Anderson Moffett was born on this day in 1773, in Fauquier County, Virginia (pronouced “FAW-ker” or “FAW-key-er”) Anderson was converted to Christ at the age of 17 under the ministry of David Thomas who was ministering through a church in the Philadelphia Baptist Association. Young Anderson began diligently serving the Lord shortly after that, and he must have been still quite young when he was arrested and locked into the Culpeper jail, before eventually becoming pastor of the Smith’s Creek Regular Baptist Church.
Anderson Moffett married and had several children. On December 21, 1923, Judge W. W. Moffett of Roanoke was visiting in Culpeper with his son and spoke of his father and his uncle Anderson. He said, “My father’s plantation was in Culpeper… It must have been in the latter have of 1885 or the first part of 1886, that my father took me to Culpeper Court House. We were standing on the south side of the street looking at the Baptist Church on the north side of the same street. My father said to me, pointing tot the church, “There once stood the jail, and in that jail my uncle, Anderson Moffett, was imprisoned for preaching the Gospel. Then turning to his right and designating the house on the corner diagonal from the Baptist Church, he said there was the home of two old people, Mr. and Mrs. Asher, who were ardent Baptists, and when theat Baptist church was being build they sat under that tree (in the corner of their yard), watched its construction, rejoiced and thanked God for what He had done….”
In other words, the jail where several Baptist preachers were jailed and persecuted (one day someone attempted to suffocate some of them by burning Indian pepper plants under the jail floor), was torn down and replaced with a Baptist church.