Oliver Hart was born in 1723. As a young man he was born again and joined the Baptist church in Southampton, Pennsylvania. When he was twenty-five, he surrendered to the will of the Lord and was ordained to the gospel ministry. Shortly after that he traveled to Charleston, South Carolina. On the day he arrived, the only ordained Baptist minister in the area died. Realizing that God’s timing is perfect, the historic First Baptist of Charleston, asked Bro. Hart to become their new pastor. For the next thirty years God blessed that church under his ministry. In 1780 the British fleet sailed into Charleston harbor. Knowing that the British would not tolerate the ministry of a Baptist preacher, Hart resigned and moved to New Jersey. It was there, while he was pastor of the Baptist church in Hopewell, that this writer met him, as I was researching the history of John Gano. Oliver Hart pastored that church during the Revolutionary War, opening its doors to General Washington and his staff after the crossing of the Delaware River and before the American’s victorious attack on the British at Princeton.
Oliver Hart died on this day in 1795. Baptist pastor, Richard Furman, wrote in memory of his friend, “From a part of his diary now in my possession, it appears that he [Bro Hart], took more than ordinary pains to walk humbly and faithfully with God; to live under the impressions of the love of Christ; to walk in the light of the divine presence, and to improve all his time and opportunities to the noblest purposes of religion and virtue.”