I am told that the Severns Valley was blessed to have the first Baptist Church in what was to become Kentucky. It was established on this day (June 18) in 1781 between today’s Louisville and Elizabethtown. Eighteen rough frontiersmen and women constituted the original membership, and John Gerrard was for a short time their first pastor. When they gathered to pray and to hear God’s word, they were dressed much like the native Indians, with leather leggings, moccasins, with hats and coats made out of buffalo skin. Because of those Indians, they came to church armed with their flintlock musket and tomahawks. They usually left a man at the door watching for an attack which fell frequently on people who were not watching.
Over the next few years, that church produced a number of other men who went out into the surrounding wilderness preaching the gospel. For example, during the great revival that stretched from 1800 to 1803, Isaac Hodgen, a young man who had been full of contempt for the things of God, was saved and called to preach. He became a gifted evangelist, overseeing the spiritual needs of several congregations and leading many to Christ. On one extended trip, Hodgen and a couple other young preachers traveled to Philadelphia, during which time, at least 600 people came to know Christ and were baptized.
Back in the Severns Baptist Church, founding pastor, John Gerrard, after about eleven months service, took his rifle and went out to hunt for some food for his family. He never returned. It is believed that a party of Indians had killed him. One history said about Elder Gerrard, “Like John the Baptist, he came preaching in the wilderness, and like Moses, no man knoweth of his sepulchre until this day.”
