. . . The ordinance of baptism was administered for the first time in Mason county in August, 1788. The ceremony took place in the Ohio river, in front of the present city of Maysville. There was present a very large assemblage of people for those days, nearly all the inhabitants of the town and surrounding country turning out. The strangeness of the scene in a new country - an almost unbroken wilderness - and the soleminity [sic] of an ordinance so appropriate to those who renounce the world and put on Christ, carried the people back to the days of their youth and to another land, impressing them as never before with the importance of a personal interest in the Savior. This scene was undoubtedly largely instrumental in the rapid spread of religious influence and the noted revivals which followed and continued for some years in Mason county. During the baptism a large number of Indians assembled on the other side of the river and watched its progress with the greatest interest. It must have looked to them like a strange, weird scene, the significance of which they could not comprehend. The solemn music, sounding across the waters like a dirge, the burial and the resurrection, must have struck them with awe and wonder. The persons baptised upon this occasion were Elizabeth Wood, John Wilcox, Ann Turner, Mary Rose and Elizabeth Washburne. . . . [p. 1]

History of the Maysville Baptist Church, by Martin Smith, 1875.

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