An Effective Preacher for Eventful Times
By E. Wayne ThompsonJohn Gano was a direct descendant of the Huguenots of France. His great-grandfather Francis was obliged to flee from the persecutions that resulted from the bloody edict revoking the Edict of Nantes. Francis Gano settled in New Rochelle, New York. His sonStephen raised six sons, one of whom was John's father, Daniel. Daniel and his wife,Sarah Britton, were eminently pious people, he being a Presbyterian and she a Baptist.John, the fifth child and third son of this union, was born July 22, 1727, and embraced the Baptist convictions of his mother as a youth.
After carrying out an itinerant preaching ministry throughout the South, John Gano accepted a call to take charge of an infant church at the "Jersey Settlement" in North Carolina. The church grew to be large and his ministry abundantly useful throughout that region of the couintry. Upon an outbreak of a war with the Cherokee Indians, he moved to New Jersey.
On June 19, 1762, the First Baptist Church of New York City was constituted by Benjamin Miller and John Gano.1 The latter immediately became the pastor. He also accepted the pastoral care of the Baptist church in Philadelphia, and for a number of years, he was the pastor of all Baptists in the two largest cities on the American continent. The church in New York propsered so much under his ministry that they had to enlarge the meetinghouse in 1763, He possessed excellent pulpit talents, and crowds flocked to hear him expound the Word of God.
During the Revolutionary War, the church was dispersed and its records suspended. No baptisms are recorded from April 24, 1776 to September 4, 1784.2 The British forces occupied the city for more than seven years, and Gano served in the Revolutionary Army for that period of time as a chaplain. No city in American was occupied as long by the enemy and suffered so much as did the city of New York. Its inhabitants found shelter in other colonies, while the Tories made it their place of refuge. Pestilence and two great fires swept it, and the soldiers inflicted all the damage that they could. At the opening of the war, there were nineteen churches in the city, but when it closed, only nine of them could be used for worship. The Baptist meetinghouse, having been used for a horse stable, was almost in ruins. On his return to New York, Gano found emptiness, desolation, and ashes. He collected thirty-seven out of about two hundred of his former flock. Many had died, and others were scattered throughout every part of the new nation.
As soon as the building was decently cleaned, he rallied his people and preached to them from Haggai 2:3, "Who is left among you that saw this house in her first glory? and do you see it now?" Under his ministry, the days of spiritual prosperity soon returned and lasted until he baptized his last convert on April 5, 1788, and left for Kentucky. During his pastorate of twenty-five years, he baptized 197 and received 23 by letter into the church. Armitage says, "He was one of the most remarkable men in America in all the resources which native strength, sound judgment, wit, ingenuity, retentive memory, zeal, and godliness furnish in times which try men's souls."3
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1 J. H. Spencer, A History of Kentucky Baptists from 1769 to 1883, (Cincinnati: J. R. Baumes, 1886), 1:124.
2 Thomas Armitage, The History of the Baptists (1890: reprint ed., Watertown, Wis.: Maranatha Baptist Press, 1976), 2:755.
3 Ibid., pp. 754-56.[From This Day in Baptist History, 1993, pp. 300-301. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]
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