(The following sketch was made early in 1841, and exhibits the condition of the denomination in 1840. The absence of the writer from his residence for many months, has prevented him from gathering and furnishing the additions for 1841.)

     A few Baptists emigrated to the territory (now included in the State of Indiana,) at the commencement of the present century. Several small churches were organized along the Whitewater, bordering on the State of Ohio, the first of which was in 1802. These churches were first connected with the Miami Association, but in 1809, were formed into the Whitewater Association, which then consisted of nine churches, six ministers, and about three hundred and eighty members.

      In 1806, the Wabash church was formed about eight miles north of Vincennes, and the same year, the Bethel church, in a settlement further down the Wabash River. In 1808, the Patoka church was organized in what is now Gibson county, and the Salem church still further south. The same year, the Wabash District Association was organized. In 1809, the Maria Creek church was formed, about fifteen miles north of Vincennes. The ministers who were instrumental in gathering these churches in the wilderness, were Alexander Devin, Samuel Jones, James Martin, and Isaac M'Coy. Mr. M'Coy, for more than twenty years, has been an indefatigable missionary amongst the western Indians.

      Silver Creek, in Clark county, was formed near the commencement of the present century. We find it on the minutes of the Long-Run Association, Kentucky, in 1805, with fifty members, and from its position in the table, it must have existed several years, and probably was the first Protestant church formed in this territory. Elder William M'Coy, the father of Isaac M'Coy, labored much in the early settlements of Clark county. He came frequently on preaching excursions, over the Ohio River from Shelby county, Kentucky, where he then resided, and finally removed his family to Indiana, in 1801, and died in 1813. He was a pious, devotional, laborious, and useful minister.

      The Silver Creek Association was organized in July, 1812, of eight churches, four ordained preachers, and two hundred and seventy communicants. In 1816, this Association contained twenty-four churches, ten ordained, and eight licensed preachers, and five hundred and eighty-two members. About one hundred converts had been baptized - the balance of the increase was from emigration. The same year the Association was divided, and the Blue River Association formed from it; which in 1817, reported seventeen churches, seven ordained and three licensed preachers, and five hundred and seventy-one members; while Silver Creek Association reported twelve churches, four ordained, and six licensed preachers, and three hundred and eighty-eight members. The two Associations report one hundred and eighty-eight baptized during the year. Revivals had prevailed in several churches.

     The Whitewater Association increased gradually. In 1815 it reported sixteen churches, fourteen ministers, one hundred and twenty-five baptized, and seven hundred and ninety-eight members. In 1820, it reported twenty-five churches, thirteen ministers, thirty-eight baptisms, and one thousand and one hundred and eighty members. Its additions have been more from emigration than conversions. It has been a consistent anti-mission body, rather hyper-calvinistic in doctrine, and not very active in enlarging its own borders, or adopting and carrying out measures to extend the kingdom of Christ.

      The Wabash District Association "run well" for some years. Its most intelligent and efficient minister was Mr. M'Coy, until he consecrated himself and family to Indian reform, and removed from its boundaries. On the pages of its minutes, a file of which lies before us, we see the impress of his hand and heart until 1819, when his name is no longer found on its tables. Until that period, Foreign Missions, Home Missions, Indian Missions, Bible operations and other benevolent projects appear on its minutes. From that time, the usefulness of this Association has been a blank! It is a singular coincidence, and a mysterious providence, that the year in which Isaac M'Coy took leave of the Association which he had nurtured form the first, the name of Daniel Parker appears on its minutes as connected with Lamotte church, in Crawford county, Illinois. Mr. Parker is one of those singular and rather extraordinary beings whom Divine Providence permits to arise as a scourge to his church, and as a stumbling block in the way of religious effort. Raised on the frontiers of Georgia, without education, uncouth in manners, slovenly in dress, diminutive in person, unprepossessing in appearance, with shrivelled features and a small piercing eye, few men, for a series of years, have exerted a wider influence on the lower and less educated class of frontier people. With a zeal and enthusiasm bordering on insanity, firmness that amounted to obstinacy, and perseverance that would have done honor to a good cause, Daniel Parker exerted himself to the utmost to induce the churches within his range to declare non-fellowship with all Baptists who united with any missionary or other benevolent (or as he called them, new fangled) societies. He possessed a mind of singular and original cast. In doctrine he was an Antinomian from the first, but he could describe the process of conviction, and the joys of conversion, and of dependence on God, with peculiar feeling and effect. This kind of preaching was calculated to take a strong hold on the hearts and gain the confidence of a class of pious, simple-hearted Christians, of but little religious intelligence and reading. He fully believed, and produced the impression on others, that he spoke by immediate inspiration. Repeatedly have we heard him when his mind seemed to rise above its own powers, and he would discourse for a few moments on the divine attributes or some doctrinal subject with such brilliancy of thought, and force and correctness of language, as would astonish men of education and talents. Then again, it would seem as though he was perfectly bewildered in a mist of abstruse subtleties.

      In 1820, he wrote and published a book against the Baptist Board of Foreign Missions, though all the knowledge he possessed on the subject was derived from one or two Annual Reports. Being exceedingly tenacious of church and associational authority, the main drift of his argument was, that the Board of Missions was not created by the churches, nor under their direct control. He persuaded the church of which he was preacher, to take a process of ecclesiastical discipline with a neighboring church, because some of its members contributed to Mission Societies. This produced a difficulty that came into the Association, extended into the other churches, and finally spread through a number of Associations. Fellowship was interrupted, correspondence broken up, and the evils are not yet entirely removed.

      From 1822 to 1826, Mr. Parker was a member of the Senate of Illinois, but he figured far less as a politician than as a polemic. About this period he commenced preaching the doctrine that has become familiarly known in the West as the "Two Seeds," in support of which he published a pamphlet in 1826. He sets out with the postulate that God never made a creature that will suffer eternal misery. All the elect were created in union with Christ from eternity, consequently when they fell in Adam, he was bound by covenant engagement to pay their debt or redeem them. These are the children of the kingdom - the good seed - and will be saved from sin and its consequences, and be happy forever as the bride of Christ.

      The non-elect are literally and in fact the children of the devil, begotten in some mysterious manner of Eve, manifested in the person of Cain. These constitute the "bad seed" - and, with their father, the devil, will perish without mercy or hope. On these leading principles, Mr. Parker builds a tolerably extensive system. Of course the devil, as the author of all evil, always existed, yet God, as the only Supreme Being, has him under his power, and will destroy him and his works. The parable of the tares, and many other passages of Scripture, are relied on to support these strange dogma. These notions, though variously modified, have been propagated to some extent in several western States. They are perishing before the influence of truth, and will soon be forgotten. Mr. Parker was excluded by a majority of his church, but he drew off a party, retained his influence in a portion of the Association that followed him, and still continued his ministrations. During the progress of these difficulties, the Association had undergone frequent sub-divisions. In 1822, it spread over a tract of country on both sides of the Wabash for one hundred miles in extent, and numbered twenty-two churches. Those to the south of Vincennes were dismissed to form the Salem Association, leaving twelve churches. By compromise on the Mission question, another division took place in 1823, and the Union Association was formed. This left most of the churches of the Wabash District Association in Illinois, and consequently it is now included in the statistics of that State.

      Besides several other pamphlets sent forth from the press, in 1830 and 1831, Mr. Parker published a monthly periodical, called the Church Advocate. His "Two Seeds" having produced a fruitful crop of dissension and strife, were not prominently advocated in this periodical. About 1833, he migrated to Texas, where he has formed two small churches, but exerts very little influence.

      The Salem Association, formed n 1822, lies in the south-west corner of the State, near the mouth of the Wabash. In 1839, it had twenty churches, fourteen ministers, and 1,035 members.

      In the south-eastern portion of the State, settlements were made, and a few Baptists emigrated there nearly forty years since. In 1807, a small church was constituted in Lawrenceburg, under the pastoral charge of Dr. [Ezra] Ferris. Elder Hume, from Campbell county, Kentucky, made repeated visits to the settlement on the Laughery, a stream that enters the Ohio, a few miles below the Great Miami, and several converts were baptized in 1810. The next year the Laughery church was formed of fourteen members. They were scattered over a tract of hilly country, without roads, for twenty miles in extent, and could meet but seldom. They had preaching for several years, only from the occasional visits of Elder Hume. In 1815, this little church built a framed meeting house at the cost of $300, and in their great poverty, and feeble and scattered condition, it was a prodigious effort. This was the first house for public worship erected between the Whitewater and Madison, a distance of seventy miles. Elder Hume moved over the Ohio river, and became their pastor, and a man by the name of Lothrop received license to preach the gospel.

      In 1818, Elder John Watts, a man of respectable talents and of much energy, removed from Kentucky, and settled on the Laughery, and several other churches were constituted from emigrants that came into this part of the State. The same year the Laughery Association was organized, consisting of six churches, two ordained, and two licensed preachers, and an aggregate of one hundred and twenty-four members. This Association has made steady progress, and exerted an extensive influence in this part of the State. One of its most efficient members, and one of the constituents of Laughery church in 1811, is the venerable J. L. Holman, one of the Supreme Judges of the State, and, since 1834, an ordained minister of the gospel. By patient, untiring efforts, Sunday schools have been organized, the destitute population of Dearborn county repeatedly supplied with the scriptures, ministerial and general education has been promoted, and the brethren encouraged to every good work. The village of Aurora, near the residence of Judge Holman, was the central point of radiation for these benevolent efforts. At one period the Aurora Sunday School Union embraced more than 20 schools, 200 teachers, 1,200 scholars, and 2,500 volumes in their libraries. We have not room to enlarge, but before us is a manuscript history of the Laughery Association, written by Judge Holman for the Western Baptist Historical Society, containing a great variety of interesting facts, and which, probably, will be laid before the public in another form. From that source, we gather the following statistics:

     During the first ten years of this Association, from 1818 to 1828, 530 converts were baptized in the churches, 402 were received by letter, 388 dismissed by letter, 142 excluded from fellowship, 31 restored, 55 died; total remaining, 584.

      During the next ten years to 1838, there were 534 baptisms, 406 received by letter, 485 dismissed by letter, 163 excluded, 23 restored, 100 deaths; leaving a total of 957.

      During the subsequent three years, there were 394 baptisms, 203 received by letter, 188 dismissed by letter, 34 excluded, and 57 deaths.

      The aggregate during the existence of the Association for twenty-three years, was 1,458 baptized, 1,011 received by letter, 1,063 dismissed by letter, 398 excluded, 88 restored, 212 deaths. A large portion of exclusions was for schism. Some left the churches and joined the Freewill Baptists, others were drawn into the current of the Campbellite heresy, and a few were led off by a disaffected minister.

      The average annual deaths in proportion to the number of members, for the first period of ten years, were as one to 104. During the second period, as one to 68. During the last period of three years, as one to 54.

      The comparative exclusions have been annually, for the first ten years, as one to 42. During the second period of ten years, as one to 43. During the remaining 3 years, as 1 to 50.

      Twenty-four ministers have been ordained in 16 churches of this Association, of which three were by the church in Aurora. Of these, 4 have died, two have joined the Campbellites, 3 have removed, leaving 15 still laboring in the churches of this body. The Association for 1840, reports 24 churches, 17 ordained and 4 licensed preachers, 184 baptized, and 1,155 members. The progress of this Association may be regarded as a fair sample of the average increase of other Baptist Associations throughout the western states, with the exception of a few Antinomian and anti-mission bodies.

     We have not room to enter into further particulars of the rise and progress of the Associations in this State. There are 31 in all, with about 417 churches, 220 ordained and 40 licensed preachers, and about 17,000 members. Twenty-two Associations report for 1840, 1,541 baptized.

      In 1833, delegates from a number of churches met in Shelby county and formed "The General Association of Baptists in the State of Indiana." The object, as expressed in the constitution, "shall be to unite the Baptists of Indiana in some uniform plan for promoting the prosperity of the Redeemer's kingdom within the bounds of the State, by a more general spread of the gospel." The body is similar to a Convention, in other States. It meets annually, and is composed of delegates from such churches, Societies, and Associations as contribute to its funds. The subjects of Foreign Missions, Home Missions, Bible Distribution, Education, Sunday Schools, Temperance, state of religion in the churches, duties of churches to pastors, and benevolent efforts in general, have been discussed at its annual meetings, and an impulse has been given to all these objects. At the close of the first session in 1833, a conference on education was held, which was resumed at the next anniversary, and resulted in the establishment of a Literary and Theological Institution, under the name of "Franklin Manual Labor Institute." This institution has gone into operation in Franklin County, where it has a farm, building, and a respectable class of students.

      Societies have been formed for Ministerial Education, for Foreign Missions, and for Bible operations, all which hold their anniversaries, at the time and place of the Gen. Association.

      The Banner and Pioneer, and the Cross and Journal, are the principal religious periodicals that circulate amongst the denomination. The former has an "Indiana Department" under the editorial supervision of the Rev. E. D. Owen. Since the formation of the General Association, the denomination has increased more than fifty percent in Indiana.

---

     [This document appears as one essay with historical sketches on Baptists in Indiana, Illinois and Missouri on pages 197-210 of the journal listed below. These articles are broken into histories of the separate states here, as it is easier to use in this format. There are links below for easy access to the other articles.] =============

[From the Baptist Memorial and Monthly Chronicle, NY, July 15, 1842, pages 197-201. Scanned and formatted by Jim Duvall.]

---

John M. Peck Index
Indiana Baptist History
Baptist History Homepage