Louisiana Baptists are closely related to those of Mississippi. The Mississippi Baptist settlements were contiguous to the Louisiana border, and when a number of Baptists moved into Louisiana they were visited by the ministers of Mississippi. Bailey E. Chaney removed with his family from Cole's Creek, Miss., to East Feliciana Parish, La., in 1798, and soon began to preach. He was arrested, and released on his promise to cease preaching in that jurisdiction. He seems to have returned to Mississippi. Ezra Courtney, who had removed

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[p. 346]
from South Carolina to Mississippi in 1802 and had settled near the Louisiana border, besides founding a church in Mississippi, ministered to a company of South Carolina Baptists who had settled about nine miles from Baton Rouge. He was threatened with imprisonment, but through the favor of the alcalde, whose friendship he won, he was enabled to continue his work. In neither of these localities was a church constituted until after 1813. The first church formed in Louisiana was on Bayou Chicot in 1812. It had been gathered by the labors of Joseph Willis, a mulatto, who had long been one of the leading Baptist ministers in Mississippi and had labored in close association with Richard Curtis. In 1813 the Mount Nebo and Peniel churches on the Pearl River were constituted as a result of the labors of some young evangelists from Mississippi. These churches united with the Mississippi Association soon after their formation.

     In 1813 there were in Louisiana 3 churches, with a membership of 130.

========= [From Albert H. Newman, A History of the Baptist Churches in the United States, 1894, pp. 345-346. The title is added. Scanned and formattted by Jim Duvall.]

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