John Taylor was probably the fourth pioneer preacher to visit Kentucky, followed by Joseph Redding, but like William Hickman, they remained only a short time.

John Taylor was born in Fauquier County, Virginia, in 1752. While a youth, his parents moved over the Blue Ridge Mountains and settled on the Shenandoah River in Frederick County. At the age of seventeen years, young Taylor heard the gospel preached by William Marshall, who later settled permanently in Kentucky. He began to read the Bible and pray. Many were converted and baptized. Among these were two brothers, Joseph and Isaac Redding, who began to hold meetings soon after they were saved. John Taylor says: "Under the preaching of the Reddings the poor rags of my righteousness took fire and burnt me to death." After great remorse, and agony of mind for several months, he at last found peace and was baptized at the age of twenty years by the devoted "prisoner of the Lord" James Ireland. He soon began to warn sinners to "flee the wrath to come."

After beginning to preach, Taylor had such a desire to communicate with his friend, Joseph Redding, who had moved to South Carolina, that he set out to that State to be with him. They returned to Virginia the next Spring (1773) and labored in the gospel, sometimes together in the frontier settlements.

In the fall of 1779, John Taylor, set out to visit Kentucky. He came through the Cumberland Gap on horseback over the mountains, through the wilderness. At the same time, Joseph Redding started down the Ohio River in a flat boat with his family and some emigrants, principally from his churches. The Reddings were delayed by the wreck of their boat, and did not reach the Falls until March of the following year (1780). They suffered the cold of the severe winter, and soon after arriving, were filled with grief over the death of one of the children. Mrs. Redding was probably the first preacher's wife who came to Kentucky. Redding found the people of the Bear Grass Creek settlement so shut up in the fort for protection from the Indians that there was no opportunity to preach the gospel. John Taylor says, "All things bore such a gloomy appearance, as to preaching, that we returned again to Virginia, and resumed our former travels for about two years."

After returning to Virgina, John Taylor married, and later inherited some property from an uncle. He continued his ministerial labors until 1783, when he decided to move to Kentucky and make his permanent home there. Semple says: "Mr. Taylor also, about 1783, moved to Kentucky, and has been there, as he was in Virginia, a preacher of weight, wisdom, and usefulness."

Mr, Taylor thus describes his experience on the way to Kentuclty: "It was a gloomy thing at this time to move to Kentucky. . . Without a single friend or acquaintance to accompany me, with my young helpless family, to feel all the horrors that then lay in the way to Kentucky, we took water at Redstone; and for want of a better opening, I paid for a passage in a lonely, ill fixed boat of strangers. The river being low, this lonesome boat was about seven weeks before she landed at Beargrass; not a soul was then settled on the Ohio between Wheeling and Louisville, a space of five or six hundred miles, and not one hour, day or night, in safety."

After a few days at Bear Grass, John Taylor set out with his family on an eighty mile journey through the wilderness to Craig Station on Gilbert Creek in Lincoln County. He thus describes the mode of travel over this eighty mile distance: "Nearly all I owned was at stake, I had three horses, Two of them were packed, the other my wife rode with as much lumber besides as the beast could bear. I had four black people -- one man and three smaller ones. The pack horses were led, one by myself, the other by my man; the trace, what there was, being so narrow and bad we had no chance, but to wade through all the mud, rivers and creeks, we came to. . . . We only camped in the woods one night, where we commonly looked for protection from the Lord. One Indian might have defeated us; for though I had a rifle, I had very little skill to use it. After six days of painful travel of this kind, we amved at Craig's Station, a little before Christmas (1783), and about three months after our start from Virginia. Through all this rugged travel my wife was in a very helpless state; about one month after our arrival, my son Ben was born."

Here John Taylor began his long ministry in Kentucky, as will be seen in anothr chapter. Joseph Redding, Taylor's devoted yoke fellow in ministry, continued his work in Virginia until 1789, when he came to Kentucky, to spend the remainder of his life.

Not until 1780 did the pioneer preachers begin to settle permanently in Kentucky. During this same year a great tide of emigration was flowing from Virginia into the new country, forming settlements. Among them were many Baptists. Some of the Baptist ministers in 1780 were William Marshall, John Whitaker., Benjamin Lynn, Joseph Barnett, James Skaggs, and probably others who are unknown. At this time there was not a Baptist church in all the territory of Kentucky.
============= {From Frank M. Masters, A History of Baptists in Kentucky, 1953, pp. 14-15. jrd

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