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In 1743, Edmund Hayes, John Hayes and Thomas Yates were Baptist Evangelists at early Maryland's Chestnut Ridge / Lutherville, Maryland (outside Baltimore). They led a colony of 15 families from this area of Maryland in 1743 to northwestern Virginia's Opecken or Obequon Creek / Mill Creek area of the upper Shenandoah Valley in Old Frederick Co VA (later Berkeley Co WV). The Sater, Isbell and Howard families were among this colony. I'd love to know more about this historical story.
Remarks: Originally patented to John Hopes/Hays 12 Jan 1746. Description: Grantor Book_Date: 2-262
10. GRACE MARY CRABTREE (WILLIAM H5, THOMAS JAMES4, THOMAS WILLIAM3, WILLIAM2, MICHAEL1) was born May 29, 1711 in St. Johns Parish, Deer Creek, and died 1774. She married WILLIAM JOHN HAYS October 31, 1727 in St. George Parish, Deer Creek, Baltimore Co. Maryland.
Historical Marker of Hays-Gerard House: The marker is on Dominion Road about .01 mile south of Rt 51 in Gerrardstown, Berkeley County WV.
One of the oldest known houses in Berkeley County. John Hays acquired 90 acres and first built a log house that is no longer standing and then added the two-story stone house beside the log cabin.
Info on how this Hays family came to be in Virginia from Maryland:
(Milford, OH) (Margaret Mary8 Lacy, Charles Edgar7 Lacy, Martha Jane6 Chenoweth, Joseph5, Absolom4, William3, William2, John1) A listing of other articles by Greg can be found on the newsletter menu
At the end of our winter here in Cincinnati, I was contemplating about the church in which my Chenoweth line had been members, and that church was called Middle Run. It is located just over the Warren County, Ohio border in Sugar Creek Township, Greene Co., Ohio. It was first organized in 1799, by members of the Mill Creek Baptist Church, Berkeley County, Virginia, now West Virginia. The current building is the third church on the site and it was built in 1855.
Mill Creek Baptist Church and the former site near Gerrardstown, West Virginia have been referred to over the years as the “mother of Middle Run”. About ten years ago, I started a list of people who I knew had been members at Mill Creek, including a list of 57 members when the church was reconstituted in 1761.
I’ll give you a history of the Mill Creek Baptist Church but first, because of its relevance to our Chenoweths, the reason they were able to cross over the Blue Ridge Mountains into Virginia in the first place.
By the 1720’s to the 1730’s, a small influx of brave pioneers went into the Valley of Virginia. It was still Indian Territory, forests, and the Valley was pretty much unpopulated. There had been larger groups of Indians there, but one account says an Indian war destroyed the tribe living in the Valley and afterwards was used mainly for a hunting ground for several tribes.
In September 1701, the Burgesses had passed an act, “For The Better Strengthening of the Frontiers and Discovering the Approaches of an Enemy.” This law empowered the Governor to allot 10,000 to 30,000 acres of unclaimed frontier land to any suitable “society”. Governor Spotswood was reluctant to populate the Valley, as to go against the wishes of England, but by 1727 when William Gooch became governor, he immediately began to promote the Valley as a place to live. He was acting on instructions from London where there was growing concern that the French in the Mississippi Valley might be planning some military move against England’s Colonies. By the late 1720’s, there were already families starting to enter the Valley. One such family was Abraham Hollingsworth, cousin to John Chenoweth, through his wife Mary Calvert. He had ventured into Virginia near present day Winchester in 1729 with his wife and four children from “New Ark” in Delaware. There had also been German families venture into the Shenandoah Valley in the late 1720’s.
It was a decision that Governor Gooch would offer large tracts of land numbering thousands of acres to expedite the situation. That’s why especially in northern Virginia, there were such large land grants. Many of these thousands of acres were originally purchased by Quakers including John Calvert, Mary Chenoweth’s brother who entered the valley about 1730 to 1732. This was also part of Gooch’s plan, as he wanted a sturdy, hard working people there who were committed to staying. And they did. In actuality hundreds of acres of the northern neck were already claimed by an Englishman, Thomas Lord Fairfax, through an inheritance of his mother – all the lands between the Potomac and the Rappahannock Rivers. Robert “King” Carter was Fairfax’ land agent and also senior member of Governor Gooch’s Council. He objected to Gooch’s plan to grant away the Valley but Gooch moved forward with his plan. So between 1728 and 1736, 15 large tracts of land were granted by Council.
In 1743 it was ordered for Frederick County to be formed from Orange County and a separate court house be built. James Wood, surveyor, laid out Winchester, Virginia the same year.
With the movement of so many Quakers in the northern neck, Opeckan Quaker meeting was formed in the early 1730’s and by 1735 a meeting house was constructed that was later named Hopewell, after the town in New Jersey where many of the immigrants had their roots. The first 25 years of the Hopewell Meeting Records unfortunately were destroyed in 1759, at the home of William Jolliffe, Jr., who was acting clerk at the time.
As early as 1737, Quaker George Robinson, along with John Petitt (Poteet) probably a Quaker too, purchased a large tract of land southwest of present day Martinsburg and north of Winchester. The land was sold to Richard Beeson in 1738, the same year that Robinson died. Pettit must have decided to return to Maryland at that time, or shortly thereafter. That property was later to become the Providence Quaker Meeting house and graveyard. The graveyard is till visible today.
In researching further the history of Mill Creek Baptist Church, I found the church is recorded in Baptist Histories as the second of three movements which brought the Baptist Faith into Virginia. The first was in 1714, in southeastern Virginia. The third being about 1761 with the movement of Baptists from the areas of New England. And guess who was there on the forefront of this movement? Chenoweths!
We probably will never know all the details, but I know that the movement of John Chenoweth (1) into Virginia and his son William(2), who he was probably living with was part of this movement. In further research the moth of Mill Creek Baptist Church was called Sater’s Church, located in no other than Lutherville, MD, not 3 miles from our last Chenoweth reunion.
Sater’s church group was organized before 1740 by a man named Henry Sater (1690-1754), who came to America about 1709 and began to practice the Baptist faith. He became a prosperous farmer in the area of Chesnut Ridge, MD and later welcomed traveling ministers to preach on his land. By 1742, he had donated a 1 acre lot and built a church of bricks (actually he used slave labor) and thus began this congregation of General Baptists. The proximity of this church to where the Chenoweth’s were living was very close. Unfortunately, the early church records of Saters’ church did not survive or I believe we would find the Chenoweth name on them. It is possible that John Chenoweth’s new wife, Jane Wood, or possibly William(2)’s wife, Ann, or all of them together had made a connection to Sater’s church. Sometime around 1740-1743, they removed to Frederick County, Virginia.
It wasn’t by chance that William(2) purchased his land right next door to John Hays in Frederick County. The land on which they settled and which was recorded in 1743, was purchased from John Mills, a Quaker. The land was part of Mills’ 1,315 acre purchase some years earlier.
According to the Baptist Church histories, Sater’s Church had a couple of evangelists who are credited with bringing a “Company” to Mill Creek and starting a congregation. The evangelists were Edmund Hays and Thomas Yates. Edmund Hays was John Hays’ brother. Ruth Chenoweth, sister of William(2), had married John Pettit (Poteet). John Poteets’ brother James and sister Susannah had married siblings Elizabeth and Thomas Crabtree, respectively. John Hays’ wife was Grace Crabtree, another sibling. So these families had a somewhat connection by marriage.
The initial settlement of what would become Mill Creek Baptist Church had been set up by the earlier pioneers and the traveling evangelists, but then a minister was finally summoned. That minister was sent from Sater’s Church. His name was Henry Loveall who was the first permanent minister at Sater’s. Loveall it is written, had a colorful past. His real name was Desolute Baker who came into some trouble at his church in England and signed on as an indentured servant to America in order to leave his country. Later, he was ordained a minister in New Jersey and two of his sons had left and went south to near Baltimore, where they must have found their way to Sater’s. Henry Loveall followed them shortly after, and in 1744 was sent from Sater’s to Mill Creek to become their first permanent minister. Again something happened, and his “licentious” life style as it was called, caused him to be sent away from the Mill Creek church. Also, there had been trouble with the Indians, and so this early church was dissolved. The evangelists Hays and Yates and some of the congregation had removed into Louden County, Virginia. It wasn’t long before the Mill Creek congregation requested from the Philadelphia Association a new minister, and in 1754 a Reverand Gerrard was sent. He was the minister at Mill Creek for 30 years, when a petition was gathered to lay out the town of Gerrardstown in 1784. It was constituted and approved in 1787, the same year John Hays passed away. The graveyard and historical marker mark the site of the Mill Creek Baptist Church, now in Berkeley County, West Virginia. There are only a few stones visible today and the church building has long been gone. This graveyard is probably the burial place for some of the earlier generations of Chenoweths. Reverend Gerrards family married into the Buckles and Seaman families from Berkeley County, and it was these families who eventually migrated to Warren and Greene Counties, Ohio to start Middle Run.
List of members of Mill Creek Baptist Church (begun 1743)
A list of members as found in historical documents, dates of membership not listed. The church was begun by a gathering of early settlers to Frederick County Virginia as early as 1740. It was the oldest Baptist church west of the Blue Ridge Mountains at the time, and organized by Edmund Hayes and Thomas Yates. The two were evangelists serving from the Sater’s Baptist Church, at Chestnut Ridge, Maryland, near Lutherville. They arrived on Mill Creek in 1744. The land given to the church was on a land grant of John Mills , and the acreage for the church lot was given by Henry Switzer.
The church preceded the town of Gerrardstown, by about 40 years, which was laid out in 1784, and constituted in 1787. The church and graveyard later came to be in Berkeley County with its formation from Frederick in 1772. After the Civil War, the area became Berkeley County, West Virginia. The church for a time was dissolved in the 1750’s, due to the Indian wars, and was re-constituted 25 May 1761. I’ve added maiden names where known. An (*) denotes part of the names that were mentioned from a list of 57 members in 1762.
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I found this article courtesy of Peter C. Chenoweth and his family newsletter.
This person was created through the import of mcdougle 2010-06-30.ged on 01 July 2010.
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