North Pamunkey Baptist Church

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Baptist ministers Elijah Craig and Aaron Bledsoe organized this congregation in 1774 as their denomination grew in VA. Both men had earlier been imprisoned for preaching without permission from the established Church of England. They and others in the community petitioned for religious freedom during the Revolutionary War while also providing support for the patriot cause. Bledsoe, pastor here for 32 years, was one of several prominent local Baptists whose political support James Madison won in the 1780s by promising to secure religious liberty. The present sanctuary was completed in the 1850s. Many enslaved people were members of the church before the Civil War but departed after Emancipation.

Department of Historic Resources, 2024

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

Robert B. Semple, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, 1810). “Dissenters: Petition” (1776), Library of Virginia: https://rosetta.virginiamemory.com/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=IE3435021 James Gordon Jr. to James Madison, 17 Feb. 1788, Founders Online: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=bledsoe&s=1111311111&sa=&r=4&sr Joseph Spencer to James Madison, 28 Feb. 1788, Founders Online: https://founders.archives.gov/?q=bledsoe&s=1211311113&sa=&r=28&sr William R. Snead, “North Pamunkey Baptist Church Bicentennial, 1774-1974,” 1974. Jack Frazer, The Pamunkey Neighborhood (Orange, VA, 2017). John A. Ragosta, Wellspring of Liberty: How Virginia’s Religious Dissenters Helped Win the American Revolution and Secured Religious Liberty (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010). Jennifer Waldron Conley, “Bury Me at Pamunkey: 250 Years of North Pamunkey Baptist Church,” book manuscript, 2024.