Elijah Baker (1742-1798)

WY-26

Elijah Baker, Baptist preacher, began his ministry in Lunenburg County. As an itinerant in the 1770s, he helped found several churches in the counties along the James and York Rivers. He arrived in this area on Easter Sunday 1776 and traveled to nearby Magothy Bay Anglican Church. The minister was absent, and Baker, atop a horse block near the churchyard, preached the first Baptist sermon on the Eastern Shore. He is credited with helping to found 18 Baptist churches on the Delmarva Peninsula. Detained in Accomack County in 1778, he was the last Baptist jailed for preaching in Virginia. Baker was the pastor of nearby Lower Northampton Baptist Church when he died in 1798.

Department of Historic Resources, 2017

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References/Bibliographic Citation:

“Baker, Elijah,” Dictionary of Virginia Biography, 1:289-290. John S. Moore, “Elijah Baker (1742-1798): A One-Talent Man Who Succeeded,” The Virginia Baptist Register (1991), 30: 1510-1523, James B. Taylor, Lives of Virginia Baptist Ministers (Richmond: Yale & Wyatt, 1838), 108-113. Robert Baylor Semple, History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia (Richmond, 1810). Garnett Ryland, The Baptists of Virginia, 1699-1926 (Richmond: Virginia Baptist Board of Missions and Education, 1955). Blanche Sydnor White, History of the Baptists on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, 1776-1959 (Baltimore: J.H. Furst Company, 1959). Kirk Mariner, Revival’s Children: A Religious History of Virginia’s Eastern Shore (Salisbury, MD: Peninsula Press, 1979.)