Baptists in Early North America, Volume III: Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists

The Baptists in Early North America Series provides a unique contribution to religious and Baptist scholarship, recovering never-before-published original records and manuscripts for students, scholars, and genealogists.

Baptists in Early North America-Newport, Rhode Island, Seventh Day Baptists , Volume III covers the period 1664 to 1808, from the date some members of Newport’s first Baptist church began meeting for worship on the seventh-day Sabbath (Saturday) through the first 137 years of their life as the Newport Seventh Day Baptist Church.

Transcriptions of the church’s first three record books (1692-1808) are preceded by extensive excerpts from the manuscripts and letters of Samuel Hubbard, one of the founding members; these document the origins in John Clarke’s Newport Baptist church and the influences from Sabbathkeeping Baptists in mid-seventeenth century England.

The record follows the covenant community, nurtured in colonial Rhode Island’s unique religious freedom, from Newport’s pioneer period through its Golden Age as a major colonial seaport and its devastation during the Revolutionary War. Scattered membership could be found east and south into Plymouth Colony and Martha’s Vineyard and west to Westerly and Hopkinton, Rhode Island, and New London, Connecticut. Members from Native Americans and African servants to Rhode Island Governors and wealthy merchants are also documented. This congregation had involvement with other Baptists in founding Rhode Island College (Brown University) and through the Second Great Awakening, then joined with daughter congregations and others to form the Seventh Day Baptist General Conference in 1802.