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Quarterly Meeting


Location: Priddy's Baptist Church

Date: June 13, 2009

Most of us know that Thomas Jefferson considered the Statute of Virginia for Religious Freedom to be one of his three most noteworthy achievements. Without religious dissenters, however, the Statute would have been meaningless. ACHS will celebrate the first meetings of those dissenters in Albemarle County, at our next quarterly meeting, less than two miles from where those first meetings took place.

Last June, Dr. David Holmes shared with us the arrival of organized Christianity in the county, at Christ Church, Glendower. This year, we take note of the fact that not all of our predecessors held the same beliefs, and that this was one of the first places in Virginia, where open dissent was tolerated.

Those early meetings, under the early guidance of Elijah Craig, pastor of Blue Run Baptist Church in Orange County, led to the formation of Albemarle Baptist Church (now Chestnut Grove Baptist Church) and Priddy’s Creek Baptist Church. From these two congregations have come nearly all the Baptist and Disciples of Christ congregations in Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville.

Our presenter will be ACHS Past-President Paul R. Brockman, an eighth generation descendant of William Brockman, in whose barn those first meetings were held prior to the organization of the first two congregations.


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