Whence I Came

Black Creek Baptist Church During a time of great political and religious upheaval in Hanover County, the Black Creek Baptist Church was established in 1777 by Elder John Clay, father of statesman Henry Clay.  The original meeting house was constructed on the east side of the road which extended from the New Castle Ferry to Bottom's Bridge, near the headwaters of Black Creek and the New Kent border.  Today, this road is known as McClellan Road, and Black Creek Church is now located on the west side of the road.  Below is a Civil War era map which shows the early location of Black Creek Church and its vicinity. Map of the Vicinity of Richmond and Part of the Peninsula courtesy Library of Congress According to the book, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia written by Robert Baylor Semple in 1894, the first pastor of Black Creek Church was William Barnes.  The earliest known extant record for William Barnes in Hanover County is the ...

"There lived....a people who had the moral courage to stand up for their rights and thereby they injected a new meaning into the veins of history and of civilization."      ---------Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.  In 1835 Hanover County, Virginia, a woman simply named Betty filed suit in forma pauperis to fight for her and her children's liberties.  In a world where Betty had no rights under the bondage of slavery, the court abstract for Betty's suit presented a woman's fight to keep her family together.  What initially drew my eye to this suit was that somehow my Thurman family was involved Betty's battle.  I feared digging further into the suit and learning something about my Thurman that I really didn't want to know.  And yet, I couldn't get Betty and her brave heart out of my mind.  I had to know Betty's story and the fate of her children. According to the official court record , Betty was the property of William Gooch, a white, land...