The Travelling Church
The Travelling Church was a large group of pioneering settlers in the late 1700s that emigrated from Spotsylvania County, Virginia, to the Kentucky District of Virginia. It was the largest group that migrated to the area in a single movement. The group was led by the Reverend Lewis Craig, one of three pastor sons of Toliver Craig Sr., and its core was his Baptist congregation. The group of about 600 people arrived at Gilbert's Creek, Kentucky, in December 1781. Other preachers in the Travelling Church were Lewis Craig's younger brother Rev. Joseph Craig and his  beloved slave Peter Durrett, who later became a pioneering black minister in Lexington, Kentucky. Lewis Craig's other brother who was a minister, Rev. Elijah Craig, did not come with the rest of the Church, as he remained for a while in Virginia to help James Madison establish constitutional religious liberty assurances before joining the group later. The group's pioneering members were to found many churches (including the first north of the Kentucky River), settlements, and other institutions that continue to this day. The group and its journey. Seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity, in 1781 Rev. Lewis Craig  led a group numbering "perhaps five or six hundred" people known as "The Travelling Church" composed of a core comprised by a majority of the Baptist congregation of Lewis' Upper Spottsylvania church, along with other settlers joining in, to the area of Virginia known as Kentucky County. "Leaving behind the discrimination against them by the established church in colonial Virginia, they sought fertile soil" for both physical and spiritual fruitbearing. "This hardy group...was led by the Rev. Lewis Craig, who saw his flock's trek across the mountains as parallel to that of the Israelites leaving Egypt for Canaan ." During the fall-winter of 1781, Craig as Moses and Capt. William Ellis as Joshua led the huge train over the frozen and danger-filled Cumberland Gap with only a little loss of life into the rugged frontier of Kentucky for their Promised Land. The emigrants included slaves held by the Craigs and others. They walked down the Great Wagon Road in the Blue Ridge Mountains through present-day Lynchburg, Roanoke and Fort Chiswell, gathering members, before joining the Wilderness Road. They crossed the Appalachians through the Cumberland Gap, continued north up the Wilderness Road, and ultimately settled in central  Kentucky, establishing their first church and community at Gilbert's Creek. "The Travelling Church" historical marker and the hilltop location of their fortified church is available online. This memorial by the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America in the Commonwealth of Kentucky for "The Travelling Church, 1781" is also known as State Marker 25 and is located on KY 39/Lancaster Rd, ca. 2.5 miles SE of Lancaster, Garrard Co., KY, 40444; 37.577915, -84.558316. The text from State Marker 25: Up on the hilltop behind the roadside marker was constructed the fortified blockhouse serving as both a house  of worship and a place of defense from Indian attacks. There is also a monument to "The Travelling Church" atop that hill on the site of the church fort. On the other side of the current road next to Gilbert's Creek they erected the wooden stockade fort known as Craig's Station, where the settlers lived. This original Travelling Church changed their name to Gilbert's Creek Baptist Church when Rev. Craig and others moved on further north two years later to found other churches and settlements. They are the third-oldest Baptist church in Kentucky and, although moved  a short distance from the original site, still continue regular worship today. Other churches founded by Travelling Church members and which still continue today include Forks of Dix River Church (1782), South Elkhorn Christian Church (1783), Clear Creek Baptist Church (1785), First African Baptist Church (ca. 1790), Mt. Pleasant Baptist Church (1791, 1801), Bracken Baptist Church (1793), the Providence church in Madison county, etc. Travelling Church members. While a complete list of names for those participating in the Travelling Church exodus and settling in Kentucky is impossible, various names are known. Old William Marshall preached to them, with their pastor , the first Sunday after their arrival. Among their members were nearly all the family of the Craigs, the old father and mother, four sons and their daughters, all married. The Bowmans, a name associated with the daring and bloody conflicts with the Indian warriors, are found in the list of Ashers, Singletons, Smiths, Hunts, Shotwells, Mitchums, Curds, Caves, Hickersons, Sanders, - many, in fine, whose names are familiar, and their descendants are to be found all over Kentucky, who were members of this traveling church. A more complete compilation from several sources includes: