Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions.

Use Restrictions

Copies may be made for research purposes only. Permission to publish must be obtained by First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia.

Preferred Citation

First Baptist Church (Richmond, Va.) Register, 1826-1905. Accession 51334. Church records collection, The Library of Virginia, Richmond, Virginia.

Acquisition Information

Loaned for duplication by First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia, 16 April 2014.

Biographical Information

The First Baptist Church (Richmond, Va.) was organized in June 1780 as the Richmond Baptist Church. It had 14 charter members, and was led by pastor Joshua Morris. According to the Church's website (accessed in 2014), it was the first church of any denomination to be organized in Richmond, and the first Baptist church organized in a Virginia city. In its early years, the church met in a building at Cary and Second Streets, later erecting a building at 14th and Broad Streets. In 1841 a majority of the church's white members departed to a new First Baptist Church building at 12th and Broad Streets. The African American members continued to meet in the original building, forming the First African Baptist Church. In 1928, the First Baptist Church moved to its current location at Monument Avenue and Boulevard.

Scope and Content

Register, 1826-1905, of the First Baptist Church (Richmond, Va.) , consists chiefly of an alphabetized list of church members with dates (when known, or when applicable) for when and how a given member was received and/or dismissed from the church. The major categories of dismissal, as explained at the beginning of the register, are a member being "excluded" (excommunicated), "dropped" (withdrawn to join another congregation or otherwise withdrawn without "charge of immorality"), or "erased" (long absent without information on his or her current situation). One event of note given as a reason for several members leaving the church was an 1832 rift recorded as the "Campbellite Secession." Other notations are made for events such as baptism, marriage, divorce, and death, including several parishioners who died in Civil War service, and at least one (Julius A. Hobson) killed in the collapse of a balcony at the Virginia State Capitol on 27 April 1870 (the date appears to be erroneously recorded as "4/27/1871"). The register begins with a note that the church's books prior to 1825 had been lost, necessitating some of the information recorded in the register being reconstituted from the collective memory of the church body. The volume continues with a historical sketch of the church up to 1885; a list of its pastors, 1780-1905; a list of outside ministers who had been members of First Baptist; and a "Table of Church Statistics," 1780-1904, breaking down by year and by cause the number of members added and subtracted from the church rolls.