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Subject: [NJHUNTER] Kingwood Baptists
Date: Mon, 24 Feb 2003 13:58:07 EST

Dear Listers:
Here is more from the book entitled: Baptists in Kingwoood, New
Jersey, A History of the Kingwood Baptist Chruch at Baptistown and Locktown
and the Present Baptistown Baptist Church by Stephen Zedpski, Harmoney
Printing Company, Phillipsburg, NJ, 1974.

EARLY EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SETTLERS

Among the earliest settlers in the Baptistown area were Issac
Wolverton and wife, William Fowler and wife, and Elizabeth Warford who
arrived in 1729. Five years later John Burtis, Ann Lanner and Mary Green
joined the colony. Perhaps among the reasons they decided to build homsteads
here are some found in an earlier 1677 letter to England from John Crips in
Burlington: Through the mercy of God we are safely arrived at New
Jersey...... the country is so good that I do not see how it can reasonably
be found fault with...Here is good land enough lies void, would serve many
thousands of families...the country, in short, I like it very well....and I
do believe this river Delaware is as good a river as most in the world. It
exceeds the river Thames by many degrees.
It was Elder Thomas Curtis who was licensed by the Hopewell Baptist
Church, and who first settled on a point of land in the fork of Spruce Run
and Smalley Creek, who was a moving spirit in the formation of the church.
When he learned of the Baptists in the Baptistown area (still a part of
Bethlehem Township) he began a Baptist settlement there. A meeting house was
built there in 1741. The first convert, Edward Hunt, was taken to Hopewell
for baptism to the church from which many of them came, and was followed by
ten more converts.

KINGWOOD BAPTIST CHURCH FOUNDED

When the group became large enough to consider organization of their
own church, twenty-one members were dismissed from the Hopewell Church. The
word dismissed is not used in its current sense of excluded or rejected but
in the church sense of being sent forth on a new mission. The new mission
was to form a new church, and on July 31, 1742 the new church came into being
with the name Kingwood Baptist Church. Four years later in 1746, the area
itself was called Kingwood when Bethehem was divided.
Previous to this, John Bray of Middletown had acquired 500 acres in
the Baptistown area, and in 1737 he bought another 1000 acres. In 1748, six
years after the Kingwood Baptist Church was founded, John and James Bray
moved from the Middletown area to Kingwoood. Since they called their
settlement in Middletown Baptisttown (now Holmdel) when they arrived at
Kingwood, they transferred their previous name of Baptisttown to their new
location, thereby giving Baptistown the name it still bears today. The name
was spelled Baptisttown in the early days, but the second T was dropped and
the spelling changed to Baptistown more recently.
At the formation of the Kingwood Baptist Church in 1742, all members
signed a covenant, thereby formally and solemnly obligating themselves to
live up to its rules and to accept penalties for transgression of those
rules.

One more later on the Locktown branch of the church.
The little book has foot notes which I have not included here and a
bibliography. If anyone is interested in learning the source of a fact or
where the author got his information, you can email me and I will try to
provide it.

Kay

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