Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 1.djvu/166

 158 EARLY HISTORY OF THE BAPTISTS IN NEW HAMPSHIRE,

��member of the Congregational church, bat having embraced Baptist sentiments, he was baptized by immersion by Dr. Hezekiah Smith of Haverhill, Mass. There was an extensive religious inter- est; a Baptist church was organized in Deerfield and one in Stratham in 1770, and that same year Dr. Shepard was or- dained in Stratham by Dr. Stillman, of Boston, and others.

Dr. Shepard immediately took up his residence in Brentwood, where he gath- ered a church in 1771. He continued to practice as a physician, but devoted him- self largely to the sacred calling. In his own section he organized branches of the Brentwood church. These were five, viz : Lee and Nottingham, united, Hawke (now Danville), and Hampstead, united, Epping, Northwood and Salis- bury. In the Brentwood church, with the branches, there were at one time al- most 700 members. Some of these branches afterwards became separate churches.

Dr. Shepard went abroad occasionally into Straffrod and Grafton Counties, preaching and adding members to church- es. He was earnest in defence of what he considered Bible truth. And when the principles of the Baptists were assailed, he resorted to the pen and the press for a reply. At least five works in pamph- let form were published. He closed his active and useful life at his home in Brentwood, Nov. 4, 1816, aged 76 years.

There were Baptists in the vicinity of Dover quite early. Rev. Hezekiah Smith of Haverhill, Mass., visited Madbury, N. H. and Berwick, Me., and in 1768 a church was formed in Berwick. Aug. 14, 1776, William Hooper of Berwick was ordained in that town. Later, a portion of the Baptists in Berwick, and several living in Madbury, were consti- tuted a church. Mr. Hooper took up his residence in Madbury, preached there and in other places, and died in Madbury, in 1827, aged 82 years. Noah Hooper, a son of his, preached mostly in Maine,

��and died at Great Falls, on the Berwick side, in 1853. A son of this last is Rev. Noah Hooper of Exeter, who has been a preacher beetween forty and fifty years.

In Dr. Shepard's time, Elias Smith, a very ready, popular speaker, was much in the lower part of this State. He was ordained in the open air before the old meeting-house in Lee, in July, 1792. The Baptists built a meeting house two miles northerly from Epping Centre, where he preached much; also in Newmarket, where he lived, and in Salisbury. In 1892 he settled in Portsmouth. He left the Baptists and united with the people called Christians, and finally settled in Boston, where he was a Botanic physi- cian.

After the gathering of the churches in the lower part of the State about the year 1770, as has been named, Baptist churches were formed in the northerly and westerly parts, as at Lebanon and Westmoreland in 1771, at Gilmanton in 1772, Marlow in 1777, Croydon in 1778, Canterbury in 1779, Rumney, Holder- ness, Meredith, Chichester, and Barring- ton in 1780, New Hampton in 1782, Weare and Canaan in 1783. In Canaan Rev. Thomas Baldwin preached. This was the Thomas Baldwin, D. D., afterwards pastor of the Baldwin Place Baptist church in Boston from 1790 to his death in 1825.

Some of the churches named became extinct, others changed their denomina- tional relations to the Free Will Baptists about 1780, when that denomination was formed.

In 1795, forty years from the organi- zation of the first Baptist church in the State at Newton, there were in New Hampshire forty-one Baptist churches, thirty ministers, and 2562 communicants. Thus it seems that the early growth of this denomination was rapid. Its in- crease in after years, if not so rapid, was still most encouraging.

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