severns valley baptist church

‘It’s the people’

By BECCA OWSLEY bowsley@thenewsenterprise.com

From a small gathering of people under a sugar maple tree in 1791 to a 3,000-plus member, 113,000-square-foot place of worship, Severns Valley Baptist Church has withstood the test of time as an icon of faith and stability.

The church is considered the oldest continuous Baptist congregation west of the Allegheny Mountains, according to J.H. Spencer’s “History of Kentucky Baptists” published in 1885. In its early years, the church faced a number of dangers it would not face

today, including the threat of being attacked by Native Americans. The fate of the church’s first pastor, John Garrard, may have been the result of such an incident, according to church lore. Garrard served as pastor only nine months in the frontier church, according to Mike Byers, current financial records administrator and longtime church member. One story holds that he went hunting and never returned, while another said he was scalped and killed.

Samuel Haycraft’s “History of Elizabethtown, Kentucky” states Garrard was a member of a hunting party that was attacked by Indians and

JILL PICKETT/The News-Enterprise Severns Valley Baptist Church has grown from a small group of people gathering under a sugar maple tree to a church with more than 3,000 members.