John Taylor (1752–1833) was a pioneer Baptist preacher, religious writer, frontier historian and planter in north and central Kentucky.
In buying and selling land on the frontier, Taylor acquired 2,000 acres (8.1 km2) and 20 African-American slaves by the end of the first decade of the 19th century, thus entering the planter class.
In his History of Clear Creek Church: and Campbellism Exposed (1830), Taylor provided material about his origins: At my birth, and in the early part of my life, my lot was cast in the backwoods of Virginia, where Indians often killed people, not far from where I was.
Being taught in all the rules of the old prayer book, I had my partialities that way; but we lived so frontier, I never heard any man preach, till about 17 years old; this was a baptist, (William Marshall).
[1] Their son Ben was born a month after their arrival in Kentucky in December 1783, after a difficult three-month trip from Virginia through the mountains.
At age 29, he took his young family to Kentucky in late 1783, two years after the historic migration of "The Traveling Church" of Baptists from Spotsylvania County, Virginia.
[6] There he entered the planter class, for he eventually held 20 enslaved African Americans and owned 2,000 acres (8.1 km2), selling some of his former land to other settlers to create a community.
[7] While not all Baptists held as many slaves as Taylor, by this time most members had accommodated to the Southern institution and stopped calling for its abolition.
[4] The missionary James E. Welch, who knew him, wrote a biography of the preacher, saying Taylor had left Gallatin because of differences with his congregation.
[6] Many religious historians have identified Taylor's leading role in the disputes over the Missionary/Anti-missionary movement that arose among Protestant churches in the United States in the 1820s.
He was honored by being one of two preachers asked to conduct the funeral of Absalom Graves, who was then the leading advocate of missions in the northern part of the state.
The Concise Dictionary of American Biography describes A History of Ten Baptist Churches as "a fine picture of religion on the frontier.
"[citation needed] When asked to tell about Taylor's life, James E. Welch, a frontier Baptist missionary, wrote: I saw this aged brother at the meeting of the Elkhorn Association, at the Big Spring Church, near Frankfort, in 1832.
[1]Taylor died in 1833 in Franklin County, Kentucky near Forks of Elkhorn Creek, the year of a major cholera epidemic in the region.
"[1] The 19th-century historian William Cathcart wrote, "He [Taylor] traveled and preached extensively and probably performed more labor, and was more successful than any other pioneer Baptist preacher in Kentucky.