[1] The original Kehukee (formerly also Quehuky[9]) meeting house was built about 1742 by William Surginer or Sojourner (1706–1750), a General Baptist from Burley, Isle of Wight County, Virginia who acquired land in the basin of the Kehukee Swamp, a creek which flows into the Roanoke River,[10][11] and settled there in the mid-1720s.

[12] The church stood near the creek and two miles east of Scotland Neck,[13] on land donated by Surginer, its first minister.

[32] Provincial North Carolina's Regulator Insurrection (1768–1771) devastated the western base of Shubal Stearns' Sandy Creek Association, whose few churches in the province's east asked to join Kehukee instead.

[35] In 1777, ten churches of the Regular Baptist faction made a confession of faith which was implicitly endorsed after the reunification.

[39] In 1793, the Neuse Baptist Association, comprising the churches south of the Tar River, was split off for similar reasons of convenience.

[6][7] In August 1826 Lawrence prepared a "Declaration of the Reformed Baptist Churches in North Carolina", which was published in succeeding months and debated by Kehukee and its sibling associations.

[43][44] Kehukee's 1826 conference voted to send it to the member churches for consideration,[43][45] and its 1827 conference issued what became known as the Kehukee Declaration:[6][8][46] A paper purporting to be a Declaration of the Reformed Baptists in North Carolina, dated August 26, 1826, which was presented at last Association, and referred to the churches to express in their letters to this Association their views with regard to it, came up for deliberation.

Despite scattered earlier smaller-scale incidents, the Kehukee Declaration is considered by many historians to mark the birth of Primitive Baptism.

[48] At its 1861 conference the Kehukee Association ordered a day of fasting and prayer to mark the Civil War.