Though they did not receive the requested assistance, native Paul Palmer labored there about 25 years later, and founded the first "General" or "Free Will" Baptist church in Chowan County, North Carolina, in 1727.
The problem with the history of Paul Palmer, however, stems from the fact that it is uncertain exactly what view of perseverance he actually held.
A remnant of the Randall churches organized in 1917 as the Cooperative General Association of Free Will Baptists.
Representatives of the "Palmer" (General Conference) and "Randall" (Cooperative General Association) groups of Free Will Baptists met at Cofer's Chapel in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1935 and organized the National Association of Free Will Baptists as a merger of the two groups.
The new association adopted the Treatise on the Faith and Practice of the Free Will Baptists,[3] which has been revised several times since then.
The Arminian tradition was fashioned in the Netherlands in the 17th century against scholastic Calvinism and its deterministic interpretation of historic Christian teachings about predestination.
The states with the highest membership rates are Arkansas, Oklahoma, West Virginia, Alabama, and Kentucky.
[6] Their primary role is to send missionaries into North America to plant Free Will Baptist churches.
As of 2011 they have missionaries in Alabama, Michigan, South Carolina, Alaska, Minnesota, Tennessee, Arizona, Mississippi, Texas, California, New Mexico, Utah, Canada, New York, Virgin Islands, Colorado, Ohio, Virginia, Idaho, Oklahoma, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Kentucky, Puerto Rico, Wisconsin, Mexico, and Rhode Island.