Three important preachers of the times were Gilbert Tennent (1703–65), Jonathan Edwards (1703–58), and George Whitefield (1714–70).
In 1745 Shubal Stearns (1706–71), a member of the Congregational church in Tolland, Connecticut, heard evangelist George Whitefield.
By March, Shubal Stearns was ordained into the ministry by Palmer and Joshua Morse, the pastor of New London, Connecticut.
The next twenty years of Stearns' remarkable ministry is inextricably intertwined with the rise and expansion of the Separate Baptists.
Here he joined Daniel Marshall and wife Martha (Stearns' sister), who were already active in a Baptist church there.
On November 22, 1755, Stearns and his party moved further south to Sandy Creek, in Guilford County, North Carolina.
Morgan Edwards, Baptist minister and historian contemporary with Stearns, recorded that, "in 17 years, [Sandy Creek] has spread its branches westward as far as the great river Mississippi; southward as far as Georgia; eastward to the sea and Chesopeck [sic] Bay; and northward to the waters of the Pottowmack [sic]; it, in 17 years, is become mother, grandmother, and great grandmother to 42 churches, from which sprang 125 ministers."
The faith and order of both are the same, except some trivial matters not sufficient to support a distinction, but less a disunion; for both avow the Century-Confession and the annexed discipline."
Separate Baptists are particularly visible in Kentucky, where a member of the denomination, Vernie McGaha of Russell Springs, served in the state senate.