Dry Ridge Baptist Church  

The fourth church to be organized in the area that would become Grant County was initially known as The Baptist Church at The Dryridge--Freewill. With the assistance of Elders Benjamin Lambert and Alexander Monroe, the other "helps" from Mountain Island, Union, and Forks of the Licking (Falmouth) Churches, the Dry Ridge Church was constituted on July 12, 1817 with the following original members: Henry Childers Sr., Thomas Childers, William G. Childers, Major Childers, William Childers, James Thomas, Mary Childers, Sarah Thomas, Elizabeth Childers, Mary Landrum, Elizabeth Lay.

The first minister, and twelfth member was Elder Christian Tomlin, a native of Virginia who moved here from the Ohio Territory in 1817. Initially, services were held in the meeting house built in 1799 and shared with the Old Baptists under the agreement reached in 1818. This agreement was formalized in a deed dated July 12, 1820 to Simon Nichols, Robert Childers Sr., William Childers, and their successors as Trustees of the Dry Ridge Meeting House which is ". . . . for all societies to worship in who please and said lot is also intended for the purpose of erecting thereon a public school . . . ."

The Old Baptists moved to Williamstown, leaving this meeting house in 1826, but the Free-Will Baptists who had improved it with the purchase of a stove in 1821 continued to meet there. In October 1842, the church instructed its trustees ". . . to get a new brick church".

In April 1843, according to the church history, the trustees reported that they had secured 1/2 acre of land at the forks of the Broadridge (Knoxville) Pike and the (Lexington) Turnpike from Uriah Tungate and wife. Although the church initially wanted a brick church, the completed church was of frame construction, fifty feet by thirty feet. The deed for this property was not written until September 11, 1848 (rather than 1843) and recorded in Grant County Deed Book "G", Pages 9 and 10, conveying 1/2 acre, more or less, for $1.00 to Jesse Conyers, James Ashcraft and Simon Nichols, Trustees of "The United Baptist Church at Dry Ridge."

The church history reports that church records for the period 1846 to 1877 were lost. During this period a deed dated April 8, 1861 and recorded in Grant County Deed Book "L", Page 433, Trustees Henry Ashcraft and Matthew Neal, of the Free Will Baptist Church, called and known as the Dry Ridge Baptist Church situated . . . . east of the Covington and Lexington Turnpike", for $15.00 acquired from William Tucker and Nancy, his wife, "A piece of land . . . . bounded on the west by said turnpike, on the north by the Broadridge Road, on the east by the line that originally divided this piece from the original lot on which stands the said Dry Ridge Free-Will Baptist Church . . . . "

In August 1875, Trustees Edmond (Edward) Evans, Henry Ashcraft and John Landrum, on behalf of the "Regular Baptist Church" purchased a 1/2 acre lot on the Warsaw Road (now Warsaw Avenue in Dry Ridge) from James Hutcherson and wife, for $250 as recorded in Grant County Deed Book "S", Page 416. There is no church record of the type or size of the house of worship built on Warsaw Avenue in Dry Ridge in 1875-76. The same Trustees, in a deed dated June 24, 1875 and recorded in Grant County Deed Book "S", Page 615-616, had sold most of the existing property at the Turnpike and the Knoxville Road for $1,500 to the Cincinnati Southern Railroad. The same Trustees, on behalf of "The Free-Will Baptist Church at Dry Ridge" in a deed dated November 28, 1876 and recorded in Grant County Deed Book "T", Page 401, sold for $50 "A certain tract" containing "8 poles" to William Conrad Jr., bordering a lot "sold to said Conrad by O. P. Hogan . . . . to be used for the C.S.R.R. depot and nothing else . . . . "

The same three Trustees, on behalf of "The Dry Ridge Baptist Church near the town of Dry Ridge" sold a small but unspecified lot of land being "a part of the Dry Ridge Baptist Church lot" in the line of the C.C.R.R. for $50 to Beverly Marshall on June 8, 1876 as recorded in Grant County Deed Book "T", Page 536. Again, the same three Trustees, on May 20, 1876, in a deed recorded in Grant County Dee Book "A", Pages 466-467, sold, for $50, a tract of unspecified size to Allen and Louisa Tucker, reserving a 12 feet passway for the benefit of Beverly Marshall.

The meeting house built in 1875-1876 was apparently inadequate by 1895 for the rapidly growing church when the church appointed a committee to purchase a new site for the purpose of building a new building. By 1900, it was agreed that a new house of worship would be built on the existing Warsaw Avenue site. The church secured the use of the M.E.-South Church in Dry Ridge two Sundays a month while their own building was constructed. The building was completed and dedicated on July 29, 1901.

History of Grant County, Kentucky
John B. Conrad, Editor
Published by the Grant County Historical Society
Williamstown, Kentucky

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