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Finding the Woman Behind the Man: Peter and Dinah Durrett


Women are often left under-acknowledged in the historical record. African American women are even less likely to be named. It is our commitment here at the Kentucky Faith & Public History Education Project to honor the contributions of past Kentucky Christians including men, women, whites, blacks, Native Americans, Hispanics, and others. It takes a lot of work to find documented evidence of their existence and of how they explained the importance of their faith to their lives and work. An example of the minimal mention given to Dinah Durrett in the written record is the subject of this blog.

Peter Durrett organized the first two African American churches in Kentucky beginning in 1808. His was the second African American church in the United States, an oddity given that Kentucky is a southern state and that Durrett was enslaved. His nickname was Old Captain. He emigrated to Kentucky in 1781 with the Traveling Church, a pilgrimage of some 500 Baptists from Spottsylvania, Virgina. Durrett had been in Kentucky before with Captain William Ellis. Explorers and pioneers, Ellis and Durrett helped to build Grant’s Station. Durrett assisted in the task of determining and making the initial preparations for the Traveling Church’s destination. Durrett might never have arrived in Kentucky without his wife’s story, however.

Her name was Dinah[1]. She was enslaved, owned by the Baptist pastor, Joseph Craig, one of the brothers leading the Traveling Church to resettle in Kentucky. Durrett was owned by his father, whose plantation neighbored Joseph Craig’s. Dinah was to accompany the Craig’s to Kentucky. Peter would have been left behind except that he requested to be traded so that he could remain with his wife. From the time that the Traveling Church left Virginia until his death in 1823, Peter was also owned by Joseph Craig.

By this time, Peter would have been 48-years old. He had converted to Christianity as a young boy of between seven and twelve-years old at the Tuckahoe Great Revival in Virginia through the preaching of John Waller[2], an evangelist in the First Great Awakening. Durrett had been a Baptist Exhorter since he was 25, but he never was ordained to the ministry because of the prejudices of the white church officials. The lack of ministerial credentials did not stop him, though. He was sponsored by the contributions and endorsements of prominent white Lexingtonians like John Maxwell and Levi Todd[3]. He is known to have been the first African American to preach a sermon in Kentucky[4].

Dinah died in 1820, three years before her husband. She is rarely mentioned by name. She is credited with providing the hospitality without which her husband’s church might not have been as successful. According to Robert H. Bishop’s early history of the church in Kentucky, “His wife was also particularly active in providing accommodations for the people, and in encouraging them to be in earnest about the things which belonged to their everlasting peace”[5]. Bishop gave Peter Durrett a whole chapter, calling him “Captain” instead of his given name. He gave Dinah one sentence without naming her other than as the “Captain’s” wife. Let the record show that without Dinah the First African Church of Lexington with its rich history as a stop on the Underground Railroad and as a hub of the Civil Rights Movement may not have been organized [6].

©2021 by Lesley Barker

 


[1] Alicestyne Turley. Spirited Away: Black Evangelicals and the Gospel of Freedom. Doctoral Dissertation. College of Arts & Sciences University of Kentucky. 2009.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] George W. Ranck. “The ‘Traveling Church’ An Account of the Baptist Exodus from Virginia to Kentucky in 1781”. The Register of the Kentucky Historical Society. Vol. 79. No. 3 Summer 1981.

[5] Robert H. Bishop (editor). An Outline of the History of the Church in the State of Kentucky During a Period of Forty Years. Lexington. University of Transylvania. 1824.

[6] Georgia Green. “Peter Durrett”. The News Herald. 2/18/2003. ONLINE at https://www.owentonnewsherald.com/content/peter-durrett. ACCESSED 2/1/2021.


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