Barton Stone
Presbyterian minister at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, and eyewitness of the revival of 1801. He left the Synod of Kentucky, signed the Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery in 1804, and took no name but Christian.
Stone writes that he was born near Port Tobacco in Maryland on 24 December 1772 (Stone, Biography, p. 1). He settled at the end of 1796 as preacher to the congregations of Cane Ridge and Concord in Bourbon County, Kentucky, and was ordained by the Presbyterians although he would not accept their Confession of Faith without qualification (Stone, Biography, p. 25). He describes the great meeting at Cane Ridge in August 1801 as one who took part in it (Stone, Biography, pp. 37–38).
After the Synod of Kentucky moved against him and his colleagues they formed the Springfield Presbytery, renounced all creeds but the Bible, and soon dropped their own name for that of Christians (Stone, Biography, pp. 48–50). Stone was one of the six who signed the Presbytery’s Last Will and Testament on 28 June 1804 (Stone, Biography, pp. 51–53). A notice printed with his autobiography records his death at Hannibal, Missouri, on 9 November 1844 (Stone, Biography, p. 101). See the Second Great Awakening.
In the timeline
- August 1801, firm dateThe Second Great Awakening
In August 1801 a great crowd camps for a week of preaching at Cane Ridge, Kentucky, the church of the Presbyterian minister Barton Stone, and carries the revival home. In the 1830s Charles Finney teaches that a revival is the result of the right use of means.
Primary sources
The Biography of Eld. Barton Warren Stone, Written by Himself
- Stone, Biography, p. 1archive.org
- Stone, Biography, p. 25archive.org
- Stone, Biography, pp. 37–38archive.org
- Stone, Biography, pp. 48–50archive.org
- Stone, Biography, pp. 51–53archive.org
- Stone, Biography, p. 101archive.org