Elijah Craig - Travel To Kentucky Area of Virginia

Travel To Kentucky Area of Virginia

Still seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity, in 1781 Elijah Craig's brother Lewis led an exodus of up to 600 people known as "The Travelling Church" (composed of most of his congregation and many others, e.g., from Germantown) from their prior location (Spotsylvania, VA) to the area of Virginia known as Kentucky (the largest single group to so migrate). Elijah Craig did not go with this group but followed a few years later after staying to negotiate guarantees of constitutional religious liberty with James Madison. The migrants included slaves held by the Craigs and others. They walked down to present-day Lynchburg and Roanoke before crossing the Blue Ridge and Cumberland Mountains through the Cumberland Gap, where English Station was the first settlement at which they arrived. Later, in 1792, the Kentucky area would be separated from Virginia to form the new state of Kentucky.

When he did finally emigrate, Elijah Craig purchased 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) in what was then Fayette County of Virginia, in 1782, where he planned and laid out the nearby town originally called Lebanon, incorporated in 1784. (In 1790 the town would later be renamed as Georgetown in honor of Gen. Washington.) Craig preached at several churches and became pastor of the Great Crossing Church, which is still active in the Georgetown area. (He was buried next to his mother in the early church cemetery, now covered by a parking lot.)

Elijah Craig established the first classical school in Kentucky in 1787. His advertisement in The Kentucky Gazette read:

“Education. Notice is hereby given that on Monday, 28 January next, a school will be opened by Messrs. Jones and Worley, at the Royal Spring in Lebanon Town, Fayette County, where a commodious house, sufficient to contain fifty or sixty scholars, will be prepared. They will teach the Latin and Greek languages, together with such branches of the sciences as are usually taught in public seminaries, at twenty five shillings a quarter for each scholar. One half to be paid in cash, the other half in produce at cash prices. There will be a vacation of a month in the spring, and another in the fall, at the close of each of which it is expected that such payments as are due in cash will be made. For diet, washing and house room for a year, each scholar pays £3 in cash, or 500 weight of pork on entrance, and £3 cash on the beginning of the third quarter. It is desired that, as many as can, would furnish themselves with beds; such as cannot may be provided for here, to the number of eight or ten boys, at 35s a year for each bed. ELIJAH CRAIG. LEBANON, December 27, 1787.”

The school was later linked to the Rittenhouse Academy, founded in 1798 and led by Craig. He donated land for the founding of Georgetown College, the first Baptist college founded west of the Allegheny Mountains. The college continues today.

Craig was a businessman and a local magnate, providing many jobs and generating socio-economic development. He built Kentucky's first fulling mill (for cloth manufacturing), its first paper mill, its first ropewalk (for manufacturing rope from hemp), and the first lumber and gristmill at Georgetown.