HistoricSiteMarkers
Colonial AmericaEarly Republic

Cartledge Creek Baptist Church

Rockingham, Richmond County, North Carolina

Marker Inscription

Cartledge Creek Baptist Church. Originally Dockery's Meeting House, about 1774. Baptist State Convention, 1833, voted here to found Wake Forest Institute. About 4 miles North.

Erected by North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources

The Story

Founded around 1774 as Dockery's Meeting House, this Baptist congregation became a cradle of the denomination in the Carolina Piedmont. In 1833 the Baptist State Convention met here and voted to establish the Wake Forest Institute — the school that grew into Wake Forest University.

Why it matters

A backcountry meeting house became the birthplace of one of the South's major universities, showing how frontier churches seeded lasting institutions of higher learning.

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Related events

  • · Founding of Wake Forest Institute

Themes & tags

EducationChurch

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