town.
They may have learned about the region from a brother, Barnabas Payne, who saw service at Fort Stanwix, about ten miles west. They, themselves, were also veterans and conceivably could have been on duty in the area. In 1795 Elisha, and mutual friends from Whitestown and Connecticut, joined Samuel in his new location. Elisha bought a large tract of land north of that held by his brother and here founded Payne’s Settlement, so-called because of Elisha’s interest and activity in developing the village. The leading citizen of the community, he erected the first frame building, opened a tavern where the first town meeting was held, and served as one of the first judges of the Court of General Sessions for Common Pleas.
Their material needs provided for, the settlers turned to matters of religion. In 1796, only two years after Samuel Payne’s arrival, they met at his home to establish the First Baptist Church of Hamilton, for nearly a generation the only church in the village. Elisha Payne for some reason did not join until three years later yet he, Samuel, and their friend, Jonathan Olmstead, were its pillars. They and six of the others, who later formed the Baptist Education Society of the State of New York, helped to make it one of the strongest in the State and the “Mother Church of Colgate University.”
The church could report in 1796 that with the aid of “divine providence” they were changing “the howling desert into a fruitful land….”*
Not content with providing a religious organization for themselves, the Hamilton Baptists in 1807 joined with other members of the denomination in the surrounding region to form a society to send preachers to the Holland Purchase area south of Lake Ontario and into the Canadian peninsula. The organization even provided a minister and teacher for their neighbors, the Oneida Indians. Probably no other agency was as influential in promoting the progress of Baptists in Western New York.
In 1795 the denomination had only about 500 members, fifteen churches, seven preachers, and one small meeting house in the upstate area. By 1817, however, there were approximately 28,000 members, 310 churches, and 230 ministers. Their preachers, though devoted and able were, for the most part, poorly educated. A contemporary who
* Ashbel Hosmer and John Lawton, A View of the Rise and Increase of the
Churches Composing the Otsego Association (Whitestown, 1800), 11-21.