Lebanon-in-the-Fork Presbyterian Church, Which Was The First Presbyterian Church in Knox County, TN

The caption reads, "Lebanon in the Fork" First Presbyterian Church in Knox County, 1791, Rev. Samuel Carrick Founder and First Pastor, Earliest Burial Ground in This Section.

 In 1791, a Presbyterian minister by the name of Samuel Carrick, who would also later become the founder of First Presbyterian of Knoxville, arrived to preach at an Indian mound near the fork of the French Broad and Holston Rivers (at Gilliam's Station), 5 miles east of present day downtown Knoxville. He arrived with the specific mission to bring the ministry of the Word and Sacraments to the pioneer settlers of the French Broad-Holston Country. These settlers being of Scotch-Irish decent, were raised in the ministry of the Presbyterian Church, but had not been in an assembled meeting for years:

"In the old states of the fatherland most of them had been acquainted with the word and felt its power, had bowed in prayer and experienced its heavenly influence, had reverenced the Sabbath, and in their Father's house had kept it holy.  The moral law they had in their youth endeavored to obey, but here on the extreme frontier beyond the reach of the preached gospel and the restraint of parental example and instruction, they were living in constant neglect of Christian worship.  In these backwoods they were as sheep without a shepherd and wandering far in the paths of sin and folly.  Wicked associations had seduced some of them from the ways of wisdom and virtue, war and the savage, lawlessness and crime abounded all around and among them.  But, now on
the night of an ambassador for Christ, the lessons of their youth came back with vivid freshness and energy upon heart and conscience.  They recollected that their father's house had been a house of prayer and parental rebuke and admonition, they recalled the meeting house on the corner in Virginia, and the powerful sermons they had heard their old minister deliver from the old pulpit near their early homes.  

Some of the party were now heads of a family and thus far were living without God, and without hope in the world.  Their children were strangers to the Covenant of Promise, were unbaptized, although half grown, sons and daughters stood around their firesides, lovely olive plants growing up in almost a heathen land with little culture and less even of the influence of religion and piety."                                                                                                             History of Lebanon Presbyterian Church, Dr. J.G.M.Ramsey (1875)

And what was Rev. Carrick's chosen text to preach to these settlers who had long been without the Ministry of the Word?

"Now then, we are ambassadors for Christ as though God did beseech you by us:  we pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God" (2 Corinthians 5:20).

In the kind Providence of God, another Presbyterian minister, Hezekiah Balch, had head about the appointed meeting and attended. After Rev. Carrick finished preaching, Rev. Balch:

"...commended the efforts of his friend who had just finished the morning services, but added that the subject was not yet exhausted and said he would preach from the same text and proceeded to explain the same without following his predecessors track so ably done.  He was heard with great attention." Ramsey

After the Word had been preached, Carrick baptized the covenant children of believers, although there appears to have been some controversy (these were Presbyterians after all!) with the liberality of who all he baptized. Once concluded, a date for a future meeting was secured and all were encouraged to spread the news. This was the initial meeting of what would become Lebanon-in-the-Fork Presbyterian Church.