Excerpt from Centennial History of the First Baptist Church, 1813-1913 Among those noble men of the wilderness, one of the most noted was Elder David Irish, who preached the first gospel sermon in Cayuga County in 1794. He was born in Dutchess County in 1757 and died in Fleming in 1815. He removed with his family to Scipio in 1794. At that time the great section of our state west and southwest of Oneida and Madison Counties was an almost unbroken wilderness. Elder Irish was the first minister of the gos pel who raised the standard of the cross and preached salva tion by grace to the destitute population of this region. He was instrumental in founding some ten churches in as many settlements and baptized during his ministry persons. He had fortitude and perseverance well-nigh Paul ine. In 1799, being called with some of his brethren of the church in Scipio to assist in organizing a church in Phelps town, Western Hill, the roads at that time being wholly impassable for travel or horseback by reason of the great depth of mud and snow, he encouraged his brethren to under take to go on foot a distance of thirty miles, when all but one accompanied. These infant churches, struggling in the environment of pioneer settlements, rejoiced in their liberty as is evident by the circular of the Cayuga association which met at Palmyra in 1804: We have not to contend with civil rulers for equal rights, nor are we harassed by the civil officer and dragged to prison, or our hard-earned subsistence torn from us under the authority of human law, to feed a voracious and over bearing clergy, established by law and supported by the secular arm. Those dark times of superstition, bigotry and oppression, are to us, in some measure, over, and the bright mom of equal rights dawns upon us. The sun bf righteous. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.