John Courtney (d. 18 December 1824), Baptist minister, was born in the early or mid-1740s in King and Queen County. He was the son of Robert Courtney, but his mother's name is not known. After his father died, Courtney's elder brother apprenticed him to a carpenter. As a young man, he married a woman named Jane, but the date and place of the wedding are not known, nor is his wife's maiden name. Before her death on 19 March 1808, they had two daughters and one son. Sometime before the American Revolution, and probably early in the 1770s, Courtney and one of his brothers were converted as the result of the preaching of several Baptist ministers. By 1775 Courtney had become pastor of Upper College Baptist Church (later Sharon Baptist Church) in King William County. He served as a private in the army during the Revolutionary War and afterward moved to Richmond, where in 1788 he became minister of the eight-year-old Richmond Baptist Church (later First Baptist Church).
Not as well educated as many contemporary clergymen in the capital, Courtney continued to work as a carpenter to support his family while ministering to the growing congregation. He lived simply in a rented house and never owned his own home. About 1798 the members erected their first modest frame building, and in 1802 they built a substantial brick church, later the home of First African Baptist Church of Richmond. The congregation was probably racially integrated from the beginning, as were many other Baptist churches, and Courtney became well known for ministering to the city's African Americans. In 1796 he escorted a black man convicted of theft to the place of execution, where the condemned man, whom Courtney had converted in jail, made an affecting address to a large crowd before being hanged. One of the members of the church early in the nineteenth century was Lott Cary, an enslaved man who with assistance from other church members gained his freedom and in 1821 immigrated to the west coast of Africa, a mission that led to the founding of what became Liberia. Courtney's personal opinions about slavery are not clear. At the time of the Revolution when he became a minister, many Baptists regarded slavery as immoral, but by the early years of the nineteenth century, members of the denomination increasingly accepted slavery as an institution sanctioned by the Bible. Evidence suggests that early in the century Courtney may have owned two or more enslaved workers.
On 7 December 1802, after the House of Delegates had decided by a close vote to appoint a chaplain, the members chose Courtney over two other clergymen, one the popular local Presbyterian, John Durburrow Blair. Courtney's election probably reflected the increased importance of Baptists throughout Virginia, but his lack of education and his ministry among African Americans drew some sharp criticism in the state's newspapers.
The church's congregation had grown to about 1,200 members by 1814 and an even larger number by 1820, when several members, including William Crane, a noted white lay leader, withdrew to form the Second Baptist Church of Richmond. The split stemmed from disagreement about the formation of a Sunday school. Although Courtney accepted the organizing of women in order to support the church's missionary work, he resisted establishing a Sunday school. He compiled The Christian Pocket Companion, Being a Collection of the Newest and Most Admired Spiritual Songs, Now Made Use of by the United Baptists in Virginia (1802), yet he was remembered for refusing to use hymnals during services for fear that they distracted the congregation from worship.
Although Courtney continued to visit members of the church during the latter years of his life, he became too feeble to preach regularly. In 1810 a member of the congregation assumed some of his pastoral duties, and for six months in 1821 Andrew Broaddus joined Courtney as assistant pastor. Had it not been for Courtney's poor health and inability to attend, his seniority and service as pastor of one of the state's largest Baptist congregations would have given him a prominent role at the founding of the Baptist General Association of Virginia in 1822. John Courtney died in Richmond on 18 December 1824 and was buried in a private cemetery in the city.
Sources Consulted:
Biography in Evangelical Inquirer 1 (1826): 22–25 (with birth year of ca. 1744), reprinted in James B. Taylor, Virginia Baptist Ministers, 1st ser. (1859), 96–99, and abstracted in Robert B. Semple and G. W. Beale, A History of the Rise and Progress of the Baptists in Virginia, rev. ed. (1894), 472; Blanche Sydnor White, First Baptist Church, Richmond, 1780–1955 (1955), 11–38, 219–220; Edward C. Carter II et al., eds., The Virginia Journals of Benjamin Henry Latrobe, 1795–1798 (1977), 1:191–193; Virginia General Assembly, House of Delegates, Journal of the House of Delegates of the Commonwealth of Virginia (1776– ), 1802–1803 sess., 5–6; Richmond Virginia Argus, 8, 15 Dec. 1802; Richmond Virginia Gazette, and General Advertiser, 11, 18 Dec. 1802; Richmond Enquirer, 22 Mar. 1808; Richmond Daily Dispatch, 29 June 1882; obituary in Richmond Commercial Compiler, 20 Dec. 1824 (with death "in the eighty-third year of his life").