Joseph Murphy (b. 1734) was a Baptist preacher in the backcountry of North Carolina. As a popular preacher, he was accused of being a Regulator.
The Great Awakening
The Great Awakening transformed the religious landscape of colonial America in the mid 1700s. Ministers, like George Whitfield, transfixed crowds with their preaching and invigorated many individuals into a “new birth”.
New denominations: the Methodists, the Baptists, and the Presbyterians, saw themselves as a New Light and separated themselves from the established Old Light (Anglicans, Quakers, Congregationalists).
In the Southern Colonies, where the Anglican church had long been established, the more personal nature of the churches inspired by the Great Awakening was a break from tradition.
Joseph Murphy’s Awakening
Born in Spotsylvania County, Virginia, Joseph Murphy was 23 years old when he converted by the famed Shubal Stearns. Both Joseph and his brother William became preachers. He was 26 when he became ordained as a Baptist minister.
Shubal Stearns was a prominent Baptist of the Great Awakening and formed the Sandy Creek Association. Morgan Edwards describes it as the “mother church, nay a grandmother and a great great grandmother. All separate baptists sprang hence.” Joseph Murphy, converted by Stearns, was one of the preachers who helped to spread the word “such that her converts were as the drops of the morning dew.”
He and his brother were known as the “Murphy Brothers”, traveling through Halifax and Pittsylvania County in Virginia — their preaching was popular and “effective” according to Robert Semple who wrote a history of the Baptists in Virginia.
After this work in Virginia he moved to North Carolina.
There, he began his ministry in Anson County, North Carolina, where he baptized several in the Little River of the Pee Dee River in 1759. The next year, he had moved with his wife and other congregants to Deep River, NC.
They extended their labors through all that region both north and south of the Rocky River so that in three year’s time the home church had increased to five hundred members.
Paschal, Spread of Separate Baptists
[Joseph Murphy’s] success is no less surprising than his conversion. He was once wicked to a proverb, and now an eminent christian and a useful preacher.
Morgan Edward
Morgan Edward, a Baptist preacher from Wales, visited congregations in the 1770s and compiled notes about the history of Baptists in America.
The Regulators
Murphy’s role in the spread of Separate Baptists also happened during a time of civil unrest in the backcountry of North Carolina.
Economically, there was frsutration over taxation. The settlers there, in the Piedmont and Mountains, were being taxed at the same rate as those who had plantations on the Coastal Plain. The contrast in ability to harvest bountiful crops created resentment among the backcountry settlers.
Socially, there was unease as those in power watched the spread of a religious fervor that was quite willing to separate from and leave behind the established religious traditions of the Anglican church.
In 1764, William Tryon, the colonial Governor of North Carolina, fueled these flames of civil unrest by building a grand palace for himself, using the taxpayer’s money.
This unrest culminated in the Regulator movement, in which the backcountry settlers wanted to regulate their own affairs, separate from Governor Tryon and his tax collectors, sheriffs, judges, and county clerks.
In 1770, a mob seized an agent of the crown, Edward Fanning, and assaulted him.
Fanning’s Accusation
Joseph Murphy, a popular and prominent Baptist preacher, was accused by Fanning as “aiding and abetting the Regulation.”
The Battle of Almance ended the Regulator Movement in 1771, and Tryon made a “triumphal tour” through the Regulator country. During this tour, a party of dragoons had been sent to seize Murphy due to his role in the rebellion. He could not be located and because they could not find him they stole some of his papers and “a new pair of stockings” instead.
Morgan Edward asserts in his notebook that “The Vile Col. F—- accussed him … whereof he was as clear as any man whatsoever.”
Impact of the Regulator Movement
Many of the settlers in the backcountry were “disheartened by the oppression of the officers set over them by Governor Tryon.” After the Battle of Almance, many despaired of having the “redress of their wrongs” and removed themselves farther west.
By 1772, the number of congregants which had been in the hundreds, was now recorded as forty-two.
Finding the Yellow Bricks 