The next destination on my Virtual Hike was the Cane Ridge Meeting House near Carlisle, Kentucky.

The previous destination on my virtual hike was the site of the Concord Church near Carlisle, Kentucky.

You can see in the map the location of the historic Concord church building is only about ten miles from the Cane Ridge Meeting House. You can also see East Union on the map which is where the Hinkston Creek or East Union Dunkard Church was founded in 1790. The Cane Ridge Presbyterian congregation was founded in 1791 just shortly after.

The virtual route from the Old Concord Church was through rural areas with parts of it lined by trees.

The route also ran by farms and fields among the rolling hills.

The Cane Ridge Meeting house was a log structure. It is still standing today, although it is now inside of a stone structure that was built to protect it. The meeting house is the largest one room log structure that is still standing from the pioneer times.

The plate above was bought at the site of the Cane Ridge Meeting Housed by Eddie Werner who was one of my camp teachers growing up. I also at one time attended the congregation he preached for in Lincoln, Nebraska. I bought the plate from his wife about five years ago. It hangs in my study and is always a great memory of him and his family. See: Two Historic Church Buildings

In this clip from Google Maps you can see the building that the original log structure is inside of. The Cane Ridge congregation was disbanded in 1921 and later the building was preserved inside the stone building and a museum was created to tell the story of the Cane Ridge area.

The Cane Ridge Meeting House was the home of the congregation that Barton W. Stone worked with as well as Old Concord. The meeting house was near the site of the 1801 Cane Ridge Revival, which helped launch the Second Great Awakening and was attended by 20 to 30 thousand people from multiple religious groups.

My ancestors in this area were at Old Concord and East Union, but would also have been in contact with the congregation at Cane Ridge. The only one of these three congregations that is still meeting is the one at East Union, although in a much newer building.

For more about early Restoration Movement history see my previous Virtual Hike posts.

Since I am virtually in Kentucky my destinations have been where some of my ancestors and families lived in the early 1800’s.

The next stop on my Virtual Hike is yet to be determined, but I will be heading toward Indiana where I will virtually visit other early Restoration Movement churches with family ties.

I am still working on the route past this area as I have learned a lot more about how migration routes changed as the frontier pressed further west.

Steven

Images in this post are from Google Maps and Street View

WwRI – Written With Real Intelligence