History of the Restoration Movement

Barton Warren Stone, member of an Episcopal family from Maryland, first came to Kentucky during the winter of 1796, as a "supply pastor" for the Cane Ridge and Concord Presbyterian Churches in Bourbon County. He evidently lived and boarded with members of his congregations. However, in 1799, he bought a tract of farm land about midway between Cane Ridge and Concord. Stone married Elizabeth (Eliza) Campbell on July 2, 1801, and built a house on his farm where he took his bride to live. This house is still standing and is occupied by a descendant of "Raccoon" John Smith. Elizabeth Stone died on May 30, 1810, just ten months after the birth of her only son.

On October 31, 1811, Stone married Celia Bowen, a cousin of his first wife, and they lived for one year on his Bourbon County farm. He sold his farm to Charles Wasson under a deed dated March 1, 1814, for twelve dollars per acre and moved to the farm of his mother-in-law, on Manser Creek(sic), northeast of Nashville, Tennessee, in what is now Goodlettsville. Because of a misunderstanding over his wife's inheritance, Stone left Tennessee and moved back to Kentucky. His family lived in a rented house in Lexington in which he conducted a high school. When Stone returned to Kentucky he endeavored to re-purchase the Bourbon County farm but the owner asked thirty dollars per acre and he was unable to "purchase it or any other at these prices."

After living in Lexington for a few years Stone moved his family to Georgetown where he purchased a 123 acre farm, on November 2, 1819, from James Grant, son of Israel Grant, who was a son of Elizabeth Grant, one of the sisters of Daniel Boone. Stone lived in this house about a mile east of Georgetown until September 15, 1834, when he sold it to a Thompson family for $3,703.68 and moved to Jacksonville, Illinois, where he resided until he died on November 9, 1844.

The last Kentucky home in which Barton Stone was thought to have lived was destroyed by fire while occupied by a Hall family. However, the mistaken identity of the house which burned was the result of the report written by Charles Crossfield Ware in a biography of Stone, titled PATHFINDER OF CHRISTIAN UNION, published in 1932. Ware wrote: "His home was near North Elkhom Creek. Subsequently during the ownership of Charles Hall, as orally reported by the community, it was burned. There remains to day but the foundation and some old cedars standing like sentinels which perchance were there in Stone's day." What Ware wrote about the site on which the house of Hall stood and burned is altogether true, but Ware wrote about the wrong house and the wrong location based on what had been "orally reported by the community."

A few years ago, Ann B. Bevins, a reputable Scott County historian and a distinguished researcher of the Disciples of Christ in her own right, set out to determine whether or not the Ware report was valid. She found that the site of "the old cedars" was not the one on which Stone's house was located. Bevins discovered the old Israel Grant house, located east of Georgetown, and concluded that it was the one which was purchased by Stone. This discovery has proved to be a great contribution to the early history of the Restoration Movement in which Stone was a central figure. Recently the writer, Charles Moore, and George Rogers, spent a few hours in conversation with Mrs. Bevins, and in exploration of the Stone homestead. The present owners, Mr. and Mrs. John L. Drake, permitted us to explore the residence and the springhouse in great detail. The eighty-seven year old couple take great pride in the fact that they own and live in the house built by Israel Grant in 1787 and purchased by Barton Stone in 1819. Stone lived in this house longer than he resided in any other home.

While living in his Kentucky home Barton Stone established the Church in Georgetown, edited the CHRISTIAN MESSENGER, published the CHRISTIAN HYMN BOOK, and served as principal of the Rittenhouse Academy, which was chartered by the Commonwealth of Kentucky and incorporated on, December 22, 1798. The Academy was financed under a grant by Governor Garrard of public land located in Christian and Cumberland Counties. Among the students who "sat at the feet" of Stone in the Rittenhouse Academy were such young men as John Rogers, L. J. Fleming, Francis R. Palmer, Marcus P. Willis, and John Allen Gano, all of whom became forceful leaders and preachers of the Restoration Movement. This was a period of time during which the sun shone brightly on Stone's "Old Kentucky Home."

Barton Stone did not attend the debate between Alexander Campbell and W. L. McCalla (Presbyterian) in Washington, Kentucky in 1823, but Campbell visited Stone in the "Grant House" in 1824.

(Editor's note: C. Wayne Kilpatrick, teacher at International Bible College has taken church history students on tours which included seeing the Campbell-Bowen house in Moss-Wright Park in Goodlettsville, Tennessee where Barton Stone was married to Celia Bowen and where they lived. This means there are three houses still standing in which Barton W. Stone lived.)