User:MarshaHuie/David Purviance

David Purviance, 1766- 1847, was a member of the Kentucky legislature and Ohio legislature and is considered a co-founder, in importance after Barton W. Stone, of the Christian Church-Disciples of Christ-Church of Christ denominations, which were born as one denomination (the "Christian Church") in the Restoration Movement. The Christian Church and the Mormon Church are often said to be the only native United States Christian denominations, although this category should also include the Cumberland Presbyterian denomination which in 1810 (in Dickson County in Middle Tennessee) broke away from the Presbyterian church of Scotland. (The Scots church or "kirk" adhered to the tenets of Swiss theologian John Calvin, including predestination, but after schism in 1810 the Cumberland Presbyterians rejected what they called the mysterious doctrine of predestination.)

David Purviance was also founder of Miami University of Oxford, Ohio. He often served as its president pro tempore. The religious fervor of the early 19th century U.S. western frontier found its strongest voice at Cane Ridge Meeting House near Paris in Bourbon County, Kentucky, site of a series of continual camp meetings from 1801-1804. In Kentucky, David Purviance, at first a farmer, engaged in significant debates with John C. Breckinridge over the proper relationship of church and state. After participating in the schism from the Presbyterian church and converting numerous Presbyterians and Baptists to the new denomination, David Purviance removed from Bourbon County near Paris to "New Paris" in Preble County, Ohio, for two principal reasons, viz., to help spread the new Christian Church movement from its Kentucky base; and because he was an abolitionist in a time when slavery-sentiment predominated in Kentucky. Born in Iredell County, North Carolina, an ending point for many colonial pioneers migrating from Pennsylvania down the Great Wagon Road of the 18th century, David Purviance's family had removed in 1791 to Sumner County in Middle Tennessee to help found the old Shiloh Presbyterian Church outside today's Gallatin, Tennessee. In 1792, the Purviance family including son David Purviance removed from Sumner County, Tennessee, to farmland near Cane Ridge in the bluegrass near Paris, Kentucky, because David Purviance's brother John Purviance had been "scalped" by hostile native Americans in the year 1792. The murdered man's wife, Martha King (Mrs. John Purviance, later Mrs. William McCorkle) watched helplessly as her husband was slain and was forcibly restrained by family from running to aid the hapless John Purviance. After the "scalping" the Purviance family considered Sumner County, Tennessee, temporarily unsafe for white pioneers at the time, although the parents of David Purviance returned to Sumner County, from which Wilson County, Tennessee, was to be carved in 1799.

David Purviance was a signator of the "Last Will and Testament of the Springfield Presbytery," which ceded the church property to the new "Christian Church" denomination. His son Levi Purviance wrote a biography of him and the new Christian Church '"restoration movement which is available on the Internet at docsouth.unc.edu courtesy of the University of North Carolina, of which Purviance relative Samuel Eusebius McCorkle''' was founder.

Footnote: Purviance-Thomas-McCorkle-Huie family histories held by Marsha Cope Huie (LL.M. Cambridge University, hons.' 1986). "Jane" Mary Jane Wasson & John Purviance, Sr., were the parents of David Purviance. The person placing on the Internet that David Purviance removed from Sumner County, Tennessee, in 1791 to Bourbon Co., KY, is in error; the year was 1792, subsequent to the time when David's brother John Purviance Jr. had been "scalped" in Middle Tennessee. Similarly, David's brother James Purviance was only a captain, and David's brother-in-law William Thomas (husband of David's sister Elizabeth Purviance Thomas) held no high rank either, but each of the three fought in the North Carolina line, and each from Iredell County. The Purviance family had been Huguenots who had fled from the west coast of France up to Northern Ireland after King Louis XIV's revocation of the Edict of Nantes. In France they had been purveyors to royalty so that the first identiable ancestor was known as Jacques de Purviance (the "de" in France signifying nobility). It is true that the father of David Purviance, John Purviance Sr., was called "colonel" post-Revolutionary War, but the father had nevertheless been only a lieutenant in the NC line of the Revolutionary war. The "colonel" was an honorific.