Baptist Women Walking Together in America, 1950-2000: when Did You Become Captivated by the Study of History? I was Born in a Twin-City Area of North Louisiana, Behind the First Baptist Church of One of the Twin Communities and Around the Corner from a School Where I Studied American History Under a Rare Phenomenon, A Seventh-Grade Teacher with a Ph.D. In History‪.‬

Miss Perkins believed that a study of the present and immediate past had to acknowledge that history began in the mammoth civilizations covering millennia followed by clusters of centuries such as the Middle Ages or the Renaissance Period or the great migration to a new continent, including as I learned later, by two strains of Baptist pilgrims, the Regulars and the Separatists. Regular Baptists settled in New England primarily, and the Separate Baptists finally settled on the Southern frontiers, although they originated in New England. In those early decades of Baptist life in America, some women among the Regulars served as leaders in their churches, and they outnumbered the brethren in most churches. The more emotional Separates ordained some women as ministers. In the late eighteenth century, the two groups, though differing in social and cultural characteristics, merged as the United Baptists in 1787. Like women of other denominations, Baptist women were active in the Great Awakenings, the missionary movement, and the beginning of the Sunday School movement.