Sidney Rigdon - Baptist Background

Baptist Background

Sidney Rigdon was born in St. Clair Township, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, about 10 miles south of Pittsburgh. (The area today is known as Library.) He was the youngest of four children of William and Nancy Rigdon. Rigdon's father was a farmer and a native of Harford County, Maryland. William Rigdon died in 1810, and Sidney remained on the farm until 1818, when he apprenticed himself to a Baptist minister named Rev. Andrew Clark. Rigdon received his license to preach for the Regular Baptists in March, 1819. He moved in May to Trumbull County, Ohio, where he jointly preached with Adamson Bentley from July, 1819. He married Bentley's sister Phoebe Brook in June, 1820, and remained in Ohio until February, 1822, when he returned to Pittsburgh to accept the pastorate of the First Baptist Church there under the recommendation of Alexander Campbell.

Rigdon and Bentley had journeyed to meet Campbell in the summer of 1821, to learn more about the Baptist who was encountering opposition to his idea that the New Testament should hold priority over the Old Testament in the Christian church. They engaged in lengthy discussions, which resulted in both men joining the Disciples of Christ movement associated with Campbell. Rigdon became a popular Disciples preacher in the Pittsburgh church. However, some disaffected members were able to force his resignation in 1824. For the next two years Rigdon worked as a tanner to support his family, while preaching Campbell's Restorationism on Sundays in the Pittsburgh courthouse. In 1826 he was invited to become the pastor of the more liberal Baptist church in Mentor, Ohio in the Western Reserve. Many prominent early Latter Day Saint leaders, including Parley P. Pratt, Isaac Morley and Edward Partridge, were members of Rigdon's congregations prior to their conversion to the Church of Christ founded by Joseph Smith.