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Our Story

A Brief History
of Pray's Mill

Est. 1842

Douglas County’s first Baptist church.

The history of Pray’s Mill Baptist Church is rich and full of God’s providence and preservation. What began as a frontier mission of a Maine-born miller in the Georgia woods has, by the grace of God, continued under the same name and on the same ground for nearly two centuries.

The Founding

A miller, a settlement, and twelve deeded acres.

Pray’s Mill was Douglas County’s first Baptist church, born by the will and providence of God in the heart of a northerner named Ephraim Pray. Born in Augusta, Maine in 1809, Mr. Pray was in his early twenties when he came to Greene County, Georgia, to erect two water-powered mills. He traveled to the Douglasville area and purchased several land lots along Dog River — territory recently distributed by lottery after the resettlement of the Cherokee — paying fifty cents an acre in gold coin. He built a homestead and three mills (sawmill, flour mill, and grist mill) on the banks of Trout Creek, now known as Dog River.

Mr. Pray was a prominent leader in the community. When the population began to grow, he saw the need for a church. He called the men of the settlement together and presented a proposal which resulted in his deeding twelve acres of land for education and religious purposes, together with a free-flowing spring and sufficient ground for a cemetery.

The original Pray's Mill Baptist Church wooden frame building, c. 1842

January 1842

Pray’s Mill Baptist Church.

With lumber from Pray’s own sawmill, a church building was soon erected. Already agreed upon as Baptist in denomination, his co-workers wanted to name the church in his honor. He refused, so it was named for his sawmill instead — Pray’s Mill Baptist Church. The first services were held in January of 1842.

A later sanctuary at Pray's Mill Baptist Church — the brick meeting house

The Early Years

Baptisms in Dog River.

In those early years people were baptized in the waters of Dog River. The first church building had no heat and no indoor plumbing. Over the generations the building was rebuilt, the pews replaced, the hymnals changed editions, and the congregation grew into what it is today — a Reformed Baptist church reaching the lost and making disciples through the preaching of God’s inerrant Word.

Our history is rich, and it points always away from us and toward the God whose providence has carried this work through wars and droughts and depressions and revivals. We continue to live out the rest of the story today. While we have been tremendously blessed in the past, we believe our greatest days are still before us — not because of who we are, but because of who God is.

From 1842 to Today

The same gospel, in the same place.

Almost two centuries after the first services were held in the building Ephraim Pray helped to raise, Pray’s Mill is still preaching the same gospel that called those first members out of the world and into the household of God. The walls have been rebuilt. The pews have been replaced. The hymnals have changed editions. But the message has not changed, and Lord willing it will not change as long as saints gather under this name. “The grass withers, the flower fades, but the word of our God will stand forever” (Isa. 40:8).