Toliver Craig, Sr.

Toliver Craig, Sr., first called Taliaferro Craig, (c. 1704-1795) was an 18th-century American frontiersman and militia officer. An early settler and landowner near present-day Lexington, Kentucky, he was one of the defenders of the early fort of Bryan's Station during the American Revolutionary War. It was attacked by the British and Shawnee on August 15, 1782. Craig and his family were early converts to the Baptist Church. His sons especially preached their religious views in the Colony of Virginia during the 1760s and 1770s, and at least two, Elijah and Lewis, were imprisoned for preaching without a license from the Anglican Church. As a young man, his son Rev. Elijah Craig was a Baptist preacher jailed in Fredericksburg, Virginia. He worked with James Madison on state guarantees for religious freedom after the Revolutionary War. Toliver and his sons Elijah and Lewis Craig led 400-600 members of their congregation as the "Traveling Church" into Kentucky in 1781. Elijah Craig became an educator and businessman in Kentucky.