Concurrently another religious organization had been growing rapidly in the colonies. The Baptists had experienced the well-proved truth that religious persecution is a most fertile soil for religious growth. "Magistrates and mobs, priests and Sheriffs, courts and parsons all vainly combined to divert them from their object," writes one of their historians. The Baptists in Virginia are said to have originated from three sources--emigrants in 1714, directly from England, settling in the southeasterly part of the Colony, others from Maryland about 1743 going to the northwesterly part, and still another group leaving New England about 1754 and going to what is now Berkely County in West Virginia. Between 1750 and 1755 John Gerrard, a Baptist preacher of Maryland, is said to have gone to Berkely County and thence journeyed over the Blue Ridge into the present Loudoun "where he found the people ready to listen to the proclamation of the gospel." The first Baptist church in Loudoun (and perhaps in Virginia as well) was built at Ketocton in 1756 or 1757, according to tradition, to be followed by a stone building in 1815 and then, in 1856, by the present brick edifice. Until 1765 the Baptist congregations in Virginia were united to the Philadelphia Association but in that year obtained their dismissal and set about the task of building their own association in Virginia. Their first convention was held "in Ketocton in Loudoun" the old church there thus giving the first Baptist Association in Virginia its name. At that time the Colony had only four Baptist churches but all of them were represented at this first convention by the following delegates Ketocton: John Marks and John Loyd. Smith and Lynsville Creek: John Alderson. Mill Creek: John Garrard and Isaac Sutton. Broad Run: David Thomas and Joseph Metcalf. A resolution was adopted to seek from the parent association in Philadelphia instructions for the guidance of the new organization. As their association grew in membership, it "was divided into two in 1789 by a line running from the Potomac a south course." The westerly portion retained the Ketocton name and that to the east was known as the Chappawamsick. This division continued until 1792 when the districts were again united.[57] [57] _Baptists in Virginia_, by R. B. Semple; also 3 Balch Library Clippings, 64.