Perrin records in his History of Kentucky the biographical sketch of a Jacob Cozatt (1773-1822) who was an immigrant from Pennsylvania. He was a hatter and a farmer in Mercer (now Boyle) County, Kentucky. Cozatt withdrew from the Presbyterian Church with Barton W. Stone, Humphrey Marshall and others and entered the Old Christian Church, of which he became a minister. His son, Jacob C. Cozatt Jr. (1817-1886) was deputy assessor of Boyle County and a member of the Christian Church. It may well be that Stone's influence came to the Perryville community and to the Christian Church through these men. Certainly, with the long and faithful service of the Preston family, it is no novelty to discover that an assessor was a member of our church.
Long before the Meeting House was built in the cemetery, the dynamic force of the Stone movement was developing. Stone's teacher, James McGready (the Presbyterian evangelist who was the chief initiator of the Great Wester Revival), along with the McGee brothers (William and John) began a revival in North Tennessee and Southwest Kentucky which moved North and East (c1800). Stone was one of those who helped it to move. He visited them, observed their work, and then returned to Cane Ridge to hold several great revivals of this own. The one which has received so much notoriety was held August 7-12, 1801. During the trip to see the work of McGready, Stone may well have passed through Perryville. Who is to say he didn't stop off at the Methodist Church and preach a sermon?
The Presbyterians—and Stone was still a Presbyterian minister—disliked the liberal trend exhibited by these revivals—especially the uneducated and unorthodox ministers who were beginning to appear. In 1803, five of them (Robert Marshall, John Dunlevy, Richard McNemar, B.W. Stone, John Thompson, and David Purvience) withdrew from the Presbytery and formed their own Springfield Presbytery, only to dissolve it the following year. This is the same movement away from the Presbyterian Church noted above in the life of Jacob Cozatt.
The question arose as to what their name was to be, and on June 28, 1804, they decided on the name “Christian” as was suggested by Rice Haggard—a “Republican Methodist” from Virginia and North Carolina who ten years earlier had suggested the same name to his own church (Garrison p. 111-112).
By 1804, there were at least 8 churches in Kentucky which took the name “Christian.” Stone remained at Cane Ridge until 1812, evangelizing all the while. Then he spent two years in Nashville writing his “Address to the Christian Church of Kentucky.” This writer does not contend that one of the original eight churches in Kentucky was the Perryville Christian Church, but it is felt that we may well have been influenced directly by Stone to the extent that we separated from the meeting house in the cemetery to from our own fellowship. In as much as Stone separated from the Cumberland Presbytery, and in as much as the old meeting house was known later as the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, our theory has a tantalizing ring of authenticity.
In order to give our theory about Stone's influence even more credulity we might note the remarkable liberal influence in the academic institutions of Perryville in the early 19th century. By 1850 Perryville Seminary was founded. This flourishing college was incorporated with collegiate powers and privileges of the state and was under the control of the Kentucky Presbytery of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. Rev. James Vinson was principal of the school's 220 students. In 1861, on the accession of Rev. W.B. Godbey to the principalship, the name was changed to Harmonia College. Both colleges had full English and classical courses and gave the B.A. and M.A. degrees. In their catalog of 1861, the school states that it promoted no denominationalism except the “Bible Only,” a purpose remarkably close to the sentiments promulgated by the Stoneites. Carrie Nation, the great prohibitionist reformer, was a Disciple who attended Harmonia College at Perryville. It is said that using a hatchet she chopped up the bar at the old Ewing Hotel on Lebanon Road where the Post Office now stands.
