John Gano

John Gano (Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey on July 22, 1727 - August 10, 1804) was a Baptist minister and Revolutionary War chaplain who allegedly baptized his friend, General George Washington.

Gano was raised as a Presbyterian and his father was a descendant of Huguenots and his mother of English Baptists. After a powerful conversion experience, John Gano eventually became a Baptist (Calvinistic) as a young man after a period of intense study. Gano left the family farm to study at Princeton University (then the College of New Jersey) but left before graduating. Gano was ordained as pastor of the Scotch Plains, New Jersey, Baptist Church on May 29, 1754. In 1760, he became the founding pastor of what became two years later the First Baptist Church in the City of New York, now located at the intersection of Broadway and 79th Street. Gano served as pastor of the New York Church until 1787, however, he made long itinerant trips evangelizing throughout the thirteen colonies, asserting

I... had a right to proclaim free grace wherever I went.

Gano travelled throughout the South, Middle Atlantic States, and New England, sometimes being away from home for as long as two years. In 1764, Gano joined several others as an original fellow or trustee for the chartering of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (the former name for Brown University, originally a Baptist school).

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