Biography: Rev. Moses Akin, 1807-1885

Article / WINTER Issue 1997
Contributed by: Lucille Harp

© 1997, Ancestral Trails Historical Society, Inc.

Published by:
HART COUNTY NEWS HERALD
MUNFORDVILLE, HORSE CAVE, KY
TUE, APR 25,1995 ISSUE 

 


                                    "Rev. Moses Akin"

Out of the Herald News, Hodgenville, LaRue Co., October 1, 1925,
comes the story of Rev. Moses Akin, 1807-1885, a noted evangelist. 

 

         His father came from Virginia. Moses was born in Green Co., KY, in 1807, on the south side of Big Brush Creek,
opposite the residence of Dr. Elijah Graham. He began preaching at the age of 30, having taught school several years before.
He left the ministry for awhile to "moonshine". People at that time made their own family whiskey, with little thought of wrong
doing. 
    In 1845 he conducted a series of meetings at South Fork and at Three Forks of Bacon Creek (Hammonsville), assisted by
Rev. Bille Brown of Virginia. He made trips in Western KY and into Illinois and Tennessee. 
    He was pastor of the Baptist Church at Glasgow, where he at one time baptized 500 people during the close of one day's
revival meeting. 
    It was during his seven years service at Glasgow that rumors became numerous (whether true or false) about he and his
sister-in-law, Miss Lydia McCubbin. He was turned out of the church after quite a wrangle. The church had paid him for his
service by giving him a $7,000 farm. 
    During the Civil War he was arrested as a southern sympathizer and sent to Camp Chase, Ohio. They were only trying two
or three a day, and some wouldn't get out until the war was over at that rate. until someone suggested "where two or three are
gathered together in my name...whatsoever they ask it shall be granted". Mose began a series of night meetings to which
hundreds were drawn. Soon the authorities began trying about 40 men per day. 
    When Mose was released he returned to his home near Holly Grove. He began farming and making moonshine. The
revenuers pursued him at one time. Weighing in at 325 lbs., he was soon overtaken. He lay down flat ont he ground, and while
the revenuers went for help to raise him, he fled. 
    Mose owned two farms, the one near Holly Grove, where his sister-in-law lived with her two children, Columbus and
"Mus", and the one on Green River, where he lived with his wife, Rebecca, and their children, Wesley, Clint, Whit, Tom, and
William, and several daughters. He often divided his time between the two farms. 
    He held a meeting at Hammonsville at the same time one was being held at Boiling Springs, six miles away, by the Baptist
association. His crowd was larger, and the association meeting was nearly broken up by its members stealing away to listen to
Mose. 
    Shortly afterwards he left for Denizen, Texas, where a Green Co., colony from Kentucky had settled. He soon made several
thousand dollars and came back through Missouri where he bought a farm and put Columbus Akin on it. Columbus later
became a Circuit Judge and lawyer. 
    He sold his farm after his wife's death, and prepared to move to Missouri. His last sermon was about Moses going up on the
Mount to die. He took sick and was hauled to the McDougal farm. LaRue Co., on his way home. He died at Holly Grove in
1885. It was believed he had been poisoned.