1955
The Rev. John Dudley McCready was born June 26, 1894, in Winchester, Kentucky. He was one of eight children of Rev. William George McCready (an Episcopal clergyman) and Margaret Anne (French) McCready, whose family had early Baptist Church ties in Clark County, Kentucky. He attended Columbia University and Union Theological Seminary in New York and Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Indecisive about whether to teach or preach, he began teaching at Howard College in Birmingham, Alabama, followed by joining the staff at Southside Baptist Church in Birmingham where he was ordained in 1927. There he met his future wife, Mary Winston Martin. From 1929 – 1939, he served the First Baptist Church in Demopolis, Alabama and Prairieville Baptist Church. In 1939, he became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Morganton, North Carolina, and, during that tenure, was granted a leave of absence in 1944 to serve in the U. S. Chaplaincy Corps during World War II. Resigning from the Morganton Church in 1956, he taught English at Chowan College in Murfreesboro, North Carolina and Central Florida Junior College in Ocala, Florida until 1966. Throughout his adult life, he wrote short stories and commentaries which were published in ten newspapers mainly in North Carolina and Virginia. For many years, John Dudley, his wife Mary Winston, and their daughter had a home in Black Mountain, North Carolina near the Baptist Assembly at Ridgecrest. It served as a place of retreat, and they were there when he died in 1973.
The McCready-Orr Family Collection is located at the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives. Materials in this presentation include a portion of the sermons McCready preached during his tenure at the First Baptist Church in Morganton, North Carolina. The sermons are arranged in chronological order by year-month-date, and either AM or PM designation. Special emphasis Sundays such as Baptist World Alliance Sunday, Boy Scout Sunday, and holidays are also included in the file titles.
