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In 1807, Rev. Manning formed the First Baptist Church of Cornwallis Township at Upper Canard, Kings County. Eaton says that he was ordained over the Cornwallis New Light Church in 1795, and that his physique was powerful, his temper stern, and he carried a certain “majestic air of command”. When he decided to form a Baptist Church, the men who left the New Light Church to join him included William Chipman.
The family of Peter Manning came to Nova Scotia in 1769 or 1770 either directly from Ireland or, according to family tradition, after a stay in Philadelphia. The 1770 census lists him as a resident of Falmouth Township, at the head of a family numbering nine. Although born Roman Catholic, all the Mannings appear to have become at least nominal Protestants by the 1770s. In 1776 Peter Manning murdered a neighbour, the stepfather of the Reverend John Payzant*. For his crime he was tried, convicted, and hanged.
Little is known of the Manning family’s life in the Falmouth area after the tragedy. Edward grew into a tall (6 feet 4 inches) and very strong young man, a good farmer, and an excellent woodsman; at the age of 16, armed only with a hatchet, he killed three bears. According to his own later account, he led a “riotous,” wicked life, although it was probably a fairly normal one for the times.
The Great Awakening, begun in 1776 and led by another Falmouth resident, the charismatic preacher Henry Alline*, had a tremendous impact on Manning. For the rest of his life he retained a vivid picture of Alline, with tears flowing, begging him to flee from the wrath to come. It was not until 27 April 1789, however, that Manning was finally converted, through the ministry of Payzant. Clearly the single most important event of his life, his conversion was an intense experience that came at the culmination of a period of great anguish and would shape his entire future.
Shortly after his conversion, Manning joined Payzant’s New Light Congregational church in Cornwallis and soon felt the “call” to preach to his fellow Nova Scotians. Although possessing little formal education, Manning began to itinerate in the Allinite tradition in 1789, preaching his first sermon in February 1790 at Onslow. He became part of a dynamic group of young men who had been “awakened” in the revivals that had swept the Maritime colonies since 1776. Over the next 20 years they would do much to transform the religious life of the region. In the New England planter communities already stirred by Alline and in the newly settled and unstable loyalist areas, Manning, his brother James, Harris Harding, Joseph Dimock*, Thomas Handley Chipman, and others carried revival to new heights – and extremes.
The move toward antinomianism was perhaps a logical development for some of these new religious leaders and their enthusiastic followers. Cornwallis, an area of early support for the Great Awakening, became the centre of the “new dispensation” movement, which insisted that the “new birth” was the means by which God spoke directly to mankind, thus placing the convert beyond church ruIes, ministerial leadership, or even scriptural injunctions. In 1791 this extreme position, championed by the Mannings, Harding, and Lydia Randall, split the Cornwallis church, and its influence spread rapidly outward from there. The following year, according to a distraught Payzant, the Manning brothers “came to the Church meeting, and began to dispute, and condemn the Church Rules, and say that all orders were done away, and that the Bible was a dead letter, and they would preach without it.” The chaos and disorder – both doctrinal and social – brought on by this movement, and the uncontrolled excesses to which some of its people went, showed Manning and other would-be leaders that they had unleashed forces they could no longer control. Over the next few years there would be a rapid retreat by Ma
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1765 - 1851 (86 years)
. Nancy MANNING, b. 12 May 1802, Cornwallis, Kings, Nova Scotia 
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