Obadiah Howard and Priscilla Breed Howard belonged with Philip Mulkey to the Separate Baptists at Deep River, North Carolina, Broad River, South Carolina, and Fair Forest, South Carolina, where their son William was born near Fair Forest and later married Jane Hart. William’s sister Nancy married Jonathan Mulkey, Philip’s son and a preacher, and when Jonathan and Nancy moved into East Tennessee and established the church at Buffalo Ridge, the Howards followed. Years later, the third generation of Mulkey preachers, John, became the first pastor of record of Mill Creek Baptist Church, and among the family members who followed John to Kentucky and Mill Creek Baptist were Obadiah, Priscilla, Jane, and William Howard. William owned slaves before and after coming to Kentucky, and those slaves tended the hundreds of acres he owned there. He chose a site near East Fork Creek for a brick home, and family history holds that enslaved people made the bricks and provided the labor to build it. Built in 1805, it was the first brick house in the county and still stands, with black walnut floor joists, three-brick-wide walls, many later renovations, and its original exterior still easily visible from County House Road. Jane spent much of her time nursing sick people of the plantation and settlement, accompanied on these errands by Aunt Rachel, her personal maid. Although William was a slave owner, he did not believe in slavery, and when one of his slaves reached the age of 21, he gave that person freedom and a plot of land on which to live. William died in 1848, and over time the land granted to his freed slaves totaled 400 acres, forming a community known as Freetown. Albert Martin, another prominent Monroe Countian, also offered some of his land to many Black families who migrated to the Freetown area and in particular gave a small tract on which to build a church. That church, formally named Mount Vernon African Methodist Church and commonly called Freetown Church, still stands, and the surrounding area became Freetown Cemetery. The church remains on its original foundation with its original logs, chinking, flooring, and shutters, though glass windows, electricity, protective wood siding, and replacement metal roofing were added over the years. Its crude benches were modified to serve as desks when the building was used as a school, and although regular services have not been held there for decades, descendants of the freed slaves who organized the church still hold special services there from time to time.