Opie Smith

Opie Smith was a wealthy brewer of “porter, beer, and brandy” in Horse Street, Bath. He was a member of the Particular Baptist congregation at Somerset Street in Bath for some fifty years and a deacon for more than thirty years, serving under the ministries of Robert Parsons (1752-1789) and John Paul Porter (1791-1832). He was a great benefactor of churches in Cornwall and assisted for many years with the financial support of the Western Baptist Association and its efforts to send itinerant preachers into Cornwall, especially Redruth, Penzance, and Helston. In 1803 he purchased Saffron Court in Falmouth, reviving the nearly defunct Baptist interest there and providing the stimulus for a new chapel, which was completed in early 1804. Thomas Griffin, an open communion Baptist, was called to be its first pastor. Robert Redding, at that time the Baptist minister at Truro and a closed communionist, had assisted the congregation prior to Griffin. Griffin remained at Falmouth until 1814. See Universal British Directory (1791-98), vol. 2, p. 108; Leonard Alfred Fereday, The Story of the Falmouth Baptists, with Some Account of Cornish Baptist Beginnings (London: Carey Kingsgate Press, 1950), 65-69; The Case of the Baptist Church, Meeting in Somerset Street, Bath (London: n.p., 1829), 13-14; Seymour J. Price, “The Early Years of the Baptist Union.” Baptist Quarterly 4 (1928–1929),  171.