August 10 | Moments Almanac | Carried
On August 10, 1792, a Paris mob stormed the Tuileries Palace and ended the French monarchy in an afternoon. Twelve years later to the day, a nearly-silent Baptist chaplain died in Kentucky after a lifetime of simply showing up. Today we set a falling throne beside a faithful death — and ask which kind of authority actually lasts.
Gano's death date (Aug. 10, 1804) is independently confirmed across Wikipedia, dbpedia, NCpedia, The Baptist Paper, Kentucky Today, and his own gravestone inscription (therestorationmovement.com). This resolves the earlier date-discrepancy deferral — his BIRTH was July 22, not August; the almanac source that originally flagged an August date was conflating birth and death. Death is the correct anchor for this date. Tuileries storming date (Aug. 10, 1792) is well-established in standard historical references (History.com, Britannica).
Fun Sidenote: Gano's descendant line (Howard Hughes, the Wright Brothers)
Welcome to Moments Almanac. This is a time for us to remember the people, places, and events that leave fingerprints on the soul. Today is August the 10th. And on August the 10th, 1792, a mob broke through the gates of the Tuileries Palace in Paris. They came for a king, Louis XVI, and the royal family fled the palace and sought refuge with the legislative assembly. Behind them hundreds of Swiss guards remained to defend the Tuileries. The fighting was brutal. Hundreds of guards were killed that day. Many of them, after the palace had already been abandoned by the king they had sworn to protect. By nightfall the French monarchy was effectively broken. It'd be formally abolished six weeks later, and five months after that, Louis would die beneath the blade of the guillotine. But august tenth was the day the crown lost its power. And twelve years later, on that same date, a very different kind of authority came to its quiet end. His name was John Gano. Gano had been a farmer, a Baptist preacher, a pastor in New York City, and a chaplain in the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War. There is an old tradition that Gano baptized George Washington by immersion during the war. It makes a wonderful painting. Whether it makes good history is another question. The story comes through Gano's descendants and remains disputed by historians. But John Gano did not need a legend to make his life remarkable. For decades he simply kept showing up to preach. Born in Hopewell, New Jersey, he left the family farm for ministry, was ordained in seventeen fifty four. He helped establish a Baptist congregation in New York City, served through the Revolutionary War, and eventually moved west to Kentucky. Then age began to take things away from him, his strength, his mobility, his independence, and eventually much of his ability to speak. But in about eighteen oh three, Baptist churches around Lexington were being troubled by Aryan teaching, teaching that denied the full deity of Jesus Christ. Someone remembered the old preacher Gano, was now in his seventies and physically broken, so they carried him to Lexington. They helped him to the pulpit, and John Gano preached. His subject was the deity of Christ. Contemporary Baptist accounts remembered the sermon as having a powerful effect in checking the spread of the teaching throughout the churches. Think about these two scenes. August tenth, seventeen ninety-two, a king has been carried away from his throne. August tenth, twelve years later, an old preacher has to be carried to the pulpit. One man, a king. He lost his power that made people listen, and the other had lost almost every physical power he possessed, and still had something worth saying. And that's the strange thing about Christian faithfulness and well old preachers. It does not require that they remain strong, it requires that they remain faithful to the one who does. Paul, nearing the end of his life, wrote, I have fought the good fight. I'm certain he preached those words, but on August 10th, 1804, at the age of seventy-seven, he finished living them. And we don't need to turn Gano into a perfect saint. He knew grief, he knew financial loss, he knew what it meant to watch his own body fail him. But when strength left him, Christ remained. And perhaps that is the greater testimony. Not that a faithful person never becomes weak, but that weakness does not have to be the final word. Returning back to Paul, he wrote these words My grace is sufficient for thee, for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Kingdoms rise, thrones fail, bodies fail. But the kingdom of Christ does not rest upon palaces, armies, healthy bodies, or powerful voices. And sometimes the strongest testimony of a life comes when someone else has to carry you to the place where you can give it. One man was carried from his throne, another was carried to his pulpit. And on August 10th, 1804, John Gano finished his course. He kept the faith. And that is Moments Almanac for August 10th. I hope you'll join me tomorrow. Until then, take heart. Notice the scattered moments, and share the grace.
