Religious Herald, 21 Jan 1847
Transcription by Barbara (Baker) Mead

Note: there were a couple of minor errors in the published obituary: she was actually born 12 Sep 1752 (not 02 Sep1753) and her father's name was Peter at christening (not John).

"This truly amiable pattern of piety of the undefiled religion of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, for many years actual experience, was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, on the 2nd of September, AD 1753. Her father John Avent, emigrated in an early part of her life into Chatham County, NC.

At some period of time after this she was married to a man named Andrew Baker, and some time after their marriage they settled in Wilkes County, NC, in the part thereof which is now called Ashe County. In the fall of 1775, she joined the Baptist church in the Osborne's Settlement on New River. In a short time after her joining the church, her husband also joined the church, and they were both baptized (as she thought) by William Hammond. As respects her husband, his life is too remarkable to be forgotten, for sometime after his admission to the church, he became one of the brightest ministers of the gospel in which he labored many years in the cordial acceptance of many precious souls into the holy church. In Wilkes Co., NC at St. Clair's Bottom Church, Washington county VA's Fox Creek Church, Grayson Co., VA where they lived 16 or 20 years; in the last which he died in the fall of AD 1815.

As an impartial testimony of the brilliant talents of this Apostle, I will relate that I heard 2 lay-elders of the Presbyterian Church say that they thought that they heard as great a sermon delivered by old Father Baker as any other minister, and had it not been that they could not have had admittance to his church upon Baptist principles, they would have been members of his church. The last year of his life he baptized 2 persons, one male and one female. The man whom he baptized was James Gilbert, who is now one of the most talented preachers laboring in the Mulberry Gap Association of the United Baptists. Thus, our old father in the gospel closed his labors, and few months after which he yielded up the ghost, and his remains now lie buried in the graveyard of Brother Robert Clarks' Sr. on Wallings Creek, Lee County, VA nearly 8 miles southwest of Jonesville.

After his death his consort, who is the principal subject of this narrative, lived in several churches, making her home most of the time with her children, who were very kind to her in every respect in administering the comforts which were necessary for her support, through the many years of her affliction of bereavement, and among the calamities that befall the human family. She had an inflammation of one of her eyes which carried away the sight of it, and very much injured the other. Indeed, so much so that in a few years after the death of her husband, she was destitute of any eyesight at all. She patiently endured all her afflictions with a devout and holy fortitude, without a murmuring word to last of her existence.

She survived her husband over 29 years; and I think that more than 20 years of this time she was deprived of all her eyesight. Notwithstanding all this, she retained her reason and recollection in an astonishing manner, for she never became the least childish or fretful in her deportment. Cleanliness and decency she retained in her mind to the last moments of her life.

About a week before her death, she and one of her sons with whom she made her home, were sitting by the fireside. In their conversation she said that if she could know that that was the last night she had to live, she would feel like praising the Lord with every breath, but professed a willingness to wait the appointed time of the Lord, and also gave at different times the most satisfactory evidence of her acceptance of the Lord."