Brownell, Thomas Church (19 October 1779–13 January 1865), Episcopal bishop and college president, was born in Westport, Massachusetts, the son of Sylvester Brownell and Nancy Church, farmers. After studying at Bristol Academy in Taunton, Massachusetts, he entered the College of Rhode Island at Providence (now Brown University) in 1800. In 1802 the president of the college, ...
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Brownell, Thomas Church (1779-1865), Episcopal bishop and college president
Don S. Armentrout
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Madison, James (1749-1812), college president and first bishop of the Episcopal church in Virginia
Carolyn S. Whittenburg
Madison, James (27 August 1749–06 March 1812), college president and first bishop of the Episcopal church in Virginia, was born near the town of Staunton, Virginia, the son of John Madison, a planter, and Agatha Strother. A second cousin of U.S. president James Madison...
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Otey, James Hervey (1800-1863), first Episcopal bishop of Tennessee and first chancellor of the University of the South
Arthur Ben Chitty
Otey, James Hervey (27 January 1800–23 April 1863), first Episcopal bishop of Tennessee and first chancellor of the University of the South, was born in Bedford County, Virginia, the son of Isaac Otey and Elizabeth Mathews, farmers. He was graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1820 and stayed on as tutor in ancient languages for another year. Religion had little influence on his early life, but his duties required that he conduct morning chapel. Obtaining a copy of the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer, he found that it met his spiritual needs, and in the next six years he completed his studies for the Episcopal priesthood under the tutelage of future Bishop William Mercer Green of Mississippi, then the chaplain of the university at Chapel Hill, and ...
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Perry, William Stevens (1832-1898), Episcopalian bishop and historiographer
Donald S. Armentrout
Perry, William Stevens (22 January 1832–13 May 1898), Episcopalian bishop and historiographer, was born in Providence, Rhode Island, the son of Stephen Perry and Katherine Whittemore Stevens. As a young man he served as parish clerk, Sunday school superintendent, and lay reader at Grace Church in Newton, Massachusetts. He studied at Brown University for a time and then graduated from Harvard University in 1854, where he received an A.B. He then studied at the Protestant Episcopal Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia, but never graduated. He read theology with the Reverend Alexander Hamilton Vinton of Boston, Massachusetts, a leader of the Episcopal church’s Broad Church party, which stressed ecumenical activity and inclusivity. He was ordained a deacon on 29 March 1857, at Grace Church in Newton. He was ordained a priest on 7 April 1858 at St. Paul’s Church in Boston, where he served as assistant minister (1857–1858). From 1858 until 1861 he was rector of St. Luke’s Church in Nashua, New Hampshire, and then from 1861 until 1863 he was rector of St. Stephen’s Church in Portland, Maine, where he married Sara Abbott Woods in 1862; they had no children. His last two parochial positions were as rector of St. Michael’s Church in Litchfield, Connecticut (1864–1869) and as rector of Trinity Church in Geneva, New York (1869–1876)....
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Schereschewsky, Samuel Isaac Joseph (1831-1906), Episcopal bishop and translator
Donald S. Armentrout
Schereschewsky, Samuel Isaac Joseph (06 May 1831–15 October 1906), Episcopal bishop and translator, was born in Tauroggen, Russian Lithuania, the son of Samuel Joseph Schereschewsky and Rosa Salvatha. His father was of the Ashkenazic and his mother of the Sephardic Jews. Both of his parents, about whom little is known, died when he was a boy, and he was raised by a half brother and his wife, who wanted him to become a rabbi. From about 1846 to 1850 he studied at the rabbinical schools at Krazi and Zhitomir, Russia. From 1852 to 1854 he studied at the University of Breslau, Germany. At Zhitomir and Breslau his interest in Christianity was aroused by missionaries of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, but it probably was his study of a Hebrew translation of the New Testament that convinced him that Jesus had fulfilled the messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Bible (or Old Testament)....
