|
|
Jackson
Kemper was born 24 December 1789 in Pleasant Valley, New York, attended
Columbia College, and was ordained a priest in 1814. In 1835, the Episcopal
Church undertook to consecrate missionary bishops to preach the Gospel west
of the settled areas, and Kemper was the first to be chosen. He promptly
headed west. Having found that clergy who had lived all their lives in the
settled East were slow to respond to his call to join him on the frontier,
he determined to recruit priests from among men who were already in the
West, and established a college in St. Louis, Missouri, for that purpose. He
went on to found Nashotah House and Racine College in Wisconsin. He
constantly urged a more extensive outreach to the Indian peoples, and
translations of the Scriptures and the services of the Church into Indian
languages. From 1859 till his death in 1870, he was bishop of Wisconsin, but
the effect of his labors covered a far wider area.
|
|