BIOGRAPHY [BO:Transcription of biographical sketch written by Samuel R. Durand:BO]. He referenced several sources at the end of the writing, but did not specify which quotations or facts came from which source. I have left open quotes at the end of the sketch as he placed them, apparently to indicate lines copied verbatim from one source or another. "Jackson Kemper was born on Christmas Eve, 1789, in an inn at Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York. His parents had gone there temporarily because of a smallpox epidemic in New York City. He was baptized David Jackson by Dr. Benjamin Moore, Assistant Rector of Trinity Church. His family were members of St. Paul's Chapel of Trinity Church in New York City. At the age of 12, Jackson Kemper was sent for a short time to the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire, Connecticut; but because of his sensitive nature, he was not happy there. He completed his preparation for college by studying under Dr. Edmund Barry D.D., a graduate of Trinity College of Dublin, Ireland, and one of the best scholars and teachers of his time. Jackson Kemper entered Columbia College at the age of 15. While there, he joined a class organized by Dr. Henry Hobart, then assistant minister of Trinity Church, which met weekly for the study of theology. After graduation from Columbia in 1809, valedictorian of his class, Jackson Kemper continued the study of theology under Bishop Moore and Dr. Hobart in New York. As the young Kemper reached the canonical age of 21, Bishop Moore was stricken with paralysis, so Jackson Kemper was recommended to Bishop White (the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church) for ordination. He was made a deacon by Bishop White on March 11, 1811, at St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia. Soon, he preached his first sermon in St. James's Church in Philadelphia, which together with St. Peter's and Christ Church formed the three united Episcopal churches in that city. On May 14, 1811, the vestry of the united churches appointed Jackson Kemper as Assistant Minister under Bishop White - who was not only the presiding Bishop of Pennsylvania, but also Rector of the united churches. There were two other Assistant Ministers. Upon coming to Philadelphia, Jackson Kemper lived for a time in the home of his uncle and Aunt, Dr. David and Susannah (Kemper) Jackson [#1265-66]. He had persuaded his father to allow him to drop his given name David while at the Episcopal Academy in Cheshire, and had used only the name Jackson since then. He remained an Assistant Rector of the united churches for twenty years. In his first two years, the communicant list of Christ Church increased from two hundred to over three hundred. His first confirmation class in St. James's Church on Easter even 1813 had the extraordinary number of one hundred eighty-one. Jackson Kemper was active in the formation of the Society for the advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania and was appointed its first missionary. In 1812, 1813, 1814, 1819, and 1820, he made missionary trips for the church beyond the Allegheny Mountains in Western Pennsylvania and Virginia, and helped establish the first Episcopal church in Ohio. Upon attaining the canonical age of 24, he was ordained a priest of the church by Bishop White on January 23, 1814 in Christ Church. In the same year, Jackson Kemper and the Rev. James Milnor started an afternoon Sunday school and night service at Commissioner's Hall, in the northern part of Philadelphia. This was the first Sunday school officially incorporated by any religious organization in America, and resulted in the general establishment of Sunday schools. Jackson Kemper was married to Jerusha Lyman on May 2, 1816. She had returned to America after the death in 1811 of her father, General William Lyman, Consul and Special Emissary of President Madison in London. Jerusha and two of her sisters had established a private boarding school for girls in Philadelphia. Apparently, her health failed two years after her marriage, for in August of 1818 Jackson Kemper was granted a leave and a salary advance by the vestry of the United Churches to enable him to take his wife south in the hope that she could regain her health. This hope was not fulfilled; Jerusha died November 21, 1818, and was buried in Christ Churchyard. Rev. Jackson Kemper was elected by the Diocesan Convention as a delegate to the General Convention in 1817; he was re-elected each year for the following 12 years. He raised funds for the General Theological Seminary, which began instruction in New York in 1819. In 1820, he was appointed a trustee of that institution. Also in 1820, at the General Convention in Philadelphia, he chaired three committees, was a member of three others, and he became one of the managers of the newly-created Protestant Episcopal Missionary Society in the United States for Foreign and Domestic Missions. On October 9, 1821, Jackson Kemper was married to Ann Relf, the daughter of Samuel and Sarah (Poyntell) Relf. She was a member of a prominent and wealthy Philadelphia family. My biographical sketch of her short life tells of their married life together, from 1821 to 1832. In 1829, his alma mater, Columbia, awarded him the degree of Doctor of Divinity, Honor Causa. He had refused calls to be Rector of St. Paul's Church in Baltimore (in 1813), and of Trinity Church in Pittsburgh (in 1827). In 1826, a schism had developed in the diocese of Pennsylvania over a bitterly contested election of an assistant bishop. Rev. Kemper's unhappiness with the resulting atmosphere in the diocese, in addition to his concern for the family's health during the hot, epidemic-prone Philadelphia summers and Ann's great desire to move to a country parsonage, he accepted an opening at St. Paul's Church in Norwalk, Connecticut. The new parish was one of the four largest parishes in the state. Within a year, he suffered the greivous loss of his wife. His two little boys, Samuel and Lewis remained with him in Norwalk under the care of an elderly nurse, Sally Lawrence, who had been a servant in the Relf family for more than 35 years. His 7-year-old daughter went to live with her maternal grandmother in Philadelphia. In 1834, Jackson Kemper and James Milnor were sent by the church to Green Bay, then in the Michigan Territory, to arbitrate trouble there at an Indian mission supported by the Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society. They traveled by boat to Albany, by stagecoach to Buffalo, and by a small steamer,the [IT::IT]Michigan[IT::IT], to Green Bay. A journal that Jackson Kemper kept on this trip is of great historical interest. During the four years that he was Rector of St. Paul's Church in Norwalk, the communicant list almost doubled, and he was influential in starting several missions from there. The general convention of the church in 1835, under the leadership of Bishop Doane, proclaimed that missionary work was a duty of the whole church. Prior to that time, missionary work had been sustained only by voluntary dues-paying members of the missionary societies. Up to 1835, bishops had been 'called' to service, but Jackson Kemper was appointed to be a bishop by the convention of 1835, to be sent by the whole church to carry its work to the wilderness. Hearing of the appointment, he wrote to a friend on September 12, 1835: "My own appointment filled me with astonishment, for it was entirely unexpected. How could I refuse a station of so much toil and danger without being stigmatized as a coward - perhaps a traitor to that cause to which I have committed my life? I hope I am not deceived. I have reflected deeply and calmly upon the subject and I think the path of duty is plain before me. I received in due time official notice of my appointment, and last Monday I accepted it." Jackson Kemper was consecrated by Bishop White as the first missionary bishop in an historic service at St. Peter's Church in Philadelphia on September 25, 1835. Bishop Doane preached an inspired sermon comparing the work before Bishop Kemper to that of the apostle Paul. At a great mass meeting (from which hundreds were turned away) in the Church of the Ascension in Philadelphia on October 25, 1835, Bishop Kemper bade himself farewell. The next morning, he left for the west. His territory included what are now the states of Indiana, Missouri, Kansas, Nebraska, and the Indian territory of Oklahoma. Within three years Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas were added. In November of 1835, he found one clergyman in Indiana but no church, and one church in St. Louis without a clergyman. For several years, he mad his headquarters in St. Louis. During the winter of 1835-36, at the request of Bishop Chase (who was in England raising funds for Jubilee College) Bishop Kemper visited several parishes that recently had been organized in Illinois. in 1836 and 1837, his work was concentrated mostly in Missouri, Kansas, and Indiana, but he also visited the East to raise funds for a college to be founded in Missouri to train men for missionary work. While he was away, the legislature passed the charter for this college, and not wishing to call it Missouri College named it Kemper College. By 1838, the church was firmly established in Indiana and Missouri, and Bishop Kemper had visited the farthest west frontier at fort Leavenworth. From January until June of 1838, at the request of Bishop Otey, he traveled down the Mississippi to Memphis, Vicksburg, and Natchez, and through Mississippi and Louisiana to New Orleans. He then continued eastward through Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, consecrating eight churches, ordaining two priests, and holding services at many places where no Episcopalian clergyman had been before. Immediately, upon returning to St. Louis, he continued northward and in july and August visited the newly created Territory of Wisconsin, going from Platteville to Prairie du Chien, Cassville, Mineral Point, Lancaster, Madison (where he found 50 homes, whereas a year before there had been just one., and where he organized a church of 16 families), Fort Winnebago (Portage) and Green Bay (where he confirmed six and laid the cornerstone of Christ Church). By mid-August, he was at the Diocesan Convention in Indiana, which now had nine churches. At the general convention in Philadelphia in September of 1838, Bishop Kemper was elected Bishop of Maryland , but he continued to choose hard missionary work in the West, and was given jurisdiction over Wisconsin and the Northwest Territory. After attending the General Convention, he traveled to the Indian reservations at the furthest western frontier again to seek out Seneca and Mohawk tribes who had a remnant of Christianity had a remnant of Christianity from the English church. In the succeeding years, the work of Bishop Kemper was similar to this, traveling 10,000 miles or more each year, mainly on horseback, open carriage, or stagecoach. He endured all kinds of hardships, sleeping often in the floors of cabins or in crowded rooms in taverns, holding services, baptizing, confirming, marrying, burying, and helping settlers from the East to obtain land and establish churches. In January of 1839 he visited Wisconsin again, this time going to Milwaukee, where a mission had been established by Rev. Isaac Hallam of St. James' Church, Chicago. On September 2 of that year, he consecrated Hobart Church at the Oneida Mission, the first consecrated church building in Wisconsin. During the years 1840 to 1842, the Bishop traveled continually throughout his vast territory, and to the East to seek funds and more clergymen. In 1842, Nashotah House was founded as a result of Bishop Kemper's inspirational appeals to young men at the General Theological Seminary. Nashotah succeeded as a place to train men for the clergy, for it alsoofferred them an opportunity to do missionary work while studying and teaching. In October of 1842, Bishop Kemper ordained James Breck and William Adams at Hobart Church. In 1844, when Missouri became a diocese under Bishop Hawkes, Bishop Kemper was able to move to Wisconsin, at the center of his territory which still included Indiana until 1849. In 1846, he purchased a house that had been built in 1840 near Nashotah; he later built an addition to the house. It became his home for the rest of his life. On June 24, 1847, 23 clergymen and 35 lay deputies met in St. Paul's Church in Milwaukee to organize a diocese. They unanimously elected Bishop Kemper bishop of the diocese. He declined to confine his work to Wisconsin, and continued as Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, with Wisconsin in his jurisdiction. In 1854, he consented to become the Bishop of Wisconsin, but still on the condition that he could carry on his missionary work in the West. It was not until 1859, when Minnesota and Kansas became dioceses, that he could resign as Missionary Bishop and remain solely as Bishop of Wisconsin. By then he had orgainzed six dioceses, ordained over 200 priests, confirmed many thousands, and traveled over 300,000 miles. 'His saddlebags contained his worldly goods - his robes, his communion service, his bible and his prayer book.' Today in his missionary territories, there are several dozen dioceses, several thousand churches and clergy, and many hundreds of thousand members of the Episcopal Church. In 1866, Bishop Kemper was in his 76th year, and he began to feel the ardours of travel and requested the election of an assistant bishop. The Rev. William E. Armitage, Rector of St. John's Church of Detroit, was elected. Bishop Jackson Kemper died at his home near Nashotah on May 24, 1870. Six bishops, 70 priests, and more than 2,000 people were at the funeral service when he was buried in the cemetery at Nashotah. The spirit of his life and ministry is well summed-up in one of his last remarks: 'I have everything to be thankful for, the presence of my Saviour, the help of his Holy Spirit, and a hope full of immortality.' "Jackson Kemper in height was five feet seven inches tall; his shoulders square, hands and feet shapely and delicate; of erect and graceful figure and springy gait. His voice was sweet but not very strong, and he had no ear for music. His complexion was fair, of good color but not ruddy, save as to his lips. His face was wide in proportion to its length, [his] thick brown hair combed from left to right looking as if blown by the wind, short side-whiskers, bright hazel eyes, chin fine and strong - altogether a handsome face and a pleasant expression. "He was affected by beauty of landscape and scenery. He loved the mountains. He observed, too, the details of nature, and he was fond of botany and other branches of natural history. He was in his element when making a round of parish visits, which he found to be an easy means of imparting religious instruction, and his tenderness and personal kindness in times of trouble, sickness, or death endeared him deeply to his people. "He thoroughly enjoyed simple social visitng, and all his life was very particular about calling on strangers and returning calls. He was a generous giver to every good cause - indeed friends thought him liberal above what he could or ought to afford - yet he was never in want. "He was exceedingly restrained in criticism of others. He had modest views of his powers and attainments, and was never satisfied with them but ever strove to improve himself. He was by no means lacking in humor of a gay and gentle kind. One of his most attractive qualities, which he never lost, was a certain boyish lightheartedness and zest for living. "If he had andy notable characteristic, it was an absorbing sense of duty. He was devoted to his home and family, but never neglected a duty which took him away from them. His great passion was the church. He was convinced if people would practice their Christian principles and follow along the way which the church pointed out to them, all problems would be automatically solved."

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Record Change December 23, 1999