USA > North Carolina > Lives of the bishops of North Carolina from the establishment of the episcopate in that state down to the division of the diocese > Part 12
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After leaving Yale, young Atkinson entered Hampden-Sidney College, in the State of Virginia, and graduated therefrom with the honors of his class, at the age of eighteen, September 28, 1825. In selecting a profession he made choice of the law, and pursued his studies under Judge Henry St. George Tucker, of Winchester, Virginia. In 1828, he was licensed to practice. He remained at the bar eight years, and then decided to enter
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the sacred ministry. At Christ Church, in the city of Norfolk, on November 18, 1836, he was ordered deacon by the Right Reverend William Meade (then Assistant Bishop), and was later ordained to the priesthood by the Right Reverend Richard Channing Moore, Bishop of Virginia, in Saint Paul's Church, Norfolk, May 7, 1837. During his diaconate he was Assistant Rector of Christ Church in Norfolk; and, upon his elevation to the priesthood, became Rector of Saint Paul's, in the same city, remaining in the latter station nearly two years. Abou: the end of the year 1838 he accepted a call to Lynchburg, be- coming Rector of Saint Paul's Church in that city, and re- mained there until 1843. During the year last named he be- came Rector of Saint Peter's Church, in Baltimore, succeeding the Reverend John Prentiss Kewley Henshaw, who had resigned to become Bishop of Rhode Island. Scarcely had Mr. Atkinson taken up his new charge in Baltimore when he was elected Bishop of Indiana. This high office he declined, and remained in his Baltimore pastorate, daily growing in the love and esteem of the people of that good city, and adding to the splendid repu- tation he had already acquired. In 1846, he was again elected Bishop of Indiana, and again he declined. The reasons for the refusals of Doctor Atkinson to accept the Bishopric of Indiana are interestingly given by Bishop Cheshire in his address on "Bishop Atkinson and the Church in the Confederacy," de- livered at the laying of the corner-stone of the Church of the Holy Comforter (a memorial to Bishop Atkinson ) in Charlotte. North Carolina, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, August 6, 1909. The first refusal, in 1843, says Bishop Cheshire, was a simple expression of his unpreparedness, he having come into the ministry from the bar only six years before. As to the renewed call, in 1846, Bishop Cheshire continues :
"This second election seemed to carry with it a strong presumption of a providential call to that work, and bis mind was adjusting itself to what seemed an inevitable duty, when he received a letter from an
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old Lynchburg friend, who for some years had been living in Indiana. This friend had left Virginia because his intense dislike of slavery had made him unwilling any longer to live in contact with it. Bishop Atkinson himself had a strong sense of the disadvantages and evils of slavery, though he was also sensible of the difficulty of finding any just and practicable means of abolishing it in the South. He had freed all his own slaves who wished to be freed and to go to the free States, and had kept only those who voluntarily chose to remain in the South. His old friend wrote expressing the pleasure he antici- pated in seeing him Bishop of Indiana, and begged him to bring his family to his house, and to make his house his home there until he should have leisure to make his permanent arrangements. He then added that the Bishop must be prepared to live and work in a com- munity where the feeling against slavery and slave owners was be- coming so inflamed and bitter, that the writer of the letter as a Southern man, though opposed to slavery, found himself in a painful and embarrassing position. 9
"This letter caused him to decline for a second time the call to Indiana. Little as he was attached to the institution of slavery, and thankful as he could have been to see it justly and peacefully abol- ished, he felt quite sure that, if in Indiana his friend could not live in comfort on account of the state of public feeling, he could not hope to be happy and contented in his work, since he would probably, as time went on, find himself more and more out of sympathy with his people on the great and absorbing question of the day.
"In the year 1853 the Diocese of South Carolina was to elect a Bishop. There was a strong feeling in favor of electing the Rev. Dr. Atkinson. But rumors had reached that State as to his feeling about slavery, and prominent persons in that Diocese communicated with him, asking for an expression of his views on the subject. He replied promptly in effect that he felt slavery to be a disadvantage, though he could not see how to get rid of it. But he declared that if it came to a choice between slavery and the Union, he should say let slavery go, and preserve the Union of the States. That is, as I remember, the substance of his reply. This letter, he said, prevented his being elected Bishop of South Carolina ; and Bishop Davis was chosen. My old friend General Thomas F. Drayton, told me that he was a mem- ber of the South Carolina Diocesan Convention of 1853, and well remembered the letter of Bishop Atkinson, which was made known to the members of the Convention, he himself having seen and read it; and he said but for that letter Bishop Atkinson would certainly have been their choice for Bishop."
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So, as Bishop Atkinson afterwards remarked, he did not become Bishop of Indiana because he was not sufficiently op- posed to slavery; and failed of election as Bishop of South Carolina because he was not sufficiently in favor of it.
In the year 1850, a controversy had arisen between some of the clergy in Maryland and their Bishop, the Right Reverend William Rollinson Whittingham, as to whether a Bishop, when making his visitation to a church, had the right to administer the Holy Communion and perform some other acts usually devolving upon the parish priest. In this absurd contention by the clergy, some went so far as to maintain that a proper respect for the just influence of the office of presbyter actually forbade that the communion office should be turned over to the Bishop. The pulpit and desk, however, they conceded might properly be at the Bishop's disposal through the courtesy of the priest in charge. "This controversy," says Bishop Lay, "was the burning question at the General Convention of 1850; and at that Convention, and in the preceding Diocesan Con- vention of Maryland, it fell to the lot of Dr. Atkinson, then Rector of St. Peter's, to vindicate the true ideal of the office of Bishop." Commenting upon the triumph of the Bishop of Maryland's contention, Bishop Lay adds in the above quoted discourse (his memorial sermon on Bishop Atkinson) that, if Whittingham and Atkinson had no other claim upon the Church's gratitude they would deserve to be ever held in honor for averting so great a calamity as that of the degradation of the Episcopate.
Shortly after the year 1850, some of Doctor Atkinson's parish- oners in Saint Peter's Church, Baltimore, in conjunction with a number of their fellow-churchmen outside of that parish. decided to build an additional house of worship and invite him to become its Recior. The erection of Grace Church, on the corner of Monument street and Park avenue, was the result, and in this beautiful edifice Doctor Atkinson was officiating when called to the Bishopric of North Carolina in 1853.
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Some years prior to his election to the Bishopric of North Carolina, Doctor Atkinson married (in January, 182S) Josepha Gwinn Wilder, daughter of John Wilder, of Petersburg, Vir- ginia. He was survived by this lady, and also by all of his children-three in number-as follows:
I. Mary Mayo Atkinson, wife of the Reverend D. Hillhouse Buel, D.D., a clergyman who faithfully labored many years in and around Asheville, North Carolina, in the interests of edu- cation as well as religion.
II. John Wilder Atkinson, of Wilmington, North Caro- lina, a Colonel in the Confederate Army, who fought through the war and was at one time confined in the military prison on Johnson's Island, in Lake Erie; he has been three times mar- ried and has descendants.
III. Robert Atkinson, M.D., of Baltimore, Maryland, who retired in early manhood from the practice of medicine, and afterwards conducted a school for boys; he has been twice mar- ried, and one of his children is the Reverend Thomas Atkinson, at present a clergyman in the Diocese of Maryland.
In May, 1853, the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina met in Christ Church at Raleigh; and before this body was laid the letter of December 22, 1852, whereby Bishop Ives made known his intention of renouncing the communion of his Church and of becoming a Roman Catholic. While his letter did not accord with the formalities governing the resignation of Bishops, the Dio- cesan Convention resolved that his abandonment of the flock com- mitted to his care and renunciation of the Anglican communion, were circumstances which in themselves worked a deposition from the ministry, and that the Bishopric was therefore vacant. Accordingly the convention proceeded to the election of a suc- cessor in the Episcopate, on May 28, 1853. The total number of votes cast was twenty-seven-eighteen, or two-thirds, being necessary for a choice. Those cast on the last ballot for the Reverend Thomas Atkinson, D.D., were twenty. The votes
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for the Reverend Richard Sharpe Mason, D.D., were three: those cast for the Right Reverend Horatio Southgate, D.D., two; and two votes were blank. The Reverend Doctor Atkin- son, having thus received the constitutional number of votes. was declared elected by the clergy, said election being unani- mously concurred in by the lay delegates. In referring to the earlier ballots, before an election resulted, the Semi-Weekly Raleigh Register, of June 1, 1853, said: "The clergy divided. almost equally, between the Rev. Drs. Mason and Drane, the distinguished Rectors of Christ Church, Raleigh, and St. James Church, Wilmington. More than thirty ballotings were had among the clergy before two-thirds of their number (the consti- tutional vote) united upon the Rev. Dr. Thomas Atkinson, of Baltimore. Drs. Hawks and Southgate also received a respect- able vote."
Upon being advised of his election, Doctor Atkinson accepted the call. He said that, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, he felt it to be the will of God that he should now accept the high position which he had theretofore declined, though it involved separation from a happy home and many dear friends in Baltimore. He attended the General Convention of the Church in the city of New York, October, 1853, as a clerical deputy from the Diocese of Maryland, while at the same time his name was presented to the Convention for its consent to his consecration as Bishop of North Carolina. Action to this effect was postponed until Bishop Ives could be formally deposed. after which the consecration of the new Bishop took place in due form, October 17, 1853, in Saint John's Chapel. As much- honored guests at the General Convention of 1853 were two colo- nial dignitaries of the Mother Church of England, the Right Reverend George Trevor Spencer, D. D., former Bishop of Mad- ras, in India, and the Right Reverend George Medley, D. D.,
* Though then officiating as Rector of the Church of the Advent, ju Boston, Doctor Southgate had formerly been Bishop over the Ameri- can missions in Turkey.
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Bishop of Fredricton, in Canada, both of whom joined in the ceremony of the laying on of hands when Doctor Atkinson was consecrated Bishop, the American consecrators being the Right Reverend Thomas Church Brownell, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of Connecticut and Presiding Bishop; the Right Reverend Charles Pettit McIlvaine, D. D., Bishop of Ohio; the Right Reverend George Washington Doane, D. D., LL. D., Bishop of New. Jer- sey; the Right Reverend Samuel Allen McCoskry, D. D., D. C. L., Bishop of Michigan; and the Right Reverend James Hervey Otey, D. D., Bishop of Tennessee. Another Bishop who received his consecration during the session of the General Convention of 1853, at the hands of both the American and English Bishops -- though the personnel of his American consecrators slightly dif- fered from Atkinson's-was the Right Reverend Thomas Fred- erick Davis, of South Carolina, who was a native of Wilming- ton, North Carolina, and a brother of the eminent lawyer, Hon- orable George Davis, afterwards Attorney-General of the Con- federate States. A few months after the consecration of Bishops Atkinson and Davis, still another native North Carolinian was added to the House of Bishops when the Reverend Thomas Fielding Scott was consecrated Missionary Bishop of the terri- tories of Washington and Oregon, on January 8, 1854. Bishop Scott's ministerial career began in Georgia, but he was born in Iredell County, North Carolina, March 12, 1807. He died in New York City on the 14th day of July, 1867.
After spending a short time in bidding farewell to his parish- ioners and other friends in Baltimore, Bishop Atkinson set out for North Carolina and arrived at Raleigh on Tuesday, the Sth of November, 1853. He preached his first sermon in that city at Christ Church on the following Sunday. On the evening of the same day he delivered a sermon in the chapel of Saint Mary's School, and confirmed twelve of its pupils. After laboring for something more than a month in North Carolina, Bishop Atkin- son returned to Baltimore in December, and brought his family to their new home. In the following month (January, 1854) he Y
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also visited New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Richmond, holding services by invitation in each of these cities.
In May, 1854, while travelling in eastern North Carolina, Bishop Atkinson paid a visit to the ruins of Saint Thomas's Church at Bath, the oldest house of worship in the State. Of it he wrote: "The Church at Bath is venerable from age and asso- ciation, but has become so dilapidated as to approach ruin. The village, once the capital of the State, and possessed of com- parative population and wealth, is now nearly stripped of both, and it will therefore be a serious effort on the part of the present residents to put the Church in good repair; but it is one they design to make, and in which they ought to be assisted by others, and especially by those who, though no longer residents, are con- nected with this interesting spot as their former home or that of their forefathers." It may interest the reader to know that this ancient edifice is now in regular use, but it was not restored until some years later. The walls, being made of hard brick, withstood the elements during the long years of neglect through which it passed.
In the year above mentioned, during Bishop Atkinson's visit to Bath, as well as elsewhere in the same section of the State, he was accompanied by the Reverend Edwin Geer, Rector of Saint Peter's Church at Washington, in Beaufort County. Alluding to May 30th, the Bishop says: "That evening I parted from Mr. Geer, whose pleasant society as well as useful services I had enjoyed for a week. He returned to Washington. I crossed the Pamlico River to Mr. Charles Crawford's, where, among others, I met with his aged mother, a venerable relict of a past era and a type of that class of women to whom the Church in this Diocese, in that of Virginia, and of Maryland, and no doubt in many others, is so much indebted-who, without the ordinary public means of grace, and amid deep discouragements, have kept the faith and carefully trained up their children in it On May 31st, at Mr. Crawford's, I baptized nine children- two white and seven colored."
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It was the privilege of Bishop Atkinson, on September 19, 1854, to pay a visit to the Moravian community at Salem. He alluded to this town and its people in his next address to the Diocesan Convention, saying: "This is a very interesting place, because of the Moravian colony established there-a body of people with whom, as Protestants and at the same time Episco- palians, we have an especial affinity. Their large and flourish- ing schools have been to a considerable extent patronized by the members of our Church, and our kind feeling towards them seems to be cordially reciprocated. Withal, the flourishing vil- lage of Winston is growing up by the side of Salem, and the population of the surrounding country is increasing." About a year later, September 9, 1855, Bishop Atkinson again visited the Moravians, and was once more received with loving hospitality. On the latter occasion he preached in their church. Later he expressed great admiration for their educational system. Speak- ing of the Salem Academy (the oldest school for girls in North Carolina ) he said: "It was to me also very pleasing and encour- aging to observe the flourishing condition of the School in which so many of the daughters of North Carolina, and of the other Southern States, have received important aid in fitting them- selves for the discharge of the duties of life." And still another visit to Salem, September 1, 1858, was recorded by Bishop Atkinson as follows: "I preached in the Moravian Church at Salem, and baptized two infants. I was received by that inter- esting community with the kindness they have ever shown, not to me only, but to all the ministers of our Church who have visited them; and I was gratified to learn that some of them are among the largest contributors to the fund now being collected for the purpose of building a house of worship for our own com- munion in or near their village."
In March, 1854, Bishop Atkinson included Saint John's Church, at Williamsborough, in his visitations, and of it he said : "The venerable Church, in which the solemn eloquence of Ravenscroft had so often awed the hearts of multitudes, exhib-
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ited (when I first saw it) marks of dilapidation and decay. Now, not only has it been repaired and painted, but a parsonage has also been purchased."
Bishop Atkinson and his family left Raleigh and became resi- dents of Wilmington in December, 1855, some Churchmen in the latter place having procured for their use a handsome home, besides showing many other acts of consideration and kindness. In 1854 the Diocesan Convention had taken steps looking to the erection of a See House at Raleigh, but this plan was later aban- doned in consequence of the Bishop's removal.
Not long after Bishop Atkinson had reached his new home in Wilmington he was called back to Raleigh by news of the sud- den death of his greatly beloved friend, Joseph B. G. Roulhac- a gentleman of French descent-of whom he says: "Never within my acquaintance has the death of a private citizen been more universally regretted than his. And well did he deserve the high place he occupied in the confidence and affection of the community. His flowing courtesy and delicate respect for the opinions and feelings of others, continually reminded those who knew him of the best qualities of the race from which he sprung. and which his name indicated, yet the bluntest of men could not have been more sincere, upright, and honorable than he was." Another death, occurring a few years after Mr. Roulhac's, was that of the Reverend John Haywood Parker, Rector of Saint Luke's Church in Salisbury, who passed to his reward on the 15th of September, 1858. This also was a source of deep grief to Bishop Atkinson, who (in addressing the Convention of 1859) feelingly referred to the loss thus sustained, and said of Mr. Parker personally : "He was peculiarly qualified to be use- ful as a minister, not only by piety and intelligence, but by warm and tender affections, by great suavity and cordiality of manner, and by a rare combination of zeal and discretion. It was said by one who well knew the town in which he lived, that his loss would be more deeply felt than that of any other man who could be taken from it."
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For several years prior to the outbreak of the War Between the States a movement had been on foot looking to the establish- ment in some Southern diocese of a university under the aus- pices of the Church. The first steps, with this end in view, were taken by Bishop Polk, who, on July 1, 1856, addressed a letter to the other Southern Bishops, setting forth the need of such an institution, not only as a training school for the ministry, but for the general education of young men. Bishop Atkinson attended a meeting at Montgomery, Alabama, in November, 1858, which decided that this institution-now known as the University of the South-should be established at Sewanee, in the mountains of Tennessee. The corner-stone of the first build- ing of this institution was laid in 1860; but, shortly after this, the war swept away nearly all of its assets, amounting to about half a million dollars. Work was begun there anew, after the war, by Bishop .Quintard of Tennessee; and, after passing through many trying vicissitudes, it is now one of the best institutions of its kind in America. The University of the South is the joint property of the several dioceses throughout the States of North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas.
At a date somewhat earlier than that at which Bishop Polk conceived the idea of establishing the University of the South, steps had been taken in North Carolina to found an educational institution as a memorial to Bishop Ravenscroft. In 1854, the Diocesan Convention of North Carolina-not deterred by the failure of the Episcopal School at Raleigh fifteen years earlier -- resolved to establish a Church school for boys. At the same time, for its government, it was provided that this institution should be under the management of a board of trustees, consisting of the Bishop, ex officio, and three laymen to be appointed by him. To serve on this board, Bishop Atkinson selected Messrs. Henry 1. London, of Pittsboro, in Chatham County, Thomas Hill, of the same place, and George W. Mordecai, of Raleigh. It was deter-
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mined by these gentlemen to locate the school at Pittsboro, as a spacious lot and about two thousand dollars had been offered to the trustees as an inducement to do so. The Reverend Jarvis Buxton, of Asheville, was elected principal, though the Bishop felt very reluctant to have him removed from a section where he was so greatly beloved and was meeting with such marked suc- cess in his sacred calling. Doctor Buxton at first accepted the principalship, but, before he could assume the duties of his new post, his parishioners at Asheville offered to establish a school in that town if he would remain. This he consented to do, first con- sulting the Bishop and securing his approbation of such a course. It was at first intended (after Doctor Buxton decided to remain in Asheville) to have schools in both Pittsboro and Asheville, but the former plan was finally given up. The insti- tution at Asheville-Ravenscroft School-was opened in 1856. The Reverend Lucian Holmes succeeded Doctor Buxton as its head-master, in 1861, and served until the doors of the school were closed in 1864. An account of this institution, written by Doctor Buxton himself, is given in the volume of centennial addresses entitled Church History in North Carolina, published in 1892. In that work, Doctor Buxton says: "At the close of the Civil War and on the restoration of peace, the Ravenscroft Institute was re-organized by Bishop Atkinson solely into a theological school-that is, a school where postulants and candi- dates only for the holy ministry were received and instructed." The Reverend George T. Wilmer was the first principal of Ravenscroft School after its re-organization, in 1868, but soon resigned to accept a professorship in William and Mary College. He was succeeded by the Reverend Francis J. Murdoch, who later gave place to the Reverend D. Hillhouse Buel in the Fall of 1872. Says Doctor Buxton, in the above-quoted account: "In 1886 it was decided by the Convention to revive the plan of a diocesan school for boys (the proposed one, to be located at Mor- ganton, having miscarried) and to fit up and use for that pur- pose the Ravenscroft building. The erection of a separate build-
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ing, for the training school for the ministry, was postponed to a future day." After the above institution became a high school for boys, its head-masters were successively Messrs. Henry A. Prince, Haywood Parker, and Ronald McDonald. The gentle- man last named undertook (with the approval of the Diocesan Convention) to run the school as a private educational enter- prise; but, not meeting with patronage sufficient to justify its continuance, he finally gave up the undertaking. In 1887, Mr. John H. Shoenberger, of New York (formerly of Pennsylva- nia), gave the school a building costing over eight thousand dol- lars. Ravenscroft School is not in operation at present ; but, as its grounds and buildings are still owned by the Church, it may be revived at some future day. It is not now in the Diocese of North Carolina, but in the Missionary Jurisdiction of Asheville.
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