USA > Wisconsin > Wisconsin, its story and biography, 1848-1913, Volumr VI > Part 11
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In the little town of Caub, on the river Rhine, in Germany, there was born, in 1706, to an army officer named Kemper, a son whom he called Jacob, who was to become the grandfather of our bishop. As
Jackson Kemper
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Jacob Kemper grew in years, he became possessed with the desire to own land, for he lived in a country not long exempt from the feudal rule, therefore he emigrated to America, and there with his wife, who was the daughter of a Calvinistic minister, settled on a farm in Dutchess county on the Hudson river. His farm was a small one, not at all his ideal of what a great landed proprietor should own, so in 1754 he removed to New Brunswick, New Jersey, and there bought an extensive property. Here his eldest son, Daniel, was born, and he became prosperous until the outbreak of the Seven Years' War brought on financial difficulties that caused him to move to New York in 1759, the year that his youngest daughter, Susan, was born. After removing to New York fortune once more smiled on him and he was again successful in his business affairs.
His son, Daniel, received a good education at King's College, in New York, for he proved to be a youth of unusual mental ability, and at the age of twenty-two he was married. Shortly after came the outbreak of the American Revolution, and he threw himself into the cause of the colonies, not only giving his personal services as a colonel but also his whole fortune to the eause. He was made a mem- ber of the Cincinnati immediately upon its foundation. He lost his wife at the close of the war, but married again, and married a woman who was not only capable of caring for his six young children, but was also an excellent manager and did much to put Colonel Kemper upon a firmer financial basis. He removed to a farm in Dutchess county, not far from Poughkeepsie, called Pleasant Valley, and there on Christmas Eve, 1789, the third child of his second marriage, Jack- son Kemper was born. Shortly afterward, through his old friend President Washington, Colonel Kemper received an appointment to the Custom House in New York, and thither removed his family. Mrs. Kemper had been a member of the Dutch Reformed communion, but at the time of her marriage both she and her husband became mem- bers of the Episcopal church. Owing to this and to the fact that his father's sister Susan had married Dr. David Jackson, of Philadelphia, where she was a prominent figure in the social life of the nation's capital, the child was baptized under the name of David Jackson, by the assistant minister of Trinity parish, Dr. Benjamin Moore. Jacob Kemper died in 1794, at the age of eighty-eight years, living just long enough to be remembered by his young grandson.
Little David Jackson Kemper grew up surrounded by all the comforts of a home of wealth, at least for that period. The house was beautifully furnished and the library gave him many hours of delight. His mother was deeply religious and the whole family at- tended both morning and evening prayer every Sunday at St. Paul's Chapel, thus early introducing him to the services of the church. At the age of twelve, he was sent to the Episcopal Academy, at Cheshire,
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Connecticut, but the school, which was evidently regarded as a house of correction by many parents, made the boy very unhappy, and in 1804 his father allowed him to return home, and he was placed under the tutelage of the Rev. Edmund Barry. In a year he was prepared for college and entered Columbia College, under the presidency of Bishop Moore. He became intensely absorbed in his studies and at the end of his Sophomore year, his health was in such a bad condi- tion that he was sent on a vacation tour through Pennsylvania and New Jersey. Meanwhile his elder brother Daniel, to whom his father was passionately devoted, a wild, reckless young fellow, had become interested in a mad filibustering expedition in the Caribbean Sea. His father had ruined himself, financially, in paying the debts of his wayward son, and now the expedition had come to a tragic end, the son was captured and put to death, and the father was completely crushed, broken in health, and with his fortune lost. It was very doubtful whether Jackson could finish his college course but it was managed and he was graduated, valedictorian of his class, in August, 1809.
"All of his best friends had long divined his fitness for the min- istry. The sweetness and evenness of his temper, the harmony of his talents, his unsullied purity of character and motive, and the unbroken course, from boyhood, of his Christian nurture had already set him apart, in their estimation." He hesitated for a time, fearing his unfitness, but at last his scruples quieted he began preparation under the direction of Bishop Moore and Doctor Hobart. He was ordained on the 11th of March, the second Sunday in Lent, 1811, to the diaconate, by Bishop William White, in St. Peter's church, Phila- delphia, his beloved friend, Bishop Moore, being too ill to perform the ordination.
Now begins the long period of his ministry. He preached his first sermon in St. James church on the afternoon of ordination, and on the following Tuesday he was called by the united parishes of Phila- delphia to an assistancy. He had, however, a number of engagements in New York and before these were filled, the resignation of Dr. Blackwell, senior assistant to Bishop White, left a vacancy, which Mr. Kemper was unanimously elected to fill. Accepting this call he arrived in June, 1811, to take up his work. The society of Philadel- phia was at this time the most cultured in the land, for Philadelphia was the largest and most cosmopolitan city. At the time of his arrival, the communicants of the three parishes that he served num- bered two hundred, and during this year the baptisms amounted to that number. When he could find an opportunity he went over to Germantown and there held services, there being no church there. He was appointed secretary of the diocesan convention at the first meeting he attended and he was reappointed from, time to time until
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1817. He was one of the active organizers in the formation, in the spring of 1812, of the Society for the Advancement of Christianity in Pennsylvania, and was appointed its first missionary. He started out in August and drove all over the state, from Lancaster to York, down to Huntington, to Pittsburgh, southward to Charleston; everywhere finding members of his church, who were gradually forgetting the ritual and even their creed through lack of use and the absence of clergy. He heard also that probably half of the settlers of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee had been Episcopalians, and he came back to Philadelphia, glowing with enthusiasm for the great work to be accomplished beyond the Alleghanies.
The young minister now gave much of his time to study, to Hebrew and theology. He was not great intellectually, not a great thinker or eloquent preacher. His sermons were, however, of the deepest sincerity and his simplicity gave him a powerful influence. He thoroughly enjoyed the pastoral side of his work, and his kind- ness and tenderness caused him to be deeply loved by his people. He did not care for poetry or the drama, caring little for Shakespeare, abhorring Byron, but was devoted to the reading of history and such romances as Scott's. He was a Federal in politics, and disliked Thomas Jefferson above all men. Perhaps his most charming charac- teristic was a delightful sense of humor and a boyish light hearted- ness and zest for living that he never lost. He was ever a lover of nature in all her moods, and indeed of beauty in most forms.
His work in Philadelphia was showing strongly, for in the two years that he had labored there an increase of fifty per cent in the communicant roll had occurred. He was now placed upon the stand- ing committee of the diocese, a post in which he served for many years. He had now been a deacon for three years, and in Christ church, on the 23rd of January, the third Sunday after the Epiphany, in 1814, he was ordained to the priesthood. His health was not very good at this time and it was decided that it was best for him to go out on another missionary journey. He set forth in August, riding a horse this time, and after revisiting Pittsburgh crossed the state line, and penetrated into the northeastern corner of Ohio, known as the Connecticut Reserve. Here he spent a good part of the autumn, encountering conditions which he himself describes: "In the same place which serves as kitchen, drawing-room and parlor I have slept at night. For a month I was traveling through a country nearly inundated by rain; the people were poor; the accommodations bad ; sometimes I was benighted and sometimes exposed to dangers." The people were highly intelligent however, and he found many church people scattered through the land. He helped to form several con- gregations, and returned to Philadelphia in December, eager to cast his lot with the west. He now became interested in the eldest daugh-
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ter of General William Lyman, the late special consul to London, and in 1816 they were married, an ideal marriage, but one destined to be shortly broken by her death after two years. After three years, in 1821, he was again married, this time to Miss Ann Relf, of a wealthy Philadelphia family. They went to housekeeping in a house on Fifth street, near Spruce, and here their children were born; the eldest, a daughter, Elizabeth Marius, in 1824, and the boys Samuel and Lewis in 1827 and 1829, respectively. During these years he was extremely busy in diocesan work, serving as a trustee of the General Seminary and as a manager of the new Domestic and Foreign Missionary So- ciety, as well as upon many committees.
Now came a period in the church life of the state that caused him much sorrow; party feeling became rampant, and the diocese was torn between conflicting parties. The extraordinary interest in his preaching and his unprecedented popularity were on the wane, though personally he was as much beloved as ever, for there were many younger and more impassioned preachers now coming forward as priests, and therefore he felt that it were better to make a change. In 1831 Bishop Brownell of Connecticut had him called to St. Paul's in Norwalk, one of the four most important parishes in the diocese, and he accepted this call. He immediately became a powerful figure in the church life of Connecticut, being placed upon the standing committee of the diocese; at the next meeting serving as secretary and was elected diocesan trustee of the General Seminary. In his own parish there was a gain of fifty per cent in the communicant list in three years. Here in 1832, his wife died and was laid to rest in St. Paul's churchyard, leaving him three children, the eldest only eight.
In 1834 he took his most extended missionary journey up to this time, going in company with James Milnor as far as Green Bay, Wis- consin. In the year 1835 Philander Chase was chosen as Bishop of Illinois, a diocese which contained one church building at Jackson- ville, and thirty-nine communicants. At this time interest in the far west had so spread among the eastern churches that Bishop Brownell visited the seetion and the result of the visit was that Kemper who had for so long been deeply interested in the work in this field was raised to the highest office of the church. The death of his wife left him free to take up the arduous labors of his immense field and he was no longer burdened with the eare of his parents, so on the 25th of September, 1835, in St. Peter's, Philadelphia, he was consecrated first missionary bishop of the American church, by his old diocesan and friend, Bishop White, assisted by Bishops Channing Moore, Philander Chase, both the Onderdonks, Bosworth Smith and Doane.
And now begins the third period in the life of this great man, the episcopate. Shortly after his consecration he set forth for his new
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diocese of Missouri and Indiana. Some description of the country he was to work in should be given, and it can be best given in the words of Dr. White, who has written such a splendid history of Bishop Kemper's life. He says: "Those territories had been ad- mitted to the Union as states in the years 1816 and 1818 respectively. Up to that period the larger portion of them still owned the sway of primeval nature; simplest frontier conditions prevailed; there was a mere fringe of settlement upon their southern bound, along the bank of the Ohio river; the bison still roamed over their grassy north- ern savannahs, and in the woods wolves, wildcat, deer and foxes mul- tiplied. The settlers had to confront the red man at every turn; even as late as 1832 they were stricken with panic at the raid of Black Hawk. The conflicts tended to intensify the vigilant, militant spirit, sufficiently pronounced from the first, of the hardy pioneers, picked men of their kind. An ardent individualism was the note of the hour, whether in religion or politics, economic or social life. Every clearing in the forest was an independent principality, pro- ducing pretty nearly everything that was consumed upon it. It was the log cabin age. All manner of bilious attacks, pleurisy, fever and ague, were the plagues of those raw clearings; the plague of ague was accompanied by the plague of whiskey.
"About one such lonesome spot amid the wet forest the following veracious conversation between a settler and an inquiring stranger is reported to have taken place. 'What's your place called ?' 'Moggs!' 'What sort of land thereabouts?' 'Bogs.' 'What's the climate?' 'Fogs.' 'What's your name?' 'Scroggs.' 'What's your house built of ?' 'Logs.' 'What do you eat?' 'Hogs.' 'Have you any neighbors?' 'Frogs.' 'Gracious! Haven't you any comforts?' 'Grog.' "
Conditions after the Black Hawk insurrection was suppressed in 1832, began to improve, a better class of immigrants came in and the development of the great middle west was really begun. Bishop Kemper arrived in Indiana in November, 1835, and in the whole state found only one missionary of the Episcopal communion, located at the capital, but in the whole state there was not one church. Jour- neying through the state the bishop at last arrived in St. Louis, Mis- souri, in December. Here he found an organized parish and church building, but no clergyman, in fact there were none in the whole state. After spending the winter in Illinois, where he consecrated the church in Jacksonville and organized a parish at Alton, he crossed the Mississippi into Iowa and as a result, Dubuque became a site for a mission.
Shortly afterward he made a journey to the east, where he took part in the first consecration of a bishop, that of Samuel Allen McCoskry, who was consecrated the first bishop of Michigan. On
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this journey, Bishop Kemper's object was to plead for men as mis- sionaries and for the means to sustain them and to start a church col- lege west of the Mississippi river. He was unsuccessful at first but at last the tide turned and within twenty days he secured twenty thousand dollars. In November of 1836 he was back again in St. Louis and in January, 1837, an act incorporating Kemper College was passed by the Missouri legislature. The name was given to the new institution without his knowledge, he having chosen the title Missouri College. The crisis of 1837 now swept the country, and affairs in the church itself were in a troubled condition, but the optimism of the bishop remained firm through it all. He had the satisfaction of lay- ing the cornerstone for a church at Crawfordsville and of organizing a parish in Indianapolis, Indiana. In the late autumn of this year he was crossing Missouri en route for Fort Leavenworth, the most important frontier post at the urgent request of its commander, Colonel Kearney. His description of the trip is interesting. He says, "Shall I tell you how we were benighted and how we lost our way, of the deep creeks we forded and the bad bridges we crossed, --- how we were drenched to the skin and how we were wading for half- an-hour in a slough, and the accidents that arose from the stumbling of our horses? But these events were matters of course. What a proof of the sluggishness of our movements is the fact that, so far as I can learn, I am the first clergyman of our Church who has preached at Columbia, Boonville, Fayette, Richmond, Lexington, Independence and Fort Leavenworth,-in a word I have been the pioneer from St. Charles up the Missouri."
When he returned to St. Louis hoping for a little rest and the opportunity to put the affairs of his college in shape, he was met with an urgent request from Bishop Otey to accompany him on a tour of the southwest. So in January, 1838, he started alone, Bishop Otey being ill, and going down the river to Memphis, he began a mag- nificent tour, visiting Natchez, New Orleans, Mobile, Pensacola, and on through Georgia and Alabama, finally arriving at New Orleans again in May. He had visited nearly all the parishes in Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, in four months time, confirming in nearly all of them; he had consecrated eight churches and advanced two deacons to the priesthood; what a remarkable testimony of his vitality and enthusiasm for the work to which he had been con- secrated.
Upon his return he again took up the work of his immense bishopric. Wisconsin and Iowa were now added to his diocese and in July, 1838, he first entered Wisconsin as its bishop. He was pres- ently offered the bishopric of Maryland and the people of the western states were wild with anxiety lest he should accept, but his heart was in the west and so he refused. In 1844 came an event that lessened
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somewhat the vast territory for which the Bishop was responsible, in the ordination of Cicero Stephens Hawks as Bishop of Missouri. Bishop Kemper had for some time felt his interest centering more and more around Nashotah and the diocese of Wisconsin, and now made Nashotah, which was the site of the religious house headed by Father Braeck, his home. In November, 1846, he for the first time since coming to the west found himself the possessor of a home, a rustic homestead not far from Nashotah. Here he brought his daugh- ter, now grown to be a young lady, from Philadelphia. His father died during this year at the age of ninety-eight and his two unmarried sisters also came to live with him, and two years later his son, Lewis, was graduated at Columbia College, and came to study theology at Nashotah. Once again the bishop was the center of a family and to a man of his domestic temperament it must have been a great joy to him.
A description of the life at Nashotah and of the growth of this interesting community can not be given for lack of space, but Bishop Kemper was ever a firm friend of Nashotah House. It was during these days following the Oxford movement and at the time when many members of the church were turning to Rome, some even of those trained at Nashotah, that the soul of the bishop was sorely tried. He was much pained at the party spirit that everywhere sprang up at this time and the news of John Henry Newman's sub- mission to Rome was a severe blow. The closing of Kemper College in 1845 also was a bitter disappointment to him and he could never speak of it afterward without tears in his eyes. The same lack of money that had forced its abandonment also told severely upon the bishop's own work. He was so hard pressed for money that for a term of years he could not revisit the Indian territory as he so much desired. He was very desirous of making an extensive visitation in Iowa and the Northern territory as he called Minnesota, and in 1848 he laid the cornerstone of St. John's church in Dubuque. Under his active direction, the church grew rapidly in this state, and at about this time in the spring of 1848 he made his first visit to Minnesota, going to the little village of St. Paul, and becoming enthusiastic over the future of this territory.
In 1847 the diocese of Wisconsin had held its primary conven- tion, twenty-one clergymen and representatives from seventeen parishes being in attendance, a splendid showing for the bishop's nine years' work. The school at Nashotah was also incorporated during this year, and at the end of this year the bishop records the fact that there were about twenty-five young men preparing there for the min- istry. His work for the diocese of Indiana had been at all times unceasing, and great was his joy when on the 16th of December, 1849, * the third Sunday in Advent, he consecrated George Upfold first dio-
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cesan bishop of Indiana. How deeply beloved he was by the people of this great state that he had served so faithfully may be seen by the following quotation from a writer of the time: "He retires from that scene of his missionary labors, with the high consciousness of having long willingly rendered severe, self-sacrificing and disinterested serv- ices, unrequited, except by honor and affection,-followed by the rever- ence and respect, the love and best wishes and prayers of all."
Bishop Kemper now turned with more time at his disposal to the building up of the church in Wisconsin. Churches were built at Fond du Lac and Manitowoc and a church college was established at Racine. But his eyes were ever turned westward; he saw so clearly the vision of what that great country was to become. As a rule he made two visitations a year to Iowa and Minnesota, and his interest in the mis- sion work that was being done in the latter territory among the Indians was always very deep. By 1854 he had laid the corner stones of five churches in Minnesota, and beside two army chaplains he had six clergymen at work in the territory. In Iowa he was even more active than in Minnesota. In many of the larger towns churches were built and the bishop must have felt encouraged as he drove from place to place in an old buckboard, enduring all sorts of hardships with perfect quietude. He was so very unassuming that when helped to "chicken fixin's," he would never express a preference, so he usually received a leg. At last when this happened toward the end of one trip his com- panion who was traveling over the state with him burst out: "Do give the bishop a bit of breast, or we shall have him running all over the prairies; he's had nothing but legs this whole journey !"
The Rev. Hugh Miller Thompson, one of the bishop's deacons, gives the following account of a winter visitation in Wisconsin: "On Mon- day I was to take the Bishop to Baraboo. The river had frozen again, and he was expected at night. The thermometer was fifteen degrees below zero. The ride was seventeen miles, most of it along the banks of a frozen river and over a bare prairie, with the wind blowing bitterly the wrong way, right in our teeth. We could only get an open buggy ; but the bishop was ready at eight A. M. to face the prairie. He preached twice, confirmed twice, and administered the communion ; and having been on his feet till nine or ten at night, might be called pretty good for a sexagenarian. We bundled 'the buffaloes' as best we might, and started and after a 'spicy' ride, with the icicles hanging round our faces, arrived in Baraboo. . . The Bishop has an appoint- ment for to-night at Madison, and after seeing him in the 'express' to ride again forty miles in this bitter weather, over the 'bluffs' and preach in another vacant parish when he has performed the journey, I rode home alone, feeling that not one of his clergy should dare com- plain." What an inspiration the bishop must have been !
In 1854, Bishop Kemper was able to report at the general conven-
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tion that in Iowa there were three consecrated churches and two more nearly ready for consecration, eleven clergymen and a call for another one in the village of Des Moines. He asked in the name of the people of the diocese that a bishop be chosen; Henry Washington Lee was thus selected and on the 18th of October, 1854, was consecreated, first bishop of Iowa. It was the only consecration of a diocesan bishop for any of his missionary sees in which Bishop Kemper had no part. It was during this year that Bishop Kemper was for the second time elected diocesan of Wisconsin, and he now accepted, having previously refused, but with the understanding that he should not resign his mis- sionary jurisdiction.
From this time until 1859 the bishop was travelling hither and yon, working much in Minnesota, and visiting many times the remote terri- tories of Kansas and Nebraska. His own diocese of Wisconsin was growing steadily ; he had penetrated to its northernmost corner, Supe- rior, and had there established a church, and he had repeatedly vis- ited Marquette, across the border in Michigan. In 1859 Bishop Kemper presided at a diocesan convention in Minnesota to elect a bishop for that rapidly growing state. Henry Benjamin Whipple was elected and was consecrated in Richmond, Virginia, at the time of the general con- vention, in October, 1859, by Bishop Kemper and others. At this great meeting, the bishop made the following speech: "I now, with deep emotion tender to the Church my resignation of the office of Mis- sionary Bishop, which, unsought for and entirely unexpected, was conferred upon me twenty-four years ago. Blessed with health, and cheered by the conviction of duty, I have been enabled to travel at all seasons through Indiana, Missouri, Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota and partly through Kansas and Nebraska." He felt that he was grow- ing old and that a younger man should be put in his place. The general convention could do no less than accept his resignation for he had indeed labored long and faithfully. The result of his work was sum- marized by the committee on domestic missions as follows: "When Bishop Kemper was appointed Missionary Bishop, in 1835, with juris- diction over Missouri, Indiana, Wisconsin, and Iowa, neither of which was an organized diocese, there was but one of our clergy and one church in Missouri, one clergyman and one church in Indiana, and neither church nor clergyman in Wisconsin or Iowa. Twenty-four years have passed away, and by God's blessing on the Church, he now sees Missouri a Diocese, with its Bishop and twenty-seven clergy; Indiana, a Diocese, with its Bishop and twenty-five clergy; Iowa a Diocese with its Bishop and thirty-one clergy ; Minnesota an organized Diocese, with twenty clergy; Kansas but just organized as a Diocese, with ten clergy and the territory of Nebraska, not yet organized as a Diocese, with four clergy; in all six Dioceses, where he began with Vol. VI-7
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