Richard Hooker Wilmer (March 15, 1816 – June 14, 1900) was the second

Bishop of Alabama The Episcopal Diocese of Alabama is located in Province IV of the Episcopal Church and serves the state of Alabama with the exception of the extreme southern region, including Mobile, which forms part of the Diocese of the Central Gulf Coast. ...

in the Episcopal Church. Richard Wilmer was the only bishop to be consecrated by the

Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America The Protestant Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America was an Anglican Christian denomination which existed from 1861 to 1865. It was formed by Southern dioceses of the Episcopal Church in the United States during the American Civ ...

(PECCSA).

Early and family life

He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, the son of the rector of Christ Church,

William Holland Wilmer William Holland Wilmer (October 9, 1782 – July 24, 1827) was an Episcopal priest, teacher and writer in Maryland and Virginia who served briefly as the eleventh president of the College of William and Mary. Early life and education The fift ...

and his wife Marion Hannah Cox, who died in childbirth when Richard was six. His father, a prominent priest in Maryland as well as Virginia and from a family of priests, briefly served as the eleventh president of the College of William & Mary before his death in Williamsburg, Virginia, when Richard was only eleven. Raised in part by his stepmother (his eldest brother dying in Mississippi shortly after his father), Richard Wilmer worked as a teenager to support his family. He graduated from Yale College in 1836 and the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1839.

Career

William Meade William Meade (November 11, 1789March 14, 1862) was an American Episcopal bishop, the third Bishop of Virginia. Early life His father, Colonel Richard Kidder Meade (1746–1805), one of George Washington's aides during the War of Independence, ...

Bishop of Virginia The Diocese of Virginia is the largest diocese of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, encompassing 38 counties in the northern and central parts of the state of Virginia. The diocese was organized in 1785 and is one of the Episco ...

, ordained him as a deacon on March 31, 1839 and as a priest on April 19, 1840. He served parishes in Goochland and Fluvanna counties in Virginia, and then served as rector of St. James Church in Wilmington, North Carolina. Upon returning to Virginia, Wilmer served parishes in Clarke, Loudoun, Fauquier and Bedford counties. In 1858, he started a mission church in Henrico County which became Emmanuel Church at Brook Hill.

Episcopate

Shortly after the outbreak of the American Civil War, Virginia and other states seceded from the Union, a move Wilmer supported, as eventually did Meade. Nicholas H. Cobbs,

, a slaveholder who did not support secession, died in Montgomery, Alabama on January 11, 1861, the day his state's legislature voted to secede from the Union. Weeks later, Meade and other bishops of dioceses now in Confederate states met in Montgomery and decided to form the

(PECCSA). A diocesan convention in Alabama voted to join the PECCSA in August, and on November 21, 1861, another Alabama diocesan meeting elected Richard Wilmer his successor. Wilmer accordingly resigned his position at Emmanuel Church effective at the year's end. However, Bishops

James Otey James Hervey Otey (January 27, 1800 – April 23, 1863), Christian educator, author, and the first Episcopal Bishop of Tennessee, having established the Anglican church in the state, including its first parish churches and what became the Unive ...

of Tennessee and Thomas Atkinson of North Carolina refused to participate in the necessary consecration ceremony before the PECCA held a convention and established its form of government. Since three bishops are needed for consecrations, the elderly and ill Meade traveled to

Richmond Richmond most often refers to: * Richmond, Virginia, the capital of Virginia, United States * Richmond, London, a part of London * Richmond, North Yorkshire, a town in England * Richmond, British Columbia, a city in Canada * Richmond, California, ...

for the consecration, and he, his assistant bishop

John Johns John Johns (July 10, 1796 – April 5, 1876) was the fourth Episcopal bishop of Virginia. He led his diocese into secession and during the American Civil War and later tried to heal it through the Reconstruction Era. Johns also served as Presi ...

, and bishop Stephen Elliott of Georgia, consecrated Wilmer as Bishop of Alabama on March 6, 1862 at St. Paul's Church. Meade died at a friend's house in Richmond shortly after that consecration. After the Confederacy's defeat, Wilmer's consecration was ultimately accepted by a re-united Episcopal Church, although he remained an ardent Southern nationalist. He could not attend the first General Convention after the war because he was under house arrest for instructing his clergy to omit prayers for the President of the United States as a protest against military occupation. Nonetheless, the reunited church ratified his consecration. Wilmer founded an order of deaconesses to care for Confederate widows and orphans, and by the time of his death in 1900, was the longest-serving Episcopal bishop. Although another Virginia priest, Henry Melville Jackson, assisted Wilmer in his last years, the diocese elected Robert Woodward Barnwell, a native of

Selma, Alabama Selma is a city in and the county seat of Dallas County, in the Black Belt region of south central Alabama and extending to the west. Located on the banks of the Alabama River, the city has a population of 17,971 as of the 2020 census. About ...

, as his successor.

Death and legacy

He is buried in the cemetery of Emmanuel Church at Brook Hill in

Henrico County, Virginia Henrico County , officially the County of Henrico, is located in the Commonwealth of Virginia in the United States. As of the 2020 census, the population was 334,389 making it the fifth-most populous county in Virginia. Henrico County is incl ...

, the parish at which he served before being called to Alabama. Libraries which hold his papers include the Birmingham Public Library, University of North Carolina, and the Episcopal Diocese of Maryland. The community of Wilmer, Alabama is named in his honor.

References

External links

* Gaillard Hunt
Story of a Great Southern Bishop - Richard Hooker Wilmer, Episcopal Wit: How He Supported Confederacy and Fought Gen. Thomas
'' The New York Times'', published January 25, 1908. {{DEFAULTSORT:Wilmer, Richard Hooker 1816 births 1900 deaths Episcopal bishops of Alabama 19th-century American Episcopalians Pro-Confederate clergy American slave owners