Episcopal Church. Diocese of Minnesota

Frederick Ferdinand "Fritz" Kramer began his service in the Diocese of Minnesota in 1953 with his appointment as vicar in charge of the Samuel Memorial Mission, Naytahwaush, and of St. Philip's Church, Rice Lake. Following the retirement of Frederick K. Smythe, he rose to the positions of archdeacon in charge of Indian work in Minnesota and dean of the Cass Lake Deanery (1956). In 1960 he was removed as vicar of the two individual parishes, and the post of dean to the Northwest Deanery was added to his responsibilities. In 1966 Kramer left the Diocese of Minnesota to accept a position in Iowa.

From the guide to the Archdeacon Frederick F. Kramer files., 1951-1966., (Minnesota Historical Society)

Mahlon N. Gilbert was elected bishop coadjutor of the Episcopal Diocese of Minnesota in 1886. As bishop coadjutor, he aided Bishop Whipple in his work around the diocese. In 1895 the northern two thirds of the diocese became the Missionary Diocese of Duluth and was supervised by Gilbert until it elected its own bishop in 1896. Gilbert died in 1900.

From the guide to the Bishop Coadjutor Mahlon N. Gilbert records., 1886-1900., (Minnesota Historical Society)

Robert Marshall Anderson was born in December 1933 in New York City. Before attending Berkeley Divinity School, he was educated at Hobarth College, Colgate University, and served with the U.S. Army in Korea. His wife Mary (n_e Evans) was a Minnesotan and the two were married in Edina, Minnesota in 1960. The couple had four children. Before being elected Bishop of Minnesota in 1977, Anderson was Dean of St. Mark's Cathedral in Salt Lake City, Utah. Highlights of his tenure included leading the largest capital fund drive in Minnesota history, which raised nearly four million dollars for diocesan activities, as well as the implementation of major changes brought about by the 1976 convention: the ordination of women, the introduction of the new Book of Common Prayer, and new roles for the laity in the church. In 1993, Anderson retired and moved with his wife to Door County, Wisconsin.

From the guide to the Bishop Robert M. Anderson files., 1965-1993 (bulk 1979-1990)., (Minnesota Historical Society)

Philip Frederick McNairy was born in 1911 in Lake City, Minnesota, the son of Harry Doughty McNairy and Clara Moseman McNairy. After attending Kenyon College and Bexley Hall, McNairy was ordained Deacon in May 1934 and Priest in April 1935. He served as Suffragan Bishop of Minnesota from 1958-1968, Bishop Coadjutor of Minnesota from 1968-1970. He was elected Bishop of Minnesota in 1971 and served until his retirement in 1977.

McNairy married Cary Elizabeth Fleming in November 1935. The couple had three children.

From the guide to the Bishop Philip F. McNairy files., 1939-1979., (Minnesota Historical Society)

The ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the area of present-day Minnesota began with the appointment of a chaplain (Clement F. Jones) to Fort Snelling in 1828. By 1838 the settlement surrounding the fort had grown so much that Ezekiel Gear's appointment as chaplain included the settlement. With the temporary abandonment of Fort Snelling in 1858, however, Gear was transferred to Fort Ripley, and the settlers of the area were once again without an Episcopal mission.

The next Episcopal missionary, James Lloyd Breck, arrived in 1849. In 1850, he and two other missionaries, Timothy Wilcoxson and J. Austin Merrick, were appointed to establish an Associate Mission in St. Paul. This mission was to be a training ground for new clergy. By 1852, however, Breck had left for the Chippewa mission field in northern Minnesota, and the Associate Mission virtually ceased operation. Although the Mission never fulfilled its true purpose, the three men did establish the first parish in St. Paul, Christ Church, and a number of missions up the St. Croix River to Taylors Falls and up the Mississippi River to Sauk Rapids.

In 1852 the first attempt was made to organize the various mission areas under the Church Missionary Society of Minnesota. It was suspended, however, when the Associate Mission was dissolved. In 1856 a second attempt at a union was made when a convention to form a diocese was called. It ended in a disagreement over the constitution, but a renewed effort in 1857 proved successful, with the adoption of a constitution and canons and the founding of the Diocese of Minnesota.

In 1859 Henry B. Whipple was elected as the first Bishop of Minnesota. He established his residence in Faribault, where in 1858 Breck and Solon W. Manney had begun the Bishop Seabury Mission. During Whipple's years as bishop, the church established parishes throughout the state. Whipple was aided in his work by the bishop coadjutor, Mahlon N. Gilbert, who was elected in 1886.

Because the diocese covered such a large area, the northern two-thirds was separated in 1895 and became the Missionary Diocese of Duluth. Originally under the supervision of Bishop Coadjutor Gilbert, in 1896 it elected its own bishop, James Dow Morrison. In 1907 it officially became the Diocese of Duluth.

Following the death of Bishop Coadjutor Gilbert in 1900, Samuel Cook Edsall was elected early in 1901 to fill the position. Bishop Whipple died later in 1901, and Edsall moved into the bishopric. Upon becoming bishop, Edsall moved his residence, and thus the center of the church, to Minneapolis.

Frank Arthur McElwain was elected suffragan bishop in 1912, and bishop following Edsall's death in 1917. One of the major developments during his bishopric was the formation in 1920 of the Bishop and Directorate as the executive body for the diocese. (In 1934 its name was changed to Bishop and Council.) McElwain served alone until the election of Stephen Edwards Keeler as bishop coadjutor in 1931. Upon McElwain's retirement in 1943, Keeler became bishop.

In 1920 Granville Gaylord Bennett was elected the bishop coadjutor of the Diocese of Duluth, and in 1921 he succeeded Bishop Morrison. Bennett in turn resigned in 1933 and was followed by his bishop coadjutor, Benjamin Tibbets Kemerer, who had been elected to that position in 1930.

Due to financial difficulties in the Diocese of Duluth, in 1943 the two dioceses voted to reunite under the jurisdiction of the Diocese of Minnesota. Although the ecclesiastical organizations were merged in 1944, it was not until 1955-1956 that transfer of the Diocese of Duluth's property holdings was legalized. With the merger, Bishop Kemerer was made the suffragan bishop of Minnesota. Following his retirement in 1948, Hamilton Hyde Kellogg was elected bishop coadjutor in 1949.

In 1954 the diocese hosted the Anglican Congress, a meeting of delegates and church officials from Episcopal parishes and missions throughout the world. Bishop Keeler and Bishop Coadjutor Kellogg served as honorary officials for the congress. In 1956, following the death of Keeler, Kellogg moved into the bishopric. The position of suffragan bishop was filled in 1958 by Philip Frederick McNairy. He became bishop coadjutor in 1968, and bishop in 1970 upon Kellogg's retirement. He served until his retirement in 1978, at which time Robert Marshall Anderson was elected as the seventh bishop of Minnesota. Upon Anderson's retirement in 1993, James Jelinek was elected as the eight bishop of Minnesota.

Historical information was taken from George Clinton Tanner, History of the Diocese of Minnesota, 1857-1907 (St. Paul, 1909); Edward Lee Sheppard, The Second Fifty Years (Minneapolis: Diocese of Minnesota, 1972); and the diocesan records.

From the guide to the Diocesan records., 1823-[ongoing]., (Minnesota Historical Society)

Henry Benjamin Whipple was born February 15, 1822 in Adams, New York. He was educated at a private boarding school in Clinton, New York, and at Jefferson County Institute in Watertown, New York. In 1839, he attended Oberlin Collegiate Institute, but his health failed and his physician recommended an active business life.

After several years working for his father, a country merchant, Whipple began studying for the ministry in the Episcopal Church. He was ordained a deacon in August 1849, became rector of Zion Church in Rome, New York, in November 1849, and was ordained priest in 1850. Whipple served as rector of Zion Church from 1849-1857, becoming known both for the size and wealth of his parish and for his work among the poor. In 1857, Whipple helped organize and became the first rector of the Church of the Holy Communion, on Chicago's south side, the first free church in the city. He drew his parishioners from "the highways and the hedges" - clerks, laborers, railroad men, travelers, and derelicts - sought converts among the city's Swedish population, and regularly officiated in a Chicago prison.

On June 30, 1859, Whipple was elected the first Episcopal bishop of Minnesota, an office he held until his death more than forty years later. He was consecrated bishop on October 13, 1859, and in December of that year made his first visitation of his diocese, including the Ojibwe missions of E. Steele Peake and John Johnson Enmegahbowh. In the spring of 1860 he moved his family to Faribault, establishing it as the see of the diocese.

During his episcopate, Whipple guided the development of the Episcopal Church in Minnesota from a few missionary parishes to a flourishing and prosperous diocese. For many years, especially during the first two decades of his episcopate, he made regular missionary sojourns by wagon or coach through the rural areas of the state, often in mid-winter, preaching in cabins, school houses, stores, saloons, and Indian villages. Until the diocese was financially secure, he pledged himself to personally support several of its missionary clergy and assumed many other financial obligations of the church. He unified a diocese that at the time of his election was divided into two quarreling factions.

In 1860, Whipple incorporated the Bishop Seabury Mission in Faribault, building it upon the foundations laid by James Lloyd Breck and Solon W. Manny, who in 1858 had founded a divinity school and school for boys and girls. With the help of gifts from eastern donors, the mission developed into three separate but closely connected schools: Seabury Divinity School, Shattuck School for boys, and St. Mary's Hall for the education of daughters of the clergy. Whipple also helped found the Breck School in Wilder, Minnesota, to educate the children of farmers.

Whipple was best known outside of Minnesota for his dedication to the welfare of the American Indians and for his missionary work among the Dakota and Ojibwe of Minnesota. He returned from his first visitation of his diocese with a firm commitment to the establishment of Indian missions and the reform of the United States Indian system. He regularly included Indian villages on his visitations, built up the Episcopal mission to the Ojibwe based at the White Earth Reservation, and appealed for support of Indian missions by addresses throughout the United States and in Europe.

In the early years of his episcopate, Whipple's espousal of Indian reform and commitment to Indian missions earned him the enmity of many whites who hated Indians, and led some of his fellow bishops to look upon him as a fanatic. His attitude was denounced most bitterly after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862, when, in appeals to the President and in the public press, he opposed wholesale executions and extermination or deportation of the Dakota.

Although a high churchman in doctrine, Whipple preached tolerance of all views which fell within the scope of the church's basic teachings. Urging that the church's task was to "preach Christ crucified" and that sectarian quarrels hindered this mission, he pled for unity among all branches of the Episcopal and Anglican communions, and for harmonious relations among members of all Christian denominations. Both in Chicago and in Minnesota, he worked closely with ministers and communicants of the national Swedish church. His interest in the church's missionary efforts was reflected in his presidency of the Western Church Building Society (1880-1893), his service on several committees and commissions of the General Convention concerned with missionary affairs, and in special missions to Cuba and to Puerto Rico. During the 1880s and the 1890s, his health compelled him to spend several months each year at his winter home in Maitland, Florida, where he held missionary services and built the Church of the Good Shepherd.

Whipple married Cornelia Wright, daughter of Benjamin and Sarah Wright of Adams, New York in 1842. They had six children. Cornelia Whipple died in 1890 from injuries suffered in a railroad accident, and in 1896 Whipple married Evangeline Marrs Simpson, widow of industrialist Michael Hodge Simpson.

Henry B. Whipple died on September 16, 1901.

Biographical information was excerpted from the biographical sketch in the inventory to the Henry Benjamin Whipple papers (see related materials), by Lydia Lucas (1971).

From the guide to the Bishop Henry B. Whipple records., 1859-1899., (Minnesota Historical Society)