Bishop William Meade

Born: November 11, 1789
Married: Mary Nelson, 1810
Died: 1862
Burial:

Parents: Col. Richard Kidder Meade and Mary Fitzhugh Grymes

Children:

William Meade went to college at Princeton in 1808, then studied for the ministry under Rev. Walter Addison of Maryland.

He led the revival of the Episcopal Church in Virginia. The Anglican Church was dis-established in 1786, but state support had stopped earlier because the Anglicans were so closely associated with the king of England againt whom the Americans rebelled. The glebes were seized by the state in 1802.

James Madison was the first Episcopal Bishop consecrated in Virginia, in 1790. He served as president of the College of William and Mary and he ordained William Meade as an Episcopal minister on February 24, 1811 in Bruton Parish Church. Meade reported:¹

On arriving at the church, we found it in a wretched condition, with broken windows, and a gloomy comfortless aspect. The congregation which assembled consisted of two ladies and about fifteen gentlemen, nearly all of whom were acquaintances. The morning service being over, the ordination and the communion were administered and then I was put into the pulpit to preach, there being no ordination sermon.

He returned home to Frederick County, where there were churches in Wincheaster and at Stone Chapel. Within a year, he accepted a call to serve as rector at Christ Church, Alexandria. There he preached against drinking, duelling, and gambling, impressing the distinguished politicians in Washington. He also published a small volume of private and family prayers to be used by ordinary families before eturning to serve as minister at the Frederick parish.

He traveled widely and became well known, and lectured regularly to those training at the Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria to become Episcopal ministers. In 1829, he was chosen by his fellow ministers to be Assistant Bishop of Virginia, and in 1841 to become the third Bishop of Virginia in charge of the diocese within the state.

He did not consider slavery to be a sin, but did encourage sleveowners to provide religious instruction to everyone. He was in ill health when he traveled to Richmond in 1862 to consecrate the new Bishop of Alabama, and died there before he could return home.²

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