Diocese of Nebraska Archives

Today we remember the parish of St. Mark’s in Creighton, organized May 6, 1885, and only recently closed. Late in the winter of 1871, a group of Omahans traveled into northeast Nebraska intent upon establishing a community in the midst of the rich farmland there. In April they selected a site about ten miles south of the Santee Reservation near Bazile Creek. They named their town Creighton to honor Omahan John Creighton. The town grew rapidly in the 1870s after it became a destination along the Sioux City and Pacific Railroad. In 1881, Nebraska Bishop Robert H. Clarkson designated a missionary to serve in growing number of fledgling northern Nebraska communities. For three years, missionaries held periodic services for a small congregation near Creighton. In the spring of 1885, Rt. Rev. George Worthington, newly consecrated bishop of the Diocese of Nebraska, visited the area and organized a mission at Creighton.

Two years later, local Creighton resident Mrs. Erastus Perrine donated a lot on which to construct a small church building. Simultaneously and with financial help from Bishop Worthington, an outdated schoolhouse from elsewhere in Creighton was purchased and moved to the Perrine lot. The structure was remodeled for use as church building, with Rev. Samuel Myers, rector of St. James in Norfolk, doing most of the work himself. On June 21, 1887, Bishop Worthington initiated church services. Missionaries came weekly thereafter. Over time near the turn of the twentieth century, choir rooms were added, a stone foundation was placed under the church building, a furnace was installed, the building was electrified, and sacred objects, including a baptismal font, a processional cross, and a brass alms basin, were contributed by the several women’s guilds..

In Creighton and elsewhere, women formed the core of congregational unity. In the 1950s, the work of the women to increase the size of the congregation, coupled with the efforts of Rev. Robert Ellwood who visited parishioners weekly, distributed the altar flowers weekly, and worked with a local Boy Scout troop, the congregation grew to the point that a parish house was needed. In 1960,a new building that housed a kitchen and dining room on the ground floor and classrooms in the basement was completed.

Despite their best efforts, Creighton’s vitality struggled in recent decades. As the St. Mark’s congregation aged, financial and physical responsibility for the church plant became too much, and parishioners and clergy decided they must close the doors on their church community. On October 19, 2019, Rt. Rev. Scott Barker, Bishop of Nebraska, in the presence of thirty-two parishioners, deconsecrated the church building. But the spiritual unity among current parishioners with those who have gone before will continue in the communal history of Creighton, and in the memories of present members who plan to meet in each other’s homes.
Submitted by Jo Wetherilt Behrens

Today we honor St. John’s Episcopal Church in Nemaha, consecrated May 26, 1866, by Rt. Rev. Joseph Crucikshank Talbot. Originally called Nemaha City, the town was established in 1854, not long after the creation of Nebraska Territory. The location of Nemaha City along the Missouri River offered a potential economy based upon steamboat trade and water-powered mills. The wharf did not materialize, but the mills did. Additionally, the town’s proximity to the State of Missouri made the village valuable to abolitionists who set up an Underground Railroad station near Nemaha. In fact, Ossawattamie Brown – the Calvinist lay preacher who organized abolitionist raids into “Bloody Kansas” – was thought to have recruited Nemaha City women to provide foodstuffs for the African slaves who used the secret trail to escape to freedom in the North.

Bishop Talbot made his first visit to Nemaha City on September 12, 1860, where he read services in the home of Dr. and Mrs. Frederick Holmes who had come to Nebraska Territory from Connecticut. A Sunday School was initiated, with Mrs. Holmes as the teacher. For the next five years, the Dr. Holmes served as layreader for the fledgling congregation. In mid-1865, the small group of Episcopalians raised $500 to construct a building. Needing additional funds to begin construction, Bishop Talbot turned to the congregations of St. John’s in Waterbury, Connecticut – the Holmes’ original home parish, as well as that of St. John’s in Elizabeth, New Jersey, for financial help. On May 26, 1865, Bishop Talbot formally organized the parish called St. John’s to honor its benefactors. The little building, constructed of “material [that] was not of the best or most durable quality,” was consecrated on May 6, 1866, by Bishop Robert Harper Clarkson. Its walnut benches were hewn at the local sawmill.

The economies of southeast Nebraska villages began to flag after the Civil War as riverboat transportation and shipping dwindled causing both economic and congregational problems for St. John’s. By the mid-1880s, the church was in serious disrepair. It had been built outside Nemaha’s city limits, which hampered attendance. The solution was to purchase new lots in town, and to move the serviceable parts of the original building to the new site, and then rebuild the structure. The church was placed on a new, good stone foundation, a new vestibule with double paneled doors was added, and at the apex of the roof, a well-built belfry was constructed; in it was hung a beautiful, clear-toned bell. St. John’s opened in its new location in mid-1887. But congregational numbers continued to wane. By 1892, there were only twenty-four communicants, and no rector. Adding insult, late that summer a tornado badly damaged the structure. Parishioners worked hard to repair the building, but their funds were sorely limited. Even the area missionary ceased to visit. Sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century, St. John’s was closed, and the building was dismantled and rebuilt as a residence.
Submitted by Jo Wetherilt Behrens

Today we gratefully remember the missionary work of Rev. Henry Clay Shaw, ordained a priest this day in 1855 by Rt. Rev. Jackson Kemper, original Missionary Bishop of the Northwest. Born in New York in 1824, Rev. Shaw was among the earliest students at Racine College in Racine, Wisconsin. After his ordination, Rev. Shaw remained at the college, serving on the faculty. It was probably through his role at the college that he became well acquainted with Rt. Rev. Robert Harper Clarkson who arrived in Nebraska just after the Civil War ended and construction on the transcontinental railroad began. Within that first year, Rev. Shaw wrote to the bishop, asking for an appointment on the Great Plains so that he could “help us lay foundations for the church in our new country.” Bishop Clarkson welcomed his offer, and “assigned him a field of nearly two hundred miles . . . , along the line of the Union Pacific Railroad.”

The Pawnee Indians had vacated the lands west of Omaha only in 1857 by the Table Rock Treaty. Almost immediately, Rev. Shaw’s brothers, J.P. and E.C. Shaw came west to farm along Prairie Creek. In each of the autumns of 1867 through 1869, Rev. Henry Shaw came to Nebraska to join his brothers and assume his role as railroad missionary for Bishop Clarkson. During that time, he regularly read Episcopal services on the nearby ranch of Henry Lathrop. In 1870, Rev. Shaw oversaw organization of, and subsequent construction of, the new parish of St. Stephen’s at Silver Creek, then little more than a Union Pacific Railroad construction camp known as Silver Glen. The brothers built a three room rectory of sod from which Rev. Shaw served parishes at Columbus and Silver Creek. Bishop Clarkson was justifiably proud of his missionary and felt compelled to explain to readers of the diocesan newspaper The Guardian and a national Episcopal journal called Home and Abroad how a sod structure was built, and how warm and comfortable it was – especially in winter on the Great Plains. When St. Stephen’s was consecrated in August 1872, the women form the local farms prepared “an elegant dinner, under the trees in front of the Rector’s sod house, . . . to the number of about 75.”

Rev. Shaw served multiple missions and parishes throughout the diocese through the early 1880s. After the death of Bishop Clarkson in March 1884, Rev. Shaw left Nebraska, relocating first to the Church of the Good Shepherd in Wichita Falls, Texas, and in the mid-1890s to Indian Territory where he served churches in Lehigh and Coalgate Rev. Shaw died peacefully on October 1, 1902..
Submitted by Jo L. Wetherilt Behrens

Today we lovingly remember the ministry of Rev. John Albert Williams, D.D., ordained to the diaconate June 11, 1891. Fondly referred to as”Father John Albert” by his parishioners, Rev. Williams had been in charge of Omaha’s then-small African-American mission since shortly after his ordination. Rev. Williams was the son of a Virginia slave who had escaped north to London, Ontario, then the terminus of the Underground Railroad. His mother was French-Canadian. A decade following the Civil War, the family moved south to Detroit, where Rev. Williams became acquainted with Rev. George Worthington, later Episcopal Bishop of Nebraska. He finished his education in Detroit, then attended Seabury Divinity School, after which he came to Omaha. Rt. Rev. George Worthington later ordained him priest on October 18, 1891. Father Williams’ rectorship at St. Philip the Deacon in Omaha lasted over forty years and remains among the longest in the history of the Diocese of Nebraska.

Under his leadership, St. Philip’s grew from being a very small mission whose tiny and rude frame building had been part of the structure of Trinity Cathedral’s modest building at eighteenth and Capitol. Rev. Williams oversaw construction of a lovely, large memorial church near Twenty-first and Nicholas streets in 1892. The mission grew from ten communicants at his arrival to become a parish of nearly two hundred in 1926. During that time, the rector declined several calls to large, eastern parishes. At St. Philip’s, Rev. Williams initiated publication of The Mission Monitor, a parish publication containing useful parish information. His service to the diocese included work as secretary and registrar of the diocese, as editor of the diocesan newspaper – The Crozier, as diocesan historiographer, and as member of the Standing Committee. For two decades, he served as one of the Bishop’s Examining Chaplains, as well as attending the Church’s General Convention. In 1929, the Seabury Divinity School honored him by conferring upon him the honorary degree of Doctor in Divinity. The Church further honored him with the Cross of the Sangreal, an Anglican spirituality award that honors an individual known to see God in all people. He was also active in multiple Omaha civic groups, including the Omaha branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Urban League, and an African-American cultural center. Father Williams died suddenly on February 4, 1933.
Submitted by Jo Wetherilt Behrens

Today we honor the memory of Christ Church in Brownville, consecrated July 26, 1868. Brownville was founded in mid-1854, named for Richard Brown from Tennessee who staked the first claim in the area. With a fine wharf and docks, Brownville’s economy quickly flourished on the steamboat trade. By 1857, 126 steamboats had stopped at Brownville, depositing not only freight, but passengers as well. Years before the Civil War, villagers dreamed of connecting the docks at Brownville to Fort Kearney by rail, but their plans never materialized.

Rt. Rev. Joseph Cruickshank Talbot, Missionary Bishop of the Northwest, arrived in Nebraska Territory in April 1860, purchasing land to make his “Prairie Home” farmstead in Nebraska City. Late in the spring, he traveled into the southern portions of his district, stopping at the “important places” to read services and look for potential congregants. One of those places was Brownville. A dearth of clergymen prevented any missionary to stop regularly until Rev. George R. Davis from Connecticut arrived in the territory in mid-1865. Services were held in McPherson’s Hall for two years, until Rev. Davis pressed for construction of a “plain” church. Establishment of the church in Brownville was further delayed because of a change in administration of the Missionary District. In 1865, Bishop Talbot returned to his native Indiana, the original district was downsized and renamed Missionary District of Nebraska and Dakotah, and Rt. Rev. Robert Harper Clarkson was consecrated as the new administrator. Because local funds were inadequate to complete construction, Bishop Clarkson turned to members of the congregation of Christ Episcopal Church in Hartford, Connecticut, for financial assistance. They collected $1,000 of the needed four thousand dollars, and for their assistance, the Brownville congregation called themselves Christ Church. The remainder of the funding to construct a fine brick building for the congregation was locally raised.

Christ Church offers an excellent example of the fundraising work by women in frontier churches. Such events knit together the church and civic communities. The women hosted strawberry festivals, ice cream socials, dinners at civic events, and an occasional “tableaux vivant,” staged readings to entertain the entire town. The women maintained an active and well-supplied Sunday School, and by 1878, they had expanded their organizational capability by creating a Young Ladies Guild to assist with parish activities. But as steamboat traffic on the Missouri River died, so did the small towns along its banks as their economies collapsed. By 1894, the congregation had all disbursed to “greener pastures,” and diocesan missionaries no longer stopped in Brownville. In 1895, the rectory building was sold to a local farmer, and in 1897, the fine brick church building was dismantled.
Submitted by Jo Wetherilt Behrens

Today we honor the Church of the Incarnation in Decatur, the first church consecrated by Rt. Rev. Joseph Cruickshank Talbot in Nebraska Territory on this day in 1864. Decatur had been established in early 1856 on the southern border of the Omaha Indian Reservation. The town’s economy was based upon fur trading with the Omaha, and the central feature of the early town was a log trading post that was a gathering spot for both natives and fur traders, among them Peter Sarpy. An early resident noted that it, “It was always crowded, always dark, always smoky, . . . and you could smell the thing as far as you could hear a locomotive whistle.” Villagers knew that to make the town grow, they needed a church, and so when Bishop Talbot first stopped in Decatur on May 20, 1861, he was pleased to read services in the dining room of the Fuller House hotel. He was impressed; the services were well attended by residents who, the bishop noted, were in full singing voice. He was overjoyed when fifteen residents offered their deeds to tracts of land to be used either to build upon or to be sold for necessary funding. Among the land donors was Peter Sarpy.

Bishop Talbot worked quickly to secure the funds necessary to construct an edifice in Decatur. Since some moneys came from a “liberal layman” at the Church of the Incarnation in New York City, the little parish took the parish name of its donor. The missionary prelate used this early construction project as his model for other frontier structures. To make Plains life more comfortable for the rector, Bishop Talbot attached a rectory “of three or four comfortable and well-furnished rooms.” to the back of the church building. It opened into the Nave of the church.

The rites of the Episcopal Church were not entirely unfamiliar to residents, Early observers recorded the funerals of at least two Omaha Indians who were buried using the burial services from the Book of Common Prayer. Late in July 1855, Logan Fontenelle, murdered by Lakota hunters near the Loup Forks, was buried near Decatur, using the “impressive funeral service of the Episcopal Church,” and a couple of years later, another elderly Omaha head man was buried on the reservation, again using the funeral rite from the Book of Common Prayer.

Church of the Incarnation did not last. After the Civil War, the Union Pacific Railroad pushed westward from Omaha, sixty miles south of the village, cutting off the town from transcontinental transportation. By 1893, the church building was “dilapidated,” and there were only twenty-one communicants. Only “a sixteen-mile road of the worst possible character [led] to the nearest railroad station.” The congregation struggled through the first half of the twentieth century, finally closing in 1949, when the building was sold for $100.

Submitted by Jo Wetherilt Behrens

Today we honor St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, organized in Wymore, Nebraska, August 18, 1884. The town had been established early in the 1880s on land owned by Samuel Wymore. Area residents wanted a hub along the railroad then under construction between Beatrice, and the Chicago, Burlington and Quincy Railroad, then building rail lines across far southeastern Nebraska. In fall 1881,the first Episcopal services were held in the Honeycut Schoolhouse. There were occasional services during the next couple of years, and on August 18, 1884, Rev. Charles Fulforth, rector of Christ Church in Beatrice organized the parish of St. Luke’s. But it was quickly clear that the congregation could not support a parish, and its members were reorganized as a mission on September 13, 1885. In 1888, Bishop George Worthington offered $800 toward construction of a church building, and the St. Luke’s congregation held its first services in their own building on July 12, 1889.

Originally, a parish house was constructed on a lot adjoining the small frame church building, but the structure was eventually demolished, and in 1947, the building’s original undercroft was refurbished for congregational gatherings, the building was redecorated, and a bell was added to the empty bell tower. Two decades later, the church vestibule was updated with new exterior doors, and later two lovely stained glass windows were installed in the sanctuary.

Populations in southeast Nebraska dwindled throughout the twentieth century, and the economies of small towns in the region declined. By the early twenty first century, only five or six parishioners regularly attended services in the church. A final crisis occurred in March 2015, when an electrical fire began in the building’s belfry. The fire was extinguished, but inspectors cut off electricity to the structure. The cost of repairs was prohibitive, and in mid-summer 2015, Mother Gretchen Naugle and her small congregation made the difficult decision to close the church. The final service was held on July 31, 2015. The building was deconsecrated and sold to a local food pantry. Gone but not forgotten, St. Luke’s remains prominent in Wymore’s collective memory.
Submitted by Jo Wetherilt. Behrens

Today we honor the life of Lucinda (“Lucy”) Gambol Williams, wife of the longtime rector of Omaha’s St. Philip the Deacon Episcopal Church. St. Philip’s parish was first established in 1878 as a chapel for the city’s African-American population, and Rev. Williams had assumed leadership over the small congregation in 1891. She was one of only two black school teachers hired by Omaha Public Schools in the nineteenth century, and she taught in Dodge School at Eleventh and Dodge streets from 1895 until her marriage. After these first two black teachers left the profession in 1903, Omaha Public Schools employed no African-American school teachers until 1939.

Lucy Gambol married Rev. John Albert Williams on June 27, 1901. She was active in activities at St. Philip the Deacon while she and Father John Albert reared their three children. Mrs. Williams also served as a delegate to the Annual Council for the Diocese of Nebraska. She later acted as the Chairman of the Board for the Negro Old Peoples Home, and served on the board for the Omaha Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Lucy Williams departed this life on this day in 1956.

Submitted by Jo L. Behrens

We are grateful today for the ministry of Rev. William Henry Wilson, the first African-American deacon ordained in the Diocese of Nebraska on January 21, 1871. Born into slavery in Dinwiddie County, Virginia, Mr. Wilson’s earliest presence in Nebraska was noted on the 1870 census for Nebraska City in Otoe County. He was then earning his living as a barber and living in an “eating house.” But he was also working among the town’s African-American population and serving as a black lay-preacher. Bishop Clarkson’s first reference to William Wilson in 1871 described him as a Methodist minister, but Mr. Wilson was in all probability serving as a lay-preacher for the Methodists who had erected a small building for black church goers. In January 1870, he had been accepted as a candidate for Holy Orders by Nebraska’s Standing Committee. He was ordained to the diaconate this day in 1871 at Christ Church in Brownville.

Rev. Wilson’s mentor was Rev. Robert Oliver, Dean of the Divinity School at Nebraska College in Nebraska City. Even before an Episcopal congregation of African-Americans was organized, Rev. Oliver and Mr. Wilson worked to establish St. Augustine’s School for blacks in Nebraska City. Acknowledging that almost none of the town’s black population could read, in the fall of 1868, the pair opened St Augustine’s School. By 1872, 200 blacks had learned to read, and sixty more of them could read and write. Additionally, nearly 300 blacks went on to advance their educations beyond basic academics. The small church structure called St. Augustine’s was built in mid-1870, and in 1873, with financial assistance from Rev. Charles Avery of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Rev. Wilson oversaw construction of a hospital for African-Americans in Nebraska City. In 1874, he became the first black to preach from an Episcopal pulpit in St. Louis, Missouri.

Rev. Wilson left Nebraska in November 1877, relocating to Pittsburgh, where he was ordained priest this day in 1877 by Rt. Rev. John Barrett Kerfoot, Bishop of the Diocese of Pittsburgh . For the next decade, he served as rector of Pittsburgh’s St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church, after which he moved to Tennessee, where he served as arch-deacon and rector of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Mason. Rev. Wilson retired in 1903, and passed to the larger life in ca. 1919.

Submitted by: Jo Wetherilt Behrens

We remember today Rev. Orsamus Charles “O.C.” Dake (1832-1875), ordained this day in 1864. He was a poet, an abolitionist, and one of the earliest Episcopal priests in Nebraska. Born in upstate New York, Dake moved to Illinois in the 1850s, where he married Amanda Eaton, edited a pro-abolition newspaper, and worked on Abraham Lincoln’s 1860 campaign, which led him to a job in the Department of the Interior. All the while, Dake had found time to study for holy orders. He left Washington and came to Omaha, where he was ordained deacon by Bishop Talbot in 1862, while Nebraska was still a missionary district.

While in Omaha, Dake served as rector of Trinity Church (later Trinity Cathedral), helped found Brownell Hall, and briefly served as the school’s first principal, until he was sent to Fremont as a missionary. In 1865, St. James’ Church was incorporated with Dake as its first rector. Dake remained at St. James’ until 1871, when he was appointed the first professor of English Literature at the newly founded University of Nebraska in Lincoln. Later that year, he became the first published poet in Nebraska with his collection Nebraska Legends and Other Poems. A second collection, Midland Poems, was published in 1873. Dake died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on October 18, 1875. According to J. Sterling Morton in Illustrated History of Nebraska, Dake was “the first to receive orders in Omaha, and the first priest to lay down his life in the diocese.”

Submitted by: The Rev. Sarah Miller

We gratefully remember the service of Deaconess Clara E. LeHew, set apart this day in 1901, by Bishop Anson Graves, a proponent of the pastoral capabilities of women. A pioneer on the Great Plains, Deaconess Clara assisted both Western District bishops over four decades, working especially with children and youngsters in preparation for their confirmations. At her retirement in 1941, Bishop Beecher commented that “her name has become a house-hold word throughout the length and breadth of the state of Nebraska and beyond its borders.” She played an important role of the development of the spiritual life of the Church in western Nebraska.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens

We are grateful today for the ministry and leadership of Bishop James D. Warner, consecrated on November 30, 1976. Bishop Warner smoothed internal conflicts among Nebraska communicants over questions about women’s right to seek ordination, the legitimacy of homosexuals calls to ministry, and the publication of a new Book of Common Prayer with new words for old prayers. Reminding his flock that “this is God’s church, and God calls,” Bishop Warner oversaw the ordination of the first four women in Nebraska on November 8, 1985, as well as upgrades to mission church facilities and raises to the salaries of mission clergy before he retired in 1989.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens

We are grateful for the ministry of Bishop George A. Beecher, a gregarious clergyman with a rancher’s sensibilities who spent most of his life in Western Nebraska. After serving as rector and as Dean of parishes in Sidney and Omaha, Rev. Beecher was consecrated as Missionary Bishop of the District of Kearney this day in 1910. Bishop Beecher’s concerns for immigrants and the marginalized led him to organize delivery of food supplies to destitute western farmers during the Panic of the 1890s; to mentor delinquent youth paroled to him by Omaha’s Juvenile Courts; to support establishment of a Japanese congregation near North Platte; and to endorse legislation to curb harassment of oriental peoples. The bishop traveled to Europe several times. In 1905, he went to France where he traveled with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show, and in 1920, he traveled to England to attend the Lambeth Conference where he saw the horrific damage inflicted by World War I. In 1912, Bishop Beecher moved the missionary district’s see city to Hastings, where he later commissioned construction of the imposing St. Mark’s Pro-Cathedral. He retired in 1943.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens

Reared and educated in Pennsylvania, The Rt. Rev. Dr. Robert Patrick Varley was consecrated this day in 1971. After just a year into his role as Bishop Coadjutor, Bishop Varley acknowledged that he had sorely misjudged the geographic size of the state, and the masterful organization established by previous diocesan leadership. “I am deeply appreciative . . . of those who have left the mark of their faith in our land,” he said in the address at his second Annual Council. The societal tumult of the early 1970s in the United States made Bishop Varley’s tenure difficult. Like his predecessor, Bishop Varley believed all laity and clergy were called upon to exercise their personal ministries in order to deeply knit their communities, both secular and spiritual. Unable to function comfortably under the stresses of diocesan work, Bishop Varley resigned his Episcopate in late 1975.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens

Today we remember gratefully Rev. Stephan Massoch, one of the territory’s earliest missionaries. An Hungarian immigrant, first trained as a surgeon in his native country, Dr. Massoch arrived in New York with his wife and two teen-aged children in fall 1850. New York clergymen encouraged the German-speaking Massochs to emigrate to St. Louis were there was a large German population. There he translated the Book of Common Prayer into German in 1854. On this day that year, he was received as an Episcopal priest at ordination ceremonies in St. Louis. Over the next three years, Rev. Massoch worked in the immigrant neighborhoods of St. Louis, primarily with German, Polish, and Silesian families. He opened a school during the winter months for Bohemian and German children, while also using his medical skills to assist the immigrants and to augment his meager salary.
On March 1, 1860, Rev. Massoch was transferred to Arago, Nebraska Territory, a tiny village in the far southeast corner of the territory along the Missouri River. Although already 63 years old, in Arago he constructed a building of logs for use as both church and school. Rev. Massoch worked with the children six hours every day, assisted by his son. The families paid $5 to educate each of their students. The primitive conditions took their toll on Rev. Massoch, and in 1868, he moved to Covington, Kentucky. In 1870, he contracted meningitis, and was hospitalized in New York City at Rev. William Augustus Muhlenburg’s St. Luke’s Hospital where he died on May 26. Arago suffered the same fate. As river boat traffic died and railroads were built to the north, Arago also died.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens

We honor today the work of Bishop Robert Harper Clarkson, consecrated as Missionary Bishop of Nebraska and Dakota this day in 1865; he became Bishop of Nebraska after the diocese was established in 1868. A gregarious missionary equally cherished by his former congregation at St. James’ in Chicago, the bishop used a horse-drawn wagon to travel north along the trails to visit members of his American Indian flock on Dakota reservations. As the Union Pacific Railroad built westward after the Civil War, the bishop was often on board, working to establish congregations in the towns that grew around the rail construction camps. Recognizing the need for a hospital in Omaha, Bishop Clarkson supported the women who created the ecumenical Ladies Hospital in 1869. As the institution expanded, the bishop assumed full leadership, renaming it Child’s Hospital. Today’s Clarkson Hospital is its direct descendant. His respect for women’s pastoral capabilities led him to set apart Deaconess Mary Ellen Hayden on April 25, 1873, the first Nebraska clergyman with a catholic background to do so. But the rigors of his frontier bishopric damaged his health, and Bishop Clarkson died unexpectedly on March 21, 1884.

Submitted by: Jo L. Behrens