1. Adam Empie was an Episcopal priest in North Carolina and Virginia, who taught and served as President of the College of William and Mary.
20 Facts About Adam Empie
1. 2.
Adam Empie worked during his years as a student at Union College in Schenectady, as well as studied under Eliphalet Nott and Benjamin Allen.
3.
Adam Empie lived in Rhinebeck and Hempstead, New York, for the next two years where he studied for the ministry and taught in the Classical Academy of the Rev Seth Hart, as well as tutored the children of Thomas Tillotson, Secretary of State of New York.
4.
Adam Empie was ordained deacon in 1809, then admitted into the priesthood.
5.
Adam Empie created associations to educate the poor and to provide them with Bibles and books of their own.
6.
Adam Empie served churches in Wadesboro and Salisbury, before moving to Memphis where he founded Calvary Church in 1832.
7.
In 1827, the growing Adam Empie family moved to Williamsburg, Virginia, where the Rev William Holland Wilmer had died unexpectedly.
8.
Adam Empie taught classes in belles letters, logic, and ethics and served as 11th president of the College of William and Mary.
9.
In 1830, Adam Empie received an honorary doctorate from the University of North Carolina.
10.
On March 24,1814, Adam Empie married a 15-year-old Southern girl, Ann Eliza Wright.
11.
The daughter of Judge Joshua Grainger Wright, she grew up in a gracious home across the street from the church and, like Adam Empie, spent summers on Wrightsville Sound.
12.
Adam Empie freed his slaves, but he treated them so kindly they refused to leave him.
13.
Adam Empie appealed to Bishop William Meade as well as the Virginia State Legislature.
14.
Adam Empie's actions were upheld, but life became so unpleasant for him in Williamsburg that he resigned and moved his family to Raleigh.
15.
Adam Empie taught at Raleigh's Episcopal High School from 1836 until 1838, as Virginia debated slavery's role at its Constitutional Convention.
16.
Adam Empie served in Richmond during the final sixteen years of his ministry.
17.
Adam Empie established a private school for young men in Richmond, encouraged the creation of slave galleries in the city's existing white churches, and founded a slave mission on Broad Street that taught Bible lessons.
18.
Adam Empie received royalties from a book of his sermons that sold well in the Northern states.
19.
Adam Empie spent most of his time praying and meditating.
20.
Adam Empie's papers are at the Manuscripts and Rare Books Department, Swem Library, College of William and Mary, as well as the US Military Academy, and the Lower Cape Fear Historical Society.