45 Facts About William Meade

William Meade was an American Episcopal bishop, the third Bishop of Virginia.

William Meade graduated with high honors and as valedictorian in 1808.

At the urging of his mother and his cousin Mrs Custis, William Meade studied theology privately under the Rev Walter Addison near the newly established national capital, and lived for a time in Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Rev Addison's parish.

William Meade was particularly impressed by Soame Jenyns Internal Evidence of Christianity and William Wilberforce's Practical View.

William Meade returned to Princeton in 1809 to continue some graduate studies in divinity, but caught a near-fatal fever, and so returned home to work on the farm as well as to build his own Shenandoah valley home at Mountain View.

Since this William Meade later published genealogies of Virginia families, and in one pamphlet distinguished the Episcopal Church from the "Romish," he acknowledged the first of his ancestors to arrive in America was Andrew William Meade, a Roman Catholic who emigrated to New York and married Quaker Mary Latham of Flushing.

The couple moved to what was then Nansemond County, Virginia, where great-grandfather William Meade "abjured his allegiance to the Roman Church," became a vestryman of the Suffolk Church, and briefly represented the county in the House of Burgesses.

Young William Meade married Mary, daughter of his Frederick County neighbor and lay reader Philip Nelson, on January 31,1810.

William Meade bore his three sons before dying on July 3,1817, and was buried at Old Chapel, as later would their sons Philip Nelson Meade and Francis Burwell Meade.

Three years after her death, on December 16,1820, William Meade remarried, to Thomasia, daughter of Thomas Nelson of Yorktown and Hanover, who zealously assisted him in his ministry for two decades before dying on May 20,1836.

William Meade was buried at Fork Church in Hanover County.

William Meade afterward recalled that the congregation consisted of fifteen gentlemen and three ladies, almost all of them his relatives, and that on the way to Bruton Church many more gun-toting students and hunting dogs had passed them.

When William Meade traveled back through Richmond, the newly ordained deacon noted that the city's only church St John's was only open for communion occasions, and that the Episcopalian Dr Buchanan and Presbyterian Dr Blair alternated Sundays.

From his ordination until 1821, deacon and then Rev William Meade served as the assistant to Rev Alexander Balmain, rector of Frederick Parish and who usually served in Winchester, Virginia, about 15 miles away from William Meade's home.

William Meade normally officiated every other Sunday at the Old Chapel near his family's plantations.

William Meade remained as rector after his consecration as assistant bishop as discussed below, in part because his predecessors all kept other positions.

William Meade continued manual labor on his farm, and had specifically sought assurances from Bishop Madison before ordination that such work would not violate a longstanding church canon against servile labor, for William Meade firmly believed sloth had helped all but destroy the Church of Virginia.

Later, William Meade became known for his forays throughout Virginia, especially by horse even during severe weather, preaching among diverse parishes, until he ceded to old age and used a carriage.

William Meade supported the American Tract Society, and the Bible Society, except as the former grew to support abolitionism, as discussed below.

Later, from 1842 to 1862, bishop William Meade served as the seminary's president, as well as delivered an annual course of lectures on pastoral theology.

William Meade helped found the Evangelical Knowledge Society and served as its president.

In 1829, after Wilmer's unexpected death and as Bishop Moore approached retirement, William Meade became assistant Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Virginia.

William Meade then began an extensive visitation of the diocese, which took him to Martinsburg, then through the Shenandoah valley before conducting Christmas services in Halifax and returning north to Alexandria.

In 1832, William Meade traveled across the Appalachian mountains for visitations in Kentucky and Tennessee.

Rev Meade thus became the first Virginia bishop to hold his position full-time, without concurrent responsibilities for an individual parish or institution.

When Bishop Moore died later that year, William Meade succeeded him as Bishop of Virginia, and soon consecrated Maryland native John Johns as his assistant.

Whereas the diocese had 44 clergy serving 40 parishes and 1,1462 communicants when William Meade was consecrated as suffragan, the numbers had risen to 87 clergy serving 99 parishes and 3,702 communicants by the year Bishop Moore died, and 116 clergy serving 123 parishes and 7,876 communicants by 1860.

William Meade preached the gospel of Christ Crucified like some of his Presbyterian neighbors.

Rev William Meade especially objected to doctrines of transubstantiation and prayers for the dead, which he thought inconsistent with salvation through grace.

Bishop William Meade pointed out that the section only had seven clergy, far less than the 30 required under church canons, and the proposal was defeated until after William Meade's death.

William Meade freed his own slaves, who moved to Pennsylvania, since Virginia's laws at the time forbade emancipated slaves from remaining in the Commonwealth without special permission from the legislature.

William Meade's views were influenced by his sister Ann Randolph Meade Page as well as his clerical mentors.

On December 21,1816, Rev Meade traveled to Washington, DC, for the organizational meeting of the American Colonization Society, thus helping Rev Robert Finley, Francis Scott Key and US Supreme Court clerk Elias B Caldwell establish that organization.

In 1819, Virginia's diocesan convention strongly supported the ACS, and William Meade traveled through the American south campaigning for the removal of African American slaves to Africa.

However, William Meade did not consider slavery a sin, merely a hindrance to economic growth.

William Meade believed Christian principles could teach masters to treat their slaves well.

In 1841 William Meade reported for a diocesan committee concerning the best means for instructing slaves, urging clergyman to devote at least part of each Sunday's sermon at slaves, or hold Sunday afternoon or weeknight services for them, and that if they could not catechize both white and black children, reserve those limited resources for slave children.

Still, William Meade believed in state's rights and acquiesced in his beloved Commonwealth's ultimate decision to secede.

Rev William Meade helped other southern bishops consecrate Henry Champlin Lay as a missionary bishop of the Southwest.

Bishop Meade had traveled by train from Gordonsville, along with his son, the Rev Richard K Meade, although coughing and obviously ill.

William Meade arrived at the church in time for the consecration, but afterward was confined to bed at a friend's home, and died days later.

Bishop William Meade was reputedly the only man who customarily called the general by his first name.

Bishop William Meade died in Richmond, Virginia, aged 72, on March 14,1862.

Furthermore, Peterkin's long-serving successor at Baltimore's Memorial Church, Dr William Meade Dame had been named in the bishop's honor.

Furthermore, in 1869, the rector of Christ Church in Alexandria, Randolph Harrison McKim, organized a mission church for African American Episcopalians in the city where William Meade had long served.