Bishop Jackson Kemper

By the time he was 42 years old, the Episcopal priest, Jackson Kemper, had been married twice, and made a widower twice.

He'd been born in New York State in 1789 and from 1811 to 1831 he served three parishes in Philadelphia. Being a single clergyman with plenty of pastoral experience - including mission experience he picked up during vacations from his regular position - qualified Jackson Tremper to serve on the frontier. (Academic degrees, of course, were also considered to be a qualification, and Kemper was a Doctor of Divinity and had been the valedictorian of his class at Columbia College.)

In 1834, Kemper left the settled east and arrived at what is now known as Wisconsin. On behalf of a mission society that was affiliated with the Protestant Episcopal Church, he was charged with making a report on a mission that was started in 1827 by Rev. Richard Cadle, and his sister, Miss Sarah Cadle. This mission was an essential part of a settlement known as "Shantytown" (now part of DePere). Unsurprisingly, the Episcopal mission had not gotten off to a good start. To the Indians, the Cadles' discipline was rigid, perhaps even oppressively rigid. Furthermore, the kind of Christianity that had existed in the Green Bay area among French traders and others for many years was Roman Catholicism - let's not forget that back in the 1800's Catholics and Protestants didn't get along.

In 1832, Richard Cadle - who was discouraged by the lack of success he was having - asked the mission society that was supporting himself and his sister to relieve them of their burden. Somehow, the mission society persuaded the Cadles to carry on with their work in Shantytown by promising more support for the mission. Jackson Kemper traveled to what was known as "the Northwest" back then, in order to see the Cadles' Shantytown mission firsthand and report back to the mission society. Jackson Kemper kept a diary on that trip which - along with footnotes provided by the State Historical Society of Wisconsin - is the source used in this blogpost. [Access Kemper's diary here.]

To make a long story short, in Kemper's opinion, the Cadles' mission was at least successful enough to be worth the effort:

Is it nothing to have rescued more than 200 ch[ildren] from
degradation & vice & ignorance & death—to teach them the arts &
feelings of civilized life and the principles of the Gospel? * * * Many of
these chld are real Indians born in our ch, but who would be ignorant of
knowledge & our language were it not for this school. And many born
heathen exhibit by their conduct & writings an evidence of the Gospel
upon their souls. Here, in this mission the Ch is exerting herself & has an
opportunity of doing good to heathen. If we give up this, we abandon the
only post we have among the heathen. We have more Indian child here
than they have at Macanaw—& the schools of the ch[urch] Miss[ionary]
Soc[iety] among the N W Indians are principally composed of the children
of white traders. Some of the chld here in 2 yrs have in addition to a
knowledge of the language acquired as much school information i. e.
made as much progress in spelling, reading, writing, composition,
geography, grammar & arithmetic as chld of similar age in the district
school of Connecticut.

In 1835 Jackson Kemper was elected the first missionary Bishop of his denomination.



You can read a more complete biography of Bishop Jackson Kemper on Harry Allagee's Good Heart blog (the visual above is taken from that site).