Richard Hooker Wilmer

Richard Hooker Wilmer (March 15, 1816 – June 14, 1900) was the second Bishop of Alabama in the Episcopal Church. Richard Wilmer was the only bishop to be consecrated by the Episcopal Church in the Confederate States of America (PECCSA). Early and family life He was born in Alexandria, Virginia, the son of the rector of Christ Church, William Holland Wilmer and his wife Marion Hannah Cox, who died in childbirth when Richard was six. His father, a prominent priest in Maryland as well as Virginia and from a family of priests, briefly served as the eleventh president of the College of William & Mary before his death in Williamsburg, Virginia, when Richard was only eleven. Raised in part by his stepmother (his eldest brother dying in Mississippi shortly after his father), Richard Wilmer worked as a teenager to support his family. He graduated from Yale College in 1836 and the Virginia Theological Seminary in 1839. Career William Meade, Bishop of Virginia, ordained him as a deacon on March 31, 1839, and as a priest on April 19, 1840. He served parishes in Goochland and Fluvanna counties in Virginia, and then served as rector of St. James Church in Wilmington, North Carolina. Upon returning to Virginia, Wilmer served parishes in Clarke, Loudoun, Fauquier and Bedford counties. In 1858, he started a mission church in Henrico County which became Emmanuel Church at Brook Hill.