Breck, James Lloyd

(June 27, 1818-Mar. 30, 1876). Founder of Nashotah House and Seabury Divinity School. He was born in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and educated at Flushing Institute, Flushing, New York. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838. He studied at the General Theological Seminary, 1838-1841, where he was influenced by the high church principles of the Oxford Movement. Breck was ordained deacon on July 4, 1841. Accompanied by two other graduates of General Seminary, William Adams and John Henry Hobart, Jr. (1817-1889), Breck headed west to establish a center of missionary activity in the newly opened Territory of Wisconsin. On Oct. 9, 1842, he was ordained priest. He and his associates established Nashotah House in that year. In 1850 Breck moved to Minnesota and worked among the Chippewa Indians. In 1858 he established the Seabury Divinity School at Faribault. After nine years at Faribault, the “apostle of the wilderness” moved to California and settled in Bernica, where he established St. Augustine's College with a grammar school and a divinity school attached. He died in Bernica. His life is commemorated on Apr. 2 in the Episcopal calendar of the church year.