Francis Huger Rutledge
First Bishop Diocese of Florida
Francis Huger Rutledge became the First Bishop of Florida
thirteen years after the diocese was organized. Until then it hadn't money
enough to pay the salary of a bishop so it had depended for Episcopal services
of near-by states. Among those who had come were the Right Reverend Messrs.
James H. Otey, Bishop of Tennessee; Stephen Elliott from the Diocese of
Georgia; Christopher Gadsden of South Carolina and Nicholas H. Cobbs, Bishop of
Alabama. Before those and before the Diocese of Florida was organized, Bishop
Jackson Kemper, the General Church's first missionary bishop, had come to
Florida to help get the church started here.
Bishop Rutledge's father was chancellor of the State of South Carolina for twenty
years, and one of his uncles was a signer of the Declaration of Independence
and a Governor of South Carolina. Educated at Yale and the General Theological
Seminary, Francis Huger Rutledge served the church in his native state from
1823 until 1840. Then he moved to Florida, where he was rector, first of Trinity
Church, St. Augustine, then of St. John's, Tallahassee. In 1851 he was elected
and consecrated Bishop of Florida. The diocese still was unable, however, to
pay a bishop's salary, so for seven years the Right Reverend Mr. Rutledge
served as bishop and as rector of St. John's.
Being the Bishop of Florida in the 1850's was a hard assignment. The
distance between parishes were great; the modes of travel were slow, uncertain
and exhausting; and the diocese's material resources were meager. Bishop
Rutledge labored under two additional handicaps -he was responsible for a
parish as well as for his Episcopal duties and he frequently suffer ill health.
Nevertheless, the diocese grew from ten congregations to fourteen in the first
ten years after he became its bishop and it appeared ready to grow more and
faster in the 1860's.
The came the blow that all but destroyed the work Bishop Rutledge had done.
The American Civil War devastated the Diocese of Florida. The physical damage
was bad enough - three churches burned. The rest neglected and left wanting
repairs - but far more destructive to the diocese was the scattering of clergy
and congregations. There were only four clergy present at the first diocesan convention
after the war - and it was held when the war had been over for nearly a year -
and then were lay delegates in attendance from just three churches.
Bishop Rutledge was one of the four clergymen present at the convention in
February 1, 1866, but he was ill most of that year and he died on November 5.
"We may well remember him," said the senior member of his clergy in a
funeral sermon, "as one of those whose good example we thank God."
When we want to point to a good man for our children to emulate, the reverend
minister continued, "we will pronounce, in emphatic tones, the name of
Rutledge, our first Bishop."
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