By The Rev. Thomas L. Holtzen, PhD, Professor of Historical & Systematic Theology at Nashotah House

What is Nashotah House? Answering that question is as important now as it has ever been, as we seek to reach an ever-changing world for Jesus Christ. It is a question about identity and purpose, one of ethos and character. Are we a seminary? Are we a theological college? Are we the same as other institutions of higher education? So, “What exactly is Nashotah House?” In answering that question it is helpful to recall the history of its founding. 

While sometimes history can be elusive, it gives us a picture of our shared past that still shapes our present because history and ethos are never that far apart from one another in reality. History not only records human actions, but also the reasons for those actions, as can be seen in the history of “The Mission,” as it was called, even before its founding.

When Bishop Jackson Kemper spoke to a group of seminarians at General Theological Seminary in 1840, it ignited a spark in a student named James Lloyd Breck for a unique way to exercise his priestly vocation. Writing of that event which would forever change him, Breck reported:

Bishop Kemper was here, and addressed us on Friday night last. He gave very great satisfaction, and made us more proud of our “Missionary Bishop” than ever before. His two chief wants at the West are means and men: the first, to found seminaries of learning to be under the control of the church; the second, laborers to assist him in preaching the Gospel. The good bishop spoke very plainly, respecting the kind of men he wanted, the burden of which was – self-denying men, men willing to go there and endure every species of hardship for the sake of Christ and His Church.1

Kemper’s words fell like seeds upon the fertile soil of Breck’s soul. He wrote to his brother Charles and told him that there was a desire of those in his seminary class to go “out west, place ourselves under Bishop Kemper, all at one point, and there educate and preach; to live under one roof, constitute into a Religious House, under a Superior.” 2

The idea of what became known as “the Mission” was thus conceived. This idea became so deeply rooted in Breck’s mind that he spoke of “our Mission” and “the Mission” in his letters before its actual founding.3 The Mission was to exist for the furtherance of the church by training up priests to serve her needs and for the work of ministry in the surrounding settlements. It was to be something like a religious frontier fort, supplying ministers for the westward expansion of the church. There remained much work to turn the idea of the Mission into a reality, however.

Kemper concluded that establishing a mission in the Wisconsin Territory would be best because of “its location between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi.” 4 He spoke again to the students, and four gave themselves to him “for the express purpose of founding a Religious House in the Wisconsin Territory”: James Lloyd Breck (1818-76), a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania; William Adams (1813-97), an Irishman from Trinity College Dublin; John Henry Hobart, Jr. (1817-89), Bishop Hobart’s son from Columbia College in New York; and James Warley Miles, a student from South Carolina. Bishop Kemper appointed a Wisconsin missionary named the Rev. Richard Cadle to act as their Superior. In early 1841, the Foreign and Domestic Missionary Society (the formal name of the Episcopal Church) approved the plan and gave Cadle a salary of $300 annually and $250 to the students.5

Shortly after their graduation in 1841, Breck, Adams, and Hobart were ordained deacons.6 Miles had to return to South Carolina for ordination and duties there at the request of his bishop. At that point, Bishop Kemper took under his authority the remaining three who were committed to the cause. He requested Breck, Adams, and Hobart be in Milwaukee on August 8, 1841. They set out on the difficult twelve-day journey, preaching at various congregations along the way, and arrived around midnight to Milwaukee, where they encountered good weather and considered this a fortunate sign. They continued their practice of preaching in area churches. Hobart walked 20 miles to Prairieville, which is modern-day Waukesha, to preach there. This became their first home. 

Missionary life was not easy on the frontier. From October 1, 1841, until January 1, 1842, they rode 1,851 miles on horseback and walked 736 miles.7 In January of 1842, Hobart returned back East to raise money for purchasing land and building a house for the Mission. Father Cadle resigned his position and severed his association with the Mission.8 The work of founding the Mission now fell to Breck and Adams. Setbacks were to be expected along the way. 

The Mission still needed a place to reside. Much to Breck’s surprise, this was provided by Bishop Kemper’s agent, the Rev. Lemuel Hull of Milwaukee, who sought and purchased land in Nashotah.9 As Breck reported:

Our dear Bishop has authorized us to purchase land and build a small house, and this we have accordingly done. We have purchased 460 acres of land on the Nashotah lakes, ten miles from Prairie Village, and yet more central to our Mission. Nashotah means Two Lakes (it is the Indian name for twin lakes), and these are so called from their resemblance to each other. They are about a mile in length, and a half a mile in width. Their banks are bold, their bottom fine white gravel. The color of the water is a living green, and in appearance very pure.10

The Mission now had a home. Breck said, “It is admirably calculated to answer all the purposes of this school and Mission. We have contracted for the building of a frame house, 17 feet by 22 feet, to cost $350.” 11 Breck expected to move to Nashotah on August 30, 1842, and to live in a one-story “claim shanty” of 13 feet by 17 feet, built by settlers, that would serve as kitchen, classroom, and bedroom.12 He said, “We expect additional lodgers soon, who will be students. In this room we are to cook our own victuals (pork, potatoes, and tea). Having neither bedstead nor mattress, we shall sleep on our buffalo robes, spread upon the floor.” 13

By 1842, the Mission at Nashotah had begun in earnest and was growing with 120 communicants, 36 of whom Breck and Adams had admitted.14 There were other missions in the surrounding settlements. The largest of these was a mission to the Oneidas at Duck Creek with 110 communicants, headed by a missionary priest, the Rev. Davis.15  Breck and Adams preached at Green Bay, and from there went to the mission to the Oneidas at Duck Creek, located nearby. On Sunday, October 9, 1842, both Breck and Adams “were ordained in the midst of the Oneidas” to the priesthood. Breck describes a ceremony reminiscent of the Day of Pentecost with speaking and singing in different languages:

The Bell at length ceased its tolling, and the Indians were all within the consecrated walls. We went to the rear of the church, entered by two doors, approached and knelt at the altar. So as we had risen, a single voice commenced changing the first sentence of the Te Deum, in the Oneida language, at the close of which the whole congregation sung aloud Hallelujah three times, and so they continued doing at the end of each sentence. After this was sung, we left the Church by another door for the robing room, where we put on the full ecclesiastical dress, and then returned. The Indians now had their worship in their own tongue, after which the Bishop preached to them by an interpreter, and held the ordinance of Confirmation. We were then ordained, after which was administered the Holy Eucharist.16

On their way back to Nashotah, Breck and Adams were given a bell weighing 88 pounds, a pair of globes, and a variety of school books from the Mission house at Green Bay that were no longer being used.17 Bishop Kemper sent these back on a lumber wagon for the 120-mile return trip to the Mission.18 Planning on walking the entire way back to the Mission, Breck and Adams received a ride by returning a hired horse for a man after walking about twenty miles of the return trip on foot. 

In November 1842, Breck and Adams moved into the newly constructed Blue House, which received its name from the donated blue lead paint used on its exterior.19 The first floor of the Blue House was a living room and parlor, while the upstairs contained three rooms with living quarters and a chapel.20 With the purchase of land, and building of the Blue House, the money Hobart had raised was depleted, but now they had theological students training for ministry. 

Students worked for four hours a day and in turn were educated for free. Students received six weeks of “vacation” at harvest time so that they could work in the fields and earn money. Non-theological students boarded with local families and paid tuition. It was a busy life. According to Breck, they kept a rigorous schedule:

We rise at 5 a.m., Matins at 6. The Morning Service of the church at 9 a.m. On Wednesdays and Fridays, the Litany at 12. On Thursdays, the Holy Eucharist at the same hour of 12. The Evening Service of the Church at 3, and Family Prayer or Vespers at 6:30 or 7 p.m. Our students labor between 7 and 9 in the morning, and 1 and 3 in the afternoon.21

Near Nashotah was the Swedish settlement at Pine Lake, or modern-day Chenequa (the Potawatomi word for “pine”), where Gustaf Unonius lived. He came to the Mission to ask someone to baptize his newborn child, and the Blue House reminded him of his student chamber at Upsala in Sweden, where he trained to be a lawyer. Breck baptized Unonius’s first child, who later died at the tender age of three. Unonius went on to become the first graduate of Nashotah House in 1845. He served many of the Swedish and Norwegian settlers in the Pine Lake area. He named his second son, Lloyd Gustaf Breck Unonius after his mentor and close friend.

Early in 1843, Breck was appointed by Bishop Kemper to head the Mission at Nashotah upon the recommendation of Adams and Hobart, who had returned from the East.22 Breck said, “We make our house a parish hospititum; none come but they are invited to partake of our board, and many have we had to sit down at our table.” 23 There was a true sense that their “Associate Mission,” where clergy and laity lived together in the same house without following a formal rule, was a brotherhood.24 As Breck described it: 

We have learned that we are in our new quarters, and are really beginning to feel that we are in a monastery. We have both cleric and lay brethren, but as yet few in number. The internal arrangement of our house is becoming more and more perfect. We have spent all, or about all, the money that Brother Hobart collected at the East, in the purchase of our land and the building of a small frame house; and now we are poor, but the poor of Christ, and therefore have nothing to apprehend. Owning to our poverty we have to get along as best we may.25

Despite its poverty, the Mission at Nashotah gained respect from far corners of the church in both England and Australia, and even came to the attention of the famed Dr. Pusey.26

In 1843, Breck’s attempts at establishing the Mission at Nashotah, which had met with many difficulties outside its walls, now met with difficulties from within as well. In May of 1843, Adams went East claiming ill health. Hobart left a few months after Adams, never to return, but serving as the rector of Trinity Wall Street in New York City instead. Breck was able to get Adams to return in October of 1844, and, in 1848, Adams married Bishop Kemper’s daughter and continued to serve the Mission until 1892, five years before his death.27

In spite of the setbacks of 1843, the Mission continued to grow. In the summer of 1843, they constructed the two-story Red House that later became known as St. Sylvanus Chapel. It served as chapel and school house, with student rooms on the second floor and in the basement which were called “the chambers.” The basement chamber was the warmest spot in winter, and even Bishop Kemper himself slept there during the winter of 1843-44.28

By July of 1843, Breck could report that there were 12 different places to preach on Sundays within 15 miles of the Mission.29 They also began receiving a variety of students. Bishop Kemper sent “two Oneida Indians, the sons of two chiefs, to be educated as native teachers.” 30 And they also trained an English Wesleyan preacher for ministry. By early 1844, they had 13 students, and by the fall that number had grown to 28.31 Bishop Kemper kept a close eye on things, attending many of the student examinations personally.32 In December of 1844, Breck offered a voluntary daily Eucharist with the approval of Adams and Kemper, but under increasing accusations of “Romanizing” tendencies, it was discontinued in 1845.33

The overall influence of the Mission proved fruitful. It founded St. John’s in the Wilderness in Elkhorn, St. Alban’s in Lisbon (Sussex), the Scandinavian Parish at Pine Lake (later Holy Innocents there), Grace Chapel in Hartland, St. Athanasius’s Chapel in Summit, St. Matthias in Prairieville (Waukesha), St. Olaf’s in Ashippun River (later St. Paul’s Church in Ashippun), St. Sylvanus Chapel at the Mission, Zion in Oconomowoc, and St. George’s in North Prairie. The Mission also greatly aided St. John Chrysostom in Delafield and St. Peter’s at North Lake. Beyond these parishes, the Mission continued year after year training priests for the church.

As much as we associate these with Nashotah House today, the Mission itself has never been about the clapboard or stone buildings or pristine shoreline along Upper Nashotah Lake. Rather, the Mission existed prior to these, as Breck’s own words show. The Mission was to serve the church by training priests and by ministering to those around her. The idea of the Mission can be found in Christ’s own words to his Apostles: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.” 34

What is Nashotah House? Nashotah House is “The Mission” at Nashotah. And that mission continues to this very day. The Mission still exists to train priests for the church and to minister to those around us. Today, professors and students at the House still serve in local parishes, as they have done since its founding. Although we have a first-rate faculty, the Mission is not just a theological or academic institution. The Mission exists for the sake of the church. It exists to plant the seeds of the gospel in people’s lives, to shape them in thought, word, and deed into the imago Christi, and to send priests into the world. If you look closely at the Chapel of St. Mary the Virgin, this fact is undeniable. The woodwork is rubbed smooth by years of students praying twice a day in St. Mary’s. Likewise, the vestments used in Chapel for worship show signs of wear from their constant use in the celebration of daily Eucharist. Nashotah House is like this because we continue to believe in the Mission. What is Nashotah House? Nashotah House is “The Mission” at Nashotah. That is what we have been and, by God’s grace and the continued financial support of the faithful, what we will continue to be for many long years to come. 

Footnotes:

1 The Life of the Reverend James Lloyd Breck, D.D., compiled by Charles Breck (E. & J. B. Young: New York: NY, 1883), 7-8.   2 Ibid., 8.  3 Ibid., 16.  4 Ibid., 9.   5 Thomas C. Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, Anglican and Episcopal History, 65, 1 (March 1996): 55-6.   6 Reeves, Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House, 56.   7 The Life of Breck, 27.   8 Ibid., 27.   9 Ibid., 30.   10 Ibid., 29-30. ‘Nashotah’ is the Potawatomi word for ‘twins’.   11 Ibid., 30.   12 Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, 62.  13 The Life of Breck, 30.   14 Ibid., 31.   15 Ibid., 30, 32.  16 Ibid., 32.   17 Ibid., 33.   18 Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, 65.   19 Ibid.   20 Ibid.   21 The Life of Breck, 34.  22 Ibid., 35.   23 Ibid., 36.   24 Ibid., 27, 11, 12, 37.  25 Ibid., 33.   26 Ibid., 37.   27 Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, 67-8.   28 Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, 66–7, 78.   29 The Life of Breck, 37-8.   30 Ibid., 38.   31 Reeves, ‘James Lloyd Breck and the Founding of Nashotah House’, 69.   32 Ibid.   33 Ibid., 75-6.   34 Matt. 28:19-20.

The Rev. Thomas L. Holtzen, PhD, has a passion for teaching classical theology as practical learning for life and ministry. He teaches both Systematic and Historical Theology at Nashotah House. His professional interests include Christian doctrine, especially the Trinity, Incarnation, soteriology, grace, justification, sacramental theology, Anglican theology, and the theologies of Sts Augustine and John Henry Newman. He teaches elective courses such as “Augustine,” “The Trinity,” “Newman’s Lectures on Justification,” “The Theology of Richard Hooker,” “The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion,” and “Anglican Eucharistic Theology.” He has written many academic articles for publication, given numerous papers at academic conferences, and written a number of pieces for popular publications.

Since his ordination in 2003, Fr. Holtzen has served as an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Milwaukee. He is priest-in-charge at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Ashippun, Wisconsin, one many area churches founded as missions by Nashotah House over 150 years ago. He served on the Diocese of Milwaukee’s Task Force on Human Sexuality, co-authoring the report. He served as a retreat leader. The preceding article was originally printed in Nashotah House’s Fall 2021 Missioner magazine, volume 35, number 2, pages 22-27. Please visit https://nashotah.edu/faculty/thomas-l-holtzen/ to hear a reflection from Fr. Holtzen on the formation offered at Nashotah House.