"Episcopal Bishop of NJ" William Henry Odenheimer Cut Signature For Sale

Up for sale the "Episcopal Bishop of NJ" William Henry Odenheimer Cut Signature.

ES-9687

William Henry Odenheimer (August

11, 1817 – August 14, 1879) was the third Episcopal Bishop of New Jersey and

the first of Northern New Jersey. Odenheimer was born in Philadelphia

in 1817, the son of John W. Odenheimer and Henrietta Burns Odenheimer.

Odenheimer was prepared at Flushing, Long Island, at the famous Institute

founded in 1828 by the Reverend William Augustus Muhlenberg (1796-1877).

Scholars emanating from the Flushing Institute very often matriculated in the

third year at Penn, Virginia, Harvard, Yale, Princeton, and other colleges.

Odenheimer graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1835.[1] He would have left Penn just upon

the arrival of another Muhlenberg "school son," J. Lloyd Breck

(1818-1876), the legendary missionary educator of Wisconsin, Minnesota, and

California. Odenheimer next attended the General Theological Seminary, graduating

in 1838. In 1839, he married Anne Randall Shaw. They would have eleven children

but only two, Anne and Margaret, would live to adulthood. Odenheimer was ordained deacon three

years later, in 1838 by Bishop Henry U. Onderdonk, and was ordained priest by

the same bishop in 1841. After his ordination to the priesthood, he served as

rector of St. Peter's Church in

Philadelphia, remaining at the parish from his ordination until his elevation

to the episcopate. While there, Odenheimer received a doctorate of divinity from the University of

Pennsylvania. He also published several books, including "The True

Catholic No Romanist," (1842) about the Oxford

Movement, and "Essay on Canon Law" (1847). Odenheimer was

a strong supporter of the Oxford Movement and changed the organization of St.

Peter's to reflect that preference. His theological beliefs were out of step

with the rising anti-Catholicism of Philadelphia in the

1840s, but Odenheimer sought to steer a middle course between the extremes of

Catholicism and Protestantism. Odenheimer was consecrated the third Bishop of

New Jersey in 1859. He was the 66th bishop in the

Episcopal Church, and was consecrated in St. Paul's

Church, Richmond, Virginia by Bishops William Meade,

Samuel Allen McCoskry, and William Rollinson Whittingham, along with

other co-consecrators. While bishop, Odenheimer received an additional degree,

a doctor of canon law from the University of Oxford, in 1867. During the

first fifteen years of his episcopate he confirmed nearly 16,000 people, and

the number reached 20,000 before his death. He visited the parishes of his

diocese often until 1866, when injuries from a fall broke his kneecaps and

forced him to curtail his travels. As his diocese grew, church authorities

found it necessary to divide it into northern and southern portions in 1874,

with Odenheimer continuing as bishop of the northern diocese, later renamed the

Diocese of Newark.[1] He was succeeded as diocesan bishop

for New Jersey by John Scarborough. He died in 1879 in

Burlington, New Jersey, and was buried at St. Mary's

Episcopal Church in that town.