Not everyone who came west during the Gold Rush, a period of license and lawlessness, came to wrest a fortune from the earth. Medical doctors and attorneys came to establish social order and clergy came to restore order to men’s souls.
Even among this latter group, the Right Reverend William Ingraghm Kip (1811-1893) was an unlikely figure. Many of the hearty circuit riders who established Methodist churches in California had grown up in raw settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By contrast Kip descended from French Huguenots who found refuge in Colonial America and over five generations established themselves as attorneys and bankers. The Kips became a leading New York family.
Kip himself graduated from Yale and studied law before following a spiritual call. He graduated from New York’s General Theological Seminary. Once ordained, he gained a reputation for eloquent preaching and became rector (an Episcopal word for pastor) at an affluent parish in Albany, New York.
Despite his breeding, wealth and sophistication, Kip was intrigued by California. He learned about it from his brother, an attorney, who joined the flood of forty-niners and later returned to New York. He read letters from California written by a former Albany church member.
In the end, what attracted Kip west was perhaps not so different from what attracted all the others. He was drawn by the adventure.
Kip landed by ship in San Francisco in early 1854, sent by the church as Missionary Bishop of California. He wasted little time getting to the gold region. After Easter 1854, Kip with his wife and teenage son, boarded a riverboat for Marysville and then a stage for Grass Valley.
Kip gathered congregations in Nevada City and Grass Valley and led services in both towns. In the next year, 1855, Kip sent a priest to serve the two towns and the people he had gathered established Holy Trinity Church in Nevada City and Emmanuel Church in Grass Valley. Kip made subsequent pastoral visits to Nevada County.
During the 19th century this urbane Easterner represented the Episcopal Church in the Far West. On journeys through his immense diocese he traveled from one end of California to the other, sometimes riding a mule by day and sleeping on the ground at night.
Mostly he lived in a fine house in San Francisco where he collected art and wrote books on theology, the history of Jesuits in colonial times and his own Western experiences. He traveled widely in Europe. He exhausted his personal fortune supporting the church.
California has been defined by the people who were here and those who have come from all over the world. And the most unlikely are the best remembered. These include a nurseryman who brought fine nut and fruit tree stock from France; a Quaker woman who presented the West in illustrations and stories; and a very little girl who first sang to a Nevada City audience at three and when grown sang to audiences in the great opera houses of Europe.
Emmanuel Episcopal Church will remember its 170-year history and the unlikely man who began it with a community brunch at 11 am on Saturday, August 16 and special services at 8 and 10 am on Sunday, August 17.
The principal speaker at brunch will be the Rev. Dr. Canon Tim Naish from Canterbury Cathedral in England, the mother church of the world-wide Anglican Communion, to which the Episcopal Church belongs. Canon Naish will also preach at Sunday services the following day.
The Rev. Seth Kellermann, rector of Emmanuel Church, will serve as master of ceremonies and introduce Canon Tim.
Tickets for the anniversary brunch are $20 and may be reserved by calling 530/273-7876. Reservations are required by August 10.Everyone is welcome while tickets last.
The Emmanuel brunch is hosted by the congregation of Grass Valley United Methodist Church, (which has larger facilities) across the street from Emmanuel Church at 236 South Church Street, Grass Valley.