James Lloyd Breck

The Rev. James Lloyd Breck
James Lloyd Breck, 1866
Born	June 27, 1818 Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania
Died	2 April 1876(1876-04-02) (aged 57) Benicia, California
Venerated in	Episcopal Church USA
Feast	April 2

James Lloyd Breck (June 27, 1818 – April 2, 1876) was a priest, educator and missionary of the Episcopal Church in the United States of America.

Breck is commemorated on April 2 on the Episcopal calendar of saints.

Breck was born in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania. He attended high school at the Flushing Institute, founded by William Augustus Muhlenberg, who inspired him to resolve at the age of sixteen to devote himself to missionary activity. Senator James Lloyd of Massachusetts and Breck's uncle financed his education at Flushing and the University of Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838 and a B.D. from the General Theological Seminary in 1841.

In 1842, by then a deacon in the Episcopal Church, he went to the frontier of Wisconsin with two classmates, under the direction of Bishop Jackson Kemper, to found Nashotah House, intended as a monastic community, a seminary, and a center for theological work. It continues today as a seminary. Breck was ordained into the priesthood later that year by the Missionary Bishop, Jackson Kemper at the Oneida Indian settlement 150 miles north of Nashotah.

In 1850 Breck moved to Minnesota where he began another mission. On June 23, 1850 he celebrated the first Episcopal Eucharist in the La Crosse area. Two years later he began work among the Ojibway, founding St. Columba Mission. In 1855 Breck married Jane Maria Mills, one of the teachers at the St. Columba Mission. He opened another mission at Leech Lake in 1856, and then in 1857 he moved to Faribault where he and the Rev. Solon Manney began a mission school to train clergy to work in Minnesota missions. Breck worked closely with the first Bishop of Minnesota, Henry Whipple and the mission school for clergy became Seabury Seminary which survives today as Bexley-Seabury Western Seminary in Chicago.