Lemuel H. Wells

Lemuel Henry Wells (December 3, 1841 – March 27, 1936) was the first Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane.

Born in Yonkers, New York, Wells lived a sheltered childhood, and as a boy experienced a desire to become a missionary. He entered Trinity College in 1860. Wells was visiting his father in Wisconsin in 1862 when the American Civil War broke out, and he was recruited as a member of the 32nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment. He fought in the Battle of Vicksburg in 1863, and in 1864 was mustered out and returned to Trinity College, from which he was graduated in 1867.

He prepared for ministry at Berkeley Divinity School (now part of Yale Divinity School) and was ordained a Deacon in 1869. A week after his graduation from Berkeley, Wells married Elizabeth Folger, ward of Charles J. Folger, Secretary of the Treasury. The marriage was short-lived, however, as Elizabeth died following a year spent in Europe. Wells, a newly ordained priest, determined to act on his earlier desire to become a missionary and Bishop Benjamin Wistar Morris of the then-frontier states of Oregon and Washington asked Wells to become rector of a struggling mission in Walla Walla, Washington.

In 1872, during his second year as rector in Walla Walla, Wells founded the St. Paul's Girls' School as well as a Boys' School that was never as successful. In 1880, Wells married the principal of St. Paul's Girls' School, Henrietta Garretson, whose father was a senator of Pennsylvania. He established thirty-one Episcopal Missions in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho - in many places, Wells' mission was the first church or religious establishment in the region. These missions included the first Episcopal congregations in:

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