The Rt. Rev. Edwin Gardner Weed

Third Bishop of Florida

The Third Bishop of Florida, and the first to be consecrated within the boundaries of the state, was the Right Reverend Edwin Gardner Weed. He was a native of Savannah, a confederate war veteran and a graduate of the Universityof Berlin and the General Theological Seminary. He had served the Church of the Good Shepherd, Augusta, as its rector through his ministry , for fifteen years, before he was called to Florida. He was consecrated in St. John's Church, Jacksonville, on August 11, 1886.

Almost immediately, Bishop Weed began traveling the state. He reached Key West before the Episcopalians of St. Paul's knew a new bishop had been consecrated!

Travel was a major part of his life throughout his episcopate. He was on the road as much as eight weeks at a time, and in one of his earlier years as bishop he spent just eighteen days at home. The next year after that, 1892, the diocese was divided and Bishop Weed became responsible only for that part of the state north of a line drawn across the peninsula a little south of St. Augustine, Palatka and Gainesville.

Four years before the diocese was divided, Bishop Weed had led it through the first major crisis in his episcopate. He had been visiting Augusta when he was informed that yellow fever had struck Jacksonville. Hurrying home, he said years later that he would never forget "that empty train" which took him south to Jacksonville and the "the crowded trains" going north. The epidemic lasted from August until December. At one time, in reply to a friend who had offered help, Bishop Weeed wrote that three of his three clergymen in Jacksonville were down with the fever he was keeping another at the cemetery 'so that all shall have a burial,' and he himself was doing "all the work in the city.- A quarter-century later a churchman in Mandann reminded the diocese of Bishop Weed "devotion to duty, his courage and his humanity to all the people of Jacksonville when the dread scourge of yellow fever swept that city.-

There were to be two more crises within the ten years after the division of the diocese: Florida's "great Freeze" of 1894-95 and the Jacksonville fire in 1901. The freeze - or freezes, for there were two that winter - destroyed most of the diocese's citrus industry. "A serious disaster has befallen the state," wrote Bishop Weed. "Everything seemed full of hope last October ... The trial and struggle to raise sufficient funds to carry on the legitimate mission of the diocese ... seemed to be over ... The freeze of February dashed these hopes to the ground ... It will take years, in all probability, for the state to recover its former prosperity." Jacksonville's fire had a somewhat similar effect. It burned down most of the city, including the diocese's biggest church for white people and its biggest one for blacks. Bishop Weed himself paid for a temporary church for the white congregation and he persuaded the church's General Board of Missions to help the black congregation rebuild. He "fear(ed) the whole diocese will have to bear an increased burden on account of this fire - but it was not ended. He wrote in 1908 that the first twenty years of his episcopate had been a "succession of hopes and crushed hopes." but the crises were over and the work was going forward. He had written that "supporting the Missions of the Diocese" was "the paramount necessity." He wanted missions to be founded even though some would certainly fail because of the changing plans of railroads and the failures of business ventures - (But) suppose we do build a church in a place which becomes deserted ... The effort and labor has been a help to eternal souls, and we are not seeking to build monuments to our wisdom, we are seeking to help eternal souls." In 1886, he became a bishop, there had been forty-five congregations in the diocese, in 1892 fifty-four had transferred out of the diocese and fifty-one were retained; in 1924, the year of Bishop Weed's death, the diocese had sixty-eight congregations. He had been a builder; seventy-seven missions had been founded during his episcopate, before and after the division of the diocese.

Bishop Weed died on January 18, 1924, after seventy-seven years of life and thirty-eight as the Bishop of Florida. He was remembered by his contemporaries best of all perhaps, for his personal relationship with people - his friendship and cheerfulness. "Perhaps the American Church has never before known a more approachable bishop," wrote the rector and wardens of St. John's, Jacksonville; and, said another one of the clergy of the diocese, "He was a shepherd who knew his sheep. He would always ask you about some incident in your life .. that you had told him (about) on a previous visit. He was a real Pastor."