Lemuel H. Wells - Bishop of Spokane: 1892-1915

Bishop of Spokane: 1892-1915

In 1892 the General Convention of the Episcopal Church divided the State of Washington into two Dioceses, the Episcopal Diocese of Olympia in the western part of the state, and the Episcopal Diocese of Spokane in the eastern part. It was Wells who determined on Spokane, WA as his See city, and he and his wife moved from Tacoma to Spokane after Wells was consecrated as the first Bishop of Spokane in New Haven, Connecticut in 1892. One of the Wells’ first acts in Spokane was to found another girls’ school – Brunot Hall, which was conceived and organized on the train ride back from New Haven following Wells’ consecration. While in Spokane he also founded St. Luke’s Hospital, Spokane. Wells became something of an international celebrity while Bishop of Spokane, being invited to two Lambeth Conferences in 1900 and 1910. While in England in 1900 he was seated next to Queen Victoria at a dinner, and amused her with stories of Ulysses S. Grant (under whom Wells had served during the American Civil War) and Abraham Lincoln, whom he had met on several occasions. The Queen, thinking that the "Washington" in which Wells served was the Nation’s Capital, and that Wells was a kind of chaplain to the President, invited him to family supper, and was not pleased to learn that her guest was, in fact, a missionary bishop in the rural northwest.