James Lloyd Breck

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James Lloyd Breck (June 27, 1818 – April 2, 1876) was an Episcopal priest, educator, and missionary in the United States. He is remembered on April 2 in the Episcopal Church calendar of saints.

Breck was born in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, the fourth son of Catherine Israell Breck and George Breck. He was baptized in 1821 at All Saints Church in Torresdale. At 15 he left for the Flushing Institute in Flushing, New York, where church life and teaching shaped him. He decided to become a missionary educator.

With support from Senator James Lloyd and his uncle, Breck studied at Flushing and then earned a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1838 and a BD from the General Theological Seminary in 1841. At the seminary he was influenced by William Whittingham, a scholar of church history.

In 1842, while still a deacon, Breck went to the frontier of Wisconsin to help found Nashotah House, a school, monastic community, and mission center. He was ordained a priest by Bishop Jackson Kemper at the Oneida Indian settlement.

Breck moved to Minnesota in 1850. He led the first Episcopal Eucharist in the La Crosse area and, two years later, began work among the Ojibway and founded St. Columba Mission. He earned the nickname “The Apostle of the Wilderness” for his outreach to Native Americans.

In 1855 he married Jane Maria Mills, a teacher at St. Columba. He opened a mission at Leech Lake in 1856 and, in 1857, moved to Faribault to start a clergy training school with the Rev. Solon Manney. That school became Seabury Seminary, later part of the Seabury-Western system.

Jane Breck died in 1862. Breck married Sarah Stiles in 1864. Three years later he moved to Benicia, California, to build more churches and schools there.

Breck died in Benicia in 1876 and was buried at Nashotah House; his body was later moved to the Nashotah campus.

His major legacies include Nashotah House, Seabury Seminary, and other institutions such as Racine College, St. Augustine College in Benicia, and St. Mary’s School in Benicia. Breck School in Golden Valley, Minnesota, is named after him.