Theodore Payne Thurston

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Theodore Payne Thurston (June 30, 1867 – January 28, 1941) was a bishop in the Episcopal Church and the first Missionary Bishop of Eastern Oklahoma. He also served as the Missionary Bishop of Oklahoma from 1919 to 1926, during a period when the two districts were merged.

Born in Delavan, Illinois, Thurston was the son of Benjamin Eaton Thurston and Mary Ann Siddall. He attended public schools in Philadelphia, Shattuck School in Minnesota, and Trinity College in Hartford, where he earned a BA in 1891 and a Doctor of Divinity in 1911. He studied at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, completing his training in 1894.

Thurston was ordained a deacon in 1894 and a priest in 1895. He served as rector of St. Paul’s in Owatonna, Minnesota, then in Winona, Minnesota, and later in Minneapolis from 1903 to 1911.

In 1910 he was elected Missionary Bishop of Eastern Oklahoma and was consecrated in 1911. When the districts were reunited in 1919, he became the Missionary Bishop of the combined Eastern and Oklahoma District, a post he held until his resignation in 1926 due to ill health. After 1928 the title was changed to Bishop of the Missionary District of Oklahoma.

Thurston was described as socially liberal and a low churchman. He married Jane Mitchell in 1904; she died in 1905. He then married Daisy Dean Carroll in 1920; she died in 1968. He passed away in San Diego, California, in 1941 at the age of 73 and was buried in Fairlawn Cemetery, Oklahoma City.