WILLIAM WEST SKILES

DEACON AND MISSIONARY, 1862
 

William West Skiles (October 12, 1807 - December 8, 1862) was a founder of the community of Valle Crucis, North Carolina in the 1840s, and builder of the region's first Episcopal church. He was born in Hertford, Perquimans County, North Carolina.

In December 1842, Bishop Levi Silliman Ives of North Carolina sent a priest to begin the Episcopal ministry in Valle Crucis Episcopal Mission. During the next 10 years, land was purchased, simple buildings were constructed to start the Mission School, and the Society of the Holy Cross, the first monastic order since the English Reformation in the 1500s, was formed. Ives sent William West Skiles to Valle Crucis to supervise the farming operation. Skiles was ordained a Deacon in 1845.

He died in 1862, and was buried at St John's Episcopal Church cemetery in Valle Crucis, North Carolina. His tombstone reds "Deacon. Monk. Missionary."

Skiles is memorialized at Valle Crucis as the "first person in the Anglican Communion since Reformation Days to persevere in the life of Poverty, Chastity and Obedience under Vows."

more at Wikipedia

See also William West Skiles : a sketch of missionary life at Valle Crucis in western North Carolina, 1842-1862, by Susan Fennimore Cooper (1890)