Backwoods Bishop
Jjnih's II.
О
ley iiioiicercd mightily in
the wilderness beyond the mountains.
By JOE JONES
Otey’s Road is a pleasant residential
street on a woodland hillside in Chapel
Hill. The origin of its name is a mystery
to most people and even to some who
live on it.
It was named for James Hervey
Otey. UNC alumnus, first Episcopal
Bishop of Tennessee, and co-founder
of the University of the South at Se-
wanee. Tenn.
When Otey was a UNC senior in
1X20 he fell in love with Miss Betty
Panned of Chapel Hill. Their courtship
included walks to a remote woodland
dell known to this day as Otey's Re¬
treat. The half-legendary spot, on the
banks of Morgan Creek, is near Oley's
Road.
Otey's marriage to Miss Panned gave
him a wife who accompanied him
across the mountains to uncivilized
lands, bore him many children, and was
his staunch helpmeet during a lifetime
of arduous missionary endeavor among
white pioneers and red savages.
(Young Otey himself reminded his
UNC classmates of a red savage when
he arrived in Chapel Hid from back-
woods Virginia. They nicknamed him
Cherokee because he was very tad and
had piercing eyes, dark skin, ill-fitting
clothes, and an awkward manner.)
Horseback and Afoot
James H. Otey was a son of Isaac
Otey of Bedford. Va.. a prosperous
farmer of good old English stock but
no religion. After his UNC graduation
he was asked to slay on a year as a
tutor, a post requiring him to lead the
campus chapel services. Lacking a re¬
ligious background, he was unprepared
for such duty until his roommate lent
him a prayer book. His study of it
aroused an interest that was to make
him one of early America’s leading
prelates.
After becoming an Episcopal priest
in 1827, Otey began his work beyond
the mountains in Franklin, Tenn.,
where he conducted church services
and founded and operated an Episcopal
academy. Already showing the quali¬
ties of a pioneer bishop, he could not
be held down to one mission and soon
organized another 18 miles away in
Nashville. He sometimes walked from
Franklin to Nashville, made the fires
in the church, conducted the services,
and walked back to Franklin.
Otey became Bishop of Tennessee in
1834. For nine years of his tenure he
was also Bishop of Mississippi. Arkan¬
sas. and Indian Territory. By horse¬
back and stagecoach, he covered this
vast field, preaching and organizing
missions. One of his letters said:
"If I had any curiosity to sec the
Red Man in his native haunts, it has
been fully gratified. One day’s ride of
40 miles took us on a trail through bogs
and swamps horrible beyond concep¬
tion."
At another time he wrote, "I have
visited, on an average, every congrega¬
tion of my diocese twice a year. I have
traveled by all sorts of conveyances, in
all weathers, have preached, labored
and taught from house to house, and
have traversed mountains and the wil¬
derness where no man dwelt."
Elisha Mitchell's Friend
Throughout his career Bishop Otey
maintained ties with his alma mater,
which conferred upon him the honorary-
degree of Doctor of Laws. He returned
to Chapel Hill in 1857 to preach the
baccalaureate sermon. In it he paid
tribute to his former UNC teacher. Eli¬
sha Mitchell, attributing to him a highly
beneficial influence on his own life. The
sermon proved to be an elegy, for with¬
in 30 days Mitchell was killed in a fall
on the mountain that was later named
for him.
A year afterwards, when Mitchell’s
body was removed from Asheville for
reburial atop Mount Mitchell, Otey
again returned to North Carolina to
conduct the funeral service there on the
highest peak east of the Mississippi.
Otey's zeal for the spread of the
church caused him to work constantly
for the establishment of what he termed
"a classical and theological seminary of
Bijhop Otey
learning." His diary indicates he
preached on this theme wherever he
went.
Finally, after 25 years of crusading
by Otey. he and six other bishops,
along with priests and laymen from all
the Southern dioceses, assembled in
1857 on Lookout Mountain near Chat¬
tanooga to organize such an institution.
They elected Otey its first president.
Honored Annually
The cornerstone of the school's first
building was laid Oct. 10. 1860, with
Bishop Otey presiding. Less than three
months later he was pleading with
Northern Bishops and members of the
U.S. Cabinet to take steps against
trouble between the North and South.
But war came, delaying further plans
for the University of the South, and he
never lived to sec its opening.
Bishop Otey died April 23, 1863. in
the new Episcopal residence built for
him in Memphis. He took his last com¬
munion on Easter Day of that year,
saying as he held the chalice, "I call
on all of you to bear witness that my
only hope of salvation is in the merits
of our lx>rd Jesus Christ."
Afterwards he told a friend. “I never,
in all my life, felt such readiness to de¬
part."
Otey is buried in the churchyard of
St. John’s at Ashwood, one of the old¬
est churches in Tennessee. Every year
at Whitsuntide a eucharist is held at his
tomb. Hundreds attend the annual ser¬
vice to hear prayers thanking God for
the faithfulness of the great Bishop and
asking rest and peace for his soul.
22
THE STATE. MAY 1973
