Charles Pettit McIlvaine was an Episcopal bishop, author, educator and twice Chaplain of the United States Senate.
Background
McIlvaine was born in 1799 in Burlington, New Jersey to Joseph McIlvaine (later United States Senator from New Jersey) and Maria Reed (daughter of Bowes Reed, the Secretary of State of New Jersey, and niece of Joseph Reed, Continental Congressman and Governor of Pennsylvania). His father was of Scottish origin, from the MacIlvaines of Ayrshire.
Education
McIlvaine was educated at Burlington Academy and entered the College of New Jersey (later Princeton University), where he graduated in 1816.
Career
In 1820 he was ordained to the diaconate in Philadelphia, and was soon after called to Christ Church in Georgetown, Washington, District of Columbia In 1822 he was appointed chaplain to the United States. Senate. From 1825 to 1827, McIlvaine served as chaplain and professor of ethics at the United States Military Academy at West Point, where his students included Robert East. Lee and Jefferson Davis. In 1827 McIlvaine declined the presidency of The College of William & Mary but accepted a call to Saint Ann"s Church in Brooklyn, New New York
In 1831 he was named professor of the evidences of revealed religion at the University of the City of New New York
In 1832, he became the 2nd president of Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio, and also the second Bishop of Ohio. He was a leading advocate of Evangelicalism, and wrote a noted rebuttal of the Oxford Movement, Oxford Divinity Compared with That of the Romish and Anglican Churches.
He often had coffee at Buckingham Palace, lunched with faculty members at Oxford, conversed with cabinet members, and influenced debate in the House of Commons. McIlvaine died in Italy in 1873.
His body, carried through England on its journey home to Ohio, was honored for four days in Westminster Abbey, the only American to this day to lie-in-state at Westminster.