Adam Empie (5 September 1785–6 November 1860), president of the College of William and Mary, was born in Schenectady, New York, and was the son of John Empie and Annatje Quackenbos Empie. He attended a private academy and in 1807 received an A.B. from Union College, in Schenectady. Baptized in the Dutch Reformed Church, Empie was ordained a deacon of the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1809 and began serving as an assistant minister on Long Island. In November 1811 he became rector of Saint James Parish in Wilmington, North Carolina. There he married Ann Eliza Wright on 24 March 1814. They had at least two sons and four daughters.

Throughout his career Empie suffered from ill health, likely the effect of asthma and rheumatism, and in 1824 he noted that he could not attend functions held outside at night because lights from candles and fires distressed his eyes. As Empie's career progressed, his life was increasingly characterized by a succession of new posts and relocations. Appointed the first chaplain of the United States Military Academy on 9 August 1813, he assumed his duties in May 1814. He served as treasurer of the academy from 1815 to 1816 and was also named acting professor of geography, history, and ethics, though there is no evidence he taught. Empie formally resigned on 30 April 1817, by which time he had already returned to Wilmington and resumed his post at Saint James. That year he helped found the Diocese of North Carolina. Empie served as secretary of the diocese and chaired its standing committee. He worked to solidify and expand the Episcopal presence in the state, and membership in his parish grew rapidly. An evangelical, Empie believed in the central importance of preaching, and three of his sermons appeared in a compilation entitled Southern Preacher: A Collection of Sermons (1824). The next year he published Remarks on the Distinguishing Doctrine of Modern Universalism, Which Teaches That There Is No Hell and No Punishment for the Wicked after Death (1825), a treatise denouncing the belief that all souls will be reconciled with God.

On 19 September 1827 the board of visitors of the College of William and Mary appointed Empie president of the college and professor of moral philosophy, and on 10 November the vestry of Bruton Parish Church, in Williamsburg, named him rector. Empie found the college in disarray. Financial troubles made it impossible to pay professors' salaries on time. Vacancies and turnover among the faculty created uncertainty about the curriculum, which in turn depressed enrollment. Unruly students destroyed college and town property, threw bricks into a meeting of the faculty, and even shot into Empie's house. His family suffered frequent illness, perhaps owing to a stagnant pool of water behind the president's house. Empie did little during his tenure to improve the school's infrastructure or revenue, though reforms instituted by the board of visitors early in the 1830s had produced an upswing in enrollment by the time Empie resigned on 2 July 1836, citing concerns about his family's health and his own financial situation.

As rector of Bruton Parish, Empie oversaw renovations to the church and doubled the number of communicants. About half the marriage services he celebrated each year were for free African Americans. Empie owned six enslaved persons in 1836 and eleven (eight of them children) in 1856. The growing influence of Baptists in the area led him to write Discourses on Immersion and Infant Baptism (1829), a treatise justifying infant baptism and denying the necessity of immersion. In 1830 Empie received a doctorate of divinity from the University of North Carolina. A self-proclaimed "High Churchman," he believed in strict adherence to the rubrics and canons of the church, though his bishop once overruled him when Empie wished to allow a nonbeliever to participate in his child's christening.

In 1836 and 1837 Empie served as rector, or president, of the Episcopal School, a short-lived seminary in Raleigh, North Carolina. In September 1837 the vestry of the newly formed Saint James's Episcopal Church, in Richmond, elected him rector. He guided the congregation as it raised funds for its sanctuary, which was consecrated in June 1839. Empie conducted a classical school for white boys and established a Sunday school for blacks. He served on the executive committee of the missionary society of the Diocese of Virginia. During the 1830s and 1840s he chaired the diocesan committee on the state of the church in Virginia, and in 1844 he represented the diocese at the Episcopal General Convention in Philadelphia. There he spoke against the Oxford Movement, which sought to tie Anglicanism more closely to Roman Catholicism, and consequently he was accused of having changed his religious principles since moving to Virginia. Widely respected in the Richmond community, he offered the opening prayer at the ceremony to lay the cornerstone of the monument to George Washington in Capitol Square in 1850.

Empie's wife died on 22 March 1843. Ten years later, when Empie retired to Wilmington in failing health, Saint James's was the largest Episcopal congregation in Richmond. Empie published Sermons on Various Subjects (1856) to defend the consistency of his theology, though half-paralyzed fingers, debilitating headaches, and poor vision had prevented him from composing new sermons after 1818. Adam Empie died on 6 November 1860 at the home of one of his sons. He was buried at Oakdale Cemetery, in Wilmington.

Sources Consulted:
Susan Taylor Block, "Bringing the Goodness of God to All: Adam Empie, Rector of St. James Church, 1811–1814, 1814–1827," Saint James Parish, Wilmington, N.C., Vineyard (summer 2007), 6; birth date on gravestone; Raleigh Register and North-Carolina Gazette, 22 Apr. 1814; Adam Empie Papers (including will dated 23 June 1856) and Adam Empie Faculty/Alumni File, Earl Gregg Swem Library, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg; correspondence in Ambler Family Papers (1772–1852) and Saint James's Church Records, both Virginia Museum of History and Culture, Richmond, in John S. Ravenscroft Manuscripts, Francis L. Hawks and General Convention of Early Episcopal Church Manuscripts, RG 117, Archives of the Episcopal Church, Austin, Texas, and printed in J. Johns, A Memoir of the Life of the Right Rev. William Meade, D.D., Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Virginia (1867), 170–183 (quotation on 171), and D. L. Corbitt, ed., "The Robert J. Miller Letters, 1813–1831," North Carolina Historical Review 25 (1948): 485–521; George W. Cullum, Biographical Register of the Officers and Graduates of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. (1868), 1:83; Richmond Portraits in an Exhibition of Makers of Richmond, 1737–1860 (1949), 62–63 (portrait); Susan H. Godson et al., The College of William & Mary: A History (1993), 1:233–245; Minor T. Weisiger, Donald R. Traser, and E. Randolph Trice, Not Hearers Only: A History of St. James's Episcopal Church, Richmond, Virginia, 1835–1985 (1986), 6–19; death notice in Richmond Daily Whig, 12 Nov. 1860; obituary in Southern Churchman, 16 Nov. 1860.

Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Susan A. Riggs.

How to cite this page:
Susan A. Riggs, "Adam Empie (1785–1860)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2023 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Empie_Adam, accessed [today's date]).

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