Bishops of Maine

Benjamin Brewster, fourth Bishop of Maine, was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He was a direct descendant of both Love Brewster, a passenger aboard the Mayflower and a founder of the town of Bridgewater, Massachusetts; and of Elder William Brewster, the Pilgrim colonist leader and spiritual elder of the Plymouth Colony, passenger aboard the Mayflower, and one of the signers of the Mayflower Compact. His brother was the Right Rev. Dr. Chauncey Bunce Brewster, the fifth American Episcopal bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Connecticut.

Brewster graduated from Yale University in 1882 and from the General Theological Seminary in 1886. He was ordained deacon in the Episcopal Church in 1886 and priest in 1887. He served at Calvary Church, New York City, Church of the Holy Communion, South Orange, New Jersey, and Grace Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado. He served on the standing committee of the Diocese of Colorado from 1897 to 1906 and was examining chaplain from 1900 to 1906. He was then Dean of St. Mark's Cathedral, Salt Lake City, Utah, and president of the council of advice for the District of Salt Lake.

On June 17, 1909, he was consecrated Missionary Bishop of Western Colorado. He was translated to be Bishop of the Diocese of Maine on June 7, 1916. As parishes and missions and a wide variety of summer chapels proliferated over the century and a half of Maine’s history, the challenges to Maine’s unity and identity as a diocese centered on its enormous geographical area and far-flung rural congregations, often sited in economically struggling areas. A central task of the diocese during the episcopacy of Bishop Brewster was to combat the “danger of losing a sense of corporate unity.”

Bishop Brewster announced in May 1940 that he would retire at the end of the year as Bishop because of his age, but his successor had not been named, and he was serving in the capacity of Bishop emeritus at the time of his death.

Benjamin Brewster, Fourth Bishop of Maine Portrait Photograph, August 2, 1940