From History of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Volume II, Publ. by The Western Historical Company 1881, Page 875-876

RT. REV. WM. E. ARMITAGE, D.D., Second Bishop of the Diocese of Wisconsin and first in charge of the Cathedral.  The following sketch of the life and services of this noble man is compiled from a memorial sermon delivered at All Saints' Cathedral, February 10, 1874, by the Rev. Dr. KeKOVEN, himself also since deceased.  "William Edmond ARMITAGE was born in the City of New York, September 6, 1830.  At the age of ten years he was made a member of God's Holy Church by baptism in St. John's church, Brooklyn, of which the Rev. Evan M. JOHNSON was at that time rector.  He was connected with the Sunday-school of the same church for several years as pupil, librarian, teacher and assistant superintendent, and in it he was confirmed and received his first communion.  Guided through his school life by the loving teaching of his uncle, Mr. Daniel P. BACON, he entered Columbia College at the earliest age the statutes of that institution permitted, and graduated with honor in the year 1849, at the age of nineteen.  From early youth he had determined to devote himself to the holy ministry and thus grew up with the shadow of the priesthood over him.  He therefore, immediately after his graduation, entered the General Theological Seminary in the City of New York, and after three years of careful preparation was ordained deacon by Bishop CHASE, of New Hampshire, in the church of the Annunciation, in the early Summer of 1852.  Called this same year to assist the venerable Dr. BURROUGHS, at St. John's Church, Portsmouth, N.H., he passed his diaconate and the first years of his priesthood there and at St. Mark's Church, Augusta, Maine.  It was in the latter place that, on the feast of St. Andrew, 1858, he married Charlotte Louisa, daughter of Mr. Allan LAMBARD, of Augusta.  During his residence in Maine he came under the influence of the amiable, devout and learned Dr. BURGESS, the first Bishop of that Diocese, who ordained him to the priesthood in September, 1854, and of whom he was wont to speak afterwards with loving gratitude.  It was in October, 1859, that he became the first rector of St. John's Church, Detroit.  The chapel and rectory had already been built by the earnest efforts of H. P. BALDWIN, the founder of the parish.  It was his aim with the same cooperation, to complete the work thus zealously begun.  A parish was formed, unequalled in the West for faithful labor, for perfect organization, for varied societies, for parochial work, and for a parish church, which, in stateliness, noble proportions, and convenient arrangement, was at once the _expression of the idea of his work and the instrument by which it was forwarded.  It still continues - a witness to the fruitful seed he planted, and to the blessing of God upon his own and the labors of them that have succeeded him.

In this church December 6, 1866, he was consecrated a Bishop in the Church of God.  For seven years, as a priest at the altar of St. John's Church, "he watched for souls as one who must give an account."  For seven years as a Bishop of the Church he wielded the pastoral staff and keys of heaven, and when the morning broke of the eighth year, which is the year of resurrection, he was at rest.  His life was very uneventful.  There is nothing stirring to mark it.  It was a life of patient dutifulness, of untiring industry, of affectionate apprehension about the operation "to which he was soon to submit, yet bearing in mind the death of a well-beloved priest under similar circumstances, he nevertheless wrote as thinking it wise to be ready for an unfavorable result.  It seemed too, as if the shadow of the Cross of Christ fell, especially upon the later years of his life, who patiently took up the Cross which was laid upon him, he added great self-denial.

Without any means of his own, except the salary he received from the Diocese, in all the journeys hither and thither which he took for Kemper Hall and the cathedral, he bore his own expenses, and was giving to the work he loved best, when God called him away, more than one quarter of his Episcopal salary.

"His Episcopal work is naturally divided into two portions - his labors as assistant bishop and the work that was properly Episcopal.  The assistant bishopric of Wisconsin in 1866 seems as we look back upon it, like none other.  With loving heart and affectionate reverence on the one side, with a father's counsel and a father's prayers on the other, the two bishops worked together until the thirty-first day of May, 1870, when the venerable Bishop was committed to the ground in the quiet church-yard at Nashotah leaving his bishop's mantle to fall upon the shoulders of Bishop ARMITAGE, and it was the legitimate result of the latter's labors as an assistant bishop, that he should have endeavored, with all the energy of his nature, to build the proposed monument to Bishop KEMPER, the permanent foundation of a school for girls at Kenosha, to be known as Kemper Hall."

"I now come to speak of his Episcopal work.  The defects in the Church organization which have resulted from the Church history in America, the past two hundred years have at various time occupied the thoughts, they are, and the labors of the members of the Church.  One of them, namely the See System, the Diocese of Wisconsin learned to believe in and to long for.  It was a noble thought, conceived in the full spirit of Catholic antiquity and of practical wisdom, that in the chief city of the Diocese there should be a central work which should be the heart of the Diocese.  The mind of the Church was reaming with the thought.  But it was not with Bishop ARMITAGE a question even to be decided.  He felt that he had been called to this especial work by the Diocese which had elected him.  By the hidden movement of his own heart, by the ordering of God's providence, by the voice of the Diocese of Wisconsin, by the direction and counsel of Bishop KEMPER, he felt himself called to bring into active operation the See System.

"Consider the work he attempted.  'The Milwaukee Church Union,' the 'Diocesan Book Store,' the 'Diocesan Paper,' the 'Diocesan Records,' the 'Diocesan Office'; a financial system which was to reach every member of the Church in the Diocese; the deacons of the Church gathered together in one place in a common brotherhood, the Clergy-house where he and his clergy were to live; and, last of all, the Cathedral itself.  It matters not whether these plans were all successful  Much of such work must be tentative, and much must fail through lack of zeal.  He was laboring for a great idea, and through failure or disappointment, whether men approved or disapproved, whither they sympathized or did not sympathize, he worked on.  Nay, even with the shadow of death upon him, he did not slacken, but worked on.  You know the end.  With the 'heavy burden of the work upon him, with the money that must be raised or his Cathedral lost, with the financial panic filling all hearts with sudden fear, with his work incomplete, with his labor unaccomplished, yet with the same unflinching courage he entered St. Luke's Hospital only to die.  If ever there was a confessor to a cause, and that cause a great one, this stainless Bishop was such a one.  In St. John's Church, Detroit, on December 11, 1873, in the midst of fathers, brethren, children with blended joy and weeping; weeping for ourselves, joy for a life well spent and a work nobly done, the funeral office was said.  He is a rest with the saints of God."

Submitted by Carol