Samuel Fallows

Samuel Fallows (December 13, 1835 – September 5, 1922) was an English American immigrant, minister, lecturer, and author. He was the 9th Superintendent of Public Instruction of Wisconsin and served as Presiding Bishop of the Reformed Episcopal Church for 30 years between 1877 and 1922. During the American Civil War he served as a chaplain and later as an officer in the Union Army, receiving an honorary brevet to Brigadier General after the war.

Early life

Fallows was born in Pendleton, Greater Manchester, in England, and emigrated to the Wisconsin Territory as a child in 1848. His family settled at Marshall (then called "Bird's Ruins") in eastern Dane County, and established a farm. He worked as a farm hand to pay for school, becoming a Methodist minister in 1858 and graduating from the University of Wisconsin (now University of Wisconsin–Madison) in 1859. He was elected vice-president and principal of Galesburg University and served there for two years, then became minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church in Oshkosh, Wisconsin.

32nd Wisconsin Volunteers

Fallows was ministering to the Oshkosh church at the time of the outbreak of the American Civil War and did not volunteer in the first year of the war. In 1862, however, he resigned his ministry and enlisted for service in the Union Army, becoming chaplain of the 32nd Wisconsin Infantry Regiment under Colonel James Henry Howe. He served for a year with the regiment which mostly performed guard duty during that time to protect supplies and logistics along the Mississippi River in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. He resigned due to poor health on June 29, 1863.