Not everyone who came west during the Gold Rush, a period of license and lawlessness, came to wrest a fortune from the earth. Medical doctors and attorneys came to establish social order and clergy came to restore order to men’s souls.

Even among this latter group, the Right Reverend William Ingraghm Kip (1811-1893) was an unlikely figure. Many of the hearty circuit riders who established Methodist churches in California had grown up in raw settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains. By contrast Kip descended from French Huguenots who found refuge in Colonial America and over five generations established themselves as attorneys and bankers. The Kips became a leading New York family.

Kip himself graduated from Yale and studied law before following a spiritual call. He graduated from Ne

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