JACOB MITZEL KOEHLER
1860 – 1932
On December 27,
1932, at the age of 72, the Rev. Jacob Mitzel Koehler, M.A., a retired
missionary, was stricken and died at home in Olyphant, Pennsylvania. A few months previous to his death, he
had suffered a stroke resulting in partial paralysis. His wife and five children survived him. The Rt. Rev. Frank W. Sterrett, Bishop
of Bethlehem, assisted by the Rev. Robert P. Kreitler, rector of St. Luke's
Church, Scranton, Pennsylvania, officiated at the funeral rites.
Koehler was born
in York, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1860; Jacob Mitzel Koehler inaugurated the
second generation of deaf clergymen.
He was the fourth deaf man to be ordained, and was 14 years younger than
the Rev. H. W. Syle.
Koehler lost his
hearing at the age of 12 years after an attack of spinal meningitis. His father was the principal of a
private school and had given him an excellent preliminary education, which he
completed with two years at the Pennsylvania School for the Deaf. In 1877 he entered the preparatory
class of Gallaudet College.
In 1879 he left college to establish a school for the deaf in Scranton,
Pennsylvania. In 1881 he resigned
his position as principal of the school over disagreement about methods of
teaching and became an itinerant missionary to the deaf in the Diocese
of Central Pennsylvania.
Koehler was the
first deaf man admitted to a theological seminary as a student. He commenced the course at the Divinity
School in Philadelphia in 1882. He
was ordained a deacon on June 13, 1886, at St. James' Church, Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, and ordained a priest on November 2, 1887, at Christ Church,
Reading, Pennsylvania, on both occasions by the Rt. Rev. M. A. DeWolfe Howe,
Bishop of Central Pennsylvania.
In January 1890,
he was called to All Souls' Church for the Deaf, Philadelphia, on the death of
the Rev. Mr. Syle, the founder and first vicar. He continued as missionary of the other dioceses in
Pennsylvania, Delaware, New Jersey and Maryland.
In 1903, Mr.
Koehler retired temporarily from Church work and spent several years in
commercial work. Opportunity to
serve the Church came to him again in 1909, when he was appointed missionary in
the Sixth and Seventh Provinces - the Southwestern and trans Mississippi
dioceses headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1917 he again retired and withdrew to his home in
Olyphant, Pa. without, however, ceasing his interest in the Church. He was always ready to attend
conferences and other gatherings and to write for the Church periodicals and Deaf
Mute Journals. In 1928 he was
automatically pensioned under the Church pension system.
Koehler held an
honorary Master of Arts from Gallaudet University, and was a past
president of the National Association of the Deaf (1896 - 1900), as well as the
Pennsylvania Society for the Advancement of the Deaf, and the Conference of
Church Workers-Among the Deaf. He
represented America at the World Congress of the Deaf in Paris in 1889, and
made three other trips to Europe.
He had knowledge of German, French, and Dutch. At the conventions and other meetings of the deaf he was
distinguished as a parliamentarian and a counselor. As an orator and writer, he was fluent, graceful, and
erudite. To the younger clergy he
was a commanding figure, a dignified personification of the voice of experience
in all matters connected with the education and evangelization of the deaf.
Note: Many years before he died, the Rev. R.
M. Koehler gave to his alma mater, Gallaudet University, a bust of the Rev.
Henry Winter Syle, which rests on a bracket in Chapel Hall. There is no mention of the donor.
Contributing:
Reginald L. Boyd
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