Thomas Albert Andrew Becker
Thomas Albert Andrew Becker (Baker) was born on December 30, 1832, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to John and Susanna Baker. His father was a farmer who owned $790 of real estate by 1850. The family lived in Findley, Pennsylvania, and by 1850, he was working as a laborer. He attended the Allegheny Institute and the Western University of Pennsylvania, and he may have attended classes at the University of Virginia.
He converted to Catholicism in the 1850s, and he changed his last name to Becker. He travelled to Rome to attend the Pontifical Urban University, and he was ordained as a priest on July 18, 1859. He returned to America soon afterward and settled in Martinsburg, Virginia (present-day West Virginia). By 1860, he owned $100 of personal property. He helped care for his brother Samuel’s wife and daughter from around 1860 until at least 1887.
He supported secession and sided with the Confederacy. A Union general declared him a “thorough secessionist who prayed in his church for Jeff Davis and the Confederacy.” Becker “will not pray for the President and authorities of the United States.” He moved to Baltimore, Maryland, in the mid-1860s, and he worked as a professor of theology and ecclesiastical history at Mount St. Mary’s College.
In August 1868, he became the first bishop of the diocese of Wilmington, Delaware. He supported the temperance movement, and he established schools and orphanages. He remained in Wilmington until May 1886, when he was transferred to Savannah, Georgia. He travelled abroad in 1895, and his passport application described him as 5 feet, 6 ¼ inches tall, with “iron gray” hair and blue eyes. He died in Washington, Georgia, on July 29, 1899.
Image: Thomas A. Becker (courtesy Wikicommons)
DATABASE CONTENT
| (4453) | Becker, Thomas Albert Andrew ~ Baker, Thomas Albert Andrew | 1832-12-30 | 1899-07-29 |
- Conflict Side: Confederacy
- Role: Civilian
- Rank in:
- Rank out:
- Rank highest:
- Gender: Male
- Race: White
Documents - Records: 1
- (12460) [writer] ~ Thomas A. A. Becker to Elizabeth Baker, 25 February 1887
People - Records: 6
- (4453) Becker, Thomas Albert Andrew is the [sibling of] (4439) Baker, Joseph D.
- (4453) Becker, Thomas Albert Andrew is the [child of] (4440) Baker, Susanna
- (4453) Becker, Thomas Albert Andrew is the [sibling of] (4442) Baker, Elizabeth
- (4453) Becker, Thomas Albert Andrew is the [sibling of] (4443) Baker, James Renwick Wilson
Places - Records: 2
SOURCES
1850, 1860, 1870, and 1880 United States Federal Censuses, available from Ancestry.com; Appletons’ Cyclopedia of American Biography, 1600-1889, available from Ancestry.com; U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, available from Ancestry.com; The Eufaula (AL) Daily Times, 1 August 1899; “Thomas Albert Andrew Becker” Wikipedia profile, available from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Albert_Andrew_Becker; Thomas J. Peterman, The Cutting Edge: The Life of Thomas Andrew Becker (n.p.: W. T. Cooke, 1982)
