Edward T. Demby and Antoinette M. Demby papers

1893-1957

Bishop Edward Thomas Demby was a native of Wilmington, Delaware, born in 1869. He received his religious education at the divinity schools of Howard and Wilberforce universities, the University of Chicago, and the seminary of the Episcopal Diocese in Denver, Colorado. He was ordained Deacon at St. Paul's Church, Memphis, in 1899; ordained a priest in 1899; elected as Bishop Suffragan of Arkansas (for Colored People) and the Southwest Province in 1918 - the only black bishop of the Episcopal Church in the United States at that time. His career as an Episcopal clergyman spanned some forty years between 1899 and 1939, when he retired from the Diocese of Cleveland. Bishop Demby received a number of honorary degrees from Wilberforce University and other institutions. He died in 1957.

Antoinette Ricks Demby was a native of Cleveland, Ohio, born around 1870. She was an alumna of Oberlin College and was a member of Howard University's first class of nursing school graduates in 1896; she may also have studied at Tuskegee Institute. In 1902, Antoinette Ricks married Edward Demby. During the Spanish American War and World War I, she served as a nurse. She was also a Red Cross nurse in Cleveland during both World Wars, the first black registered nurse known to practice in that city. Throughout her career, Mrs. Demby practiced in a number of hospitals and private settings around the country, including Freedman's Hospital in Kansas City, Kansas, where she was head nurse. In addition, Mrs. Demby was principal of the parochial school of St. Michael's Church in Cairo, Illinois while her husband was vicar at the church in 1903. Mrs. Demby also died in 1957. The Dembys had one child, Thomas Benjamin, who died sometime before 1960.

Note: Various editions of Who's Who in Colored America, Who's Who In America were consulted, in addition to materials in the collection to compile the biographies of the Dembys.