William G. McDowell

McDowell was ordained deacon by Bishop Beverley D. Tucker and priest by Bishop Alfred Magill Randolph in 1909. He then became rector Meherrin Parish, in Meherrin, Virginia, and in 1913 became rector of Emmanuel Church in Staunton, Virginia. From 1918 till 191 he served as a first lieutenant chaplain in the US Army during WWI. Later, in 1919, he served as a student pastor at the Alabama Polytechnic Institute (now Auburn University), where he remained till 1922.^[1]

In 1922, McDowell was elected Coadjutor Bishop of Alabama at a special convention at Carlowville, Alabama (Dallas County) and was consecrated on October 20, 1922, by the Bishop of Tennessee, Thomas F. Gailor. He then succeeded as Diocesan bishop upon the death of Charles Minnigerode Beckwith in 1928. He died on March 20, 1938, of pneumonia contracted during an episcopal visitation to the southern part of the Diocese.^[2]