Episcopal Press and News
Election of the Rev. Harold S. Jones in South Dakota
Diocesan Press Service. October 22, 1971 [96-4]
PIERRE, S.D. -- The Rev. Harold Stephen Jones, vicar of Good Shepherd Mission, Fort Defiance, Ariz., was recently elected Suffragan Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota. He is the first American Indian to be elected a Bishop of the Episcopal Church.
The Rev. Mr. Jones has indicated acceptance of his election subject to the required canonical consents.
Born in Mitchell, S.D., in 1909, he is a member of the Dakota (Santee) tribe. He worked his way through college by taking a variety of odd jobs, and by playing semi-professional baseball. With his savings, and with educational assistance from the government, just then inaugurating a scholarship program for Indians, he completed his college education, receiving the B.S. degree in education from Northern State Teacher's College, Aberdeen, S.D., in 1935. He received the L.Th. diploma from Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, Evanston, ll., in 1938. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1941.
He began his work as a missionary on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota and later served at the Cheyenne River Mission and at Trinity Church, Wahpeton, N.D. He was also director of Christian education for the Wahpeton Indian School for the National Council of Churches.
In 1968 he became vicar of Good Shepherd Mission to the Navajo in Fort Defiance and was instituted by Bishop Joseph M. Harte of Arizona as Canon to the Ordinary.
The Rev. Mr. Jones is married to the former Blossom Steele, also a Dakota, and they have one daughter.
The Episcopal Diocese of South Dakota, which covers about 77, 100 square miles, has 44 parishes and organized missions. There are 69 active clergy and a communicant membership of 10,350, half of whom are of Indian ancestry.
The Rt. Rev. Walter H. Jones, Bishop of South Dakota, at the time of his election in the spring of 1970, had expressed his desire for a Suffragan Bishop who, hopefully, would be of Indian ancestry.
