Rev. Edward Ashley Biography

	This biography appears on pages 715-716 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. I (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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	REV. EDWARD ASHLEY, one of the prominent and honored members of 
the clergy of the Protestant Episcopal church in South Dakota, is a 
native of England and comes of staunch old English stock. He was born 
at Road Hill, Wiltshire, on the 12th of December, 1854, and is a son of 
Jacob William and Charlotte (Watts) Ashley, both of whom passed a large 
part of their lives in England, coming to this country and settling in 
Michigan in 1872. While in England they were communicants of the 
established church, in whose faith they reared their children. the 
father having been a sawyer by vocation. The subject of this review 
secured his preliminary educational discipline in the common schools of 
his native land, and thereafter learned the trade of carpenter. He came 
to the United States in 1873, at the age of nineteen years, landing in 
New York city on the 1st of September, reaching Muskegon, Michigan, 
where he secured work at his trade, while simultaneously he pursued in 
a private way the studies of a college course, including the classics. 
On the 8th of May, 1874, he began his services as a missionary teacher 
among the Sioux Indians in the territory of Dakota, in the meanwhile 
taking up the study of theology and being ordained a deacon in the 
Protestant Episcopal church on the 27th of November, 1 877, by Rt. Rev. 
William Hobart Hare, bishop of the missionary district of Niobrara. In 
1879 he entered the Seabury Divinity School, at Faribault, Minnesota, 
where he was graduated in June, 1881, with the degree of Bachelor of 
Divinity, while on the 3d of the following month he was ordained to the 
priesthood, receiving holy orders at the hands of Rt. Rev. William H. 
Hare, now bishop of the diocese of South Dakota. He was a missionary on 
the Crow Creek reservation from 1874 to 1879, thereafter was similarly 
engaged in service on the Sisseton reservation from 1881 to 1889, in 
which latter year he assumed his labors in his present important field. 
He has been successful in his work among the Indians, and his life has 
been one of consecrated zeal and self-abnegation, while in the early 
days he endured manifold vicissitudes, hardships and dangers in his 
earnest efforts to bring within the fold the unfortunate ward of the 
government. He has been at all times mindful of those "in any way 
afflicted in mind, body or estate," and has worked unceasingly, while 
he finds that his temporal reward has not been denied, in that he has 
brought spiritual enlightenment and grace to many of those to whom he 
has ministered in his divine calling. Since 1885 he has held the office 
of rural dean and examining chaplain of the missionary district of the 
state, as previously noted.  

	On the 6th of October, 1877, at Frome, Somersetshire, England, 
was solemnized the marriage of Mr. Ashley to Miss Elizabeth Ann Martin, 
who was born in that county, on the 26th of August, 1854, and who has 
proved a gracious and helpful coadjutor to him in his labors as a 
missionary. They have five children, Charlotte Jessie, Winona, who is 
the wife of Gervais Coulter, of Culbertson, Montana; and Edward 
Athelstan, Martin Anselm, William Cuthbert and Robert Laud. The 
respective dates of birth are as follows: December 21, 1878; December 
9, 1881; April 22, 1884; February 18, 1886; and July 28, 1891.  

	In politics Mr. Ashley maintains an independent attitude, giving 
his support to those men and measures of whom and which his judgment 
approves. Fraternally he has attained the degrees of ancient-craft, 
capitular and chivalric Masonry, in the York Rite, while in 1903 he 
passed the thirty-third degree in the Ancient and Accepted Scottish 
Rite, being identified with South Dakota Consistory, No. 4, at 
Aberdeen, while he is also identified with the Ancient Arabic Order of 
the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, the Modern Woodmen of America and the 
Modern Brotherhood of America. He is a man of genial and gracious 
presence and makes and retains friends in all classes, while among the 
Indians of the state he is well known, respected and admired.