Henry R. Percival

Henry Robert Percival (April 30, 1854 - September 22, 1903) was a prominent American Episcopal priest and author. After studies at the University of Pennsylvania and the General Theological Seminary in New York, he was made a deacon on May 27, 1877, and ordained to the priesthood on June 10, 1878. Percival served briefly after ordination at Grace Church, Merchantville, New Jersey, and as curate from 1878 to 1880 at a chapel of Christ Church, Philadelphia. He was elected rector of the Church of the Evangelists, Philadelphia, in 1880, and pursued a plan of Anglo-Catholic enrichment of its services; he oversaw the building of a new church beginning in 1885 and the planting of S. Elisabeth's Church as a nearby mission under the care of the Congregation of the Companions of the Holy Saviour and William Ignatius Loyola McGarvey. (Since 1922, the Evangelists church building has housed the Fleisher Art Memorial.) Percival retired as rector in 1897, citing ill health, and was succeeded by the Reverend Charles W. Robinson.

He was the author of an appendix on "The Theological Value of Incense" in The Case for Incense, submitted to His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury on May 8, 1899.

Percival received an honorary doctorate of divinity degree from Nashotah House Theological Seminary in 1891. He died in Devon, Pennsylvania and is buried at St. Peter's Episcopal Churchyard in Philadelphia.