Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright I (February 24, 1792 – September 21, 1854) was a provisional Episcopal bishop in Manhattan, New York City.

[2] His father was a prosperous English tobacco merchant who emigrated from England to Boston and became a citizen after the American Revolution.

In 1837 he returned to Trinity Parish, New York, as assistant in charge of St. John's Chapel, which post he retained until he was elevated to the episcopate with the exception of six months' service in 1850 as rector-elect of Calvary Church in Gramercy Park.

He wielded great social influence, was a ripe scholar, and was a devoted lover of music, contributing toward its improvement in the churches of his denomination.

In 1844, he engaged in a controversy with his friend George Potts, which grew out of an assertion that Rufus Choate made at a celebration of the New England society.

The subsequent discussion with Potts, which was carried on in nineteen letters in the New York Commercial Advertiser, was published as a book No Church Without a Bishop; or, the Controversy between the Rev.

[1] Through his son John Howard, he was the grandfather of Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright (1864–1945), a U.S. Representative and United States Assistant Secretary of War.