[3] Although he had attended Methodist prayer meetings as a youth, Wilmer decided that his life's work was to preach the gospel through the established Episcopal Church.

[5][6] For a year, Wilmer also served as the first rector of St. John's Church, on Lafayette Square across from what was then called the President's House in the newly created and laid out national capital of District of Columbia, but resigned that position to concentrate on his ministry in Alexandria.

Wilmer helped Virginia's second bishop Richard Channing Moore, who he, Meade, Edmund Lee, and Bushrod Washington convinced to accept the position headquartered at Monumental Church in Richmond) reinvigorate it more broadly.

The Evangelical Anglicanism movement of William Wilberforce as well as the moderation of Calvinist doctrine advanced by Charles Simeon influenced all these clergymen.

In June 1818, a year after the national general convention approved the creation of the General Theological Seminary in New York City, Wilmer became the first President of the Society for the Education of Pious Young Men for the Ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church in Maryland and Virginia, a position he held until leaving Alexandria for Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1826.

[15] The previous year, Wilmer had been one of three men delegated to raise funds for the General Theological Seminary in New York, with particular responsibility for fundraising in the southern dioceses, and he served on the GTS board of trustees from 1820 until his death.

[18] The journal was designed to "disseminate the principles of religion and piety," and Wilmer also became involved in several tract and prayer book societies.

[23] Meanwhile, Keith had moved from Georgetown to Williamsburg in 1820 to teach history and classics at the College of William and Mary, as well as to lead Bruton Parish Church—but his classes seemed unpopular and he never had more than one theological student at a time.

The committee appointed by the Virginia convention changed its mind about the proposed seminary's location—and accepted Alexandria after Hugh Nelson arranged significant funding and Wilmer offered space and persuaded Rev.

[25][27] In 1826, after lobbying by Moore (but refusing his offered position in Richmond), Wilmer moved to Williamsburg to become professor of moral philosophy and rector of Bruton Parish Church.

[33] Although Wilmer's salaries were considered large for the time, according to his son's biographer, he spent considerable amounts buying and freeing slaves, so when he died unexpectedly at age 44, the family was forced to rely upon the parish's generosity, and his widow moved back to Alexandria and taught school for several years to support the young family.

Soon after moving to Alexandria, Virginia, Wilmer married Marion Hannah Cox of Mount Holly, New Jersey, who died shortly after the birth of their sixth child in 1821.

Wilmer caused a scandal when he married Ann Brice Fitzhugh (1801-1854), two decades his junior, on February 5, 1823, but they had two children before his death and she raised her stepchildren.

[38][39] Wilmer's eldest son, William Porteus, died of yellow fever at age 21 shortly after his father's death, and both his brothers ultimately became priests.

Richard Hooker Wilmer, aged 11 at his father's death, worked to support the young family before beginning his clerical career.

His brother Simon held posts near the ancestral home in Kent County, Maryland, in Swedesboro, New Jersey, and later Radnor, Pennsylvania, but was disciplined by conservative bishop George Washington Doane for not giving up his affiliation with the Diocese of Pennsylvania under Bishop William White while serving as a supply priest for coastal New Jersey parishes without a rector following his departure from Swedesboro after his wife's death.

Simon Wilmer published a pamphlet in his defense, he ultimately married a wealthy widow and accepted a position near Washington, D.C., at Christ Episcopal Church in Accokeek, Maryland.