Robert Lee Bloomfield

Robert Lee Bloomfield (December 1827 – 1916) was an American businessman and church-founder.

Early life Bloomfield was born in Rahway, New Jersey, in 1827. His father, Richard, died when Robert was nine.

Career In 1849, Bloomfield moved south to Athens, Georgia, where he opened a men's clothing store on the city's Broad Street.

Seven years later, in 1861, they built a home on Waddell Street, where their next child, another daughter, Elizabeth, was born on December 7. naming it for deceased shareholder Mary Baxter. It was completed in 1869, and consecrated on Easter Day 1871. Bloomfield delivered the first sermon. Its design was copied from a church that Bloomfield attended as a child in Bound Brook, New Jersey. After a financial depression hit Athens, resulting in a large fall in parishioners, the church closed in 1899.

Death Bloomfield died in 1916, aged 88 or 89. He is buried with his wife, who preceded him in death by ten years, at Oconee Hill Cemetery in Athens.

In 1931, the tower of Athens' Emmanuel Episcopal Church, for which Bloomfield "labored from the beginning", was erected in his honor.