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Dakota Soul Sisters
Stories of the Women of the Dakota Missions
Lois A. Glewwe
The Cunningham Clan Comes West
Posted on November 8, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
On April 17, 1848, the Williamson family, which had been on furlough in Ohio since fall of 1847, left Ripley, Ohio, and began their journey back to Kaposia village in Minnesota. With them were Sylvester Cook, who was coming out to Kaposia as a teacher; and Miss Martha Ann Cunningham, who was embarking on a two-year commitment to the Dakota Mission.
This might be Martha Ann Cunningham; image is from the famous Ebell escape photo taken on August 20, 1862.
Martha was the daughter of William and Ellen Doak Cunningham. She had eleven brothers and sisters and was fifth in the family, born on December 20, 1819. In the culture of 19th century Ohio, a woman like Martha, who was already twenty-eight years old when she came to Minnesota, would have been considered a spinster. The opportunity to venture west was perhaps her last opportunity for some exciting new experiences before she settled into life as a single woman.
There is not a great deal of information about Martha in the source documents of the ABCFM. Thomas Williamson wrote to S. B. Treat at the mission board on April 19, 1848 to inform him that they were bringing Miss Cunningham out to Kaposia. On June 5, 1848, he informed Treat that they arrived home on May 5, 1848. He said,
"Miss Cunningham is helping Jane with teaching the girls. She came out at the Board's expense. She might stay two years. She remains very usefully employed which helps Mrs. Williamson and my sister, who have been in poor health. Once they are well, she will go to one of the Ponds."
That happened by October 20, 1848, when Samuel Pond wrote to Treat, "Miss Cunningham, a young lady who came out last spring with Dr. W. has come to reside with us so we are no longer destitute of a teacher."[1]
Jane Williamson appreciated Martha even during the journey from Ohio. She wrote to Elizabeth Burgess on June 9, 1848:
"I scarce know how we should have done had not the Louis included Miss Cunningham to come with us. We would feel it a great privilege to have her remain with us but as she is much needed at some of the other stations. If sister should continue better perhaps we ought not to wish it. She will be better and useful at either of the stations."[2]
Martha stayed with Samuel Pond's family at Shakopee until the spring of 1849, when she was to go to Traverse des Sioux and help Robert and Agnes Hopkins with the mission and school there. In July of 1849 Robert Hopkins wrote to S.B. Treat that he, Mr. and Mrs. Moses Adams, Miss Cunningham, and a number of Indians were leaving for Lac Qui Parle. Martha was assigned there to assist Mary Riggs.[3]
In her memoir, A Small Bit of Bread and Butter, Mary Riggs wrote that:
"When Mr. and Mrs. Adams returned here a Miss Cunningham from Ohio accompanied them. She has been at Mr. S.W. Pond's during the past winter and is now with us. I cannot but hope her stay with us will be a blessing to us all. I believe she intends returning to Ohio in the fall."[4]
Martha did return to Ohio sometime in 1850; unfortunately I have not found any mention of her departure but it is interesting to note that she was back in Minnesota in 1862 when the U.S. Dakota War broke out on August 18, 1862. [5] By that time, Martha was married and had two little boys. Her husband was James Brown Rogers, who had been married to Martha's sister Jane Cunningham Rogers from 1835 to1843, when Jane died, leaving an eight-year-old son, William Rogers, who was killed in the Civil War on September 11, 1864. James Rogers remarried to Nancy Ruder in 1846 and they had one daughter named after Jane, who was born in 1847. Nancy died six months after Jane was born on July 26, 1847.
When Martha Cunningham returned from Minnesota, she must have connected with her former brother-in-law, James Rogers, who was living in Indiana with his children from his first two marriages. William Rogers was Martha's stepson and nephew and he was already eighteen years old when Martha and James were married. Jane was Martha's stepdaughter from James' second marriage and she was five years old when James and Martha wed in Tippecanoe, Indiana, on April 14, 1853. Their first child, Edwin Cunningham Rogers, was born on April 27, 1857 and their second son, Franklin P. Rogers, arrived on September 8, 1860.
Hugh Doak Cunningham was with the group that escaped Hazlewood on August 18. His two sisters and wife were also with the group. This image is cropped from the famous Ebell escape photo taken on August 20, 1862.
By that time, Martha's brother, Hugh Doak Cunningham, had followed in her footsteps and come out to Minnesota in 1856 to work with Stephen Riggs at the new mission at Hazlewood. Hugh was thirty-four years old when he arrived in Minnesota. He had never married but must have graduated from some type of academy or seminary in order to be qualified to be a teacher and leader at the mission.
Hugh met Mary Beauford Ellison shortly after he arrived. Mary was just one of several Williamson family relatives who spent time working at the mission in Minnesota. She came out in 1856, but two of her brothers were among the first Williamson relatives to join the mission when the Williamsons were stationed at Kaposia. John Calvin Williamson and his brother, William Williamson Ellison, came to Minnesota by 1849. John was born on June 22, 1820 , and William on February 22, 1822. Their parents were James and Mary Beauford Williamson Ellison. Mary was a half-sister of Thomas and Jane Williamson, their father's daughter by his first wife. For the Thomas Williamson children, Mary and James Ellison were their aunt and uncle and their children were their cousins. Mary Ellison died in 1835 when John and William were fifteen and thirteen years old respectively. Their seven additional brothers and sisters ranged in age at that time from seventeen to four years old.
Mary Beauford Ellison married Hugh Cunningham in February 1857 in Minnesota. This image is also from the Ebell photo of the escape group on August 20, 1862.
John Ellison was at Kaposia with the Williamsons in 1849 when Alexander and Lydia Huggins came to the village to pick up their three oldest children who had been living with relatives in Ohio. When they returned to their home at Traverse des Sioux, they had a young man with them from Ohio, "an American named Ellison of a good family" Unfortunately the young man got knocked out of the boat and lost his glasses which was a serious problem since spectacles were hard to replace.[6]
William and John Ellison are both listed in the 1850 census at Big Stone Lake and Crow Village (Kaposia). Interestingly, John Poage Williamson, Thomas and Margaret Williamson's oldest son, is listed in the census of 1850 in Sprigg, Adams County, Ohio, with William and James Ellison's sister, Elizabeth Ellison Livingston, and her husband, Samuel Livingston. John Williamson was fifteen years old and was attending school in Ohio. The Livingstons lived at Jane Williamson's childhood home, The Beeches, from 1843 until Jane sold the property in 1856 so John Williamson had the opportunity to live in his grandfather's home where his own father had grown up.
William Ellison reportedly attended school at Kaposia when John Aiton was the government teacher there although he was nearly 30 years old. He is enrolled from October to December 1851 and June to March 1852.[7] That summer he was sent to the new Williamson mission site near the Upper Sioux Reservation to build the new house and mission there. Jane Williamson reported to her cousin, Elizabeth Burgess, about his work on the house in a letter dated November 19, 1852.
This is the only known image of the Williamson House at Pejutazee which William Ellison and his crew of workmen built in 1852.
"We arrived here Sat. evening. The next Tuesday morning Wm. Ellison and J. P. W. started down the former for Ohio. John and Andrew probably went to Galesburg, Illinois (Amos Huggins is there) but do not know certainly where they are. John had not entirely concluded when he left us and we have received no mail since we came here."[8]
William Ellison escorted John Williamson to Ohio, but returned to Minnesota and continued to help with construction at the new Williamson mission site known as Pejutazee and with the Riggs mission at nearby Hazlewood. He married Sarah Rebecca Pond, the third child of missionaries Gideon and Sarah Poage Pond, on May 10, 1859. Sarah had been born in 1842 at the Oak Grove mission in Bloomington, William was twenty years older than Sarah but they wed and had seven children between 1860 and 1880. William was fifty-eight years old when their youngest, Ruth Edna Ellison, was born on September 27, 1880. William and Sarah spent their lives in Bloomington, Minnesota, but William also invested in property in and around St. Peter or what was then Traverse des Sioux, Minnesota. In 1856 and 1857, he gave Thomas and Jane Williamson several properties, which is where they ended up living after the outbreak of the U.S. Dakota War of 1862.
William's brother, John Calvin Ellison, who had been with him at Kaposia in 1850, married Lydia Lockhart in Greene, Ohio, on March 9, 1852, but they returned to Minnesota and settled in Traverse des Sioux (now St. Peter, MN) where they raised their three children, James Ellison, David Ellison and Ada Ellison. Lydia passed away in 1874 at the age of forty-nine and John relocated to Missouri and then to Kansas where he passed away at the age of 94 in 1914.
William and John's father, James Ellison, had been a widow for many years and he moved to be near William, John and Mary by 1875, when he is listed in the census at Traverse des Sioux at the age of eighty-eight years. He became acquainted there with Jane Williamson, and was known to be very helpful to her when her eyesight began to fail in 1880. I have not found a date of death for James Ellison but he was born in 1787 and was still alive in 1883 so he was well over ninety years by that time.
We first meet William and John's sister, Mary Beauford Ellison, in a letter that Rev. Stephen Riggs wrote to S.B. Treat of the ABCFM on March 4, 1856. He told Treat that "Miss Mary Ellison has been teaching for 7 weeks and attended to the girls sewing in the afternoon."[9] Mary was thirty-eight years old when she came out to join her brother William at Yellow Medicine. From everything I have found in the source documents, Mary Ellison was not a missionary with the ABCFM. It appears that she may have come out to assist Mary Riggs at Hazlewood by teaching the Riggs own children and helping teach the Dakota girls and women skills like sewing.
In any case, Mary met Hugh Doak Cunningham at Hazlewood and they were married in 1857, either at Hazlewood or, as other records indicate, at Traverse des Sioux. Hugh and Mary Ellison Cunningham began their work at Hazlewood with Stephen and Mary Riggs in 1858. They were to be paid $350.00 a year and their board; but furnished their own bedroom. On June 12, 1858, Stephen Riggs told Treat that if they were good, he would expect the ABCFM to hire them and take responsibility for the school. [10]
Mary Huggins Kerlinger, writing in her journal in 1861, said:
"I came down that time with Mr. Cunningham manager of the boys boarding school must say here I do not think a more able pair for that work could have been found than he and his wife. They loved the children and exercised a wise and kindly discipline and the children loved them and improved rapidly." [11]
It is important to once again say here that the use of the term boarding school by Stephen Riggs and the ABCFM should not be associated with the horrific history of the federal government's Indian boarding schools of the 1870s-1960s. Dr. Thomas Williamson always refused to even consider running or being part of a boarding school because he had promised the Dakota people years earlier than he would never use the education funds provided to them under treaty for such a purpose. Stephen Riggs believed that the Dakota boys and girls would get the best education and access to opportunities if they lived under the same roof for months at a time and although he always encouraged the students to use the English they had learned, the Dakota mission had always stressed that learning to read and write in Dakota took priority at all age levels.
Mary and Hugh taught at the Hazlewood Mission from 1858 until 1862. This photo is one of the only images of the facilities that survived the war of 1862.
On February 12, 1859, Hugh wrote to S.B. Treat at the ABCFM asking that he and Mary be appointed as official assistant missionaries. He said that they had some scruples because of the board's stance on slavery but decided that it would be best. They were appointed by March 9, 1859. Treat wrote to the Dakota Mission that "Mr. Cunningham will be recognized as a member of the commission with all the rights of the older brethren."[12]
A small window into daily life at the school is provided in letters that Thomas Williamson sent to Selah Treat of the ABCFM in 1860. On July 20, 1860, Thomas mentions that,
"Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham are so dissatisfied with Annie Ackley's teaching they are threatening to leave and it would be very hard to replace them as the behavior of the children is improved since they came and the children love and respect them." A few months later, on November 23, 1860, he reported that, "Mrs. Cunningham became ill and Mrs. Ackley took over all the kitchen and sewing work and gave up teaching which she did for several months without complaint. Mr. C. failed to get help for his wife which made this necessary. Both Mr. and Mrs. C. are grieved that the children aren't making more progress and they are finding it difficult sustain their family on their allowance. They have been successful in teaching the children to speak English."[13]
Emma Cunningham was 26 years old when she came out to Hazlewood to visit her brother Hugh and his wife Mary. She got caught up in the outbreak of the war and had to flee with the Riggs escape group. This image is another from the famous Ebell photo of that group.
Hugh and Mary Cunningham were working at Hazlewood when Hugh's youngest sister, Marjorie Emma Cunningham, always known only as Emma, came out to Minnesota to help them in October 1861. Marjorie was twenty-six years old and she recorded her experiences in her journal from October 25, 1861 to May 2, 1863. Her observations about the other teachers at Hazlewood, her record of her daily activities and social outings, and her reflections on her adventure are filled with details of life at the mission.
One of her journal entries recently provided new information to today's members of the Williamson family. The date of Martha Williamson Stout's wedding was never recorded in any of the family tree information. But Emma's second entry in her journal on October 28, 1861, records that Emma attended Martha's wedding to William Stout at Dr. Williamson's home that very morning and that Hugh Cunningham took the newlyweds to Traverse des Sioux immediately after the wedding as they were headed for Ohio.[14]
One of the more significant passages in Emma's diary covers the weeks just prior to the outbreak of the U.S. Dakota War. I have included Emma's entries and some additional notes to clarify individual names and places.
"8/5/1862 – Some of the folks were very much frightened today about the Indians going to fight the white people. The difficulty arising about the Indians having to wait so long for payment but altho there is some danger of trouble quiet was restored by evening all was peaceable.
8/7/1862 – 11th anniversary of dear pa's death. (Pa" is William Cunningham, 1790-1851)
8/8/1862 – We have taken a boarder for a few days. He is an artist and has the use of two rooms. (This could very well be Adrian J. Ebell, who was a photographer who had come to the Upper Sioux Agency to take general photographs of the Dakota and the mission activities in August of 1862s. Ebell's photographs from August 17, 1862, the day before the war began and from the Riggs party escape are among the most famous and all have been used in Dakota Soul Sisters.)
8/10/1862 – When we got up in the morning, Doak went out to the stable and found Charley and Frank stolen. Some Indians broke the lock and broke the door down. (Emma always calls Hugh by his middle name of Doak.)
8/11/1862 – Just as breakfast began we were called to the door and there was Frank. Some Indian brought them back.
8/13/1862 – We were to have gone this morning to get our pictures taken but it rained and we did not get off until 11 o'clock we got the little boys and Jenne's but not the rest of us.
8/14/1862 – Went back to the Agency and got our pictures – Doak's and Mary's are very good but I don't like mine. After dinner, Mary and I called on Mrs. Givens and Mrs. Wakefield. (This indicates that Ebell was indeed taking photos of the individuals at the mission. Unfortunately, no known photos of the Cunninghams have ever been found. No doubt they were destroyed in the vandalism and destruction that took place during the war.)
8/18/1862 – Mrs. Pettijohn and her child came down in the afternoon on the way to Traverse des Sioux. Just as we were eating supper, word came that the Indians had killed some white people at the Lower Agency. Soon the children's parents began to come and take them away. Some frightened almost to distraction and urged to gather up and make our escape immediately. We retired but had not gone to sleep when we got word again that the Indians from above us and below us were preparing to make the attack about daylight. Our friendly Indians said we must go immediately. We did so. Mr. Riggs family and ours with Mr. Pettijohn. The Indians piloted us about 5 miles up the river and took us over the river in a canoe. Left us on an island where we were to hide in the bushes all day and when dark came they were to assist us to get away. In the meantime, Mr. Hunter had got his family over the river and had his two teams. My brother and Mr. Pettijohn went to try and get our teams and the rest of us started with Mr. Hunter's folks. My brother and Mr. P got only one of his horses and a buggy. The Indians would not let him take the other. We traveled briskly and stopped and laid down overnight. (The Pettijohns are Jonas and Fanny Huggins Pettijohn and their daughter Alice, who was eight years old. Marjorie does not mention Jonas and Fanny's sons William, who was ten years old, and Albert, who was twelve. Mr. Hunter is Andrew Hunter who is on the escape with his wife, Elizabeth Williamson Hunter, their two children, Nancy, aged 3 and John, who was just eleven months old; and Elizabeth's sister, Nancy, aged 20, and her brother, Henry who was 11.)
8/20/1862 – Cooked some meat and bread. (This is her entry from the day Ebell took the famous escape photograph.)
8/22/1862 – We stopped about 15 miles above Ft. Ridgely and saw Dr. W and his family approaching. They had left the night after we did and got on the trail.
8/22/1862 – Andrew said they couldn't get in the fort.
8/23/1862 – In the afternoon we came to the first house we had seen since we started. It was deserted people had left in confusion – went on mile after mile. Stopped at another deserted house and camped until morning.
8/25/1862 – We were still 12 miles from Henderson. Mr. Riggs family went to Henderson – the rest to St. Peter. We got there after dark. Place filled with soldiers and all rejoiced to learn we were alive. Doak, Mary and I spent the night at Dr. Daniels. (Both Asa and Jared Daniels were doctors and brothers. I don't know which one might have had a home in St. Peter in August of 1862, since both were working at reservations at that time.)
8/26/1862 – Mr. Livingstone from Mpls was in St. Peter. Mary and I came away with him we traveled as far as Belle Plaine.
8/27/1862 – Got to Shakopee and had dinner at Samuel Pond's where we met with the rest who had left us on Monday. Got to Mpls. that night – arrived here about midnight.
8/28/1862 – Too tired to get up
8/30/1862 – Mary and I went out shopping. Gideon Pond and John Williamson took dinner with us. (Apparently John P. Williamson, who had been away from the agency when war broke out, had returned from Ohio and was having dinner at Oak Grove in Bloomington, Minnesota with Gideon Pond, Emma Cunningham and Mary Ellison Cunningham.)
9/2/1862 – It is one year since I left home to come to MN. Mr. Riggs came to call. I expect to go in company with him and his sister as far as Chicago on my way home.
9/4/1862 – After dinner Doak took me down to St. Paul. I took the boat in the evening. Started home in the company of Alfred and Anna Jane Riggs. (Alfred and Anna were on their way back to their schools in the east.)
9/5/1862 – Stuck on a sandbar 15 miles from St. Paul.
9/6/1862 – Got to Prairie du Chien – took the cars to Chicago.
9/7/1862 – Got to Chicago at 6 am – put up at Biggs House. Alfred went to church – Anna and I laid down. In the evening we attended a large union meeting held for the purpose of taking measures to send for a memorial to the president on behalf of freeing the slaves immediately.
9/8/1862 – Got home – reached Logansport. (Logansport, Indiana)
5/2/1863 – Mary and Doak are in town."[15]
This photo of Emma Cunningham Shultz was taken when she was a much older woman living in Iowa where she and her husband, John Shultz settled.
What makes Emma's brief diary of special interest to researchers is the fact that she had not been identified for many years as one of the women who were part of the escape party on August 19, 1862. She just happened to be in a very wrong place at a very wrong time. After Emma got back to her family in Indiana, she married John Baughman Shultz on June 1, 1867, in Lee County, Iowa. They had communicated by mail while John served in the Civil War but there is no indication of how or when they met. They had two children, William, born in 1871 and Laura, in 1874. Emma was eighty-three years old when she died on June 20, 1917, in Cass County, Iowa.
Hugh Cunningham wrote an eloquent and detailed account of how he and Mary fled Hazlewood on the night of August 18, 1862. He recalled how the community around the mission became anxious and excited as news of the Indian attack on the Lower Sioux Agency spread. Many of the Dakota urged the Cunninghams to flee and the parents of the children in the school began to arrive to retrieve their sons and daughters while urging the missionaries to get to a place of safety. Hugh wrote:
"The first thing that convinced the more unbelieving ones of us of the reality of our danger was the stealing of Mr. Rigg's [sic] horses and wagon from Mr. Pettijohn, some two miles from our place, who was moving his family to Saint Peter. During the evening and fore part of the night the excitement seemed to increase. The Christian and Friendly Indians gathered about our houses and offered to protect us all they could, but said they were but a few when compared to the others. We felt as though we didn't like to expose them, to protect us when the odds seemed so much against us. They all gave one voice, and that was to get to a place of safety. We had, during the night, seen some of those who had come in, of the baser sort, trying to get the horses out of my stable, while that had taken several in the neighborhood. It was evident about midnight that the best thing we could do was to put ourselves under their care, follow their advice and the sooner the better.
"About one o'clock A.M., we left our homes, never to return. When we started we had but one two-horse team and a single buggy to carry twenty-two persons, mostly women and children. Some of our company thought we had best not try to take my horses as they would probably be taken from us. But we thought that we would only have to walk if they did, and we should start with them anyhow. Some of the Indians went with us as guides and guards. We followed them through the timber about three miles, to an Indian village, where we found some of our neighbors who had started before us. After a long council it was decided that we had better conceal ourselves on an island two miles from the village and wait till the next night before we went any further. This not at all agreeable to our feelings, but we submitted.
"Two men went with and ferried us across to the island in a canoe that would only carry about two persons beside the one who paddled it, at a time. We were all over in safety about daylight. When we got to our place of concealment we felt as though the flesh was weak indeed, and that is was necessary to rest if we could, which was a very difficult matter among the swarms of mosquitoes that infested the place. After an hour or so spent in our vain endeavors to court sleep, we gave it up; we arose and read a portion of scripture and committed ourselves to the keeping of Him who alone could grant us deliverance in such a time of distress.
"After so doing we partook of some refreshments, which consisted of about three small crackers, as our desire for food seemed to have left the most of us. The supply for the whole party was about three of four quarts of said crackers, but the Lord who fed the five thousand with but little more bread than we had could feed us also. Soon after we had thus refreshed ourselves, an Indian woman came with some forty or fifty pounds of provisions sister E______ had prepared and we had forgotten to take with us in our haste to be gone.
Rev. Stephen Riggs organized and managed the escape of forty-some individuals who fled from the Hazlewood mission and tried to reach safety at Fort Ridgley on August 18, 1862.
"Mr. Riggs and myself visited the village early in the morning where we learned that the work of destruction had commenced at the Agency, five miles from our homes, and that our houses had been rifled also. We soon returned [to] our hiding place, where we spent the forenoon in great anxiety, drenched with the rain and tormented by the mosquitoes.
"About one o'clock P.J., Mr. Riggs returned the second time from the village, with the painful news that the man he had left his horse with had refused to give him up, having heard that the owner had been killed, as he said, and he thought he had as much claim to him as anyone else. We immediately began to prepare for our departure. While the rest of the company were removing from the island to the other side of the river, Mr. Pettijohn and myself made another visit to the village to get my horses and secured one of them."
Hugh goes on to report that the group on the island ran into Andrew and Elizabeth Williamson Hunter and their children who were traveling with two other families from the mission. He was unable to catch up with them as a violent rainstorm prevented him from following their trail and he spent the night on the open prairie with the Dakota man who had been caring for his horses. Late the following afternoon three Germans joined them. They had left the group that was being led to safety by John Otherday. They rejoined the group from the island later that day. The story continues:
This is the famous Ebell photograph taken of the group that was fleeing the Hazlewood mission in August 1862 with assumed identifications, including women's eventual married names, all birth/death dates and ages at the time of the escape. Hugh Cunningham said that there were 42 people in the group by the time they reached the fort. There are fewer identified people in the photo but it is reasonable that some of them, especially the young boys, were not there for the photographer.
"Our company now numbers forty-two. The night passed slowly away to many of us. It rained the whole night, and until ten o'clock A.M. We started again, after committing ourselves to the guidance of Him who alone could guide in the path of safety. Cold, wet and hungry, we traveled until noon to get to a grove some ten miles from us, and then had to stop two miles from it. Dead Wood island is surrounded with a marsh and some lake. Six others and myself went forward, I leading the way through grass higher than our heads and water to our knees a good portion of the way. By the time we returned, some of the others had butchered a calf and many of the juveniles were soon roasting or warming meat on a stick and eating it. We passed the afternoon at this place and started the next morning, somewhat refreshed.
"At noon we stopped at Birch Cooley, about five miles from the Lower Agency, where we were joined by Dr. Williamson, wife and sister. We then learned that we were in the midst of danger. When the first part of the Dr.'s family started, he was determined to stay and see it out. Said he was willing to die then if it was the Lord's will. Sometime the next night he started, accompanied by several of the Indians who had stayed by him the whole time guarding him and his property as best they could. After a short rest and consultation, it was decided to reach Fort Ridgley that night, which was some fifteen miles distant – at that time surrounded by the hostile Indians. This was somewhat of an undertaking, with worn-out ox teams. Some distance above the Fort evidence of the work of destruction which had been done and was still going, began to increase. About five miles about the Fort we passed the remains of a dead man."
Picture depicting Fort Ridgley in 1862. Hundreds of refugees from the war tried to find safety at the fort but many, like the Riggs group, were turned away for lack of room and provisions. Creator: Paul Waller Photograph Collection ca. 1862 Location no. MN2.7F p40 Negative no. 13718
Hugh explains that when they came near the Fort, Andrew Hunter crawled on his hands and knees until he got inside and spoke with the commander who advised him to keep going and try to make it to Henderson because the fort was full of refugees and in danger of being attacked again. He returned to the group with this news and the party argued about what they should do. The Dakota that had attacked the fort were camped less than a mile away so at ten o'clock that night, the group got moving again, leaving the road and going across the prairie until two o'clock in the morning when it was too dark for them to see. Hugh continues:
"About nine in the morning we stopped for breakfast, and to rest our worn –out teams. At one o'clock P.M. we stopped at the first house we came to, where we spent several hours refreshing ourselves. We traveled that night until eleven. As we had been during the day, were still in sight of the burning buildings. The next morning being the Sabbath we were a little later in starting that usual. We had now reached the settlements, but the settlers had all fled.
"We traveled that afternoon only about six miles, when we reached a place where there were a number of settlers collected to protect themselves. We stopped near them, having heard that reinforcements had past [sic] on their way to Fort Ridgley. In the afternoon we had religious services, and O, what a precious season that was. We felt that we had been under the special care of Providence, that we had put our trust in Him and had been so far delivered.
St. Peter, Minnesota, was not a bustling commercial center in 1862 when hundreds of refugees poured in seeking safety in 1862. This photo of the downtown was taken in 1867.
"The next morning, after having spent a week together in the most trying circumstances, we separated, never to meet again in this world, some of us going to St. Peter, and others going to Henderson, St. Paul, and further on, we going with the former party. We reached our place of destination sometime after dark, weary and worn, without anything of this worlds goods but what we had worn away.
"Then and not until then did we realize the danger to which we had been exposes, and what a signal deliverance the Lord had granted us while so many other had met with a worse fate." [16]
Hugh and Mary Cunningham joined John P. Williamson and Bishop Henry Whipple at Fort Snelling to assist in bringing Christianity to the Dakota who were being held there in the aftermath of the war.
Hugh and Mary stayed with friends in St. Peter for the weeks following the end of the war in September 1862. They also traveled to St. Paul once the Dakota women and children and men who had not been found guilty in the trials of early October were relocated to Fort Snelling. There they assisted John Williamson with the ministry to the Dakota in the encampment. In May of 1863, the Dakota at Fort Snelling were moved from the encampment to the new reservation at Crow Creek, South Dakota. John Williamson accompanied them and was to be the lead mission worker there. Hugh and Mary wanted to go out there to assist him in his work but had to wait until hearing from the ABCFM as to where they would be assigned.
On November 10, 1862, both Hugh and Mary testified that Thomas Williamson's claim for his family's losses in the war was accurate. In December Hugh wrote to S.B. Treat to tell him that he wanted to open an Indian boarding school near Gideon Pond and needed the $1,000 that Stephen Riggs had asked the board for. Treat responded that he didn't think it was wise to open a new school anywhere in Minnesota until they learned where the Indians would be sent.[17]
Hugh wrote to Treat again from Minneapolis on February 6, 1863. He shared that they didn't know where they were going to live and that they had two Dakota girls with them and expected to take Simon Anawangmani's son with them when they left. They said they would leave him with his brother-in-law where he would be under good influence. Treat advised Hugh to submit a voucher for payment of his salary and expenses from July 1, 1862-October 1, 1862, and to mention that the school had ceased operation on August 19, 1862 because of the war.[18]
John Williamson had some concerns about their plans. He wrote to his father.
"Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham are already connected with the mission and it would seem more appropriate that they should come but I don't think they would want to come to teach such a school and if they did they would be suited to the place. We want to teach Indian here and they don't understand it enough to teach it well. I don't think that cousin Mary's health would stand it."[19]
Mary and Hugh Cunningham worked with John Williamson at the Crow Creek reservation in South Dakota from 1863 until 1864. The Dakota were moved to a new and much better area in Niobrara, Nebraska in 1866.
Later that spring, still without a new posting, Hugh and Mary made a visit to Illinois. They planned to visit friends and family and raise money for what they hoped would be a new mission. They returned to Minnesota, and although they had not received official permission from the ABCFM, they made the journey out to Crow Creek, South Dakota, where John Williamson was heading up the new mission and school at the reservation there. John Williamson wrote to his father on December 14, 1863, and said that Hugh and Mary were teaching about thirty students in English while Edward Pond has enrolled 131 students in Dakota school.[20]
Conditions at Crow Creek were deadly for the Dakota with many dying of illness and starvation. The land was not suitable for farming and there was no game nearby. Many of the missionaries began to complain to the government that the place was completely unsuitable and to petition for a reservation in a better location.
Hugh and Mary also had to leave for a time to take part in their own hearing concerning what kind of settlement they were to receive from the government for their losses experienced as a result of the war. The hearing took place at St. Peter, Minnesota on September 13, 1864. Hugh and Mary were seeking compensation of $$3,310.83 and Stephen Riggs testified on their behalf. He told the court that the Cunninghams' house had been completely destroyed, burned down with all the buildings at Hazlewood by the Indians.
Hugh himself testified that they had lost everything owned and had only retrieved one horse and buggy after the war but that the horse had been so misused that it was worth little and the buggy was worth no more than $25.00 in its damaged condition. He also mentioned that his sister Marjorie had included $120 or $130 worth of items, all clothing, that she had lost in the war. After describing the furniture and carpeting that had been in their home, he and Mary submitted the following:
"p. 10 The wash bowl & Pitcher was large stone Cantesnumerate (sp?) Crockery
Item 99 cost amt charged in Cincinnati
Some of the books his father had, the others were mostly new.
Had the dress coat 2 years, cost $18 or$20
Had one of overcoats 5 years but seldom wore it – had wore out 2 others in the time
Some of the shirts were half worn – Had two pair woolen shirts and 2 pr drawers – Most of the Window Curtains were curtain calico
The Cupboard was Basswood, with paint worn off 3 x 4 with door 4 shelves
Kept a lot of thimbles for the indian [sic] Girls to sew with: had been in the habit of keeping a lot of such things on hand as the Squaws were constantly coming there and offering to work for such things 0-
The bill of Dry Goods is estimated – they were turned over by the Department for the use of the Indian Children as their share of the annuity Gods, and belonged to them as such
Items from 95 to 302 were purchased by me for the indian children, intending to draw their money annuities to pay for them – but the outbreak occurred before the payment consequently I never did. I had paid for them.
The Pork was salt about 1/3 of the bbl had been used
The "Childrens Clothing and Girls Clothing"
p. 11 come under the 2nd Exception before referred to –
Our fiscal year ended in December. We had made the estimates for that year at the October previous. It amount to $1,150.00 and it was allowed by the Board. This was for the Boarding School alone – and had drawn about $570 of it – Most if not all of the clothing had been purchased or made since the preceding fiscal year – and some of it had been dealt out to the children and worn by them – At the time of the outbreak there were 11 children in the school and boarding with me.
Had about 5 acres under cultivation – about 4 acres of potatoes, ½ acre beans, acre corn, ¼ acre rutabagas and a patch of peas.
The Garden was about 1/3 of an acre – with raspberries set on three sides, thinks there were 100 of them, some been set 2 and some 1 year, about 75 strawberry plants, and about 50 Gooseberry bushes.
H.D. Cunningham
Mrs. Mary B.E. Cunningham
Being duly sworn says she is wife of claimant and at the time of outbreak was living at Hazlewood, and assisted to make the Schedule attached to his complaint (and being particularly interrogated as to the articles in Schedule says)
As to items 1-4-5, 20 to106; 108 to 159 to 161 to 322
p. 12 325 to 373 & 380 she knows of her own knowledge and can describe them as to quantity and quality – but as to the other items she knows they had articles of the kind but cannot speak the number of value thereof.
That she escaped with her husband and all the property was left behind –
That the prices charged for the articles she knows are no more than they were worth then and there –
Cross Examined
The witness being interrogated at length as to the Schedule among other things said,
That the Feather beds would not weigh less than 25 lbs each as she believes,
One of item (44) was about 5 yards long, one 4 and one 3-1/2 – item 45 were about same size
The Sheets were all for double beds
Item 50 were larger but plain – The Velvet bonnet was new – it belonged to my sister. The Silk had more than a year. The Crape [sic] Shawl cost $14, 12 years before but was as good as new – The Bracket cost $15. One of the silk dresses was black – had it 4 or 5 years the other a fancy one, almost new belonged to my sister
The Wood delain was almost new
Had the Poplin and Ginghams a year –
Sister left 2 calico dresses which are not in the bill
p. 13 Had the quilted S____ a couple of years
The number of yards of Dry goods charged and estimated – they had several whole pieces of Goods – thinks they had 4 pieces of Calico –
Thinks they had more than charged as there were several remnants which she forgot when the bill was made. Had 40 yards of one kind of Gingham
2 dress patterns of another and some remnants
Had 2 whole piece Bleached Muslin, and remnants of 3 others – Had more than 2 dress patterns of Debayr, (sp?) and one whole piece of one kind of ________ and parts of three others colored,
All the goods turned over by the department and comprised in items 258 to 272 inclusive
Had 2 entire pieces of Bleached muslin and remnants of several which with made more than one full pieces- Thinks they had over 50 yards of Delaine
Item 313 had not been worn at all
The Feathers were indian feathers."
In the end Hugh and Mary were paid $2,700 for their claim, not quite the $3,310 they had hoped for.
Although they remained as teachers at Crow Creek, by January of 1865, Hugh and Mary were in Greenwood, South Dakota, trying to set up a new mission on the Yankton Reservation there. In the fall of 1864, the ABCFM Report for October 1865 informed readers that:
"Last autumn, Mr. C. endeavored to commence operations among the Yankton Dakota but there was not sufficient encouragement to justify an y considerable effort on their behalf as his services are not required – his connection with the Board has been terminated. He returns, however, with the respect and confidence of the committee."[21]
Apparently Greenwood had not worked out as hoped. Thomas Williamson wrote in the Missionary Herald of 1865 that Hugh had suspended the school at Greenwood as of January 15 since the head chief is now a Romanist and there are French Romanists who have married Dakota women.[22]
Gideon Pond founded the Oak Grove Presbyterian Church in Bloomington, MN and Mary and Hugh Cunningham were members there in the last few years of Hugh's life, even as they operated their own combined denominational church.
At some point after leaving the ABCFM in 1865, Hugh and Mary moved to Bloomington, Minnesota, where they eventually affiliated themselves with Gideon Pond's Oak Grove Presbyterian Church. In the 1865 census they had three Dakota children living with them, Samuel, Mary and Jennie, and ten years later, in the 1875 census, Hugh is listed as a farmer in Bloomington.
By 1876, Hugh and Mary were the hosts of a combined denominational church and Sunday School in Bloomington. Hugh was the pastor of the Plymouth Congregational Church and he became superintendent of the Bloomington Ferry Church for twenty years while Mary taught the younger children. Preachers came from Oak Grove or Eden Prairie Methodist Church so they met at 2:30 p.m. on Sundays.
In the 1880 census Hugh and Mary are listed in Bloomington. Living with them are Fanny Stout, aged twenty. Fanny was Mary's niece, the daughter of Mary's oldest sister. Also with them is a boy named James Cunningham, aged ten, who is listed as an adopted son. I have not been able to determine if this James was Dakota or white, and his name only occurs in this specific census. In the Iape Oaye newspaper of July 1882, Mary B. Renville wrote that the Cunninghams were doing real home mission work and have one of the largest Sabbath schools and care for the loved ones. A large farm does not hinder them from doing Christian work.[22] The loved ones Mary refers to are likely Mary's father, James Ellison, and Jane Williamson, who came from St. Peter to live with the Cunninghams at some point between 1881-1883.
By 1885, Hugh and Mary were living with Mary's brother, William Ellison, and his family in Bloomington Ferry, Minnesota. William and his wife, Sarah Pond Ellison, built the Bloomington Ferry house. Their children living at home were Emma, 23; Sarah, 22; George, 19; Mary Margaret, 16; Esther, 15 and Ruth, 4. By that time, Jane Williamson had apparently moved to Greenwood, South Dakota, to live with her nephew, John Williamson, at the Yankton Reservation and James Ellison had passed away.
Hugh continued working with the church through Christmas of 1896 and passed away on January 17, 1897. His obituary, from the Cunningham family tree on Ancestry.com records the following:
"Cunningham-Hugh Doak, died on Sabbath morning Jan 17 at his home in Bloomington, Minn in his 75th year of age…The departed was one of the excellent of the earth. In early life he gave his heart to Christ, and united with the Presbyterian church in Ohio. He ever maintained a true and consistent Christian character. He gave forth in his life the unmistakable evidence of being one of God's saints. He was preeminently a man of prayer. Prayer was his daily delight. He was an ardent lover and student of God's holy word; it was his daily manna. He had a remarkably clear insight into its meaning. He loved the house of God and found a pure joy in her praises and worship. He was a most sincere and earnest servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. His life was devoted to the up building of his Master's Kingdom on earth. The last twenty-one years of his life he was the faithful and beloved superintendent of a Sabbath-school near his home. He laid down the sacred office only three weeks before he entered upon his eternal rest and reward.
"In his death Oak Grove Presbyterian Church lost a valuable and much esteemed member and elder. He leaves in his world to mourn her loss, a dearly beloved wife, who for many years walked by his side in sweet and loving fellowship. May the God of all grace comfort her in this her great sorrow. 'Precious is the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.' S.W.L"
After Hugh's death, Mary moved to Humboldt, Kansas, where her brother John Ellison and his family were living. She spent the final years of her life with John and visited other family members in the south. On Sunday morning, February 18, 1906, she died at Denison, Texas, at the age of eighty-eight years. Her obituary tells her story:
Mary and Hugh were married for 39 years when Hugh died in 1897. Mary moved to Kansas to be near her brother John and his family and died there in 1906. She is buried in the Ellison family cemetery in Humboldt, Kansas.
"Mary B. Ellison was born May 2, 1817, in Adams county, Ohio. United with Presbyterian church when quite young. Married to H.D. Cunningham in Feb., 1857, and the next year they took charge of a boarding school for Indians, in western Minnesota, and continued in that work until the Mission was broken up in 1862. Then made Minneapolis their home until the death of Mr. Cunningham in 1898 [sic]. Since then Mrs. Cunningham has resided with relatives here at Humboldt and in the south. She died Sunday morning, Feb. 18, (1906) at Denison, Texas.
"The body was brought here (Humboldt, KS) and the funeral services were held at the Presbyterian church Tuesday at 10:30 a.m., Rev. R.C. McQuesten in charge. The interment took place in the Ellison cemetery, southwest of town.
"The deceased was a sister to J.C. Ellison and he has the sympathy of many friends in this affliction.
"Mr. and Mrs. J.C. Blair, of Denison, Texas, nephew and niece of the deceased, accompanied the remains to Humboldt.
"Humboldt Union
Like so many of their colleagues in the mission in Minnesota, the Ellisons and Cunninghams influenced not only generations of Dakota students but also left their mark on Minnesota.
[1] Thomas Williamson to S. B. Treat, April 19, 1848; Thomas Williamson to S.B. Treat, June 5, 1848; Samuel Pond to S.B. Treat October 20, 1848; ABCFM Corres., Box 1, MNHS.
[2] Jane Williamson to Elizabeth Burgess, June 9, 1848, Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College, Item 15, Folder 2.
[3] Robert Hopkins to S.B. Treat, June 4, 1849; Samuel W. Pond to S.B. Treat, July 12, 1849, A Corres., Box 1, MNHS
[4] Maida Leonard Riggs, Editor, A Small Bit of Bread and Butter: Letters from the Dakota Territory 1832-1869, Ash Grove Press, South Deerfield, MA, 1996, p. 192
[5] The Cunningham's experiences in the days following the beginning of the U.S. Dakota War on August 18, 1862, are well documented in Marjorie Emma Cunningham's diary and in Hugh Doak Alexander's written account of their escape. Neither one mentions that their sister Martha Ann Cunningham Rogers was in Minnesota when the war began. The only mention of her being there is that her trunk was lost during the escape. She and her husband are identified in the famous Adrian Ebell escape photograph of the Riggs Party but it really is unclear if she was actually in Minnesota at that time. The Cunningham family tree on Ancestry.com indicates that Marjorie and Hugh were definitely in Minnesota but doesn't mention Martha.
[6] Alexander Huggins Journal, Huggins Digitized Collection, MNHS. Although Alexander Huggins doesn't provide a first name for the Ellison boy, in John Ellison's obituary in 1914 it mentions that he was not able to enlist in the Civil War because he had always suffered from eye problems so we may assume it was John who lost his glasses.
[7] Aiton Family Collection, Kaposia attendance roster, MNHS. I am not sure that the William Ellison listed on the roster is the William Ellison from Ohio. It was very common for the missionaries to give Dakota children the names of their own relatives as a way of honoring their family. The William Ellison at the school could be a Dakota boy.
[8] Jane Williamson to Elizabeth Burgess, November 29, 1852, Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College, Item 19, Folder 3
[9] Stephen Riggs to S.B. Treat, March 4, 1856, ABCFM Corres, Box 1, MNHS
10 Ibid., June 12, 1858
[11] Mary Huggins Kerlinger Journal, p. 198; Huggins digitized collection, MNHS
[12] Hugh Cunningham to S. B. Treat, February 12, 1859, MNHS, ABCFM Corres. Box 1. Several of the missionaries were expressing concern about the ABCFM's official position on slavery by this time. The mission board was very cautious about its donors and supporters in the south and how they might react to a strong abolitionist stance.
[13i] Thomas Williamson to S.B. Treat 7/28/1860 and 11/23/1860. MNHS, ABCFM Corres., Box 5. Annie Ackley's story is told in a future Dakota Soul Sisters post.
[14] Marjorie Cunningham Diary, 1861-1863; October 28, 1861; NW Missions Manuscripts, MNHS P489. Readers who are interested in the details of the Williams family genealogy may want to note that William Stout, the young man who married Martha Williamson at Pejutazee in 1861, was the son of Mary Ellison Cunningham's oldest sister, Kathryn Beauford Ellison Stout. William was Mary Ellison Cunningham's nephew and he had come out to visit them at Hazlewood when he met Martha Williamson. Martha was only sixteen years old when she and William were married; William was twenty-two.
[16] H.D. Cunningham Statement reproduced in A Thrilling Narrative of Indian Captivity: Dispatches from The Dakota War, by Mary Butler Renville, Edited by Carrie Rebar Zeman and Kathryn Zabelle Derounian Stodola, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln and London, 2012, pp. 192-197.
[17] Hugh Cunningham to S.B. Treat, December 1, 1862 and S.B. Treat to Hugh Cunningham, December 29, 1862, MNHS, ABCFM Corres., Box 7
[18] Hugh Cunningham to S.B. Treat, February 6, 1863; MNHS, ABCFM Corres., Box 7 and S.B. Treat to Hugh Cunningham, February 6, 1863; MNHS, NW Missions MS P489
[19] John Williamson to Thomas Williamson, July 7, 1863, MNHS, ABCFM Corres., Box 7
[20] John P. Williamson to Thomas S. Williamson, December 24, 1863, MNHS Williamson Papers, P726, Box 1
[21] AMCFM report for October 1865, MNHS, N.W. Mission MS P. 489, Box 21
[22] MNHS, Missionary Herald, 1865, p. 71. Romanists were members of the Roman Catholic church. In Hugh Doak Cunningham's family tree on Ancestry.com, the reporter indicates that Hugh and Mary went to work with the Chippewa for two years, from 1865-1867. I have not been able to confirm that information.
[23] Mary B. Renville entry, Iape Oaye July 1882.
Posted in Elizabeth Williamson Hunter, Fanny Huggins Pettijohn, Jane Smith Williamson, Lydia Lockhart Ellison, Marjorie Emma Cunningham Shultz, Martha Ann Cunningham, Martha Williamson Stout, Mary Ann Clark Longley Riggs, Mary Ann Longley Huggins Kerlinger, Mary Beauford Ellison Cunningham, Nancy Hunter Lindsey, Ruth Edna Ellison, Sarah Rebecca Pond Ellison	| Leave a comment
The Hancock Wives – Martha, Sarah and Juliet
Posted on October 31, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
In a lovely setting in Oakwood Cemetery in Red Wing, Minnesota, six tombstones tell the sad story of Joseph Woods Hancock, his three wives and two young children.
Joseph was born in Oxford, New Hampshire, on April 4, 1816. He went on to graduate from an academy at Bradford, Vermont, and taught in various schools. In 1841, he headed west and made it to Quincy, Illinois, where he met John Aiton at the Quincy Mission School Institute where John Aiton's father-in-law, Moses Hunter, was the principal. At the time, neither young man knew that they would soon be fellow missionaries in Red Wing's village in Minnesota Territory.
The natural mineral springs at Saratoga Springs, NY, were known to the Iriquois early in the 1700s as a source of healing. The Grand Union Opera house, pictured here was part of the world's largest hotel built by Gideon Putnam beginniing in 1802. The hotel was demolished in 1953. According to legend, the creation of the potato chip is associated with Saratoga Springs. The legend holds that a diner visiting the restaurant Moon's Lake House in Saratoga Springs in 1853 was unsatisfied with the texture of the fried potatoes he had ordered and sent them back to the kitchen multiple times in protest. The chef, George Crum, allegedly became so annoyed with the customer that he sliced the potatoes much thinner than he usually would, covered them in salt, and deep fried them. The customer was finally satisfied.
In any case, Joseph Hancock's name became known to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) as early as January 24, 1846, when Thomas Williamson wrote to David Greene: "A classmate of John Aiton's is an excellent teacher and will be sending you testimonials." [1] Joseph, however, didn't follow up immediately but did find a temporary position in Iowa where he taught at the Winnebago mission. He also traveled to Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, and taught there for a while but soon found that although he had come west because he had been told the climate would benefit his health, he didn't feel any better and returned east, settling in Saratoga Springs, New York, where the natural springs assisted in restoring his health.
Dana, Massachusetts was an up and coming community when it was incorporated in 1801. Martha's parents moved there from Vermont in the 1840s. Today Dana is nothing but a ghost town with only the original roads and a few stone walls and foundations remaining. The state of Massachusetts disincorporated Dana in 1938 and the entire area was flooded to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir to provide water to Boston. Dana, however remains above the water mark today and is open to the public. This marker informs the public that the city is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Joseph Hancock married Martha Marie Houghton on August 21, 1846, in Dana, Massachusetts. It may be that Joseph met Martha while he was attending the Academy at Bradford, Vermont, which was about fifty miles south of Martha's family's home in Sutton, Vermont. By the time of the marriage, Martha's parents had moved to Dana, Massachusetts. Martha was the ninth of eleven children born to Captain William and Marilla Clay Houghton. There were five girls and six boys in the family. All of her older siblings were married and settled in their own homes by the time Martha and Joseph married when Martha was twenty-six years old and Joseph was thirty. Only Martha's younger siblings, Henry, who was twenty-three, and Marilla, who was twenty one, were still single and living at home.
Martha's younger brother, Henry Oscar Houghton, was the founder of today's Houghton-Mifflin Publishing Company in 1872, and served as the Mayor of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1872-1873.
After their wedding, Martha and Joseph settled about 160 miles north in Saratoga Springs, New York, where Joseph had a position as a teacher. They welcomed their first child, Marilla Persis Hancock, on March 28, 1848. Joseph himself described what happened next.
"During the latter part of the year 1848 an invitation was sent me by a former fellow student to join him in laboring as a missionary among the aborigines of our country. He was about to graduate from the theological seminary near Cincinnati, Ohio. I had left my studies on account of poor health five years previously, and had been residing at Saratoga Springs, N.YH. My heath had so much improved, by living at the Springs several years, that I had married and was engaged in teaching school there.
"After due consideration of the matter, my wife and I concluded to offer our services to the American Board of Foreign Missions, to labor among the Dakota or Sioux Indians. Our offer was accepted and a commission was sent to us from the officers of the Board.
"But it was now too late in the season to undertake the journey to the Northwest Territory. Facilities for traveling, especially in that direction, were not what they are now. Such a place Minnesota was not then known. The location assigned to us was described as follows: 'An Indian village on the west bank of the upper Mississippi river, a few miles above Lake Pepin.'
"We postponed our journey till the following spring. During the month of March in that year, a new territory, called Minnesota was formed by act of the United States Congress. So we learned, before we left the East, that our future home would be in Minnesota Territory."[2]
Martha and Joseph visited friends in Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts during April 1849 and met with the officers of the mission board at Boston, returning to Saratoga Springs in May. They then packed up their clothes, furniture and supplies and had them shipped to Galena, Illinois, where they hoped to reclaim them in a few weeks.
Joseph Hancock was 30 years old when he married Martha Houghton, who was 26. He was not an ordained Presbyterian minister but was still hired by the ABCFM to go to Minnesota to work at the Dakota Mission at Chief Wakute's village named Red Wing.
The first leg of their journey was made by stagecoach. They took the train from Schenectady to Buffalo, New York, and then came to Chicago, Illinois, by steamboat. Joseph purchased a horse and wagon in Chicago and proceeded to Galena, Illinois, to retrieve their belongings and board a steamer for Minnesota. Joseph described this part of the journey:
"This was by far the most toilsome part of our journey. The highways were scarcely changed from their natural condition. The streams were without bridges, and many swampy places let our wagon wheels sink so that we were often 'stuck in the mud.' But we struggled on, gathering rich experience for future work in a new country, and after several days arrived safely in Galena. At that place we were detained a few days waiting for a steamer to take us to the end of our journey.
"Our freight, shipped from Saratoga to this place, had not yet arrived. Being instructed by the missionary helper who was already at Red Wing, I purchased a stock of provisions and groceries, and also a good milch cow, while in Galena. With these additional equipments, we were transported on the steamer Franklin to our future home in a wigwam village."[3]
It is hard to imagine how Joseph and Martha managed to pull their wagon out of the mud considering that they had a fifteen month old toddler to care for on their journey. Martha no doubt was responsible for Marilla's care and safety. None of the source documents regarding the care of children on the trail mentions how parents could sleep outdoors and still make sure that children didn't wander off in the night. It is also difficult to understand how Joseph knew the way from Chicago to Galena, Illinois, without a guide to direct the way. Martha no doubt was relieved when they finally made it onto the steamer at Galena and headed for St. Paul. They had the experience on board of meeting Henry Rice, a prominent Minnesota fur trader and politician, during their journey. Joseph and Martha also made several acquaintances among the other passengers.
Henry Lewis created this lithograph of Red Wing's village in 1855. Tatankamani was the most famous of the line of hereditary Dakota chiefs known as Red Wing by the whites. When he died in 1829, his stepson and nephew, Wakute, was named chief and was the leader of the village when the first missionaries arrived in 1838. He welcomed Joseph and Martha Hancock when they arrived in 1849 and encouraged people to attend and support the mission school.
When they arrived at Red Wing on June 13, 1849, Joseph described the welcome they received:
"As we slowly approached the shore, a large number of Indians from the village had collected, evidently eager to know why a steamboat should stop at their port. It was a strange sight to many of the passengers on board the boat, who were on their way to the new towns of St. Paul and Stillwater, to see such an array of painted faces gazing at them.
"The Indians seemed glad to see us who landed among them. Men, women and children, all gave us a hearty hand shake. Our belongings were soon dumped ashore, with the exception of the horse and cow. These two animals stoutly objected to being sent ashore. It was mainly by human strength that they were compelled to walk the plank. Evidently they had not been acquainted with painted faces and blankets. The thought of being now far separated from friends and excluded from the civilized portion of the world was not a pleasant one to us, but it seems a greater grief to our horse and cow.
"There were three white persons then living in the village who soon met us with a hearty welcome and assisted us to establish our home in a log-house. These were Rev. John F. Aiton and wife, who had been here a few months only, and Mr. John Bush, who had married an Indian wife, and who had been sent here to assist the natives as a farmer."[4]
All of the Dakota missions used Dakota grammar books like this with simple illustrations to help Dakota children learn to read and write in their own language.
Martha thus found herself in her first Minnesota home. The cabin had been built by the Samuel and Persis Dentan who had come to the Red Wing mission on behalf of the Swiss missionary group in 1837 and it was very comfortable. There was a small garden fenced with rails, and the house was quickly made ready for its new residents. Joseph and Martha spent most of that summer learning the Dakota language and working with the children of the village to become acquainted with them and determine the best way to teach them to read and write. Fellow missionaries sent them Dakota language primers that they had developed with simple words in English and Dakota illustrated with clearly understood drawings. Martha appreciated the friendship and assistance that Nancy Aiton was able to provide. Nancy and John Aiton's first child, Thomas Aiton, was just two months old when Joseph and Martha arrived at Red Wing in June 1849, so the two women shared childcare challenges together.
Like their fellow missionary teachers, Joseph and Martha were frustrated that some of the Dakota parents did not want their children to attend school at all and the children who did attend often stayed away for days or weeks. They were not accustomed to being made to stay in one place for any length of time and would come and go in and out of the classroom during the day. Joseph learned to bribe them with cakes and boxes of raisins that he would give as a reward at the conclusion of classes to convince the children to stay in the classroom.
In late summer, the older students were unable to attend school at all since they were needed to chase the blackbirds away from the corn as it became ripe. Once the corn was harvested, the Dakota began to make preparations to leave the bark houses they used in the summer and take their teepees and go away from the village to their winter hunting grounds. Most of the families were gone from Red Wing by the end of October. Joseph and Martha were left to resume their study of the Dakota language as they, too, prepared for the winter months.
Dr. David Lowry was assigned to the Winnebago reservation in Long Prairie, MN, in 1848. He is the one who convinced Joseph to leave Red Wing and join him because Joseph had worked with the Winnebago in Iowa years earlier.
Then in early November, Rev. David Lowry showed up at Red Wing and urgently requested that Joseph and Martha go with him to Long Prairie, Minnesota, where they were need as teachers at the new government school there. Joseph had worked with the Winnebago band in Iowa earlier and decided that it made sense for them to proceed to Long Prairie rather than spend the winter at Red Wing without any Dakota in the village. They embarked on the 150-mile journey northwest through completely unoccupied territory.
Joseph described their trip as follows:
"Packing up such clothing as would be needful, we were soon on board a steamer for St. Paul. From thence we traveled to Long Prairie in a lumber wagon drawn by two horses. At St. Paul we obtained a supply of provisions for the journey to the Winnebago reservation. The distance was said to be 150 miles, through an uninhabited wilderness. Our load was four passengers with their baggage and a driver. We left St. Paul on a Monday morning and arrived at our destination on the following Saturday. It was a long, lonely journey through the wilderness, the more fatiguing because on frozen ground. Through the forest the road passed over stumps wide enough for a team to go through.
"We camped out at night by the primitive roadside, sleeping on the ground in blankets and buffalo robes around the campfire. We cooked our fresh beef by holding it on sticks before the fire. Such traveling was indeed a novelty. On the last day of the trip, while going over a stump, one of the axletrees of our wagon was broken and we were at a standstill for a short time. Soon, however the living part of the expedition was moving on, some going on horseback and the rest on foot, leaving the lumber wagon and heavy baggage to be sent for another day. We arrived at our destination on Saturday evening after dark."[5]
In 1848 the U.S. government removed the Ho-Chunk (Winnebago) from their reservation in the northeastern part of Iowa to Long Prairie in Minnesota Territory. The Ho-Chunk found the land at Long Prairie a poor match for their needs as farmers. In 1855 they were moved again, this time to a reservation in southern Minnesota. Martha and Joseph spent the winter and spring of 1849-1850 with the band at Long Prairie, MN. This photo of a typical Ho-Chunk village was taken by the Whitney Gallery.
The school at Long Prairie consisted of a building with two large rooms, one for the girls and the other for the boys. School attendance was very different that the Hancocks experienced at Red Wing. There were fifty to seventy students in class each day and Joseph and Martha only taught in the English language.
When spring of 1850 arrived, Martha and Joseph received word that they were urgently needed back at Red Wing. John and Nancy Aiton were anxious to leave the mission there and return to Illinois. Joseph was told that if he and Martha didn't return the mission at Red Wing would close.
Joseph doesn't mention any problem with this movement to and from Long Prairie but apparently the mission board didn't know what was going on. John Aiton wrote to S.B. Treat at the ABCFM on October 30, 1849, to say that Joseph and family were on their way to spend the winter with the Winnebago. John reported that he had paid Joseph the $250 that he had drawn from the board in the spring.[6] Joseph wrote to Treat, but not until January 1, 1850 when he informed him that he and Martha were with the Winnebago until the spring and that they had eighty scholars and four teachers.[7] There is no indication that Treat responded to Joseph but on January 24, 1850, he wrote to John Aiton and told him that he had no information on Joseph's movement and doesn't know why he left Red Wing. [8] Treat's reaction implies that although Joseph Hancock was in Minnesota Territory under the auspices of the ABCFM, he was really a government teacher and not a mission school teacher. He was not an ordained minister either so perhaps his connection to the mission board was not as clear as that of the other mission leaders.
In any case, Joseph and Martha remained with the Winnebago until June of 1850 when they returned to Red Wing. Martha was seven months pregnant when they embarked on this trek back to Red Wing. Joseph described their journey as follows:
"The spring had been backward and rainy. Streams and swamps were almost impassible for teams; and therefore, after due deliberation, we concluded to travel by water. We took the longest way around to be our shortest way home. Obtaining a skiff, we started on the Long Prairie river, which runs northerly and empties into the Crow Wing river. The latter runs easterly, and we were informed, would convey us to the Mississippi river.
"It was a bright morning in June when we went aboard our boat. Besides myself, wife and our little child, a young man, wishing to leave the place, took passage with us for St. Paul. He was a great help to us, being skillful in the use of oars. With our necessary baggage we took provisions for several days, because we could not expect to see any human habitation until we should arrive at Fort Ripley. This fort was at the time occupied by United States soldiers, and was on the Mississippi a few miles below the mouth of the Crow Wing river.
"We enjoyed our first day's journey down the winding stream, till the middle of the afternoon. Then we noticed that some clouds had begun to spread over the sky, hiding the sun. Soon muttering thunder was heard and evidently a shower was near. We turned our boat to shore and had just time to haul it upon the land and turn it bottom upwards, putting ourselves and lading underneath it, when the rain began to pour down in torrents. Shower after shower followed till night came on and we remained there until the light of another day dawned upon us. The clouds had disappeared and we launched our boat again.
"Still and smoothly we passed along the winding stream. Before noon we entered a forest. As the forest became more dense our river began to widen out until it seemed to be covering the whole country. The frequent rains had caused a flood. Keeping as best we could in a northerly direction, we soon found that we had left the true channel by going into a bay. After rowing about between the tall trees for some time, and watching the course of the currents, we found the way back into the Crow Wing river.
"There we turned easterly, and had been pursuing our new course but a few hours when we were overtaken by three long birchbark canoes, filled with Indians. It was a delegation of Menomines [sic], who, with their agent, had been looking over the country for desirable place for settlement. They were now returning home. They came alongside with about twice our speed. Seeing one white man among them, I hailed him for information as to our present distance from Fort Ripley. He did not know the distance, but they expected to reach the fort by sunset of that day. It would be impossible, however, for us to get there in our skiff till near midnight. I asked them to take Mrs. Hancock and our baby aboard, and to put them in care of an officer's family at the fort. They granted my request and the three canoes were soon out of sight."[9]
Joseph, of course, has nothing to share with the reader about how a very pregnant Martha felt about being sent off in a canoe with a total stranger and three Indians. Unlike some of the Dakota Soul Sisters, Martha is completely silent. I have never found a letter, a note or any kind of memoir of hers in any of the sources. In any case, she and Marilla, who was now two years old, were cared for at Fort Ripley and Joseph joined them there the following day.
Upon reaching Red Wing, Martha and Joseph and Marilla were warmly welcomed by the Dakota. John and Nancy Aiton had departed for Illinois two or three days earlier so they immediately began to take on the responsibility of the school and continue their study of the Dakota language. Joseph had bought a hand bell in St. Paul and the children soon learned to assemble for school when they heard the bell. He continued to give them raisins at the end of the day as an incentive for them to return the next morning.
Joseph submitted his annual report to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in the summer of 1850. He said that he had begun his work at Red Wing on July 18, 1850, and that he had twelve boys and five girls in school who are regular in attendance. He wrote: "In intellectual capacity I do not find the North American Indian inferior to the Anglo Saxon one."[10]
The Dakota men and women frequently dropped in at their little cabin, sometimes to ask for a little sugar or flour but Joseph reported in his memoir that they always bought payment in the form of some fresh fish, a piece of venison or wild fowl. On August 25, 1850, Martha gave birth to the couple's first son named after Joseph, but always known as Willie. There is some indication in the source documents that Martha may have gone up to Kaposia to stay with the Williamsons when Willie was born. That would make sense since she and Joseph were working alone at Red Wing and it would have been difficult for Martha to keep an eye on Marilla while awaiting a new baby. In July of 1850, Joseph and Martha were joined by Sarah Rankin, the seventeen-year-old sister of Nancy Rankin Adams, the wife of Rev. Moses Adams. Sarah had come out to join them in their work at the mission at Lac Qui Parle in May of 1850. Shortly after Sarah arrived, Nancy became ill and she and Moses returned to Quincy, Illinois. Sarah was going to accompany them back east but instead chose to remain with the mission and was sent to Red Wing to assist Martha Hancock and Nancy Aiton with their children.
It is clear from the historical record that Martha became ill in the winter of 1850-1851. The History of Goodhue County, Minnesota records that, "After two years of service among the Sioux her health gave way and she died on March 21, 1851."[11] Joseph wrote to S.B. Treat of the ABCFM the following day.
"My dear companion, the wife of my youth, my dearest earthly friend, has ceased of her labors. How suddenly, how unexpectedly she was called away! Her toils are ended. She has entered her rest. Died on the morning of the 20th. Two motherless children are left to me. The elder is not quite 3; the youngest only 7 months. Dr. Williamson came down to officiate. Miss Williamson is also with us. She attended Mrs. H. during the last 12 days of her life with all the care of an affectionate sister. Mrs. H's parents reside in Dana, MA. I have written to them but perhaps a few words of sympathy from you might be a comfort to them in their distress. Capt. Wm. Houghton, Dana, MA."[12]
Joseph shared his tribute to Martha for the Missionary Herald:
"A letter from Mr. Hancock, dated March 22, announced the death of Mrs. Hancock at Red Wing two days previously. She was the daughter of Mr. William Houghton, of Dana, Massachusetts. Her health has not been good since August last, though she seemed to be gaining strength during the first part of the winter. Having been quite anxious to prepare herself for usefulness among the Dakotas, her zeal has probably been too great for her physical ability. 'Her death was peaceful and happy. She had a hope which was an anchor to her soul, in the hour of dissolution.' She was asked several times, Mr. Hancock says, 'when conversing upon the approach of death, whether she regretted having left her friends, to die so soon among the Dakotas' and she always answered that she did not in the least regret having become a missionary, and her only sorrow was that she had been able to do so little for them. She expressed a desire to live, that she might train up the two children which God had given her, and labor in other ways for his kingdom and glory. At the same time, however, she was willing that her Heavenly Father should do what seemed to him good. 'The Lord is good' she often exclaimed. 'He will do what is right. I commit my husband and my children to his kind care.' She had but very little pain till the last ten hours of her life and then it was so slight, and so different from what she had anticipated that she could hardly believe herself dying. She always said that she dreaded the valley of the shadow of death, but the Good Shepherd took away all her fears, and made her pass through it without being conscious of her state. How sweet the surprise must have been, when she found herself beyond the place which she so much dreaded, without having experienced the least of her fears!"[13]
Jane Williamson had been with Martha at Red Wing since early in March and Thomas Williamson came to the village to conduct the funeral service. Martha was the first white person buried in Goodhue County, Minnesota. John and Nancy Aiton rejoined the mission a few weeks later and went to Red Wing to help Joseph care for seven-month-old Willie and little Marilla. Sarah Rankin remained with the missionaries at Red Wing until late October 1851 when Moses and Nancy Adams returned to the mission at Lac Qui Parle with Sarah.
That same fall, Joseph took Marilla and Willie to Kaposia where they stayed with the Williamsons while Joseph attended the annual meeting of the Dakota Mission. On his way back to Red Wing, he stopped to pick up the children only to find that Willie was very sick. Even with Dr. Williamson there to care for him, little Willie died on September 27, 1851, at the age of thirteen months. Joseph buried him next to his mother in the cemetery at Red Wing.
In October 1851, John and Nancy Aiton were asked to go to Kaposia and help there while Jane Williamson made a trip to Ohio with her niece, Nancy Williamson, and Marion Robertson, the Dakota girl who had lived with the Williamsons for most of her life. Joseph, now alone at Red Wing with his daughter Marilla, wrote to S.B. Treat just before Christmas 1851.
"Aitons left me in October to accept an opening at Kaposia. My little daughter is with the Williamsons in Dr. W's family for the moment and I am boarding with the farmer at Red Wing. I have written to H.O. Houghton in Cambridge, Massachusetts for some tombstones. If he furnishes them will you have them shipped to Red Wing." [14]
Even as Joseph dealt with the loss of Martha and Willie, he also soon realized that he needed to remarry. He had known Sarah Rankin since she had come to assist with the work at Red Wing in July of 1850 and then moved back to Lac Qui Parle in November of 1851. Sarah wrote to Nancy Aiton from Lac Qui Parle on March 18, 1852. Nancy and John Aiton had left Red Wing and were at Kaposia while Jane Williamson was on furlough in Ohio.
Sarah wrote,
"I was very much surprised to learn in a letter from Mrs. Pond that you had left Red Wing and gone up to Kaposia and have taken Miss Williamson's school. I won't believe it if I hadn't heard it so straight. I think Miss W. must have started off very suddenly. I think Mr. H. must be very lonely there all alone. Where is Marilla and has she got well. I have been very anxious to hear from her…I think about Willie a great deal. I feel very lonely at times when I think of him but he is gone and our loss is his gain."[15]
Just five weeks later, on May 2, 1852, Joseph married Sarah Hancock at the mission at Lac Qui Parle. He was sixteen years older than nineteen-year-old Sarah but he needed a wife and Sarah already knew Joseph and had cared for Martha and their daughter Marilla. Almost exactly nine months after the wedding, Sarah and Joseph welcomed their first child, Stella Ann Hancock, who was born on February 16, 1853, at Red Wing.
That summer, Joseph wrote to the mission board to request a leave of absence from the mission for two months. He and Sarah wanted to travel to Saratoga Springs, New York, and Montpelier, Vermont, to visit friends and hoped the ABCFM would provide the necessary funds for the trip. He told S.B. Treat that the Indians had scattered and that all of their houses at the village were burned to the ground by white settlers before the Dakota returned from the winter hunt that spring. Joseph and Sarah attended the annual meeting of the Dakota mission in June 1853 and Joseph was ordained there as part of the proceedings. He filed the Report of the Red Wing Station on June 16, 1853, informing the board that the mission family consisted of himself, his wife Sarah, two daughters, Marilla and Stella, and another woman named Maria Gould.[16]
By July 1853, Sarah was staying with family in Quincy, Illinois, with baby Stella, and Joseph was on the way to Ohio, where he planned to leave Marilla with her namesake and aunt, Marilla Houghton. Joseph's father wrote to the mission board on August 9, 1853, to inform them that Joseph was in Montpelier, Vermont, but that he was so sick he could not leave and perhaps might never be well enough to leave.
Joseph did ultimately recover and he and Sarah and baby Stella were back in Red Wing in the fall of 1853. Marilla was still with her aunt in Willoughby, Ohio, when the aunt wrote to S.B. Treat on December 9, 1853, reporting that Joseph had told her that she could apply for funds for Marilla each year. She said she didn't want to do that but would like to know what that amount would be should she need to do so. [17]
Joseph wrote to Treat on January 23, 1854 to report that he and Sarah and the baby left Red Wing on January 2 in a sleigh. They reached Traverse des Sioux four days later and Joseph left Sarah and Stella there with Moses and Nancy Adams while he continued on to the new Lower Sioux Agency near Redwood Falls, Minnesota. He described the new reservation to Treat:
"The New Agency is located on the west side of the Minnesota between sixty and seventy miles, by land, from Traverse des Sioux, and about thirty miles below yellow Medicine. It is well situated in respect to wood, water and grass. The Gov't has erected several buildings and now employs some fifteen men in getting out rails for fencing at that place. The Agent informed me that it is the intention of Gov't to erect buildings for a school there, early in the Spring. The location I think, is as good as may be found on the reservation. But I expect that the Gov't School will not be offered to the care of our mission. Am fearful that it will not be placed under protestant influence.
"We stopped with Brother Pond last Wednesday night on our way home. He is still doubtful whether it will be his duty to go to the reservation and labor for the Dakota any longer. The prospect is still abroad. Some in the "Big Woods" and some at their former hunting grounds.
"While at the East and since my return two preachers of the M.E. church have settled at Redwing [sic]. One has been appointed to preach here two thirds of the time. The other a local preacher. I feel now that my services here (with the present population) are not distressingly needed. I unite with them in holding meetings and in the Sabbath school. Shall also preach occasionally at a settlement nine miles distant in the State of Wisconsin.
Joseph Hancock outlived all three of his wives and was 91 years old when he passed away in 1907.
"My health has been quite good during the Autumn and Winter thus far. I was dropped as teacher for the Gov't at the end of July last, and shall be under the necessity of drawing upon the Board for funds in time to come. I have sold one of the seven village lots claimed here, for forty dollars and some rails, for eight dollars and used up the money….The sum estimated by our mission will but little more than furnish us with clothing , fuel and lights for the year. But I have no reason to complain of the Board and do not speak of this in the way of complaint. I only wish to have it understood that I am not able to go on the same footing with others in the mission in regard to support. So that the Board may know what to expect should I be retained in its service hereafter." [18]
For the next few months Joseph continued to write to Treat asking what he should anticipate but finally on May 2, 1854, he asked for release from the ABCFM, telling Treat that the Indians don't want them anymore. Sarah also signed this letter. There is some indication in correspondence between the mission board and other missionaries that it was Sarah who convinced Joseph to leave mission work, but Joseph never implies such a thing.
The official release came through on September 11, 1854, along with the news that Joseph was joining the American Home Mission Society. He had inquired about whether he could purchase their home at the mission and ultimately the ABCFM gave him the house at no charge. The Missionary Herald Annual Report of 1854 reported that, "Mr. Hancock will now minister to the whites at Red Wing…no Dakota are there."[19]
This montage of photographs is from the current website of the First Presbyterian Church of Red Wing, MN. I assume the portrait of the man is Joseph and that the little chapel and subsequent church are early images of the congregation that Joseph founded when he left the ABCFM and became a Presbyterian minister to the white settlers in Red Wing.
Like the Pond brothers and Moses Adams, Joseph became a minister to the white settlers in Red Wing. He founded the First Presbyterian Church of Red Wing on January 13, 1855 with seven charter members. The little congregation met in the mission house, a carpenter's shop, a summer shanty, and a one-room schoolhouse before erecting the first church building in 1857. Joseph stayed as pastor of the church for seven years. Joseph and two other Presbyterian pastors from the area founded the Winona Presbytery in 1855 and Joseph expanded his work in the community by becoming the first postmaster of Red Wing . Governor Alexander Ramsey appointed him Registrar of Deed in 1855 and that fall, he was elected to that office by the people.
Joseph and Sarah had a second child, Alta Emily Hancock, on February 8, 1856. Stella was just shy of three years old when the new baby arrived and apparently Marilla was still living with her aunt in Ohio. Sarah was twenty-four years old when Alta was born. Sadly, Alta died at the age of sixteen months on June 13, 1857. Sarah and Joseph were heartbroken at losing another child. Two years later, on August 19, 1859, Sarah also died. She was only twenty-six years old and Joseph was again a widower with six-year-old Stella in his care.
Juliet's father, James Thomson, was the founder of the First Presbyterian Church of Mankato, MN, in 1855. The church, pictured here as it looks today, has been in continuous service since that time.
This time it was once again the church community that stepped in to help Joseph care for Stella and ultimately to find a new wife. Joseph married Juliet Thomson in October 1860, a year after Sarah's death. Juliet was twenty-three years old; Joseph was forty-four. She was the daughter of Rev. James Thomson, who had founded the First Presbyterian Church of Mankato, Minnesota, in 1855. Joseph and Juliet had one child, James Otis Hancock, born in November 1867. By that time, Joseph had retained his membership at the First Presbyterian Church of Red Wing but turned his professional focus to education. He was superintendent of schools for Goodhue County from 1862 to 1867 and from 1870 to 1880, and published a short history of the county in 1893.
Juliet was sixty years old when she passed away on August 19, 1897. She is buried next to Joseph's first two wives in Oakwood Cemetery in Red Wing, Minnesota. Joseph himself died on October 25, 1907,at the age of ninety-one years. He had outlived three wives and two of his children and spent his final years enjoying his grandchildren. He and Juliet lived with Joseph's oldest daughter, Marilla Hancock Holliday, the daughter of Martha Houghton Hancock, and her family in their final years. Marilla had grown up in Ohio being raised by her mother Martha's sister, but she married William Holliday in 1874 and they raised their family in Red Wing, Minnesota. Marilla and William left the cold winters of Minnesota behind and moved to Palacios, Texas by 1920 after their own children were married and living on their own.
Joseph's second oldest surviving child, Stella Ann Hancock, who was Sarah Rankin Hancock's daughter, never married and after Joseph died, she lived in St. Paul, Minnesota, with Nancy Rankin Adams, her mother's sister, who was also the widow of Rev. Moses Adams, as a housekeeper and companion. Joseph's only surviving son, James Otis Hancock, moved to Seattle, Washington, with his wife and family in 1907 after Joseph died and Stella eventually joined them there. In the 1930 federal census Stella was eighty-two years old and was living with another elderly woman in Beaverton, Oregon. I have not found any record of her death.
The photo below is of the stone markers at the Oakwood Cemetery in Red Wing, Minnesota, where Joseph and his wives and children are interred. The tombstones tell the story of sadness, of religious passion and of grief as both Martha and Sarah are buried there with their infant children alongside Juliet and Joseph.
[1] Thomas Williamson to David Greene, January 24, 1846, MNHS, ABCFM Corres.
[2] "Missionary Work at Red Wing, 1849-1852," by Rev. Joseph W. Hancock; presented at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, May 12, , p. 165. MNHS, Aiton Papers, P1447, Box 1. The former fellow student Joseph mentions was John Felix Aiton, who had already arrived at Red Wing with his wife, Nancy Hunter Aiton. Some sources say that Joseph Hancock visited Northwest Territory with John Aiton in 1848 before he and Martha actually moved to the Red Wing mission from New York, but neither Hancock nor Aiton mention such a visit in any of their correspondence or memoirs. Joseph Hancock was accepted by the ABCFM even though he was not an ordained minister in 1848.
[3] Ibid., p. 166
[5] Ibid., p. 170.
[6] John Aiton to Selah B. Treat, October 30, 1849. MNHS, ABCFM Corres., Box 6
[7] Ibid., Joseph Hancock to Selah B. Great, January 1, 1850
[8] Ibid. Selah B. Treat to John Felix Aiton, January 24, 1850
[9] "Missionary Work at Red Wing, 1849-1852," by Rev. Joseph W. Hancock; presented at the monthly meeting of the Executive Council, May 12, 1902. MNHS, Aiton Papers, P1447, Box 1, p. 171-172.
[10] Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indians Affairs 1850, submitted by Joseph W. Hancock, p. 82, MNHS
[11] The History of Goodhue County, editor in chief, Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge, H.C. Cooper, Jr. & Co., Chicago, IL, 1909
[12] Joseph Hancock to S.B. Treat, March 22, 1851, MNHS ABCFM Corres., Box 6
[13] Missionary Herald, May 1851. MNHS MS Collections
[14] Joseph W. Hancock to Selah B. Treat, December 13, 1851, MNHS ABCFM Corres. Box 6
[15] Ibid., Sarah Rankin to Nancy Hunter Aiton, March 28, 1852
[16] Ibid., Joseph W Hancock to Selah B. Treat, June 14, 1853; Mission Report, June 16, 1853. I do not know who Maria Gould was and her name occurs nowhere else in the source documents.
[17] Ibid., Marilla Houghton to S.B. Treat December 9, 1853. No response to Marilla's letter has been found.
[18] Ibid. Joseph W. Hancock to S.B. Treat, January 23, 1854
[19] Missionary Herald Annual Report of 1854, p. 261. MNHS MS Collection
Posted in Juliet Thomson Hancock, Martha Houghton Hancock, Nancy Hunter Aiton, Nancy Rankin Adams, Sarah Rankin Hancock	| Leave a comment
Three Dakota Daughters – Nancy McClure, Julia LaFramboise and Helen Sibley
Posted on October 2, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
Throughout the story of Minnesota's territorial past we often encounter individual stories of women whose mothers were Dakota and whose fathers were white traders, soldiers or adventurers. These women share many things in common, including a sense that they did not quite fit in either the Native American culture of their mother, nor in the white culture of their father. Often identified as Mixed Blood, they wind their way through the lives of the missionaries, showing up as boarders with mission families or attending mission schools. Most of them learned to read and write in English and Dakota but few found success in their marriages or life choices.
One of these Dakota women who has appeared in many Dakota Soul Sisters stories is Marion Robertson [Hunter] Prescott. I won't tell Marion's story again but I encourage readers to click on her name in the category list and read about both the amazing opportunities she had and the tragedies she experienced throughout her life.
Nancy McClure was only 16 years old when Frank Mayer drew this sketch of her on her wedding day, July 11, 1851.
Another Dakota daughter who has been mentioned in passing throughout these stories is Nancy McClure. Nancy, whose Dakota name was Wowaka Wa-Pa-Let, meaning Hat, was born in the Village of Mendota in 1836. Her mother Winona, who was born in about 1818 in Redwood Falls, Minnesota, was the firstborn daughter of Mazekutemani. Winona entered into a relationship with James McClure, a white soldier at Fort Snelling, in 1835, and Nancy was the only child of that partnership. Nancy lived with her mother's people at Mendota and James remained in contact with Winona and Nancy until he was transferred to Florida and died there in 1838.
The next year, Winona married Antoine Renville of the Lac Qui Parle Renville family. Winona and Antoine Renville had three other children who were Nancy's half-siblings, Sophia, Isaac and William Renville. Nancy grew up at Lac Qui Parle after 1839 and attended school at the Dakota mission there. She was baptized into the Christian faith by Dr. Thomas Williamson on November 8, 1840. Nancy's mother was often not well and Nancy actually lived with the Williamsons until they left for Kaposia in 1846, at which time she became part of the Fanny and Jonas Pettijohn family at the Lac Qui Parle mission. Mary Huggins Kerlinger wrote in her journal that, "This winter, Aunt had a lovely half breed girl Nancy McClure who had lost both parents. She was 14 years old. I roomed in the attic with her and I must say she was a good modest girl. I learned no evil from her."[1] Nancy herself recalled that when she left the Williamsons, Aunt Jane said she would walk back home with her part way and that they held hands and cried as they prepared to leave each other. Nancy said she never saw Jane again.[2]
Nancy McClure's name is listed in the 1850 Lac Qui Parle census with her stepfather Antoine Renville and his children. Her mother had already passed away.
Fur trader Martin McLeod told Nancy that he had been in touch with her father's family and that she would receive several hundred dollars from her father's estate but Nancy recalled that all she ever received was fifteen dollars. McLeod died in 1860 but he did provide for Nancy and her mother after Nancy's father died in 1838.
Nancy was thirteen or fourteen years old when her mother died in 1850. She is listed as living with her stepfather, Antoine Renville and his children, Isaac and Sophie, in the 1850 census at Lac Qui Parle, but she was actually cared for by Martin McLeod who had helped her and her mother during her mother's illnesses. McLeod told her that he had been in touch with her father's family and that she would receive several hundred dollars from her father's estate but Nancy later said she only got fifteen dollars from McLeod at some point.[3] In 1851 Nancy went to live with her grandparents at Traverse des Sioux near her uncle Rdayamani's (Rattling Walker) village. She soon became part of the Robert and Agnes Hopkins family and continued to attend school at the mission there.
When the government officials and bands of the Dakota assembled at Traverse des Sioux in July 1851 for the signing of the 1851 treaty, Nancy was one of the young women who assisted with their accommodations and meals. Frank Blackwell Mayer, a writer and artist who was at the treaty signing, drew Nancy's portrait and described meeting her in his journal. Mayer tended to use many abbreviations of his own and hardly any punctuation. I have edited his words to make it easier to understand what he meant.
"Strolling thro the village…in company with that fine specimen of a French gentleman Mr. [Alexis] Bailly our camp master, we stopped before the farthest lodge. 'This is the lodge of Rdamahnee or the 'walking rattler' and here lives Winona or Nancy McClure, the natural daughter of an officer of our army and an Indian woman. We'll go in.' On a mattress covered by a neat quilt sat Winona, the most beautiful of the Indian women I have yet seen. She is but sixteen and the woman has scarcely displaced the child in her face and figure. She possesses Indian features softened into the more delicate contour of the Caucasian and her figure is tall, slender and gracefully girlish. Her eyes are dark and deep, a sweet smile of innocence plays on her ruby lips and silky hair of glossy blackness falls to her dropping shoulders. She received us with a smile and a modest inclination of her head. She understands English, for the departed missionary had been her instructor, but excessive modesty prevents her essaying to speak, her only answer being the innocent smile downcast eyes and nod of affirmation or denial. She has been visited by most of our camp, the rarity of her beauty being the attraction and the purchase of moccasins the ostensible object."[4]
Mayer made reference to the fact that only a few days earlier, on July 4, 1851, Robert Hopkins, the missionary at Traverse des Sioux had drowned in the river. Nancy, of course, had lived with the Hopkins family and studied at the mission and was no doubt grieving at this tragedy herself when Mayer met her. For Nancy, Robert's death meant more changes in her life and it may be that his passing prompted her to make a decision of her own. Mayer goes on to say,
Frank Mayer described David Faribault as a young man when he wrote about Faribault's marriage to Nancy McClure. David was actually 19 years older than Nancy, had been married twice before and had several children when he and Nancy wed.
"She has been courted for a year past in person and by proxy by David Faribault, a young Indian trader of half breed descent and the ceremony of marriage was yesterday at our camp. Two horses were given for the bride. At the commissioner's marquee were assembled the bride and groom and his relatives, the Governor and the commissioner and suite, the voyageur half-breeds and Canadians and the Indians. Mr. Alexis Bailly, the Magistrate present, read the service of the Episcopal church, the different personages group around, forming a picturesque and novel scene. The bride congratulated, the marriage was announced by a salute of champagne corks, the report of which soon summoned the camp to hilarious harmony which flowed on through a hearty dinner and the subsequent toasts, and broke like the surf as the company dispersed singing simultaneously by individual and collective efforts 'Sparkling and Bright, Auld Lang Syne and Vive le Compagnie.' A speech from the commissioner was translated into Sioux and delivered to the Indians." [5]
The romantic scene Mayer painted and the joyous champagne reception he described are shadowed by the reality of who David Faribault really was. For one thing, he was close to thirty-five years old in 1851 when he married Mary, who was only sixteen, an age difference of nineteen years. He had also already been married twice and reportedly had several children. He was born in 1816 at Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, the son of Jean Baptiste Faribault, who was a white trader at Mendota and Elizabeth Pelagie Anse, a Dakota woman. He was the manager of Henry Sibley's store at Mendota but when he married Nancy they moved to Shakopee, Minnesota, where David continued to trade with the Indians. They then moved to LeSueur, Minneosta, for a year and then to Faribault, Minnesota, where they remained for four years. Their daughter, Mary Jane Faribault, was born in Faribault on August 16, 1855.[6]
When the 1857 Territorial Census was taken in Faribault, David listed his age as forty-four and the census taker wrote that Nancy was forty when she was really only twenty-one. Living with them were David Faribault, Jr. who was listed as twenty when he was really only fifteen. His younger siblings are also listed as William, eighteen (he was really thirteen) and Louise who is listed as sixteen when she was really eleven years old. They were David's children with his second wife, Suzanne Wasukoyakewin Weston, who had died in 1851. Nancy and David's daughter, Jane Faribault, is listed as four years old when she was only two years old at the time.[7]
By 1862, David, Nancy and Jane had moved to a new home about two miles from the Lower Sioux Agency on the east side of the river at Redwood. There are several different stories in the historical records that purport to describe what happened to the family when the U.S. Dakota War began on August 18, 1862. In one intriguing reference, Dr. Thomas Williamson wrote to the head of the ABCFM, Selah Treat, and said, "David Faribault, a half breed of bad character, is strongly suspected of instigating the Indians to these murders."[8] Whether Thomas was correct or not, Nancy described what happened as follows:
"At the time of the outbreak we were living two miles from the Redwood agency on the road to Fort Ridgely. We had a log house, but it was large and roomy and very well furnished. When we first came my husband intended engaging in farming and stock raising, but he soon got back to his former business, trading with the Indians, and when they rose against the whites he had trusted them for very nearly everything he had, for they were very hard up, and the other stores would not trust them for anything. Besides the goods he sold them on credit, he let them have fourteen head of cattle for food. The winter and spring before had been very enjoyable to me. There were a good many settlers in the country, some few French families among them, and the most of them were young married people of pleasant dispositions. We used frequently to meet at one another's houses in social gatherings, dancing parties and the like and the time passed very pleasantly. I was twenty-five years of age then, had but one child and could go about when I wanted to, and I went frequently to these gatherings and came to know a good many people.
"Then came the summer, and the Indians came down to the agency to receive their annual payments under the treaty of 1851; but the paymaster with the money was delayed on the road until the time for the payment had passed. He was at Fort Ridgely with the money, all in gold, when the Indians rose. There were mutterings of trouble for some time, but at last it seemed the danger had passed away.
"On the very morning of the outbreak my husband and I heard shooting in the direction of the agency, but supposed that the Indians were out shooting wild pigeons. As the shooting increased I went to the door once or twice and looked toward the agency, for there was something unusual about it. My husband was out attending to the milking. All at once a Frenchman named [Oliver] Martelle came galloping down the road from the agency, and seeing me in the door, he called out: 'Oh, Mrs. Faribault, the Indians are killing all the white people at the agency! Run away, run away quick!' He did not stop or slacken his speed, but waved his hand and called out as he passed. There was blood on his shirt, and I presumed he was wounded.
"My husband and I were not prepared for trouble of this kind. Our best horses and wagons were not at home. We had two horses in the stable and harness for them, but no wagon. My husband told me to get my saddle ready and we would go away on horseback, both of us being good riders. We were getting ready to do this when we saw a wagon, drawn by two yoke of oxen and loaded with people, coming down the road at a good trot. My husband said we would wait and see what these people would say. When they came up to us we saw there were five or six men, three of four women and some children, and they were all in great fright. They asked us to put our horses to their wagon as they could travel faster than oxen and to get in with them. This we agree to do and soon the change was made. When they were harnessing the horse I ran to the house to try to secure some articles of value, for as yet we had taken nothing but what we had on our back, and I had many things I did not want to lose. Woman-like, I tried first to save my jewelry, which I kept in a strong drawer. This drawer was swelled and I could not open it, and I was running for an ax to burst it, when my husband said, 'Let it go they are ready to start.' So I took my dear little daughter, who was eight years old and my only child and we started for the wagon.
"Just as I was about to get in everybody else was in I looked up the road toward the agency and saw the Indians coming. I was afraid they would overtake the wagon; so I declined to get in, and my husband got out with me, and we took our child and ran for the woods, while the wagon started off, the men lashing the horses every jump. Just as we started for the woods, Louis Brisbois and his wife and two children, mixed-blood people, came up and went with us. We all hid in the wood. In a few minutes the Indians came up and somehow they knew where we were hidden and they called out very loudly: 'Oh, Faribault, if you are here come out; we won't hurt you.' My husband was armed and had determined to sell his life for all it would bring, and I had encouraged him; but now it seemed best that we should come and surrender, and so we did.
"The Indians at once disarmed my husband. They seemed a little surprised to see the Brisbois family, and declared they would kill them as they had not agreed to spare their lives. Poor Mrs. Brisbois ran to me and asked me to save her, and she and her husband got behind me, and I began to beg the Indians not to kill them. My husband asked the Indians what all this mean what they were doing anyhow. They replied, 'We have killed all the white people at the agency; all the Indians are on the warpath; we are going to kill all the white people in Minnesota; we are not going to hurt you, for you have trusted us with goods, but we are going to kill these Brisbois.' And then one ran up and struck over my shoulder and hit Mrs. Brisbois a cruel blow in the face saying she had treated them badly at one time. Then I asked them wait until I got away, as I did not want to see them killed. This stopped them for half a minute, when one said: 'Come to the house.' So we started for the house and just then two more wagons drawn by oxen and loaded with white people came along the road. All the Indians left and ran yelling and whooping to kill them.
"We went into the house. At the back of the house was a window, and a little beyond was a cornfield. I opened the window and put the Brisbois family out of it and they ran into the cornfield and escaped. They are living somewhere in Minnesota today. The white people were nearly all murdered. I could not bear to see the sickening sight, and so did not look out, but while the bloody work was being done an Irish woman named Hayden came running up to the house crying out for me to save her. I saw that she was being chased by a young Indian that had once worked for us, and I called to him to spare her, and he let her go. I heard that she escaped all right. Now, all this took place in less time than one can write about it.
"When the killing was over the Indians came to the house and ordered us to get into one of the wagons and go with them back to the agency. This we did, my husband driving the team. The Indians drove the other team. Soon after we started an Indian gave me a colt to lead behind the wagon. About half way to the agency we saw the dead body of a man lying near the road. Just before we reached the ferry over the Minnesota river we saw a boy on the prairie to the right. There were but three Indians with us now. One of them ran to kill the boy. At this moment a German rode up to us. I have forgotten his name, but the Indians called him 'Big Nose.' I think he is living at Sleepy Eye, Minn., now. One of the Indians said to the other Indian, 'Shoot him and take his horse.' The other said, 'Wait till my son comes back and then we will kill him.' (His son was the one that had gone to kill the boy.) All this time I was begging them not to kill the man. I asked my husband to plead with them, but he seemed unable to speak a word. At last I told the German to give them his horse and run into the brush. This he did and escaped.
"When we got to the ferry the boat was in the middle of the stream, and standing upon it was a young white girl of about sixteen or seventeen years of age. The Indians called to her to bring the boat ashore, but she did not obey them. They were about to shoot her, when my husband told her they would kill her if she did not do as they ordered, and she brought the boat ashore. When it touched the bank a young Indian made this girl get on a horse behind him and he rode away with her, and I never heard what became of the poor creature. When I saw her being taken away I felt as badly as if she was being murdered before my eyes, for I imagined she would suffer a most horrible fate. When we reached the agency there was a dreadful scene. Everything was in ruins and dead bodies lay all about."[9]
Nancy went on to describe how Taoyateduta attacked Fort Ridgely the next day and rumors began to fly that all of the mixed blood people were going to be killed. Nancy saw David run into Taoyateduta's cornfield and she took Jane and ran seven miles to Shakopee's camp where she had some distant relatives. She left Jane there the next morning and went back to Taoyateduta's to see whether David was there.
He was and Nancy apparently stayed there with him. She goes on to say,
"I think it was the fourth day of the outbreak that I was strolling through Little Crow's camp when I saw my horse, Jerry. I untied him and was leading him away when an Indian ran up and said, 'Here, I captured that horse at the fort, and he is mine.' I told him I did not care how he got him; he was mine, and I was going to take him. At last he allowed me to have him. I had that horse at Camp Release, and took him with me to Faribault, Minn."[10]
Hundreds of white and mixed blood Dakota prisoners were held near Monticello, Minnesota by Taoyateduta and his followers. Nancy and David, along with their daughter Jane were held there and feared at any moment that everyone might be killed.
During the attack on Fort Ridgley on August 22, 1862, David reportedly drove Taoyateduta in a hansom buggy as they led the second attack on the troops assembled there.[11] He appears to have been on the Dakota side of the war for at least the first few days, although he was never accused and never tried for his role in any of the battles. In any case, David, Nancy and Jane all ended up at Camp Release with the other whites and mixed blood Dakota who were taken prisoner by Taoyateduta. They were released on September 26, 1862; Taoyateduta and his loyal band of followers fled north and Henry Sibley and the federal government took over control of the Dakota who remained behind.
David was never arrested or accused of fighting in the war but became an informer for the government and was called as a witness in one hundred thirty-one of the post-war trials of the Dakota. He testified in eighty-six, usually saying that the accused was definitely at such and such a battle or was known to have attacked and/or killed people at this or that location. Nancy took Jane and her horse Jerry and went to Faribault, Minnesota, where they moved in with David's sister Emily and her husband Sterne Fowler. David remained at the agency for the trials and served with Sibley's troops until he became a scout for the post-war campaign to find, arrest and try the Dakota who had not turned themselves in after the war.
Nancy and Jane remained with the Fowlers in Faribault for two years and then returned to Redwood for a short time. David became involved with the government once again as he assisted in moving three hundred Dakota from Crow Creek to the new reservation at Niobrara, Nebraska in 1867. Stephen Riggs wrote to S.B. Treat on March 12, 1867 and reported that David Faribault had five thousand dollars put into his account in a St. Paul bank as his payment for removing three hundred Indians, including fifty or sixty church members from Minnesota to Niobrara.[12]
David and Nancy arrived at the site of the new Fort Ransom in June 1867. They then opened a "house of entertainment" about thirty miles away to provide room and board for travelers. Today the site is a historic park in North Dakota.
It was perhaps this significant payment that prompted David to move the family to Big Stone Lake in west central Minnesota. William Quinn was there and offered David a position as interpreter under Major Grossman who was on the way to build Fort Ransom one hundred-fifty miles northwest of Big Stone Lake in what is now North Dakota. David and Nancy arrived at the site of the new fort in June 1867. It was built to protect settlers and railroad workers who were working on the Northern Pacific Railroad between Fargo and Bismarck and was named for distinguished Civil War veteran Major General Thomas E.G. Ransom. The fort was built on top of Grizzly Bear Hill, a site chosen by Brigadier General Alfred H. Terry. In the fall, they went out thirty miles from the fort and opened a mail station and what is called a "house of entertainment" for travelers, which must have been an inn or tavern.
David and Nancy settled in Flandreau, South Dakota where their son-in-law, Rev. John Eastman, pastored at the Dakota church, which remains in active worship today.
In June of 1868, David took Jane to enroll her in school in Winnipeg and while he was gone a party of Indians attacked the station. Nancy fled with her neighbors to Fort Abercrombie, North Dakota, about forty miles away. David returned from Canada two weeks later to find everything had been taken or destroyed. David and Nancy then went to the reservation at Sisseton, South Dakota, for a short time before settling in Flandreau, South Dakota, where there was a prominent Christian Dakota settlement.
Nancy concludes her memoir as follows:
"My first husband died about eight years ago. Since then I have remarried to Mr. Charles Huggan. We live on a farm near Flandreau. My only child, who was a captive with me, is the wife of Rev. John Eastman, a Presbyterian minister and a mixed-blood. They have six children, all bright, interesting and promising. When I was first married I was a Presbyterian, but Mr. Faribault and all his family were Catholics and I became a Catholic and am a member of that church still. I think Christian churches are like so many roads, all leading to the heavenly land. If we follow them carefully and walk uprightly in them, the All-Father will bring us to him at last."[13]
Nancy smoothed over the last few years of her life rather than share what is apparently the real story of her second marriage to Charles Huggan. According to A.H. Laughlin, writing in the History of the Red River Valley: Past and Present, Nancy met Charles Huggan in 1871 when he was living and working at David and Nancy's home while engaging in hunting and trapping. Charles and Nancy fell in love and carried on a clandestine correspondence with each other by using a boy named Tommy Bonner as the carrier of their messages. Over time, rumors of their relationship spread through the community and David became very angry. Charles then took an opportunity in 1874 to get David very, very drunk and while he was passed out, Charles and Nancy eloped.[14]
The story, especially about eloping, doesn't quite ring true because there is no mention of a divorce and Nancy was, by all accounts, a practicing Catholic. David Faribault Sr. didn't die until November 18, 1887, but in the 1880 Federal Census, Nancy, listed as aged thirty-six, when she was really forty-four, is identified as Nancy Huggan, and is living with Charles Huggan, aged thirty, in Moody County, South Dakota, which is where Flandreau is. Interestingly, eighteen-year-old Louise Faribault is recorded as living with them. Louise was actually David Faribault, Jr.'s daughter; David Sr.'s granddaughter. Nancy was not related to her at all except as what might be called a former step-grandmother.
It appears, however, that the so-called romantic marriage between Nancy and Charles did not last. In 1902, an Indian School Service report on Indians living at Flandreau records the following in Nancy's entry: "62 years old, receives rations. She has a worthless white husband. She has no land and lives with John Eastman [her son-in-law]."[15] Charles Huggan was deceased by the time that the Laughlin history was published in 1909. In the 1920 census Nancy is listed at the agency in Flandreau, South Dakota, as eighty years old (she was really eighty-four) and she is living with her daughter Jane and Jane's husband, Rev. John Eastman. Three of John and Jane's grandchildren were living with them and are listed as Christ, 6; Leroy, 2; and Millard,1.[16]
David and Nancy's daughter Jane married Rev. John Eastman and served the Dakota community at the Presbyterian mission church in Flandreau, South Dakota.
Despite the apparently difficult ending to her second marriage, Nancy spent the final years of her life surrounded by her grandchildren. John Eastman was ordained as a Presbyterian pastor in 1876 and ministered at the Flandreau mission in Moody, South Dakota. He and Jane were married in 1874. Their oldest son, Christian Eastman was born about 1875, followed by Cora Belle Eastman, born on January 26, 1878. John Alfred Eastman, born on April 19, 1880, was their third child and Mary Jane Eastman was born on October 12, 1882. Grace O. Eastman arrived on August 8, 1886, and Fred Riggs Eastman was born on January 7, 1889. George A. Eastman, their youngest son, was born on September 22, 1891, and the youngest of the family, Elizabeth "Bessie" Carson Eastman arrived on September 17, 1896. Mary Jane Eastman died when she was only a few months old and Cora Belle passed away in 1897 at the age of nineteen years.
Nancy McClure lived to be ninety-one years old. She visited the site of her 1851 marriage at Traverse des Sioux just three weeks before her death and had her photo taken at the Daughters of the American Republic monument at the Old French Cemetery.
On the occasion of the seventy-sixth anniversary of her July 11, 1851 marriage to David Faribault at Traverse des Sioux, Nancy made a visit to the site of the treaty signing and her photograph was taken next to the Daughters of the American Revolution monument marking the French Cemetery nearby. She passed away three weeks later on August 6, 1927, at Flandreau at the age of ninety-one years. Her life had spanned the earliest days of the Dakota mission in the 1830s, through the U.S. Dakota War of 1862, the arrival of the railroad, the advent of the airplane and the dramatic events of World War I. Throughout the span of her long life she had also dealt with the reality of her birth and learned how to live within both Dakota culture and white Christian culture, always trying to find the best path.
Julia Ann LaFramboise
Mary Huggins Kerlinger, Alexander and Lydia Huggins' daughter, wrote in her journal that, "Julia when grown had somewhat the bearing of a chieftain. She would be noticed anywhere. She lived with us more than five years and with letters and visits we kept in touch with her all her…years. I loved her like a sister." This photograph of Julia was given to the Minnesota Historical Society by Miss Callie Kerlinger, Mary Huggins Kerlinger's daughter, in 1930.
Julia LaFramboise makes her first appearance on the Dakota Mission scene on September 25, 1850 when her father brought her to the mission at Traverse des Sioux, Minnesota. She was placed with the Alexander and Lydia Huggins family and began attending classes at the mission when she was eight years old. Nancy McClure was one of the other Dakota girls at the school. Mary Huggins Kerlinger, Alexander and Lydia's daughter, wrote in her journal that, "Julia when grown had somewhat the bearing of a chieftain. She would be noticed anywhere. She lived with us more than five years and with letters and visits we kept in touch with her all her…years. I loved her like a sister."[17]
Magdelaine LaFramboise was the first woman to take over her husband's fur trading business and become very wealthy. Alexis Bailley brought Julia LaFramboise a locket with a lock of her Magdelaine's hair sent to her beloved granddaughter.
Mary Ann was right to think of Julia as having the bearing of a chieftain, descended as she was from a long and respected line of both Dakota and French ancestors. Julia was born on December 11, 1842, at Little Rock, Minnesota. Her father, Joseph LaFramboise Sr., was born in 1805 and was the son of the first Joseph LaFramboise and Magdelaine Marcot LaFramboise. The first Joseph was murdered in 1806 when Joseph Sr. was only an infant. He grew up with his mother, who was the daughter of a French trader and an Ottawa woman. Magdelaine took over her husband's trading post at Mackinac Island in Michigan and became quite famous and wealthy as the first woman to successfully take part in the world of trading in the early 19th century. She sold the business to the American Fur Company in 1818 and retired to her stately home in Mackinac. Today, her mansion is the Harbor View Inn, one of Mackinac Island's most elegant hotels.
Magdelaine LaFramboise eventually sold the fur trading operation and built this magnificent mansion on Mackinac Island. Today her historic home is the Harbor View Inn on Mackinac Island.
A monument to Chief Ishtakhaba, Julia's grandfather, stands watch over the town of Sleepy Eye, Minnesota.
Julia's mother was Oasixheaoui, one of seven daughters of Ishtakhaba, also known as Chief Sleepy Eyes, who was a Dakota chief of the Sisseton tribe. He became chief sometime between 1822 and 1825, receiving a commission from the Bureau of Indian Affairs as chief in 1824 and remained chief until his death in 1860. [18] His band, known as the Swan Lake or Little Rock Band, hunted in southwestern and southeastern Minnesota. Ishtabkhaba tried to promote peace with whites in and around the state of Minnesota. He was a signer of at least four treaties with the United States government, including the Treaty of Traverse des Sioux, and met with President James Monroe in Washington, D.C. in 1824.
Oasixheaoui's sister, whose Christian name was Magdelaine, also married Joseph LaFramboise, Sr. and another of Sleepy Eyes' daughters, Mazanakawin, married the white trader Louise Provencalle. Joseph LaFramboise Sr. married Oasixheaoui and Magdelaine in 1838. Oasixheaoui had three children before she died. Joseph LaFramboise Jr. was born in 1831; Alexis LaFramboise, in 1840 and Julia, in 1842. Oasixheaoui died by the end of 1844 when Julia was about two years old. Joseph Sr. then married Jane Dickson, the daughter of fur trader Robert Dickson, in 1845. Jane was Mdewakanton, Ojibwe and Scots and was the only mother that Alexis and Julia ever knew.
Julia's oldest brother, Joseph LaFramboise Jr., watched over and protected her all of her life.
Joseph and Jane had three children together, step-siblings of Jane LaFramboise. William was born in 1847; Justine in 1849 and Eliza in 1855. Julia's father taught her about her family and Alexis Bailly, one of her grandfather's best friends, sent Julia a locket with a piece of her grandmother's hair in it – a gift from Magdaliene Marcot LaFramboise at Mackinac Island.
When Julia was thirteen years old, her father became ill and she returned home to Little Rock. Joseph LaFramboise Sr. died on November 9, 1856, at the age of fifty-one years. He left his property to his children and Julia used her portion of the proceeds to pursue her education. She first went to Rev. Stephen and Mary Riggs at their Hazlewood mission by the Upper Sioux Agency in west central Minnesota. Then, in the fall of 1859, she joined two of the young women of the mission, Nancy Jane Williamson and Martha Riggs, at Western Female Seminary in Oxford, Ohio. Julia was there with them when the college burned down on January 14, 1860.
Julia attended Lake Erie Female Seminary in Painesville, Ohio for a year or so in 1861-62. The school, now known as Lake Erie College celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2006.
Julia then enrolled at Lake Erie Female Seminary which was formed in 1856 as a seminary for women in Painesville, Ohio. The institution, now known as Lake Erie College, first offered classes in 1859, with 137 students initially enrolling. Julia stayed at Lake Erie for a year. When she returned to Minnesota, she went to assist Amos and Sophia "Josephine" Huggins at the Lac Qui Parle government school and was there when the U.S. Dakota War broke out on August 18, 1862.
The story of Amos Huggins's death on August 19, 1862, is covered in the Dakota Soul Sisters story about Sophia "Josephine" Huggins but I am repeating it here as part of Julia's story.
Josephine Huggins was interviewed by The Saint Paul Weekly Press for the February 12, 1863 edition.
Julia was with Sophia Huggins when Sophia's husband was killed on August 19, 1862. Sophia's story describes how much she counted on Julia for support and assistance as they tried to reach safety during the outbreak of the U.S. Dakota War. Sophia is pictured here with her daughter, Letta.
"The nineteenth day of August, 1862, dawned on me full of hope and happiness. It was the 24th anniversary of my birth. But before its close it proved to be the saddest day of my life
. News of the war which broke out at the Lower Agency on the 18th did not reach Lac-qui-parle until the next day. Then it came with fearful suddenness and fearful reality."
Josephine and her husband, Amos Williamson Huggins, 29, had come to Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota, in 1861 to operate a government school for the Dakota in the area. They had been married in the spring of 1856 and had two children. Eletta Sophrina Huggins, known as Letta, was born on April 5,1858, and Charles Loyal Huggins, called Charlie, on April 19, 1861. Letta was four years old on that fateful day in August 1862 and Charlie just 16 months. Josephine may not have known that she was a few weeks pregnant with their third child.
Sophia's account of that day continues:
"On the afternoon of that day, three men from Red Iron's village came in, each carrying a gun. They were quite friendly and talkative, seeming very much interested in the sewing machine Julia was using, and asked a great many questions about it. About four o'clock Amos came home from the field. Then the men went out; and soon after, we heard the report of two guns. The Indians rushed in, looking so wild and frightened, that my first thought was that the Chippewa were upon them. They said to us, 'Go out, go out; you shall live – but go out. Take nothing with you.' When I went out, the oxen my husband had been driving were standing at the side of the house and near them was Julia, on her knees, bending over his motionless body. She looked up and said: "Oh, Josephine, Josephine!" Oh, what an ocean of grief swept over me then, for I saw that he was dead! A ball had entered his back, and passing through his body, had killed him instantly."
I imagine the terrified women carrying Letta and Charlie and trying to run through the tall grass in their long skirts, not knowing who to trust or where they might find safe haven. Perhaps the children were laughing at this new game, unaware of what had happened, or perhaps they picked up on their mother's tension and fear and began to cry. It was early evening and no doubt they felt a sense of urgency to reach safety before darkness fell.
I recently had occasion to visit the site, pictured above, where the Huggins' home once stood. It was a hot, sleepy afternoon in July 2012, 150 years after the tragic murder of Amos Huggins. The sky was blue, the wind in the grass and the chirping of the cicadas offered a soft cacaphony of the omnipresent song of the prairie in summer. I felt a tremendous sense of "place," an identity with the story of the site that can only happen when one is able to physically be present where something memorable happened. I could easily visualize the chaos which took over the peaceful scene as the gunshots rang out and Amos fell dead. The Indians shouted at Josephine and Julia to take the children and go – to leave everything and just go.
Sophia continues her story:
"We were driven away, Julia and I. We ran over to De Cota's. Julia went first, carrying Letta. I staid behind until I saw they were really going to shoot me. Then, after hastily spreading a lounge cover that I had been sewing on, and had carried out with me, over the lifeless form of my dear one, I fled with Charlie in my arms. When I reached De Cota's he and his wife were starting back with Julia. I wanted to go with them but they thought it would not be safe. I knew Julia would see that everything which it was possible to do should be done; so I yielded to their judgment.
"Mr. De Cota came home shortly. I asked him if he could not take us to the Yellow Medicine. He said that we would be killed on the road. I then suggested that he take us across the river, and go across the country to the white settlements. He answered that perhaps he would start to the Red River the next day. When Julia returned, she told me that Walking Spirit and others had buried Amos. The old chief was fullof sorrow and said that if he had been there, they should have killed him before they could have killed Mr. Huggins. Our house was full of plunderers. Indians, from the Lac-qui-parle village were there, as well as the murderers. Julia went in, and was able to get a few things, which afterwards proved valuable to me.
"It was thought we would be safer at Walking Spirit's than at De Cota's; so we went over in the evening. Mrs. De Cota intended to go with us, but her husband prevented it, probably thinking he should not be safe if she left him. She sent her brother, Blue Lightening, with us. He did not offer to carry either of the children.
"We had not gone far before Ke-yoo-kan-pe came up to us, and taking Charlie out of my arms, carried him until we reached the village. As we passed through it, a great many women came out to shake hands with me. Some of them laid their hands on their mouths and groaned. The men paid no attention to me. When we reached he chief's house he received us kindly, shaking hands with me, and with the children. His wife hurried to spread a buffalo robe at the farther end of the room for us to sit on. All the time that I was with Walking Spirit my seat was, whether in a tent or in a house, at the end farthest from the door – the most honorable place. We slept on the robe, but were furnished with pillows by the chief's wife, one of which I recognized as having been mine. She gave me several other articles which had been mine.
"There was a great deal of noise in the village during the night, loud talking, singing and yelling, but the children slept soundly, not realizing what had befallen them, nor the dangers before them. Men went and came through the whole night long to talk to the chief.
"The next morning we had beef for breakfast, which had been killed at our house the evening before. They gave me, as they always did, bountifully of the best they had. In the afternoon, Mr. John Longee invited us over to his home across the river, thinking we would be safer there than in the Indian village. Walking Spirit told us to do as thought best, and we finally concluded to go. One woman packed Letta all the way; another packed Charlie as far as Lame-Bear's village. As we passed through it I saw a great deal of fresh beef hanging up to dry. My husband's writing desk was there; also many of our chairs. I saw Indian children dressed in my children's clothes. I could hardly bear these reminders of the home which had been so cruelly torn from me. I did not, however, see any Indians that I knew, except "Old Fuss." He shook hands with me, and made a speech, of which I understood nothing but Amos' name.
"We staid at Longee's until Friday, and had a quiet, lonely time. We saw no Indians while there, except the woman who packed Letta over. She staid with us all the time. Julia and I were in constant alarm. Longee and a Frenchman always slept with their guns beside them, in readiness for use, or staid outside, watching. Thursday, Mr. Longee went over to the village, and brought back dreadful accounts of the war below. It was reported that the missionaries and the whites at both Agencies were killed. Oh! What a day that was – full of grief, anxiety and suspense. Julia had saved two pocket Bibles from the hands of the plunderers. One of them was my husband's. How precious it was to me! Precious for the sake of him who had once pondered its sacred pages, as well as for the blessed teachings, and glorious promises it contained.
"In the evening Julia's brother came up from below, dressed like an Indian. He said he had come for her, and that if she put on the Indian dress, and staid with him, she would be safe, but that it would not be prudent for me to accompany them. Mr. De Cota was there, and invited me to live in his family. It was decided that I should do so.
"Friday morning Julia left me. She had been my comforter, my adviser, my help in all my troubles. Now I was left alone. I realized more than ever my need of strength and fortitude, and prayed that I might be prepared for whatever I might pass through."
Sophia and the children were found by four Dakota men who had been sent out to bring them to Amos Huggins' family in Traverse des Sioux six weeks after their capture.
Julia was safely brought to the Lower Sioux Agency by her brother Joseph. During the Battle of Birch Coulee on September 2, 1862, Julia translated a letter to Henry Sibley from Chief Standing Buffalo and Joseph delivered it to the General. Julia and her brothers and sisters came down to the Lower Sioux Agency in October and on October 28, 1862, Julia testified against Tatekage, in his trial for the murder of Amos Huggins. He was executed at Mankato on December 26, 1862. Julia also served as interpreter for Chief Standing Buffalo during the trials.
Julia's brothers, Joseph and Alexis, and their families were in the internment camp at Fort Snelling from 1862-1863, but Julia sold part of the scrip or land she had received in a government settlement with the mixed blood Indians, and enrolled in the Rockford Female Seminary at Rockford, Illinois. She graduated in 1863 and remained for a year as a graduate student and assistant to the principal.
She returned to Minnesota in 1865 and worked for a year or so as a clerk in a dry goods store in Minneapolis while continuing to hope for a teaching job in a public school. She ultimately became a licensed public school teacher in Minneapolis in August of 1867 and taught school in St. Anthony, Minnesota, for two years. At that point, Julia was asked to come to teach at the Santee Reservation in Santee, Nebraska in the spring of 1869.
Dr. Thomas Williamson reported to the ABCFM on November 7, 1871, "She had seen enough of missionary life to know that the call was to a life of toil, with a salary barely sufficient to meet her current expenses, yet she went cheerfully, counting it a privilege to be employed in teaching the poor despised Indians, though none of her near relatives were there. It was a position for which she was eminently qualified. A good scholar, with an excellent knowledge of both the English and Dakota languages, her gentle and dignified manners and skill in teaching, excited the love and admiration of her pupils, and inspired them with interest in their studies. She labored beyond her strength, and in less than two years and a half she was compelled to cease from teaching."[19]
Jane Huggins Holtzclaw was a dear friend of Julia's. They had known each other since Julia boarded with the Huggins family when she was a girl. Jane served as the executrix of Julia's estate.
Julia returned to her brother William's farm at West Newton, Minnesota, for the final weeks of her life. Julia was only twenty-eight years old when she died of tuberculosis on September 20, 1871. She was originally buried at the farm but was later moved to the LaFramboise family plot at Fort Ridgely Cemetery.[20]
Two days before her death Julia wrote her will:
"In the name of God. Amen. I, Julia Ann Laframboise of the Town of West Newton in the County of Nicollet and State of Minnesota, Spinster being mindful of my mortality and being of sound mind any memory do this eighteenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy one make and publish this my last will and testament and name following.
"First, I resign my soul into the hands of believing God. Being and believing in a remission of my sins by the merits and meditations of Jesus Christ and my body I commit to the earth to be buried at the discretion of my Executor, desiring him to have my body buried in our small family graveyard on my parents' home at Little Rock farm beside those dear departed …
"Second, I give and bequeath unto my Beloved Brother Alexis George LaFramboise my gold watch chain and I give and bequeath to my beloved Sister Justine Marie LaFramboise my gold watch.
"And I give and bequeath unto my Beloved Brother William R. LaFramboise my share of silver plate which belongs to me. Also I give and bequest to my brother William LaFramboise and my sisters Justine Marie LaFramboise and Eliza LaFramboise all my stacks of books desiring them to evenly divide the same among them in love and peace for my sake.
"My wearing apparel I give and bequeath to the following married persons: My Mother, My Sisters Justine and Eliza, My brother Alexis's Wife, My Sister-in-law and Mrs. Cantane (sp ?).
"Fourth, to pay all moving expenses attending my funeral and what remains to be directed to erect a monument in memory of my Dear Departed Father, Three Sisters and One Brother and myself.
"And I do hereby Constitute Jane S. Holtzclaw my soul executrix of this My last will and testament.
"I am writing…herewith sent by mail and dated the eighteenth day of September in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and seventy one.
"The foregoing instrument of one sheet was now submitted by Julia Ann LaFramboise the testator in the presence of each of us was at the same time declared by her to be her last will and testament and we at her request sign our names hereto as attorney and witnesses.
"[unclear] residing at West Newton, Nicollet County, Minn.
Jane Holtzclaw residing at West Newton, Nicollet County, Minn.
Justine LaFramboise residing in West Newton, Nicollet County, Minn." [21]
Julia was only 28 years old when she died at William LaFramboise's farm. She was buried there but later moved to the LaFramboise plot at the Fort Ridgely cemetery.
Like Nancy McClure, Julia lived a life in two worlds, one the family of her mother in a traditional Dakota village and the other in late 1860s white America where the country was recovering from the Civil War and where women of Julia's generation were already working to gain equal rights and the freedom to vote as full citizens of the United States. Throughout her brief life Julia left an impression on everyone she met and had she lived, she no doubt would have served as a teacher and an example to hundreds of Dakota girls who were growing up in a confusing and rapidly changing world.
Helen Hastings Sibley
Helen Hastings Sibley was the daughter of Minnesota's first governor, Henry Hastings Sibley. She was born in Mendota to Sibley and his Dakota wife, known as Red Blanket Woman, in 1841.
One of the more dramatic and tragic stories from Minnesota's past is that of Helen Hastings Sibley. Helen's mother was Tahshinaohindoway, a Mdewakanton Dakota woman from Black Dog's Village on the Minnesota River near Fort Snelling, and her father was the first Governor of the State of Minnesota, Henry Hastings Sibley. Sibley was only twenty-three years old in 1834 when he became a partner in the American Fur Company and relocated from Mackinac Island to St. Peter's, now known as Mendota, Minnesota. He erected his home and trading post, now known as the historic Sibley House in 1836 and probably met Helen's mother a few years later. Known to whites as Red Blanket Woman, she was probably several years younger than Sibley. Her father, Wasuwicaxtaxni, or Bad Hail, was a well-known spokesman for the Dakota in the treaty negotiations of both 1837 and 1851. He was a good friend of Henry Sibley's and took the side of the traders in the treaty payments. It may be that he believed a union of his daughter, whose Dakota name was Tahshinahohindoway, with Henry Sibley would be advantageous to both his trapping and trading activities and to his family.[22]
Governor Sibley knew Helen was his daughter and although he never acknowledged her birth in writing, he paid her foster parents and covered all of her expenses for clothing, books, education, etc.
In any case, Sibley married Red Blanket Woman in 1840 and they both went on the winter hunt that season. The wedding was conducted in Dakota fashion meaning that Sibley would have negotiated a settlement with her family and there would have been a quite elaborate ceremony of transferring the young woman from her father's home to her new husband's dwelling. Sibley had no reason to keep the marriage a secret. Marriages and relationships between the Dakota women in the area around Fort Snelling and the fur traders and military men working there were very common. Red Blanket Woman herself was thought to be part French, meaning that one of her parents may have descended from a French fur trader.
It isn't clear whether Tahshinaohindoway actually moved into the Sibley House with Henry. It may be that she remained with her own family, especially when she became pregnant in the late fall of 1840. The new couple's daughter was born on August 28, 1841. Her Dakota name was given as Wakiye, or Bird, but her Christian baptism certificate identifies her as Helene, daughter of Tahshinahohindoway and an unnamed father. Sibley's friend and fellow trader, William Forbes, was her godfather.
Although Sibley had the baby baptized, he apparently ended his relationship with Red Blanket Woman soon after Wakiye was born. By the spring of 1842, he was traveling in pursuit of his political future and also hoping to find a white wife to bring back to Minnesota. He traveled to Baltimore for the wedding of Franklin Steele to Anna Barney. Sibley knew Steele, who had been working in Minnesota for many years. Steele's sister, Sarah Jane, was at the wedding and then came back to Mendota with Franklin and his new wife. It was there that Sibley began his courtship of Sarah and they were married at Fort Snelling on May2, 1843.
Helen was not yet two years old when her father married Sarah Steele on May 2, 1843. Sarah knew of Helen's existence but never acknowledged that Helen was Henry Sibley's daughter.
It is difficult to understand today how an acclaimed Christian man like Sibley could simply abandon the Dakota woman with whom he had a child and start life over with a white wife. Sarah Jane Sibley had their first child, Augusta Sibley, in June of 1844. They would go on to have eight more children together, only four of whom lived beyond childhood.
Wakiye, in the meantime was living nearby with her mother's family and growing up like any other Dakota girl. Tahshinaohindoway continued to come to the post at Mendota to trade for various supplies. In the credit books of the trading company, her name appears and she is identified as Bad Hail's daughter in August 1845 and April 1846.[23] Unfortunately, the historical record includes several conflicting stories about what ultimately happened to Tahshinaohindoway. Some sources say she married a man, who may have been known as Henry St. Cloud, from the Black Dog band and died during childbirth in 1848; others imply that she died five years earlier when Wakiye was only two years old. Still others report that she moved out of the Mendota area and went up north to her brother's band and married and died there.
William Reynolds Brown and his wife Martha raised Helen Sibley from the time she was about six years old until she married in 1859.
What is documented is that Henry Sibley took Wakiye away from her mother and her Dakota family by 1847, when she was only about six years old. She became Helen Hastings and Sibley took her to the little village of Red Rock on the east side of the Mississippi River south of St. Paul to be fostered by William Reynolds Brown and his wife, Martha Newman Brown. The Browns had only been married a few years. Martha was a widow identified only as Mrs. Boardman when she came with the first Methodist missionaries to teach the Dakota at the Mdewakanton village of Kaposia in 1839. William had come west with his brother and had a substantial farm in Red Rock, now Newport, Minnesota. They wed in 1841.
Bruce Kohn, author of Dakota Child, Governor's Daughter, published by the Friends of the Historic Sibley House in 2012, does an excellent job in his book surmising how quickly and completely Wakiye's life changed when she was brought to the Browns. Her Dakota name was set aside and she became Helen Hastings. She worshipped with the Browns at the Methodist chapel in Red Rock and was, for the most part, raised as their daughter. The Browns also took in other foster children. The 1850 census for Washington County, Minnesota, records the following who were in the household that September: William Brown, 32; Martha, 32; Elizabeth Brown, 22; William Wilson, 25; and Hellen Sibly [sic], and Catherine Forbes, both eight years old. Elizabeth was William Brown's sister; William Wilson may have been a hired man and Catherine Forbes was the daughter of Helen Sibley's godfather, William Forbes, and a Dakota woman.
Helen attended Methodist church services in this log cabin which was built by Rev. Benjamin T. Kavanaugh in 1839-1840. The building has been moved several times but since 1969 it has been on the grounds of the Newport United Methodist Church in Newport, Minnesota.
Henry Sibley paid the Browns to care for Helen and they submitted bills to him for her clothing, shoes and other items over and above the monthly board. William was well-respected in the area and held several elected positions during his farming years in Washington County, including assessor, justice of the peace and county commissioner. He and Martha also enjoyed entertaining and moved in the best social circles of the time for a small, rural community.
When Helen was about ten years old, in 1851, William and Martha sold their farm and moved across the river near the Mdewakanton village of Kaposia, where the Williamson mission was located. The federal treaty with the Dakota of that year required the Dakota to leave their village and relocate to the new Lower Sioux Agency near Redwood Falls, Minnesota, while the western side of the river was opened up for white settlement. By early 1853, the Dakota made their way to the new reservation and the land that had been the Kaposia Village became part of the Township of West St. Paul in the Dakota County. The Browns and Helen were in West St. Paul for perhaps two years and then William and Martha purchased a home in St. Paul in 1854.
Helen, then a young teenager, became involved with the Jackson Street Methodist Church and was, according to all accounts, a popular and pretty girl. Kohn provides the following description of Helen:
Bruce Kohn wrote an excellent and very detailed biography of Helen Hastings Sibley in 2012. The cover image was created by Deb Zeller especially for the Kohn book, which was published by Friends of the Sibley House Site.
"Men remembered her looks. 'She was a pretty girl, was Helen with dark eyes and hair but with a fair complexion and with features that gave much less evidence of her descent from the 'first families' than was displayed by the half-Caucasian children of other prominent pioneers,' summarized a journalist reporting her life story. Helen probably looked more Caucasian than the typical mixed-blood child because her mother was partly of French descent. By another account, Helen was a 'very beautiful girl,' who 'looked much like [her] father.' A former boarder with the Browns remembered her some sixty years later as 'a handsome girl.' In another memory, 'Helen Sibley was the best-looking of all of them.' "[24]
By this time, in the mid-1850s, Henry Sibley was deep into his political career. He served in the U.S. Congress as the Territorial Representative from Minnesota from 1849-1953. He was then elected to the Minnesota Territorial House of Representatives in 1855, as the representative of Dakota County and was a member of the Democratic Party wing of the first Minnesota Constitutional Convention in 1857.
In 1858 Sibley was elected as the first governor of the state, serving from May 24, 1858, until January 2, 1860. After narrowly defeating Republican Alexander Ramsey in the first state gubernatorial contest, Sibley declared in his inaugural address, "I have no object and no interests which are not inseparably bound up with the welfare of the state." He did not seek reelection.
While Sibley continued to support Helen and pay her expenses with the Browns, he continued to try to hide his true identity when it came to the legal documentation of her parentage. Like all those of mixed blood, Helen was entitled to what was called Half-Breed Scrip, where those who were white and Dakota were awarded land along the Minnesota side of Lake Pepin. As whites continued to move into the area, many of those who received the property were willing to convert them to scrip and receive the value in dollars rather than property. Everyone who was awarded anything had to produce evidence, usually with live testimony, of the details of their birth. In Helen's case, Sibley wanted her to get the value of her award but by pulling strings, he managed to get her recorded via William Forbes' testimony as Hellen Hastings [sic], who is the daughter of ____________. Her mother is reported as being a full blood, Indian woman of the Mdewakanton band of the Sioux Indians and she is a half blood of said band. Thus, Sibley got her scrip recorded without identifying himself.[25]
Despite his cautionary behavior, nearly everyone knew that Helen Hastings was the Governor's daughter and she herself used the name Helen Hastings Sibley. At some point when she approached her late teens, Sibley paid for Helen to go east to a finishing school for young women and she had received an excellent education in the schools in Washington County and in St. Paul. She was musical and played the melodeon, which Henry Sibley gave her for her fourteenth birthday. When the Browns took a house at 145 East Fifth Street in downtown St. Paul between Robert and Jackson Streets, Sibley visited often and he and Helen could be seen chatting over the front gate as he attempted to be on his way after one of his visits.[26]
The Browns took in a variety of boarders to supplement their income in the 1850s and in 1857, a young doctor from New York, Sylvester Sawyer, took a room with them in August of 1857. Bruce Kohn writes:
"Doctor Sawyer intrigued Helen. He had studied in the office of a physician in Keeseville, New York, and in 1854 graduated from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. He was a surgeon at a hospital until the latter part of 1855, then spent a year studying in Paris before going to Saint Paul to practice medicine. He fascinated the young woman just returned from school and awakening to the wider world. William Brown told Sawyer about Helen's parents and her maternal grandparents."[27]
It wasn't long before Helen and Sylvester fell in love. They were married on November 3, 1859. Sylvester was thirty-one years old and Helen just eighteen. Helen agreed to use the name Helen Hastings in the official documents and her father, the Governor of Minnesota, agreed to participate in the wedding. The Governor's staff attended and Reverend John Mattocks, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church of St. Paul, who had known Sylvester Sawyer back in his hometown in upstate New York, performed the marriage. The ceremony took place in the front parlor of the Browns' home in St. Paul and many members of their church community attended. Henry Sibley signed the marriage certificate as a witness while the name of the bride's father remained blank on the document.
Throughout her entire life, Helen had to live with the fact that her father had a whole other family and that her stepmother, Sarah Jane Steele Sibley, wanted nothing to do with her. No matter how much she had accomplished nor how popular and intelligent she was, she never quite met the mark with her father's clan. According to Kohn, she did have a good relationship with Henry Sibley's brother Fred who came to Minnesota and managed the Mendota trading post for Henry as the Congressman lived in Washington while serving on Congress. He remained in Minnesota in 1854 and meant a lot to Helen. Unfortunately, she apparently never received an address at which to write to him after her marriage.[28]
Still Helen and Sylvester reportedly were very happy together. They established their first home in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Sylvester wrote to William Brown in mid-November 1859:
"As Helen has informed you, we are comfortably lodged for the winter & everything is as pleasant as could be desired. Helen makes a most excellent wife and affectionate companion & I have no doubt we shall get along in perfect harmony together…My experience convinces that matrimony is a great institution and I no longer wonder that widowers and widows are so anxious to get married a 2d or 3d time."[29]
Their marital bliss in Milwaukee was challenged by their financial situation even as Sylvester continued to grow his practice. On May 26, 1860, Helen and Sylvester moved from Milwaukee to Raymond Center in southeastern Wisconsin, where Sylvester purchased an existing practice from a retiring doctor. They joined the Congregational Church in Raymond and Helen became friends with the pastor's wife. They had a house, three acres of land, a barn, a cow, chickens, a horse and a wagon. They could even afford to hire a helper who assisted with the farm and the house.[30]
In their comfortable new location, Helen and Sylvester prepared to welcome their first child who was expected in mid-August 1860. By early September, the baby still had not arrived and on Monday, September 3, Helen broke out in a red rash but she wasn't concerned. She went into labor and Helen and Sylvester's new daughter arrived at 1:10 a.m. on September 4, 1860. The baby was healthy but by the next afternoon, Helen had developed a high fever and a rash and became delirious as the day turned into Wednesday. Sylvester sent to Milwaukee for another physician since he could not control the fever.
Helen died on September 6, 1860. She had just turned nineteen years old on August 28, nine days earlier. Sylvester wrote to William Brown, who, along with Martha, was shocked and grieving Helen's death. Bruce Kohn describes the situation:
"How Sylvester missed his young wife. 'Every day I saw more and more in her to love and admire – every day my attachment to her was becoming stronger & stronger, while her love for me was such as I never thought to gain – so true, so steadfast."
Sawyer also reported that the baby seemed well. "I shall call her, I think, Helen Mary – Mary being my mother's name. Helen's mother's name I never knew. I know you will be shocked at this dreadful news – so will her Father and all of my friends." The minister's wife took the baby to care for her in the days after Helen's death. When Henry Sibley got the news, he was celebrating the birth of his own son, Charles Frederick Sibley, who was born on September 11. He wrote to William Brown on September 14, 1860:
"I am much obliged for your kindness in sending me for perusal, Doct. S's letter giving a detailed account of the illness and death of poor Helen. I had already recd a similar one from him. Poor girl! Her dream of happiness here was a short one, but we have reason to help that she has been translated to a better and purer state."[31]
As a physician, Sylvester kept checking on baby Helen but unfortunately, by Tuesday, she was emaciated and in pain. She passed away on Friday, September 14, 1860, just a little over a week after Helen. The two were buried together in the cemetery in Raymond, Wisconsin.[32]
Sylvester remained in contact with the Browns and with Henry Sibley after Helen's death, sharing his own sorrow and grief but also, at least in the case of Sibley, seeking access to Helen's scrip on her behalf and on behalf of their also deceased baby girl. Sibley had told him that the scrip would be handed over to him as soon as it could be arranged.[33]
In February of 1862, Sylvester remarried, this time to another Helen, Helen A. Gookins, from Belvidere, Illinois. They got married in Elkhorn, Wisconsin. Sylvester had still not received payment for Helen Sibley's scrip and remained in contact with Sibley about it, but the Civil War interrupted his plans as he was called to serve as a physician at Fort Schuyler near New York City. He was in that role for fifteen months beginning in November 1862. He and his wife settled in New York after the war and Sylvester practiced medicine there until he died at age forty-two in 1870, leaving Helen and their two children, Henry S. Sawyer, who was five years old and Jessie Sawyer, who was still an infant. Sylvester's widow continued the pursuit of Helen Sibley's scrip payment which Henry Sibley said he still had in 1883, but it is unknown if she was ever successful in receiving any proceeds.
Helen Hastings Sawyer's obituary in the Weekly Racine Advocate on September 19, 1860, clearly identifies her as Henry Sibley's daughter.
"At Raymond Center, Racine County, Wis., Sept. 6th, 1860, of scarlet fever, HELEN H., daughter of Gov. H.H. Sibley, of Minnesota, and wife of Dr. S.J. SAWYER, of Raymond, in the 20th year of her age.
"Mrs. Sawyer adorned her Christian profession, and recommended the religion of Jesus by a life of remarkable devotion to the happiness of others. In her domestic and social life she was singularly self-forgetful; her thoughts and efforts seemed all to be for the comfort and enjoyment and highest good of her friends and acquaintances. She was unaffected and enthusiastic in her admiration for the beauties and wonders of nature, and loved the humblest of God's animated creatures. As a wife she was devoted and affectionate, and ardently beloved; as a mother she lived but three days, of delirium with but brief lucid intervals, and was mysteriously removed from duties and cares and delights, which she alone could best fulfil and enjoy; and yet a humble and confiding faith in our Heavenly Father can enable her friends to realizes that for her 'to die is gain.'
"After a life of only ten days her daughter has been transplanted to bloom by her side in the Paradise of God."[34]
Perhaps of the three Dakota daughters discussed in this story, Helen is the one who really was transformed from the daughter of Red Blanket Woman who grew up in a traditional Dakota village, to become the acknowledged daughter of the white Governor of Minnesota and the wife of a respected white physician in Raymond Center, Wisconsin. She had made her place in white society at a time when moving between native and white culture was not always easily accomplished. After her mother's death, it appears that Henry Sibley never encouraged Helen to remain in touch with her mother's family nor with her Dakota culture. Sadly, she died so young that she truly never had an opportunity to realize whatever goals or objectives she had created during her life as she made this transition to white culture. In any case it is clear that her mother loved her dearly, as did her father, her foster parents and ultimately her husband. We can only imagine who she may have become had she lived a longer life.
[1] Mary Huggins Kerlinger Journal, Huggins digitized collection, Minnesota Historical Society, p. 126.
[2] MNHS, Minnesota Collections, Vol VI, 1894, pp. 438-60.
[4] With Pen and Pencil on the Frontier in 1851, The Diary and Sketches of Frank Blackwell Mayer, edited with an introduction and notes by Bertha L. Heilbron, Minnesota Historical Society Press, St. Paul, 1986, pp. 167-168.
5] Ibid., pp. 169-171.
6] Mary Jane Faribault Eastman's tombstone at the agency cemetery in Flandreau, South Dakota, lists her date of birth as August 16, 1855. Many other records indicated that she was born on August 9, 1853, but I cannot explain how an official tombstone could be wrong so I am going with the 1855 date. http://www.FindaGrave.com, September 13, 2019.
[7] These discrepancies in dates are frustrating and often cannot be explained. I have attempted in every case to document the correct information from original source documents like birth and death certificates, marriage licenses, etc. There is an excellent Faribault family tree on Ancestry.com which seems to provide documented dates and names.
[8] Thomas Williamson to S.B. Treat, November 21, 1862, MNHS, ABCFM Correspondence, Box 7
[11] Mark Diedrich, Little Crow and the Dakota War, Coyote Books, Rochester, MN,, 2006, p. 221
[12] Stephen Riggs to S.B. Treat, March 12, 1867, MNHS NW Missions MS P489, Box 21
[13] MNHS, Minnesota Collections, Vol VI, 1894, pp. 438-60.
[14] A.H. Laughlin, "History of Ransome County," History of the Red River Valley: Past and Present, Vol II, C.F. Cooper & Company, Chicago, 1909
[15] MNHS, Minnesota Collections, Vol VI, 1894, pp. 438-60, reprinted in Minnesota's Heritage No 1, January 2010, f.n. 9, p. 45. In this report, Nancy's age, listed as 62, is again incorrect. Nancy was sixty-six in 1902.
[16] There is a fairly complete Eastman family tree on Ancestry.com that provides dates, spouses, children, etc. for John and Jane's children but none of those children appear to be the parents of these three grandchildren.
[17] Mary Huggins Kerlinger Journal, Huggins digitized collection, Minnesota Historical Society, p. 148.
[18] Oasixheaoui is spelled this way in the historical record but it is not how a Dakota name would normally be written. When I asked Carrie Zeman for her thoughts on the name, she responded that it could be pronounced, "Wa-she-hay-a-win," which could mean French Woman or even White Woman, although Oasixheaoui was full Dakota as far as we know.
[19] Thomas Smith Williamson, Obituary of Miss Julia Framboise, November 7, 1871, to ABCFM. MNHS ABCFM Correspondence, Box 5.
20] West Newton, Minnesota is a ghost town today, closed in 1910. The only remaining commercial location that was in West Newton is Harkin's General Store, just outside of New Ulm, Minnesota.
[21] MNHS Huggins Digitized Collections, Part 14, pp 2-3. The "mother" that Julia mentions is her step-mother Jane Dickson LaFramboise, who was fifty-one years old when Julia died.
[22] Both Bad Hail and his daughter, Red Blanket Woman, are identified in the historic record by several different Dakota names or at least names with different spellings. I am using Wasuwicaxtaxni and Tahshinahohindoway.
23] Bruce A. Kohn, Dakota Child, Governor's Daughter: The Life of Helen Hastings Sibley, Friends of the Sibley Historic Site, Mendota, MN, 2012, p. 42
[24] Ibid., p. 70 and endnote 160.
[25] Ibid., p. 71
[28] Ibid., p. 66, 85
[29] Ibid. p. 86
[30] Currently an unincorporated ghost town.
31] Kohn, Ibid. p. 94
[32] I have never located the location of a cemetery in Raymond, Wisconsin, which is an unincorporated ghost town in 2019. Sylvester Sawyer had also informed people that he planned to have Helen and the baby's gravesite moved to his own family plot in New York but Helen does not appear in any current cemetery search sites.
[33] Kohn, Ibid., p. 99
[34] Ibid., p. 96. Helen had turned nineteen on August 28, 1860.
Posted in Dakota Mission, Eliza Huggins Holtzclaw, Fanny Huggins Pettijohn, Hazlewood Mission, Helen Hastings Sibley Sawyer, Jane Smith Williamson, Julia Ann LaFramboise, Kaposia Village, Lac Qui Parle Mission, Lydia Pettijohn Huggins, Magdelaine LaFramboise, Mary Ann Longley Huggins Kerlinger, Nancy Jane Williamson, Nancy McClure Faribault Huggan, Sarah Steele Sibley, Sophia Josephine Marsh Huggins Hanthorne, Tahshinaohindoway aka Red Blanket Woman, Traverse des Sioux, U.S. Dakota War of 1862, Women in Minnesota	| Leave a comment
Mrs. Aiton Times Two – Nancy Hunter Aiton and Mary Briggs Aiton
Posted on September 11, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
In June of 1925, Miss Margaret Aiton of Minneapolis donated "some twelve letters" to the Minnesota Historical Society. Minnesota History Magazine described the gift as follows:
"Some twelve letters written by Jane Williamson, Sister of the missionary Dr. Thomas S. Williamson, from the Yellow Medicine mission in 1853, have been presented by Miss Margaret Aiton of Minneapolis, daughter of Mrs. John Aiton, to whom they originally were written. The letters are of special interest because they interpret from a woman's viewpoint the situation which confronted the early missionaries. Miss Aiton has also presented a biographical sketch of Dr. Williamson and reminiscences of the mission by her mother, together with a number of photographs of members of the Williamson family."[1]
Many of these letters have been cited in earlier posts, especially those about Jane Williamson. What the article didn't say is that the letters weren't actually written to Margaret Aiton's mother, who was the second Mrs. Aiton – they were written to Nancy Hunter Aiton, John Aiton's first wife. Jane Williamson and Nancy Aiton were close friends and their letters to each other do indeed "interpret from a woman's viewpoint" the story of the Dakota missions at Red Wing, Kaposia and Pejutazee. The magazine article also indicates that Miss Aiton also turned over several photographs of the Williamson family. That information is important and tragic because all of those photographs were destroyed in the infamous photo purge at the Minnesota History Center when thousands of prints were thrown away because some enterprising staffer saw that the Society did not have the negative and did not take the time to track down the provenance of those prints. In the case of the Williamson family, most of their own photographs were destroyed when their house was burned to the ground in 1862 and some of the photographs donated by the Aiton family were the only existing copies of those images.
That sad story aside, the story of Nancy Hunter Aiton and her friendship with Jane Williamson is an important part of the historical record. I would give anything to find a photo of Nancy but so far nothing has surfaced. She was born on October 20, 1828, in New York State, the daughter of Moses and Elisabeth Hunter. She had three brothers, James, Robert and Andrew.
When Nancy was a young girl, her father brought the family to Quincy, Illinois, where he served as principal of the Quincy Mission Institute. Rev. Dr. David Nelson founded the Mission Institute in 1836 and the school operated Quincy's best known Underground Railroad Station, Mission Institute #1, just north of present day Madison Park. The Underground Railroad was an informal, secret system of aiding fugitive slaves by passing them along from "station to station" until they reached Canada and freedom. The Underground Railroad lasted in Quincy from the early 1830s to the late 1840s. Nancy grew up in that abolitionist home and held to her strong anti-slavery beliefs for her entire life. She was also a student at the mission institute during her teenage years.
Nancy Hunter grew up in Quincy, Illinois. This scene of the city includes the courthouse and one of the main streets in the shopping district. Nancy's father was the principal of the Mission Institute in Quincy.
In January of 1846, Thomas Williamson apparently learned that a student at Lane Seminary, John Felix Aiton, had approached the ABCFM about coming west as a missionary to the Dakota. Thomas wrote to David Greene of the ABCFM that "Mr. Aiton is engaged to a young lady in Quincy, Illinois… They would do well at Red Wing. I have been told that the woman he is about to marry is very likely to be a suitable companion to a missionary."[2] That young woman was Nancy Hunter. She and John Aiton had been engaged since 1845.
John Aiton was born in Stonehouse Parish, Lanarkshire, Scotland on November 15, 1817. He was the son of Thomas and Jean Muter Aiton, and came to Canada when he was seventeen years old, while his parents remained in Scotland. In about 1837 he came to Ohio and attended the Mission Institute at Quincy before beginning his studies at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati.
Lane Theological Seminary was a Presbyterian theological college that operated from 1829 to 1932 in Walnut Hills, Ohio, today a neighborhood in Cincinnati.
In the summer of 1848, when Nancy was nineteen years old, John graduated from Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, along with his classmate Moses Newton Adams, whose wife was the other Nancy, Nancy Rankin, whose story was shared in the previous post. Both John Aiton and Moses Adams wanted to be missionaries to the American Indians in the west and both received the same advice that they needed to be married before they even considered going to the mission field.
Nancy Hunter married John Aiton on July 5, 1848, and Nancy Rankin married Moses Adams on July 8, 1848. Both couples left for the Dakota mission in Minnesota Territory within a few days of their weddings. Both couples were also welcomed by the Williamsons at Kaposia. The Aitons were sent south to assist Rev. Joseph and Martha Hancock at the mission at Red Wing, Minnesota, and Moses and Nancy Adams were assigned to the mission at Lac Qui Parle, Minnesota. Joseph Hancock had been a classmate of both John Aiton and Moses Adams while they attended Lane Seminary in Cincinnati.
Seth Eastman painting of Kaposia on the west bank of the Mississippi in what is today South St. Paul, Minnesota. John and Nancy were originally stationed in Red Wing, Minnesota, about 40 miles from Kaposia but both of them visited and worked at the Kaposia mission during their time in Minnesota.
When Nancy and John arrived at Red Wing, Joseph Hancock and his wife, Martha Houghton Hancock, had one daughter, Marilla Hancock, who was four months old. It wasn't long before Nancy and John learned they were expecting their first child as well. Nancy came to stay with the Williamsons at Kaposia during her confinement. She and John arrived at the village on February 20, 1849. John returned to Red Wing a few days later but Nancy stayed until their daughter Elizabeth was born on April 9, 1849.[3] A week later she wrote to John that Dr. Williamson said she could return to Red Wing in three weeks or so and said she wished that John could be there to give their daughter a kiss this morning.[4]
John wrote a letter to his new baby daughter on April 20, 1849, when she was just eleven days old. He was at Red Wing and Nancy and the baby were at Kaposia.
"Dear daughter,
"Today I hear that you look in Mother's face. You are not yet acquainted with Red Wing and the people here so I cannot tell you anything about home except that I am very glad to hear about you. I hope that you will give yourself to God as soon as you can learn from your Mother that all men are in need of a Savior. God says, 'Remember thy creation in the days of thy youth.' I am glad that you are in good health; also that you sleep well. Put your little arm round Mother's neck and kiss her.
"The lord bless you, Farewell,
Your Father John Aiton"[5]
The correspondence between John and Nancy began in 1845 when he was attending Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Nancy was in Quincy, Illinois. Over the years, they wrote hundreds of letters, many of which are in the collections of the Minnesota Historical Society. The letters are very intimate and full of loving messages. Despite that intense connection on paper, John and Nancy actually lived apart a great deal of the time.
For example, on February 3, 1850, when their daughter Elizabeth was ten months old, Nancy wrote to John from her mother's home in Quincy, Illinois. It isn't clear where John was but Nancy told him, "So you were writing to me last Friday night when I was thinking perhaps he will come tonight. I was knitting and sat until ten rather later than usual and then felt satisfied that you would be otherwise employed. I am glad to hear that you have plenty to do and are contented." It appears that John was nearby and this may have been the time when he was working as a Bible salesman in Illinois.
Nancy's letter continues:
"The sun is now set and what a beautiful day it has been and Mother and I had a fine walk down to Mr. Furnell's. Sarah is still confined to the bed and Mrs. F. very poorly. Twas right cold last week but we had plenty of wood and I kept thinking that if this month is cold the next will be warmer perhaps which was quite a consolation you know. Indeed I felt quite well and cheerful all the week. I washed your clothes and have them all ready with very little inconvenience and I thought I had great reason to be thankful. There is scarce any lameness now and very little pain and good appetite so ought I not to be thankful and cheerful not if you would concern we would be happy and have mush and milk." [6]
Nancy's health is often mentioned in these letters and was an ongoing concern although she was able to return to Red Wing, Minnesota, with John within a few weeks of writing this February 1850 letter.
By July 23, 1850, however, when little Elizabeth was fifteen months old, Nancy once again returned to her mother's home in Quincy, Illinois. Nancy's brother Andrew, who was twenty years old, was the last of her siblings to live at home with his mother. Before they left Minnesota Nancy wrote to Jane Williamson at Kaposia:
"My Dear Miss Williamson,
"Till the last I have promised myself the pleasure of seeing you again, by getting on The Nominee as it went up; but now I must give it up as The Franklin Nr. 2 is early enough this week to take us clear home before the Sabbath which will save us much time trouble and perhaps expense. I have left my bureau for you. Please accept it as a token of my gratitude for your multiplied kindnesses to us. Mr. Aiton says perhaps it will cost you more to get it than it will do you good. This I would pay were I going up, so please charge it to my account. The little roll of pieces I designed for the little girls, the thimble for Mary, the calico was given to me by a dear friend last summer but I do not need it now and perhaps it may do you some good. Please wear it for my sake, not because it is pretty."[7]
Only a few days after John and Nancy arrived in Ohio, their little daughter Elizabeth became ill and died. As is so often the case when a young child passed away in this era, nothing is noted as a cause of death. Children just died. Historians today have speculated that some of them may have been lactose intolerant, or had some gastrointestinal problem that didn't allow them to absorb nutrition. This latest journey to Ohio may have been made because Elizabeth wasn't well, but Nancy's health also became an issue again. In any case, words and notes of sympathy arrived from friends and family.
One of the most unusual came to Nancy from Mary Napexni, a little Dakota girl who had known Nancy at Kaposia.
"Dear Mrs. Aiton,
"I think the rose you sent me very pretty. You were very kind to spin that good yarn to keep my feet warm in the winter. I think you for the knitting needles. I have commenced knitting my stockings. I read Bowyer-Smith through three times and thank you for sending it to me. I have read Mother stories and some other books. I read some chapters in the Bible every day now. I read about Jephtha's daughter today in school.
"I was very sorry when I heard little Elizabeth was dead. My little Brother is dead too. He was put in a box and buried on the bluff. Aunt Jane goes with us up to the grave sometimes. We can see it from the kitchen door. On the same hill are some red stones the Indians pray to but I know that they cannot hear nor help them.
"Please do not forget,
"Mary Napexni"[8]
Mary Napexni was probably about eight years old when she wrote to Nancy Hunter Aiton to thank her for items Nancy had sent to her from Illinois. Mary was a student of Jane Williamson's at Kaposia and learned to read and write in both Dakota and English at Jane's school.
On October 11, 1850, Nancy Jane Williamson wrote to Nancy Aiton.
"We were very much pleased and surprised to see Mr. Aiton come off The Nominee. We were very glad to hear from you once more.
"I was very sorry when I heard that little Elizabeth was dead.
"Mary's brother is dead, too, but may we not hope that they are together praising God among the holy angels. Once when I went out with Mary to see her brother's grave she said his soul had come out at a hole she showed me. But I hope she will learn better after a while.
"We think the crewel and perforated paper very pretty. Aunt said that she thinks when we get our woolen things all made she will let us have some time to make markers. I think the marker you sent me very pretty and thank you for remembering me and taking to make it.
"Nancy Jane Williamson
Letter Continues
"Mr. Aiton spent last night with us but he did not talk much of dear Elizabeth's death and we supposed it made him sad to think about it."
Jane Williamson added her own thoughts on October 16, 1850:
"Bro. Aiton has just informed me that he is sending to you and although it is my usual bedtime I will add a line to what N.J. has written. Oh, if you could have considerably left home this winter how we should have loved to have had you with us. We would all have felt it a very great privilege. Still it does seem very desirable that you should spend a season with your Mother and bro. Even the hope of seeing you in the Spring rejoices us. But Mr. A. now feels that the way is not quite open for him to labor in Minnesota. May the Lord direct your steps."[9]
By the winter of 1850-51, Nancy was pregnant again and John was teaching at a school in Chili, Illinois, while she stayed in Quincy. Their son, Thomas Hunter Aiton, was born early in 1851. On March 12, 1851, Nancy wrote to John that the baby was lying on the floor "stretching himself, making observations and taking some exercise withal. He slept in bed all night las night and has been very good today. He would listen attentively to any you would say to him for he loves to be talked to."[10]
Only a few days later John Aiton wrote to Nancy concerning the situation with their position in the mission in Minnesota.
"The news in the Dr's letter were about what I expected. If Mr. Hancock and Mr. Pond are not in favor of increasing the number of the missionaries, then it will not be well for us to go there. And perhaps it would be best for us to give up the expectation of joining the Sioux Mission. The Dr. does not appear have much hope of our joining that mission. He speaks of us keeping a boarding school at Red Rock. But the obstacles on our part, is want of money. The missionaries have generally calculated what the U.S. will allow and it will not be sufficient to maintain the children. Thus the children will require our time and not afford us anything to live on. And if the ABCFM does not see fit to undertake such a school then the moneyless family would be made, in my estimate to enter on so money-need a scheme. Still if God says so, then he will alter the way…..Please do not call the boy bub. I greatly dislike it." (He circled the last sentence.)[11]
Despite John's expressed concerns about whether they should leave the mission for good, by May of 1851, the Aitons returned once again to Minnesota. They were called back because Joseph Hancock's wife Martha had passed away on March 20, 1851, leaving him alone with three-year-old Marilla and seven-month-old Willie Hancock. Nancy and John's own son, Thomas Aiton, was baptized at Kaposia by Rev. Williamson on May 30, 1851, and a few weeks later Jane Williamson brought four of her Dakota students by steamer down the river to Red Wing to visit Nancy there.
Red Wing today is a charming historic city on the Mississippi River. In the 1850s it was rapidly becoming populated by white settlers and river traffic increased over the years. Jane Williamson took four of her Dakota students on a riverboat to Red Wing to visit Nancy Aiton in 1851.
On October 2, 1851, Jane Williamson wrote to Nancy to share her concern that the obituary that Mr. Hancock prepared may have not reached the office of the Pioneer in time to appear in that week's paper. The obituary Jane referred to was for little Willie Hancock who had died on September 27, 1851, at the age of thirteen months. Jane had returned to Kaposia after being at Red Wing with Nancy and John Aiton and Joseph Hancock following Martha's death.[12] She was preparing for a trip to Ohio and took Nancy Jane Williamson and Marion Robertson with her when she left with Stephen and Mary Riggs on October 31, 1851.
Nancy Aiton came to Kaposia to cover Jane's classes during her absence. Sarah Rankin, who had been stationed at Red Wing with the Aitons and Hancocks, wrote to Nancy from her new posting at Lac Qui Parle on March 28, 1852.
"I was very much surprised to learn in a letter from Mrs. Pond that you had left Red Wing and gone up to Kaposia and have taken Miss Williamson's school. I won't believe it if I hadn't heard it so straight. I think Miss W. must have started off very suddenly. I think Mr. H. must be very lonely there all alone. Where is Marilla and has she got well? I have been very anxious to hear from her. I suppose Thomas has got to be a great boy by this time if he grew as fast as he did last summer. I think about Willie a great deal. I feel very lonely at times when I think of him but he is gone and our loss is his gain. I expect your mother was very much disappointed in not seeing you this fall. Sister said that she was expecting you home on every boat when they left…Sister sends her respects to you and Mr. Aiton and says she would be happy to hear from you. I send much love to Mr. A and all inquiring friends."[13]
Nancy took care of Jane's students and they exchanged letters during this time which are cited in Jane Williamson's story in Dakota Soul Sisters. Jane returned home to Kaposia in May of 1852. She brought with her a young sixteen-year-old Mary Smith Briggs, who had been one of Jane's students in West Union, Ohio, when Mary was a young girl. This was perhaps the first time that Mary Briggs met John and Nancy Aiton and it wasn't long before Nancy and John once again went to visit Nancy's family in Illinois. They were in Illinois when the Annual Meeting of the Dakota Mission was held that fall but were back in Kaposia by November 18, 1852 where John was serving as the government teacher at the school as opposed to being affiliated with the Kaposia mission. Nancy's brother, Andrew Hunter, came out to Kaposia to join them in 1852.
In October 1852, the Williamsons, Mary Briggs, and Nancy Aiton's brother Andrew moved to their new mission which they named Pejutazee. It was located by the new Upper Sioux Agency reservation northwest of the Lower Sioux Agency reservation. The Dakota were being relocated to the new reservations following the ratification of the Treaty of 1851. Jane wrote to Nancy from their new home on November 18, 1852.
"Soon after we came here Mr. Hunter went to Lac qui Parle for a cartload of potatoes. Smith [Smith Williamson] accompanied driving him in the wagon to bring a piece of furniture bro had left. Then bro insisted that I should comply with an invitation Mrs. Riggs had sent me and pay them a visit and as I am not fond of riding in wagon he said I might take the side saddle and ride Filly. I enjoyed riding in the wagon and on horseback by turns very well. We were almost thru when I was taken sick and was quite unwell. Sabbath could not attend Sioux preaching. We expected to start home Monday but the horses could not be found. Your bro searched diligently till Tuesday evening.
"Wednesday morning your bro harnessed the oxen and started. Mr. Riggs put his horse on the wagon and brought Nancy Jane, Smith and me in it. We did not reach home until sometime after dark. The snow was falling very fast and we had some difficulty finding the house. Mr. Hunter camped but started before day and arrived early in the morning. He is very energetic and never complains of being sick or tired. We find him a very pleasant member of our family, too fearful of giving trouble and ever ready to oblige he appears humble and devoted and I cannot but hope the Lord use him as an instrument of good to his poor people. Yet I know I ofttimes hope to be disappointed but I doubt not that you pray the Lord to guide us all in the way that we should go. He will soon speak Sioux well, nearly those hard sounds very accurately."[14]
Just a few days after Jane wrote this letter to Nancy, her brother Andrew and a hired French man named Jacques planned to head back to Traverse des Sioux to bring back the flour and corn meal that had not made it into the carts and boat for the first trip. Thomas Williamson was very worried about them because the weather was rapidly worsening, becoming colder with snow and ice constantly building up. Jane said the two men were both "full of energy and youthful adventure and profess not to dread the trip."
Things did not work out as the men planned. Jane told Nancy about the situation in a letter to her on January 12, 1853:
"Dear Sister Aiton,
"If the letters mailed by your bro. at Traverse des Sioux reached you in safety you undoubtedly have listened to the frightful howling of the fierce north wind with painful anxiety. And day after day when the churning rays of the sun were obscured by the drifting snow you thought of and prayed for a brother who might be exposed to the terrible tempest.
"We too were painfully anxious for him and the young man who was with him. My bro sometimes said all the comfort he felt respecting them was in knowing that the Lord reigns and the reason we had to hope Mr. Hunter was his child.
"On last Monday evening they both reached home but I am sorry to add your brother's feet had been so badly frozen that he has not been able to walk on them since. When bro opened his feet he exclaimed I can't see how you walked on these feet. Andrew replied, "I knew friends were praying for us. The Lord helped me. When I took one step I thought I could take one more."
"For two or three days after he came his feet had so little sensation that the dressing gave him very little pain but he suffers acutely now when they are dressed. Still he bears it without a murmur."
"When he is able he will give you particulars. Suffice it to say the Indians that came before them had used hay they left by the way and notwithstanding their efforts to preserve them by calling down but armed the storms they give out. Mr. Jacques made a little sled and putting some crackers and their bedding on it prevailed on your bro to leave the teams. They came on J driving the sled.
This on New Year's Day. While many were rejoicing they were painfully pursuing their way. Mr. H. sometimes holding onto J. They got in sight of Brown's but wandered a little could not reach it, slept without fire but having plenty of blankets were not cold. Sabbath morning the wind rose and they started for the house. The snow in the timber was soft. Jacques had left his snowshoes behind, and drawing the sled caused him to sink. Made walking very laborious so he put some crackers in a pillowslip, left all the rest and they reached the house in the forenoon. No one is living there this winter and there is no door that shuts but wood was very convenient. Mr. Jacques kept a good fire, carried in plenty of hay for them to sleep on and under the next morning they started early and reached home about 8 p.m.
"We are very sorry your bro should suffer so but feel it our privilege to be permitted to nurse him and although we may not do it so well as a widowed mother or an only sister he seems content and much oftener speaks of his mercies than his afflictions.
"The provisions they had left when they arrived at Traverse they laid up where they thought it would be safe but a dog got it. They got what meat they thought would be enough coming back but it was not sufficient. Mr. H. said he never felt so strong after the meat gave out…
"He relishes his food very much now hope he will soon be better but he can't get well very soon.
"When we consider how terribly stormy the weather was we feel thankful that their lives were spared. Still I feel very sorry to see him suffering and it gives me much to feel that this suffering was brought by exerting himself to bring food to us.
"When starting I said to him, 'Don't you dread the trip?' 'All I dread about it is the anxiety you and others will feel for us,' was your brother's reply. Yet I felt sad when they started."[15]
Jane continued to keep Nancy informed about Andrew in a letter she wrote between February 4 and 15, 1853:
"Your favor of December 27 did not reach us till yesterday though one of a later date had been previously read.
"Your Brother's feet are still mending but the right one from which the toes were taken is more painful than usual today. He said just now 'If I can't along without complaining with part of a foot how should I do if I had a whole one?' Thus you see he is Andrew yet. But he does not very often make light remarks and few I think would have such an affliction with so much cheerful resignation as he does.
"I think Dec. was the most terribly stormy month I ever saw with us. How was it with you? Jan. came in cold but upon the — it was pleasant. The howling wind today is rather to remind us of the painfully anxious days and nights we spent when Mr. H and J were returning from Traverse.
"Mr. J says one night very similar the cold was so terrible that they stowed the fire and made their bed on the hot rocks having a large fire at their feet after lying sometime he tried to look out, the fire had burned out the place where it had been was covered with snow and a drift was forming on them. They had a tent but the wind was heavy they could not often sit it. They also had more bedding that they needed but the snow would wet it to prevent this. They had taken with then a bed tick filled with hay but when the horses had nothing else to eat they fed it away….
"The wind has abated but the mercury is 26 below. When it is so cold we are seldom comfortably warm in daytime but we have bedding enough to keep us warm at night. Were you to stop in the first object that would strike your attention would be Brother lying on the floor for we have not a bed for him. At night he lies in a feather straw bed but in the morning we usually lay off the feathers. This being an increasingly cold day he lies on both today although a shade more —
"I think his countenance has increased its animation and he looks more interesting than when he was so ill. I said to him the other day, 'If we only had one comfortable room for you.' He quickly replied 'Aunt, I would not be half so happy as I am here.' He always seems content with such things as we have and will such attention as we can give. He often regrets that he did not do more to comfort and relieve his mother and sisters.
"Mr. Jacques's great toe is still quite sore but he goes around. He is planing plank today. Workbench is the house floor covered with shavings and he is trying to put up the plank for the — room might be comfortable warmed with the stove. Your bro takes in half in the planing and putting up the — and longs to be able to assist.
"I fear you will find it sad to think his bed is no the floor but although attended with some inconveniences he is perhaps rather better off than on a bedstead. It is easier to get around at a suitable distance from the floor to have his feet dressed. The dead flesh is now all off them and they have ceased to be offensive. The heel on the right foot is healing rapidly and we hope. The bone of it injured a small part of his bone on the left heel is bare but bro thinks the bone of it is not near so much injured as he had feared. A scale came off the bone on the outside of that foot but the flesh has grown over it and the skin is growing over it nicely. There is still a little piece of anklebone on the great toe. The toes on the right foot were all taken at the lower joint and although a little of the living flesh was cut in taking the toes off the dead flesh extended far below the sole and though this is now off it has [bottom of page torn off].
"Your bro sits at the stove today….Had you come in a little while ago you might have seen him with Grammar in hand for I have persuaded him to recite with the children and he sometimes assists them in arithmetic. But he has laid his book aside and he is now is trying to sharpen a plane bit on a whetstone. It being too cold for Mr. J. to work out he is again assisting at the partition when it is possible. This room will be warmer. But the upper floor is only loose boards and much of the heat escapes in that way.
"The kitchen stove throws out but little heat but although we have not a very comfortable house we have much to be thankful for. Sister's health is better than usual. I had feared Miss Briggs might be lonesome or discontented but she is more pleasant and seems happier than before we left Kapoja. Gets her lessons well and recites in grammar with the others….
"For the last few days your Bro. has had his bed taken up in the morning and sits and lies on a pallet by the stove during the day. The absence of the bed leaves room for the table and he sits with us to eat. This looks pleasant though he has to have his feet propped on a box under the table. When hanging down they are painful. He has got clear of the rheumatism in his hips. Bro thinks the rheumatism was worse in consequence of his leaving his overcoat. We were very sorry when we found he had left as the one he wore was much shorter. He said his reason for leaving it was he could not wear so much under it as the short one and it was more clumsy. He had a very good pair of mittens but would not wear them before he started down thinking he wished to save them because you had knit them. I got Mary to knit him a pair of coarse white yarn, charged him to take both pair with and the deerskin ones he had to wear over…. Jane S. Williamson" [16]
In the spring of 1853, Nancy Aiton was once again expecting a baby and John took her and Thomas to Nancy's mother in Quincy, Illinois. Nancy's mother had hoped to come out to visit them in Minnesota but the snow and ice that marked the winter of 1852-1853 made travel impossible and Nancy felt it best to have the baby in Illinois. Jane Williamson continued to keep them informed of Andrew's progress with his feet.
The last letter I've ever found from Jane Williamson to Nancy Hunter was written on March 3, 1853. Sadly, Nancy was recovering from the stillborn birth of an unnamed child and suffering from consumption, or what we now call tuberculosis. It was a letter that again brought Nancy up to date on how Andrew was doing. She told Nancy that Andrew was very anxious to make a trip to Illinois to visit the family, but that he still wasn't well enough to travel. It appears that John Aiton returned to Kaposia without Nancy, who remained in Quincy in the hope of recovering her health.
John, who was the government teacher at Kaposia, soon expanded his role as Kaposia became the new seat of the Dakota County. His home was the site of the first meeting of the Dakota County Commissioners on July 4, 1853. The first precinct elections were held at Aiton's and John was named deputy registrar of deeds for the county. He also became the first postmaster – one date says April 26, 1853 and another February 4, 1853 until October 16, 1854, when the county seat was moved to Mendota. It isn't clear whether or not he ever made a trip back to Illinois during this time.
A letter from Nancy to John dated September 20, 1853, shares some of Nancy's thoughts:
"I thought it was my duty to go and do what I could to make you happy my few remaining days and did I think you felt so I would do my utmost. But I am very frail and thankful to enjoy a mother's care while I am not unmindful of a tender husband's sympathy. Thomas climbs in and over his little bed by himself. Appears to be pretty well. I hope you will keep up good courage and come back when your business permits. Leave not to pray for your affectionate wife. N.H. Aiton."
A few days later, on October 1, 1853, Nancy writes that she cannot yet bear the thought of parting from him. The letter ends mid page and she says no more.[17]
Unfortunately, Nancy Hunter Aiton died by the spring of 1854 when she was just twenty-five years old. She left one son, Thomas, who was three years old when Nancy passed away. I have not found any record of when and where Nancy was buried, nor any obituary for her in the missionary files. As we have learned, however, John Aiton, or perhaps Nancy's mother, kept all of Nancy's letters that she had received from Jane Williamson and it is those letters that have provided the foundation of the story of Nancy's brief life, one hundred sixty-five years after her death.
The Hazlewood Mission was established by Stephen Riggs in 1854. Riggs asked John Aiton to come to Hazlewood after Nancy's death to help teach English and Dakota. The Williamson mission at Pejutazee, where Mary Briggs was living, was just three miles away and the mission families often worshipped and socialized together.
On November 1, 1854, John Aiton was hired by Rev. Stephen Riggs to come out to the Riggs Mission at Hazlewood to help with teaching the Dakota. It appears that John left his son Thomas with Nancy's family in Illinois since he never mentions having to care for him in the years following Nancy's death. John taught at Hazlewood that winter. The Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs for 1855 reports that he taught Dakota School in the mornings and English in the afternoons. Attendance in the morning classes was poor so they were dropped but John taught the English school through the end of the spring 1855 term.
Stephen Riggs soon received an inquiry from S.B. Treat of the ABCFM asking him when John Aiton arrived at Hazlewood and pointing out that he had not been informed that John was even there. Riggs replied that John was only there as hired help and that he expected him to leave soon. He said he'd hired him to teach five days a week for $21 a month.[18]
While John was at Hazlewood he renewed his acquaintance with Mary Smith Briggs, the young woman who had come out to Kaposia with Jane Williamson in May of 1852. Mary was a former student of Jane's from West Union, Ohio, and was born on June 17, 1836. She was the daughter of George Briggs and Rachel Blake Briggs and had two sisters. The eldest, Harriet Briggs, was born on November 22, 1834 and the youngest, Hannah Briggs was born on December 12, 1839. Mary was the middle daughter.
When Mary arrived at Kaposia with Jane Williamson in 1852, forty to fifty Dakota were at the river's edge to welcome the boat. Mary had never experienced such a thing but enjoyed the adventure and moved into the two-story Williamson home with the family. Dr. Williamson informed the ABCFM of her arrival but didn't ask that she be officially enrolled as a member of the mission. John Aiton first met Mary at Kaposia, but John was married to Nancy at the time and as a man who was nineteen years older than the young new teacher at the mission, it is unlikely that they would have exchanged more than a few words over the years. It is more likely that Nancy Aiton knew Mary much better than her husband did.
Mary accompanied the Williamsons to their new mission near the Upper Sioux Reservation in 1852. They made the journey in late fall, arriving in November and the weather had turned very cold. In a letter to her cousin Elizabeth on November 29, 1852, Jane Williamson mentioned that she and Mary slept on the upper story with the little girls, reporting that they had two stoves but one had no feet and couldn't be moved to make it as warm as she would have liked.[19] Despite the cold and the challenge of finishing their new home in time for the storms of winter, Jane Williamson wrote to Nancy Hunter Aiton that "Miss Briggs is happier than she has been since we left Kaposia."[20] Mary was with the Williamsons during the entire episode with Andrew Hunter's frozen feet and would have come to know Andrew's sister Nancy Aiton through her many letters to Jane Williamson. But Nancy Aiton died in the spring of 1854, and Mary's new friendship with John Aiton flourished.
On March 3, 1855, Stephen Riggs wrote to S.B. Treat and informed him that John had been paying attention to Miss Briggs who wanted to return to Ohio in the spring, surmising that John might go with her and bring her back.[21] On April 11, 1855, John Aiton wrote to Mary Briggs from Hazlewood. "Think not, Miss Briggs, that in these sense you had to place in this heart. I plucked one little spray for you. Good night, dear lady, of my many thoughts. May God order all our steps for Jesus; sake. Amen." [22] Thomas Williamson performed the wedding ceremony of John Aiton and Mary Briggs on April 20, 1855, at the Williamson mission at Pejutazee, less than a year after Nancy Hunter Aiton's death. John was thirty-seven years old and Mary was just eighteen when they were wed. They took a wedding trip to St. Paul where they remained for a year before purchasing Ten Trees Farm in Lake Prairie, Nicollet County, Minnesota.
Mary Briggs and John Aiton were married at the Pejutazee mission by Rev. Thomas Williamson on April 20, 1855. The Dakota called John 'Man with the White Hat' and Mary was 'Mary Goodpath' because she had big feet. John Aiton described himself as five feet, five inches tall, light complexion, blue eyes and black hair when he was later discharged from the Union Army. They were married for thirty-seven years and had nine children together.
John's tradition of writing romantic letters to his wife continued with his marriage to Mary. The letters are numerous and they both express promises of passionate commitment. In the first months after their wedding, John occupied himself with divesting of his various properties, especially those at Kaposia where he had served in public office. He sold his claim in Township 22 to W.R. Brown for $177.00 and sold another lot in Block 1 to Addis Messenger for an undisclosed sum. He received payment in full on April 23, 1857.
John and Mary settled on the farm in June of 1856 in time for the birth of their first child, George Briggs Aiton, born on June 15, 1856. John did not, however, immediately enter into what seemed to be a career as a farmer. Instead, he and Mary took the baby and moved to New Hartford, Illinois, in August of 1857. John took a position as a teacher in the village which is located approximately fifteen miles north of downtown St. Louis, Missouri, on the Mississippi River. It is known for being the site where the Lewis and Clark Expedition spent the winter of 1803-1804. John's son Thomas left his Hunter grandmother in Quincy, Illinois, and joined the family in New Hartford. Illinois, when he was five years old.
George Briggs Aiton was John and Mary's first child and oldest son. He was valedictorian of his graduating class at the University of Minnesota in 1881 and spent his professional career as a superintendent of schools in Zumbrota and Austin, Minnesota and retired as principal of East High School in Minneapolis.
John and Mary had two children while living in New Hartford. Jean Muter Aiton was born on January 25, 1858, but did not survive infancy and died in 1859. Another daughter, Rachel Mary Jeanne Lincoln Aiton, arrived on April 21, 1860, just a year before the first battle of the Civil War when the new Confederate States Army attacked Fort Sumter near Charleston, South Carolina. John Aiton was forty-four years old but never questioned the patriotism that prompted him to immediately enlist in the Union Army and devote the next four years of his life to bringing an end to slavery and fighting to preserve the nation as a united country.
Mary and John returned to Minnesota and Mary remained on their Nicollet County farm while John was away in the Union Army. He was occasionally in the area and in the summer of 1862, he was stationed at Fort Ridgley in Minnesota and later at Judson, Minnesota. There is nothing in the historical record about exactly where he was when the U.S. Dakota War broke out on August 18, 1862, but Mary took the children and moved into St. Peter for safety during the six weeks of the war. By the fall of 1862, however, the Ninth Minnesota, which like several other regiments raised in the fall of 1862, was stationed by companies and smaller units at a score of newly created forts and outposts on a defensive line running north to south. They spent all winter at those posts, then gradually were replaced by others. Eventually the small garrisons were pulled out once the threat from returning Dakota was eliminated.[23] John Aiton was stationed at one of those posts in south central Minnesota in what is now an unincorporated community known as Judson, Minnesota.
Mary had their third child, a daughter, Mary Mathilda Aiton, on February 15, 1863, in Nicollet County, Minnesota, which would mean either at Ten Trees Farm or in the town of St. Peter.
Mary wrote to John on Sunday, March 10, 1863. Her own parents had moved to Nicollet County by this time, coming out from West Union, Pennsylvania. Her father, George Briggs, was sixty-two years old and her mother, Rachel Blake Briggs, was fifty-seven. Her father was farming and her mother apparently lived in town while Mary and the children remained at Ten Trees Farm. Mary was at Ten Trees Farm with John's son Thomas, who was twelve years old; Mary and John's son, George, who was seven; their daughter Rachel, who was almost two years old; and the new baby, Mary, who was three months old.
Mary's letter provides insight into the efforts she took to provide food and clothing to the family with limited funds while John was away in the Army. Mary's letters are all written without any paragraphs or punctuation. I have edited this one a bit to make it easier to understand what she is saying.
"My dear husband,
"I received two letters from you this week and with them the news that you had left Judson Tuesday. I sent a letter to the post office that day but suppose you will not get it. I felt so badly to think you did not get home once more before you left. Do you think you will get home this summer at all? Perhaps you are one of the number that was left at Judson. I hope so, feel anxious to hear, was at town last week, took down $1.25 worth of turnip seed, 80 cts worth of eggs, got the boys hats, $4 apiece, shoestring, five cts, so all the purchases I made.
"I made – called at the Dr's on my way home, got a certificate of our marriage. Aunt Jane made me a present of a bonnet, a better one than I could have afforded to have bought. I had given up getting one this summer. Sold all the barley. I have got eleven dollars for what I sold. Father has got fifteen bushels. He has just two sacks of wheat left so my wheat will go next. It was $40 I let Aunt Jane have. Mother was down Wednesday. I sent down 95 cts worth of rags and eggs. I got a pair of shoes $1.75, bandbox 25 cts, six yards of coarse linen, 40 cts a yd, for the boy' pants. It is so much cheaper than cotton. I was glad to get it. I am through for this summer. I will not get a dress. Mr. Ellison paid.
"I have on hand now $20.50. If Doake does not come soon I shall let Aunt Jane have $10 more which will make it $50.00 – and pay the interest on that note. I will soon go down hill, then if you get your pay I would not blame you if you did not buy something to eat if your appetite is as poor as mine. I often feel like not eating at all. I have such a pain in my side of late. I have no energy to do anything, only what is really necessary. I don't think I ever felt so languished before. I believe if I could get out more I should feel better. If I had any way of going I should try it.
"We have some little chickens out. I think our cow will have a calf in a few days. We will be glad to get butter once more. Mother has been sick, bed fast, part of the time. I was here for her last week and did my own and washed my bedclothes. Besides I have hardly done anything since the baby is getting so fat, begins to try to catch hold of things and wants to sit up very much. Can raise its head clear off the pillow.
"March 14 – Mrs. Huggins, Aunt Jane, was here Tuesday. Said you had not left Judson. I am so glad. I saw a solder pass yesterday. I suppose belongs to your company. I shall watch for him to come by. I will send you that History. The baby is sick; has had the coup. Mary Cronan has been here two days getting me to help her on her silk dress. I put in a comfort today. Want to get it out this week. Out of forty eggs, I got five chickens.
"Friday 15 – Beloved Husband, I received your letters last night, assuring me that you are really at Judson. It is almost too good to be true. I hasten now to send my letter. I did not know before where to send it, this and my former one convey some of the same ideas but I shall send it for I have no time to write anew. My morning work is just done.
"Lucy is still in bed though awake. The baby still sleeps. She is three months old today. I see a team coming out of the settlement so I hurry. George is getting his lessons – Geography, spelling. We go to Fran's to quilt today. It rained last night. Thomas is helping Grandfather plant the corn he drops. He is planting three acres. They plant the sugar corn today and squashes. Mother is not ready to go yet and she has not got her money. Jeanie has had the diarrhea for over a week and doesn't seem to do her any good. She is getting thin. I feel sorry. Mr. _________(?) is gone. You will be lonely. Can you not come home soon? It has been over three weeks since you were here. Mother is getting better.
"I must close, Your wife
Write to me often,
Write to me soon
Letters are dearer to me
Than the fairest flowers of June.[24]
The postscript in this letter is actually quite amusing to one who has been reading and researching John and Mary's letters. John was very fond of regaling Mary with reams of poetry in his letters, romantic poetry that he both copied from others and created. On April 30, 1863, only a few weeks after she sent him this charming love poem in her letter, she asked him very directly to stop writing poetry to her. She said, "I wish you would not write poetry. I positively have not the ability to appreciate and it grates most terribly. I did not read all you wrote last."[25] Apparently in March she was kind enough to try to respond to his poems by adding her own but in only a few weeks, she was once again fed up with his outpourings and just told him to stop it.
Jane Williamson had been Mary's teacher in West Union, Ohio, when Mary was a young girl and they were now living a few miles from each other, Mary on the farm and Jane in St. Peter. Mary's letter mentions that Jane and Lydia Huggins paid her a visit.
This letter from Mary also provides insight into how the community of former missionaries continued to help each other. Stopping by the "Dr's," is, of course, referring to Mary's visit to Thomas Williamson's family in St. Peter, including seeing Aunt Jane who gave her the new bonnet. It is also the first and only time that we uncover the information that apparently Jane had loaned John and Mary some money and Mary is now paying Jane $50 in interest. Mary also refers to "Doake," which may be Hugh Doak Cunningham, a longtime mission teacher who was related to the Williamsons. Mrs. Huggins is certainly Lydia Pettijohn Huggins, one of the very first missionary women at Lac Qui Parle in 1835 and was now retired and living in Traverse des Sioux on the family farm near St. Peter.
John was able to visit the family in June of 1863 when his regiment had been sent to Fairmount, Minnesota but later that year he was sent to Fort Osage in Missouri, an abandoned military fortress that had ceased operations in the 1820s but which was used as a garrison during the Civil War. In January 1864, he wrote to Mary from the Jefferson Barracks Military Post, located on the Mississippi River at Lemay, Missouri, south of St. Louis. He was discharged from there to go to a hospital in St. Louis, Missouri, where he was to have a tumor removed from his nose. The operation took three hours and he told Mary they were very careful. He remained at Jefferson Barracks for a few weeks and was then sent to a camp on the East Branch of Black Water, nine miles west of Warrensburg, Missouri. Subsequent letters came to Mary from Kansas City, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee. He wrote to Mary on July 9, 1864, to tell her he was in Gazaso Hospital in Memphis and on September 10, 1864, he let her know that he was recuperating at a private home in Memphis but was soon sent back to the hospital.
John was stationed at Jefferson Barracks in Missouri for several months during the Civil War.
John wrote to Mary on Christmas Eve, 1864, from his hospital bed.
"Dear Wife! Two days ago I received a letter from you of Nov. 11th. It contained much of interest to me. But especially that clause "your and my interest are forever divided," seems to me to suppose the contingency…when you have the data whence to calculate the amount of money that I shall have when I get home, if indeed I do not die first. But to answer all at once, I have no very distinct idea what I shall do, not even whether to make home on the prairie or in the woods. And if you will only try to get through this winter cheerfully, then leave to God the future, it will much aid your own happiness and the happiness of others.
"Indeed, I gather from your letters that sometimes you get considerably out of humor with your husband. For myself I do intend to live more reasonably than heretofore. I should like to live a few years longer and see you and the children in comfort before I die. And as I have planned so much, and done so little, prefer to wait a little and do something. Now I will ask one question. How much money have you on hand and how much will be unspent of it next Sept? I have no idea. One thing we must have a team, either of horses or of oxen. That will do.
"I do hope that George will try to be a good writer. I hope to see your trees flourishing and us all in health. Our weather is still changeable, mild, terribly calm, etc. Some days I feel chilly all day. I know of only one way to get a discharge and that is for you to write to the President. And yet as it is now the shortest day, it might be best to stick it out. They say that a good part of the 19 prisoners of Co. B, one alive, it is truly awful.
"Our folks are very busy getting up a Christmas dinner. B and C and the dining room are all decorated with evergreens and fancy colored paper. "Beau batchers" Johnny calls them; his mother is a widow, her beau is off getting his neck ready for the halter of matrimony. If he can live with her than I am no guesser. She cannot write her own love letters so I get to hear of matters through a third person. Great stuff, for me to write, perhaps you will say. Well I write of ever thing and so it goes. But this is also Miss Adams and her beau's Miss King is hers also. So you see that our ladies do not labor without love in return.
"They say Miss Fargo is dead! She was a summer nurse; had left her husband. She looked like a very high tempered person.
"Monday – Better day, cloudy and damp. Col. Summer inspecting, does it thoroughly, as usual. But not since their dinner yesterday as I went to meeting at 3, after suffering the gnawings of hunger two hours, I seem to be unable to go beyond the usual hour of eating. Indeed others expressed themselves in like matter. I would either have a common meal in its time, than an extra good one by waiting a while longer. By 3 o'clock my hunger was over and by supper time felt as usual.
"Nothing new. I sleep under the blankets, but hope to need no additions. I send my best wishes to the children and yourself. May God keep you all. Kind remembrances to Gran, to Grandfather and to Hannah, etc., etc., etc. Ideas will not flow today.
"Gazaso Hospital, Memphis, Tenn. December 27th, 1864
"Dear Wife, I am in usual health. My nose is improving under the medical treatment lately begun. I have just received your letter of the 19th mail mark. It is a very good letter but very shabby paper. Please supply yourself with paper, worthy of yourself. I am indeed glad that you have realized something from that ___________. I am glad that you feel like using it.
"We shall indeed be thankful that God has given us the means of living on ourselves. Do not think of vising me down here. If God sees fit, I should like to travel with you from Pike, to Ill, to Minn, again. But that is far in the future and to buy a team will cost us a sum of almost too much for our purse. But you are considerable for planning and you may think of the subject. I lately rec'd your letter of Nov. 11th. Am glad that you are teaching the children. I lately wrote to Janet and to Jean. Yesterday Col. Summers inspected, etc. and ordered 30 to be sent off. McMillan, long playing off they say, goes. Day is cloudy; really muddy, although last night was clear. I taste neither tea nor coffee nor stimulant and think that I am less nervous. God bless you all, and keep you in his grace.
"Wednesday, 28th Dec. 2 o'clock. Bright day. Good news of Sherman's capture of Savannah. Every face seems to wear gladness and the heavy Dutch linen curtains are down from the windows; so that good news, bright skies, better daylight, all contribute to render all happy.
"After receiving your letter yesterday, I tore my sheet in two, intending to copy any part of it, I have continued to send it all. You will not take offence at me noticing your language. And I want you to credit me with a desire to help to keep you comfortable next winter. What do you think of trying the woods next winter? I hope that you will buy at least 100 lbs of pork, even if it is 12-1/2 a lb; or at least a good hindquarter of beef. I must send the boys a copy of letters, which I hope they will make good progress of copying and if we are all well, we hope to occupy a good part of next winter in the woods, getting out building materials, fences and wood. How would it do to rent the place for one third of the crop or will you get enough planted to do us? I prefer you bossing it, at least till I get home. I write this at table in Ward B. Guess Jerry has gone, discharged for disability, etc. Our side of B is very empty, leaving me alone on chocolate. Half diet is very good.
"The richest of heaven's blessings attend you all,
"29th – Cool and clear. All well. Please excuse the faults and accept the best wishes of your Husband. Affectionately, John Aiton"[26]
John Aiton was discharged from the Union Army on March 31, 1865, in Memphis, Tennessee. He made his way home to Ten Trees Farm and joined the family once again. His oldest son Thomas was fourteen; George was nine; Jean was seven and Mary was fourteen months old then John returned. He and Mary had five more children between 1867 and 1875. John was fifty-seven years old when their youngest son was born.
John and Mary's children are:
George Briggs Aiton, June 15, 1856-February 23, 1931. In 1884 he married Mabel Niles, who was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Mabel died on January 1956. George graduated from the University of Minnesota in 1881 as valedictorian. Mabel was a teacher and George was the Superintendent of Schools in Zumbrota, Minnesota, Austin, Minnesota and Principal at East High School in Minneapolis.
Jean Muter Aiton, January 25, 1858-1859. Baby Jean was born and died in Pike County, Illinois, while John and Mary were living in New Hartford, Illinois.
Rachel Mary Jeanne Lincoln Aiton, April 4, 1860-February 1, 1942. Rachel died in San Diego, California and apparently never married.
Mary Mathilda Aiton, February 15, 1863-August 26, 1946. Mary married a man named Woodruff and is buried at Lakewood Cemetery in Olmstead County, Minnesota.
Robert Bruce Aiton, July 30, 1867-October 14, 1929. Robert married Sara Levina Oles, (March 29, 1869-September 17, 1946) in May 1888 in Pine City, Minnesota. They lived in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
Hannah Aiton, April 9, 1868-September 14, 1919. Hannah married a man named Edwards and both are buried in the Aiton plot in Lakewood Cemetery.
Isabel Maack Aiton, June 23, 1873-January 6, 1940. Isabel married Albert Olson and they are buried in the Aiton plot at Lakewood.
Margaret Aiton, April 6, 1872-January 18, 1933. Margaret never married and was interred at Lakewood in the family plot.
John William Aiton, August 8,1875-December 4, 1937. John married Cora Kremer, August 22, 1882-March 11, 1969, and they lived in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.
John and Nancy Hunter Aiton's only surviving child, Thomas Hunter Aiton, died of typhoid in 1883 at the age of thirty-two. He is buried with John Aiton in the Green Lawn Cemetery in Traverse des Sioux, now St. Peter, Minnesota.
John's son Thomas lived to be only thirty-two years old and died of typhoid fever on January 3, 1883. Mary's mother passed away on June 9, 1877 at the age of seventy-one. Her father moved into the farm with the family and passed away on October 20, 1898 at the age of ninety-seven years.
Mary was fifty-six years old when John Aiton died on August 24, 1892 at the age of seventy-four years The St. Peter Herald of August 26, 1892, reported the story of his passing.
"The people of this city were pained to learn of the very sudden death on Wednesday afternoon of one of the oldest and most esteemed citizens of Nicollet County. At his home in Lake Prairie at four o'clock on Wednesday, John Aiton passed way after an illness of but two hours and from which he appeared to be recovering. Even up to within five minutes preceding his death he was sitting upon the lawn conversing with his oldest son, George, who chanced to be home on a visit at the time. A short time prior to his death a physician had been summoned but arrived too late to be of service. Mr. Aiton was one of the pioneer settlers of Nicollet Count and also o Minnesota. He came to this state when but few white men had crossed its border and for almost half a century had been one of the most useful citizens. He was a man above reproach and his life had been consecrated to his fellow men. Of noble purpose, lofty aims and perfect integrity, John Aiton had many friends and no enemies." [27]
John Aiton is buried in the Green Lawn Pioneer Cemetery at Traverse des Sioux with many of his mission colleagues and early Nicollet County pioneers.
Mary Briggs Aiton was the founder of the Captain Richard Somers Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution and was chosen to unveil the monument to the old French Cemetery in what was then Traverse des Sioux in 1913. The original stone that Mary unveiled was replaced with this new marker in 1939.
After John's death Mary moved to Minneapolis where she organized the Captain Richard Somers Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution in 1908. She lived at 828 University Avenue S.E. in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In 1913 she was selected as the D.A.R. member to unveil the organization's monument commemorating the French Cemetery in Traverse des Sioux. Mary was the oldest living member of the Dakota mission at the time. She had outlived her parents, her husband, her sisters and two of her children, Jean, who was just a year old when she died in 1859, and Hannah Aiton Edwards who died in 1919. Mary had been a young girl when she met and worked with the founders of the Dakota mission and had experienced life with the Dakota before they were confined to the reservations in west central Minnesota. Although she and John left mission work when they married in 1855, Mary then spent life as the wife of a Union soldier in the Civil War, never knowing when or if he might return home.
Mary Aiton donated these moccasins to the Minnesota Historical Society, along with other items in 1912 and 1915. Nancy and John Aiton had received them when they were stationed at Red Wing. The center-seam moccasins are now in the Sibley Historic Site colllection. They have never been worn and have smoked leather uppers, fine silk ribbonwork on the vamps and cuffs and white seed-bead edging on the low cuffs.
Mary spent thirty years as a widow in Minneapolis. I have no doubt that her children took good care of her after John's death. Several of them had settled in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, in Itasca County, but others were in the Twin Cities near Mary's home in Minneapolis. Unfortunately, after John died in 1892, their rich romantic correspondence came to an end. Still, Mary understood the role she played in the mission history of Minnesota and in 1912 and 1915, she contributed several keepsakes from the mission to the Minnesota Historical Society.
Mary Smith Briggs Aiton died on February 3, 1922, and is buried in Lakewood Cemetery in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Several of her children were buried in that same plot in the coming years even though her beloved husband John was interred in Green Lawn Pioneer Cemetery in what is now St. Peter, Minnesota.
[1] Minnesota History Magazine, June 1925, p. 204
[3] Jane Williamson to Agnes Hopkins, March 16, 1849, Gretchen Furber private collection
[4] Nancy Aiton to John Aiton, April 16, 1849, MNHS, Aiton Family Papers, P1447, Box 1
[5] Ibid., John Aiton to Elizabeth Aiton, April 10, 1849
[6] Ibid., Nancy Aiton to John Aiton, February 3, 1850
[7] Ibid., Nancy Aiton to Jane Williamson, July 23, 1850
[8] Ibid. Mary Napexni to Nancy Aiton, undated. The Bowyer-Smith book that Mary referred to in the letter is The Child's Remembrancer-a Memoir of Bowyer Smith a Pious Child who died Jan. 30, 1811, aged 7 years and 2 months, by the Rev. Basil Woodd. The book was published in 1825. The story of Jephthah's daughter is from The Book of Judges, 11:30-11:39. It is a particularly sad passage which describes how Jephthah promised God that he would offer up a burnt offering of the first person he saw come through the door if God would bring him safely home. The first person was his only child, a daughter whom he loved. Mary clearly wrote her last name in English as Napexni. In Dakota that "x" represents a sound that doesn't really exist in English but is sometimes written as "sh." Documented spellings of the name include Napahshue, Napayshne, Napesni, Napashue, and Napexna.
[9] Ibid., Nancy Jane Williamson and Jane Williamson to Nancy Aiton, October 11 and October 16, 1850
10] Ibid., Nancy Aiton to John Aiton, March 12, 1851
[11] Ibid. John Aiton to Nancy Aiton, March 18, 1851
[12] Ibid., Jane Williamson to Nancy Aiton, October 2, 1851
[13] Ibid., Sarah Rankin to Nancy Aiton, March 28, 1852. It isn't clear if John Aiton remained at Red Wing during this time or whether he accompanied Nancy to Kaposia. Nancy probably had little Thomas with her. Sarah Rankin expressed concern about Rev. Joseph Hancock and his daughter Marilla and continued to mourn the death of Willie. Just a few weeks later Sarah married Joseph Hancock and returned to Red Wing as his wife and stepmother to Marilla.
[14] Ibid. Jane Williamson to Nancy Aiton, November 18, 1852
[15] Ibid. Jane Williamson to Nancy Aiton, January 12, 1853
[16] Ibid. Jane Williamson to Nancy Aiton, February 4-11, 1853
[17] Ibid. Nancy Aiton to John Aiton, September 20 and October 1, 1853
[18] S.B. Treat to Stephen Riggs, March 12, 1855 and Riggs to S.B. Treat, April 12, 1855. MNHS, NW Mission MS P489, Box 18.
[19] Jane Williamson to Elizabeth Burgess, November 19, 1852, Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College, Marietta, IL, Item 28, Folder 3
[20] Jane Williamson to Nancy Hunter Aiton, February 11, 1853, MNHS, Aiton Family Papers, P1447, Box 1
[21] Ibid., Stephen Riggs to S.B. Treat March 3, 1855
[22] Ibid. John Aiton to Mary Briggs, April 11, 1855
[23 Email to Lois Glewwe from Stephen Osman, September 7, 2019
[24] Mary Briggs Aiton to John Aiton, March 10, 1863 to March 15, 1863, MNHS., Aiton Papers, P. 1447, Box 1. Mary Aiton refers to Lucy and Jeanie in the letter as though they are the children in the family but Jean Muter Aiton had died in 1859 and the only other girl in the family at that time was Rachel and the baby Mary.
[25] Ibid., Mary Aiton to John Aiton, April 30, 1863
[26] Ibid., John Aiton to Mary Aiton December 24-29, 1864
[27] St. Peter Herald, August 26, 1892
Posted in Andrew Hunter, Dakota Mission, Hazlewood Mission, Hugh Doak Cunningham, Jane Smith Williamson, Kaposia Village, Lac Qui Parle Mission, Lydia Pettijohn Huggins, Marilla Hancock Holiday, Marion Robertson Hunter, Martha Houghton Hancock, Mary Napexni, Mary Smith Briggs Aiton, Minnesota Historical Society Photo Purge, Moses Newton Adams, Nancy Hunter Aiton, Nancy Jane Williamson, Nancy Rankin Adams, Sarah Rankin Hancock, Traverse des Sioux, Underground Railroad, Willie Hancock, Women in Minnesota	| Leave a comment
Posted on September 2, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
I am writing to apologize that the Dakota Soul Sisters site has been invaded by ads. It's very frustrating. I spend a lot of time working out the layout of text and photos and then these stupid ads pop in every time I open the page. Word Press will charge me to get rid of "some" ads; they are saying that some will come in no matter what I do. I haven't decided if I can afford to upgrade or not but I want to thank you for your patience while I work through this.
Posted in Women in Minnesota	| Leave a comment
Ann "Nancy" Margery Rankin Adams – Living Life with Moses
One of the challenges of writing about the "soul sisters" is that several of them are completely silent. They left behind no written record, no letters, no diary, no journal, and no memoir of their years with the Dakota mission. Nancy Adams is one of those silent sisters. In order to tell her story, we have to rely on her husband, Rev. Moses Newton Adams, who was possibly the most un-silent of all of the missionaries. In fact, the only actual mention of Nancy Adams in the historical record is a letter from John P. Williamson to his father, Thomas, where he refers to Nancy's 'meddlesomeness." [1]
I didn't want to rest Nancy's entire story on that one comment so I've gone through Moses Adam's letters closely and tried to find something of Nancy in those abundant documents.
Nancy Rankin Adams married Moses Adams in 1848 and worked with Robert and Agnes Hopkins and Stephen and Mary Riggs at the Lac Qui Parle mission in Minnesota. She was a member of the Daughters of the American Revolution.
Ann Margery Rankin was born on December 19, 1827, in Jefferson County, Tennessee. She was known as Nancy, as Annie and Ann M. Rankin, and was the daughter of James and Sarah Gant Rankin. James Rankin was related to Rev. John Rankin, the famous abolitionist of Ripley, Ohio, and like John, he did not keep slaves but fought to abolish slavery his entire life.
When Nancy was a young girl, her parents sent her to live with Rev. John Rankin's family in Ripley, Ohio, to receive her education. The Rankins in Ripley had thirteen surviving children between 1816 and 1839. If Nancy joined the family when she was about eight years old in 1835, there were already eleven boys and girls in the little house on top of the bluff in Ripley, Ohio spanning the ages of nineteen to infancy. James Rankin and John Rankin may have been brothers. Both were born in Dandridge, Tennessee, where James's family still lived. The Rankin surname is a very common one in America. My own great-great-grandmother was Elizabeth Rankin from Scotland. I don't think I'll try to unravel the Rankin family tree as part of Nancy's story, however.
The John Rankin house sits high atop the bluffs overlooking the Ohio River in Ripley, Ohio. A light was always in the window so that people who were attempting to escape from slavery could find their way to the Rankin's where they would be sent to safety in the north on the Underground Railroad. Nancy lived with the Rankin family while she went to school as a young girl.
Nancy thus spent her childhood and early teen years in one of the most prominent abolitionist Presbyterian families in all of America. Rev. John Rankin is renowned throughout history as the inspiration for the story of Eliza in Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Ohio River, which flowed in the valley below the Rankin home was the sight of Eliza's dramatic escape from Kentucky. Rankin's home on the very top of the bluff is a national historic site today in Ripley, Ohio. It is said that a candle always burned in the window of the house to help those escaping from slavery find their way to the Rankin home from which they would be spirited away to the north on the Underground Railroad.
Nancy was twenty years old when she met Moses Newton Adams in Ripley. He was born in Adams County, Ohio, in February 1822, to Robert and Betsy Baird Adams, and was a cousin of Rev. Stephen Riggs, who may have inspired Moses's interest in working with the Native Americans. Moses graduated from Ripley College in 1845 and three years later received his degree from Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. He applied to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) to become a missionary soon after graduating. His application was met with a single piece of advice that he not even consider going to the mission field until he had a wife.[2]
Rev. Moses Newton Adams had a reputation of being a source of contention in nearly every position he held. He described himself to S.B. Treat of the ABCFM as "5'11" high, a high but not wide forehead, large light blue eyes, long full face with high cheekbones and thick lips, dark hair and light complexion. All he said about his wife Nancy was that she was twenty-one years old at the time.
This was not an unusual response from the mission board. Whether it was a man who wished to minister in India, China or the American west, no single men were allowed to go to the mission field. The board recognized that not only would a man need a companion and caregiver to see to his meals, clothing, health and wellness, but as a single man, he would never be allowed near the women of that mission field by himself. The board knew that it was the female missionary who would be able to freely move among the women and children of the community, earning their trust, securing their friendship and thus leading them to be willing to come to church services. This requirement led to many marriages between a man who desired to bring Christianity to the mission field and a woman who perhaps saw no other future for herself beyond a relatively safe and uninteresting life in a place like Ripley, Ohio.
Less than two months after being advised to find a wife, on July 11, 1848, Moses Adams notified David Greene of the ABCFM that, "On last Saturday evening, the 9th, in the Central Congregational Church of this place we were married. We hope for a boat for Galena today." [3] Seventeen days later, Moses and Nancy arrived at the village of Kaposia in Minnesota where they were welcomed by Thomas, Margaret and Jane Williamson and where they immediately began their efforts to learn the Dakota language.[4]
No matter how many of these stories of the early missionary women I research, I am always amazed at their courage and their longing for not only spiritual blessing but for adventure. For a young women like Nancy her only possible future in Ohio meant marrying and being a wife or remaining single and becoming a schoolteacher. There would be no travel; no hope of any kind of diversion from domestic life. Many of these young women took a chance and when a zealous young man asked if you'd like to go live in the wilderness among the Indians, it may have been too enticing to ignore. As we know from the stories we've already told in Dakota Soul Sisters, that decision was not always rewarded with success. Many died very young in child birth or of tuberculosis or other diseases. Nancy, as it turned out was one of the lucky ones.
Two months later, at the Annual Meeting of the Dakota Mission at Kaposia on September 12, 1848, Moses and Nancy were approved for appointment to the mission at Lac Qui Parle where they would serve with Robert and Agnes Hopkins and Stephen and Mary Riggs. It isn't clear exactly where Moses and Nancy were staying at the Lac Qui Parle mission. Robert Hopkins reported to S.B. Treat of the ABCFM that they were staying with him and Agnes on September 12, 1848, but Mary Riggs later wrote that she and Stephen gave them the kitchen and one bedroom for the winter, leaving only two rooms for themselves and their children.[5]
Moses Adams brought a particular focus to his ministry upon his arrival at Lac Qui Parle. He was an early proponent of the boarding school model of educating the Dakota. He called the school at Lac Qui Parle a boarding school and almost immediately upon their arrival he and Nancy took in a young Dakota girl named Lydia Wakanmane. Lydia was named after Lydia Pettijohn Huggins, and was about eight years old when she joined the household of Moses and Nancy Adams. She was baptized at Lac Qui Parle on August 30, 1840.[6]
Nancy and Moses concentrated on learning the Dakota language, apparently becoming proficient enough that Nancy was given responsibility for teaching the day school for the Dakota for four and a half months in the winter of 1849-1850.[7] Moses soon began to make his presence known within the Dakota mission because of his criticism of the AB CFM and Thomas Williamson in particular. On October 2, 1849, he also wrote to S.B. Treat that he was very opposed to Rev. Gideon Pond taking his seat in the Minnesota Territorial Legislature. He was the only missionary who expressed any opposition. On January 12, 1850, he wrote to Treat again to express his belief that the ABCFM was not taking a strong enough stance against slavery. He also criticized Thomas Williamson for not forcing the Dakota to forsake their long tradition of men having more than one wife.[8]
Dr. Williamson did not condone polygamy but he also believed that women who were married to a man who had another wife should not be banned from joining the Christian church. The wives were actually sisters in many cases and Thomas didn't feel they should be punished for that tradition. He also realized that should a Dakota man be forced to set aside one or more of his wives, it was those women who would suffer since they would lose their home and source of support. He and Moses Adams never resolved their differences over the issue.
In May of 1850, Nancy's sister, Sarah Rankin, came out to join Nancy and Moses at Lac Qui Parle where she hoped to serve as an assistant missionary. Sarah was five years younger than Nancy and was seventeen years old when she arrived in Minnesota. Unfortunately, shortly after Sarah came to the mission, Nancy became seriously ill. There is no indication in the historical record of exactly what she suffered from but on July 8, 1850, she and Moses went to Kaposia and visited the surgeon at Fort Snelling. He advised Moses to take Nancy to St. Louis for treatment as soon as possible. Instead, Moses decided to take Nancy to Quincy, Illinois, and he informed the ABCFM that Sarah would return to Quincy with them.[9]
Over the next year, Moses was engaged to preach in the Schuyler Presbytery for six months and also received a commission from the Home Missionary Society for a year, which the ABCFM allowed him to accept. In March of 1851, he wrote to S.B. Treat to report that Nancy was still not well enough to return to Lac Qui Parle but by October 1851, she had apparently recovered. Moses wrote to S.B. Treat from Galena, Illinois, on October 3, 1851: "We left Quincy, Illinois last Monday and arrived here yesterday. Mr. Riggs and part of the family have gone east. Mrs. Adams's sister Sarah, now at Red Wing, will join us on our return and go to Lac Qui Parle as assistant missionary as before."[10]
Sarah had not gone back to Illinois with Nancy and Moses but had remained in Minnesota and was assigned to the mission at Red Wing, Minnesota, where Rev. Joseph Hancock was stationed with his wife Martha and their daughter Marilla, who was born in 1848, and their son Willie, who was born in August 1850. Martha died on March 20, 1851, and Sarah apparently remained at the mission with Rev. Hancock to help care for the children. Sarah's story will be told more completely in a future post but suffice it to say that she did return to Lac Qui Parle when Nancy and Moses came back to the mission but she then married Joseph Hancock there on May 2, 1852 and returned with him to Red Wing.
At that time in 1852, Moses and Nancy had five Dakota children living with them and were expecting Lydia Wakanmane to return to the family in a few days. Writing to S.B. Treat on June 7, 1852, Moses said that "Food is more scarce than I have ever seen. The Indians are starving to death." Ironically, three years earlier Moses wrote in the Missionary Herald magazine of September 1849 that "God humbles the people by making them starve."[11]
In July of 1852, Moses asked Treat if he could bring his sister out to help Nancy. He said he had a cousin he was thinking of bringing on but would prefer his sister.[12] A month later, in August 1852, Stephen Riggs returned to Lac Qui Parle with Miss Lucy Jane Spooner and Miss Mary Roach Spooner. The sisters were cousins of Moses Adams. Lucy Jane went to live with the Riggs and Mary joined Moses and Nancy. The Spooner sisters will be featured on a future Dakota Soul Sisters post.
Throughout this time at Lac Qui Parle, Moses Adams began to have problems with Stephen Riggs. On December 9, 1852, Moses wrote to S.B. Treat and bowed out of the boarding school at Lac Qui Parle because "Riggs is unwilling to hold with me and be an equal part of the undertaking." He thinks that he and Rev. Hancock could do it at a different location, not Lac Qui Parle or Red Wing.[13]
In June of 1853, Joseph Hancock wrote to S.B. Treat that Moses was in attendance at the annual meeting of the Dakota mission at Red Wing and that he asked for release from the ABCFM which was granted with regrets. It was decided that his request for articles to be taken with him is to be treated liberally. That same month, Moses wrote to S.B. Treat that the reason he was leaving was because of the ABCFM's stance on slavery and Thomas Williamson's views on polygamy. Treat responded by telling Moses that was nonsense and the reason he was leaving was because of his disagreement with Riggs over the boarding school at Lac Qui Parle. Treat subsequently wrote to Thomas that "Mr. Adams had better be out of the mission for he will only make trouble." On August 22, 1853, Treat wrote to Adams confirming that he had been dismissed from the ABCFM.[14]
Moses and Nancy appeared to do well at the new church in Traverse des Sioux. They continued to take in Dakota children and were paid for doing so although I have not been able to unravel who was paying. In the Northwest Mission documents of January 1854, the Chief Clerk of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Charles Mix, wrote to Minnesota Territorial Governor Willis Gorman and told him to pay Moses Adams for the tuition, and care of several children for the third quarter. Moses had hoped for payment for three quarters.[15]
Nancy and Moses remained with the church at Traverse des Sioux until 1860. They apparently continued to live in Traverse and it may be that this is when Moses began to travel the region on behalf of the American Bible Society. When the Williamsons showed up in Traverse after fleeing the violence of the U.S. Dakota War of August 1862, they moved into the Adams's house since Moses and Nancy weren't there but were expected to return home very soon.[16]
While they were pastoring the church at Traverse des Sioux, Nancy and Moses adopted their daughter, Ella Christiana Adams. Ella had been born in 1848 but first shows up with Moses and Nancy in the 1857 Territorial Census of Nicollet County, Traverse des Sioux, Minnesota. She is listed there as eight years old and was a white child whose parents were from Sweden. Her birth surname is not listed in the historical record. The family went through a time of grief when Nancy's sister Sarah died in Red Wing. She had only been married to Joseph Hancock for seven years and left a daughter, Stella Ann, who was six years old. Another child, Alta, had been born in March of 1856 but the baby only lived fourteen months and died on July 2, 1857.
There is only one historical record of Moses and Nancy from the time they left the church at Traverse in 1860 and January 1871 when Moses was appointed the new Indian Agent at the Lake Traverse Reservation in South Dakota. Mary Riggs wrote to her husband Stephen on October 13, 1862, that Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Wakefield of St. Peter called and visited Mary where the Riggs' were living in St. Anthony.[17]
Moses Adams had an ongoing feud with Gabriel Renville who was the chief of the Dakota at the Lake Traverse reservation. Moses was there as a federal government Indian Agent but according to many, acted more like a missionary, favoring Christian Indians and directing the Dakota to give up their traditional ways.
As of January 1, 1871, Moses was named the Indian Agent at the Lake Traverse Reservation. His appointment was opposed by chief of the Dakota there, Gabriel Renville, and the Scouts Party, which was made up of the mostly Christian Dakota who had worked as scouts with Henry Sibley in the years following the War of 1862. Moses received the post because the reservations had each been assigned to a specific denomination and Lake Traverse was Presbyterian. Jared Daniels, who was the agent there, was Episcopalian so Moses was approved to take his place.
In what seems to have become a pattern with Moses, he soon found himself in the middle of controversy when a non-Christian Indian filed for a clerkship on the reservation and was rejected. He filed a complaint against Moses in Washington, D.C., saying that Christian Indians were being favored and paid more. As impetus grew in the Scout party for Moses to be removed, federal officials began visiting the reservation. Chief Gabriel Renville tried to resign but his followers refused to accept that and the feud between Moses and Renville continued through the end of 1873.
One of the main problems was that an Indian Agent was not to act like a missionary and was not to favor Christian Dakota over non-Christians. Moses instead, railed against Gabriel Renville who had more than one wife and who continued to live as a traditional Dakota, participating in dances, hunting and traveling on Sundays and generally attempting to protect Dakota culture. In the fall of 1874, the federal government sent E.C. Kemble to Lake Traverse to try to resolve the situation. Kemble's report did not support Moses's imposition of religion on affairs of the government. He did not demand that Moses resign but he did bring Gabriel Renville back to the executive board. Things did not improve and finally it was Stephen Riggs who convinced Moses to resign. Even having done so, Moses and Nancy remained on the reservation until May 1875.[18]
Now fifty-three years old, Moses turned to his former colleagues from the ABCFM in an attempt to find a new position. John Williamson wrote to his father Thomas on March 15, 1875, and reported that Moses wanted to leave government work and return to the mission. He had specifically asked if he could be assigned to the mission at Fort Peck, Montana. John told Thomas that he was hesitant to approve the request because of Moses's head-strongness. This is the letter where John also says that he is concerned about Nancy's meddlesomeness.[19]
I'm led to two possibilities when I read that about Nancy. First of all, she had spent twenty-seven years married to Moses, who over and over again finds himself in disagreement with his colleagues. That alone might have caused her to meddle in mission business if only in support of her husband. The other possibility is that Nancy and Moses were perfectly suited to each other and both found fault with others and with their superiors consistently. In either case, I doubt that Nancy Adams had a very peaceful and happy life.
Fort Gibson in Oklahoma was established in Cherokee and Muskogee Counties in 1824. Moses Adams was chaplain at the Fort from 1878 until he retired in 1892.
The Annual Meeting of the Dakota Mission was held at Greenwood, South Dakota, on the Yankton Reservation in the fall of 1878 and Moses and Nancy were there as visitors. Iape Oaye, the Dakota newspaper, reported that Moses was a chaplain in the U.S. Army and was stationed at Fort Gibson in Muskogee County, Oklahoma.[20]
While Moses and Nancy were at the Lake Traverse Reservation, their daughter Ella apparently got married, although no marriage certificate has been located. In the 1880 census in St. Paul, Ramsey County, Minnesota, Ella is listed as a widow, aged thirty, with two sons: Charles Rankin Frost, born on December 18, 1874 and David Frost, born in July 1876. Living with the family is Newton Robinson Frost, a twenty-one year old single man, who is listed as Ella's brother with the occupation of grocer. My interpretation of this information is that Newton Robinson Frost was actually Ella's brother-in-law, not her brother. This would explain why Ella's sons are in the census with the last name of Frost, even before Ella and Newton Frost were married on March 13, 1882. They had three children together: Wilford N. Frost, born in December 1884; Edith Margaret Frost, born on February 8, 1890; and Howard Edwin Frost, on May 3, 1893.
Nancy and Moses lived in this home at 1564 Laurel Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota from 1892 until at least 1902, when Moses passed away at the age of eighty years.
Ella and Newton lived in St. Paul, Minnesota and that is where Moses and Nancy chose to settle when Moses retired from the chaplain position at Fort Gibson in 1892. Their home was at 1564 Laurel Avenue in St. Paul and they joined the Dayton Avenue Presbyterian Church which was just a few blocks away. In July 1898, on their 50th wedding anniversary, the church hosted a reception in their honor. The Dakota newspaper, The Word Carrier, of July 1898, reported that Ella and Newton were there along with the Misses Brown of Denver and Miss Whitney. Even former Minnesota governor Alexander Ramsey attended the event.
Moses Adams passed away on July 23, 1902 in Buffalo, New York, but his body was returned to Minnesota and he was buried on July 28, 1902 in Oakland Cemetery in St. Paul, Minnesota. Nancy lived until at least 1914 when she is listed in the St. Paul City Directory as a boarder at 1853 Marshall Avenue; for some reason her death is not listed in any of the archival resources and there is no listing for her with Moses at Oakland Cemetery. I have not found her listed in the 1920 census so it appears as though she passed away sometime between 1914 and 1920.
The only letter written by Nancy that has survived was sent to Warren Upham, the secretary of the Minnesota Historical Society on March 13, 1904. She had donated a Catlinite Indian pipe to the society and wrote to Upham to describe its origin.
This is the only document actually written by Nancy Adams that has surfaced. She wrote to Warren Upham at the Minnesota Historical Society in 1904.
After the Indian Outbreak in '62 quite a number of the Indians left the Sisseton reservation and took up claims in the neighborhood of Flandreau [in present day South Dakota]. They were very destitute. Did not have axes, spades or hoes to commence farming with. Rev. M.N. Adams had six thousand sent him from Washington, D.C., to purchase for them things that they could not farm without. When these things were given to them, they were so over-joyed that they presented him about 1863 or 1864 with the pipe which I sent you yesterday. They considered the presenting of a pipe to a man the greatest honor that could be conferred upon him.
Mrs. M.N. Adams
"P.S. – D.F. on this Catlinite pipe is for David Faribault, who carved it."[21]
In 1989, Jeffrey Tordoff researched the pipe that Nancy Adams donated to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1904. While some of Nancy's information was incorrect, the pipe is an intriguing example of craftsmanship around 1840.
Unfortunately, a 1989 further examination of the pipe has revealed that it was probably carved in 1840, not in the 1870s and that if David Faribault did carve it, it was David Faribault, Sr., not the David Faribault, Jr., whom Moses Adams may have known in the 1870s. Still, the pipe and the story reflect Nancy's ongoing support of and admiration for her husband and reflect her goal to preserve his reputation for posterity.
In the 1910 census taken in St. Paul, Minnesota in the spring of 1910, Nancy was eighty-two years old and was living with her niece Stella Hancock, who was fifty-seven and single. Stella was the only surviving child of Nancy's sister Sarah, who had been married to Joseph Hancock for a few years before she died when Stella was six years old. At some point Stella moved to Beaverton, Oregon. She is listed there in the 1930 census as a servant to eighty-seven-year-old Betty Anderson. The last listing for Nancy is the aforementioned 1914 city directory where she is listed by herself as a boarder at the house on Marshall Avenue. She had been widowed for at least twelve years and was near her daughter Ella and her grandchildren. Her son-in-law, Newton Frost, donated Moses Adams's papers to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1925. The Adams papers make for a very interesting journey through decades of early Minnesota history from one of the most opinionated and troublesome characters who ever graced the work of the Dakota Mission.
[1] John Williamson to Thomas Williamson, March 15, 1875, MNHS, Williamson Papers P786, Box 1
[2] David Greene to Moses Adams, May 21, 1848, MNHS, ABCFM Corres.
[3] Ibid., Moses Adams to David Greene, July 11, 1848
[4] Ibid., Moses Adams to David Greene, July 28, 1848.
[5] Ibid., Robert Hopkins to S.B. Treat, September 12, 1848 and Mary Riggs October 18, 1848.
[6] MNHS, Williamson Papers, P786, Box 4
[7] Annual Report of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs, 1850, p. 80, MNHS
[8] ABCFM Corres., Moses Adams to S.B. Treat, October 2, 1849; January 12, 1850.
[9] Ibid., Moses Adams to S.B. Treat, July 24, 1850.
[10] Ibid., Moses Adams to S.B. Great October 3, 1851.
[11] Ibid., Moses Adams to S.B. Treat, June 7, 1852 and Missionary Herald, September 1849.
[12] Ibid., Moses Adams to S.B. Treat, July 8, 1852.
[13] Ibid., Moses Adams to S.B. Treat, December 9, 1852
[14] Ibid. Joseph Hancock to Treat, June 1853; Treat to Adams, June 6, 1853; Treat to Adams, August 22, 1853.
[15] Charles Mix to Willis Gorman, January 26, 1854, MNHS, NW Missions, P489, Box 18. Throughout the ABCFM correspondence and mission reports, the payment to missionaries for room, board and education for Dakota students is recorded at usually $75 a year, pro-rated per quarter.
[16] ABCFM Corres., Thomas S. Williamson to S.B. Treat, September 8, 1862.
[17] Mary Riggs to Stephen Riggs, October 13, 1862, MNHS Riggs Family Papers.
[18] Rogers, Elwin, For God and Land: Brown Earth, A Dakota Indian Community 1876-1892. Pine Hill Press, Sioux Falls, SD, pp. 13-15. Source: Sterling, Everett W. and Marion Hopkins, "Indian Land Policy Since 1887 with Special Reference to South Dakota," South Dakota Historical Collections, vol., 13, 1926.
[19] John Williamson to Thomas Williamson, March 15, 1875, MNHS, Williamson Papers P786, Box 1
[20] Iape Oaye, November 1878
[21] Tordoff, Jeffrey, "Conundrum in Catlinite: Exploring the History of a Masterpiece," Minnesota History, Winter 1989, p. 313-318
Posted in Agnes Johnson Hopkins Pond, Dakota Mission, Jane Smith Williamson, Kaposia Village, Lac Qui Parle Mission, Lucy Spooner Drake, Margaret Poage Williamson, Mary Ann Clark Longley Riggs, Mary Spooner Worcester, Moses Newton Adams, Nancy Rankin Adams, Sarah Rankin Hancock, Traverse des Sioux, Underground Railroad, Women in Minnesota	| Leave a comment
Life of a Legend – The Story of Jane Smith Williamson – Part XVI
Posted on August 28, 2019	by dakotasoulsisters
Over the next few years of Jane's life, she remained as active as possible. Her biographer, The Rev. R.J. Creswell, furthered yet another legend about Jane when he wrote about her in 1906. He said:
"In 1881 she met a poor Indian woman, suffering extremely from intense cold. She slipped off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman. The result was a severe illness which caused her partial paralysis and total blindness from which she never recovered."[1] Jane herself refutes this story in a letter she wrote to Mary Riggs on Christmas Day, 1862:
"I believe I told you of losing my skirt that I intended to wear just before leaving Pajutazee. I suppose Mrs. Daniels thought I looked too slender and she gave me a quilted skirt but when Marion came I lent it to her and took cold which brought on dysentery and I was unwell for some time. Marion did not know the cause of my illness but she gave me back the skirt as soon as she got another and afterward when Mr. Kerr sent her a bundle containing one she did not need she gave me that also."[2]
It is true that Jane began to lose her sight in 1880. One of the last letters I have that Jane sent to her cousin Elizabeth Burgess is dated March 14 and March 23, 1881, but is not written in Jane's handwriting, indicating that she dictated it to someone who wrote it for her. It provides an amazingly personal portrait of Jane's life when she was living alone in St. Peter.
"I suppose the winter has been unusually hard almost all over the U.S. and remembering that your delicate constitution did not bear the cold so well as mine I have often felt anxious about you although I knew you were surrounded by every comfort that love could give… Before the snowdrifts intercepted our communication with the west I rec'd letters from Nancy Hunter once or twice a week but they come very seldom now. The last one was dated 21st of Feb and she said she had not heard from me for four weeks and feared I was sick and that she had done wrong in leaving me but they needed her there and I have been very comfortable all winter. Have not had a wearisome night or an hours sickness and notwithstanding the storms I have not been confined to the house a single day although there has been a great deal of stormy weather this winter no single storm has been so severe as I have seen in goneby years but I think there is more snow than there has been any winter since we came to St. Peter. Some mornings the men and large boys were all busy shoveling the snow to make roads from their doors and for a time wood was scarce ____but Andrew had left me plenty of good wood. The man who with his family occupy the lower part of the house had it sawed. His boys brought it up so that I have had no trouble all winter.
"Before the weather became very cold I slept in the other room where I have a cook stove and used this for a sitting room but when the weather became severe I found it more comfortable to cook, sleep and eat in my sitting room. It has a nice little parlor cook stove that I bought long ago with money that you sent me and it makes this room very comfortable indeed. I cover the fire at night and in the morning step out of bed uncover the fire, take up the ashes, lay in dry wood and go back to bed till my room is warm and then rise and get my breakfast which is not much trouble but I always eat it with good relish. This climate gives us good appetites.
"I don't trouble much about cooking. Martha Stout usually sends me a loaf of light bread once a week when the traveling is practicable. I told Mrs. Ericson I would like to have her send me a piece of cooked meat once a day and I would make it right at the end of the month. My little stove bakes potatoes very nicely. I can buy anything I wish downtown. Mr. Ericson calls at the P.O. or does any other errand I wish both her and his wife are very kind and thoughtful seem to take pleasure in doing me any favor. They are Swede Lutheran of the middle class.
"Andrew Williamson tried to leave everything comfortable for me. All my brothers' children seem to desire to do anything to add to my comfort. Andrew left money subject to my order so that I could draw it at any time and the others seem just as willing to do for me. The man who had the greater part of my money failed but I draw the interest on four hundred dollars (in other hands) semi-annually a piece of land that had been unsuitable on account of the grass hoppers was sold the last of Dec. and from that source I will now draw nine per cent interest on eight hundred & fifty dollars from the sale of the land and there is some other money owing to me that I may receive the lower part of the house rents for six dollars a month and although I make some reduction on account of the many kindnesses I receive. Still I have all that I need with something to give the church and the poor.
"I am acquainted with many of the poor often bringing their children outgrown garments and their own that for some reason they are willing to spare to be distributed to the needy. And other winters I have been in the habit of seeking out those who were sick or in want but the walking has been bad this winter and I have gone out very little except to church to attend our missionary meetings when the weather is favorable or a lady calls to walk with me to the evening meetings but when the wind blows I stay at home. I am sometimes troubled when walking with a sharp pain striking me just above the left ankle that for a moment deprives me of the use of that limb. It hurts me very little when sitting and I have never felt it at all when lying on the bed. I suppose all old people have their pains and aches but I think very few suffer so little as I do. I have a cold now for the first time this winter but it does not make me sick though I am not so strong as I was earlier in the season. We are having pleasant weather now and the snow melts a little every day but it is still very deep and warm rain would probably cause a great flood.
"23. I stopped writing rec'd a letter from Nancy as she had still no letter from me and was troubled about it I wrote her a very long letter and then it was necessary for me to write to Andrew and although I stay at home very closely people thinking I am lonesome call very often. Mrs. Aiton spent a week with me lately. She is all the one that can talk with of Ohio friends. Should I live till June I think Andrew and Nancy both will visit me and although I am not lonesome I shall enjoy a visit from them very much. That you may be enabled at all times to cast your care on Him who cares for you is the desire of your ever loving Cousin Jane."[3]
It is true that Jane began to lose her sight sometime in the 1880s. Mary Butler Renville, an old friend of Jane's from the mission at Pejutazee, was happy to greet Jane in the summer of 1882 at the meeting of the Women's Board of the Northwest Missions in Minneapolis. She wrote the following for the Iape Oaye newspaper's July 1882 edition:
"There was dear Miss Jane Williamson, blind and suffering otherwise yet with untiring patience, long we clasped hands without a word. She, too, loved our darling Ella. The elder father of Mrs. Cunningham, James Ellison, can see to read and is so helpful to blind Aunt Jane. They are both ready to hear the master say, 'Come up higher, I need thee.' "[4]
The Iape Oaye had also reported in the December 1881 issue that Jane had gone to spend the winter with the Cunninghams in Bloomington Ferry. The last letter of Jane's that I have located was written from Bloomington Ferry on February 12, 1883. Like the March 1881 letter, it is not written in Jane's handwriting but at the end of the letter there is a note saying, "By Mrs. Ames." There are two letters in one with the first part to Elizabeth Burgess:
"Ever Dear Cousin,
"I have been very anxious to hear from you for a good while fearing you were sick. Cousin Lizzie's letter came last week saying you had been sick but was better & I feel thankful that you are better… I thank Cousin L. very much for mentioning Winnie. It is a great comfort to know that she is contented and doing well. Where the children of Missionaries are wholly consecrated to God I think they have greatly the advantage of other in learning among the heathen. J. B. Renville said to me after hearing John Williamson preach he speaks right to the heart and then it is so much easier for them to speak the language it gets into their feelings. I have a letter from Winnie's father the first of January. It is a great comfort to me probing in any darkness to receive letters from friends. I had a letter last week from Andrew. He is kept very busy. Charges me to want for nothing. I had one also from Martha Stout they are in usual health. My brother's children are all very kind and I feel I have a great deal to be thankful for.
"The winter thus far has been very cold and stormy and I have some more pain than I did a while but still I am quite comfortable at times and my nights are not as bad as they were last winter. Sometimes I have been a little troubled thinking I might lose my hearing also. Then I remember the admonition be careful for nothing but in everything tell your requests to make known unto the Lord by prayer and supplication & I try to cast my burden on him.
"Nancy H. usually writes to me every week but it is not probable we shall get regular mail while these storms continue. They have lately organized a woman's society in the church here. I contribute some things for the relief of some of the needy that Nancy has mentioned in her letters but there is some doubt about their receiving these soon on account of the many snowdrifts. Mr. and Mrs. Cunningham are in usual health which is never good.. Very many thanks to Cousin Lizzie for her kind letter,
Your ever affec. Cousin, J.S. Williamson"
The next letter is to Winifred Williamson, who is obviously in Marietta, Ohio, staying with the Burgesses and meeting relatives.
"Dear Winnie,
"I am so thankful to hear from all the letters that you are contented, well & doing well. I want to tell you what a pleasant visit I had from your Cousin F_____- Brown. She stayed here a couple of weeks when Mr. Cunningham was quite unwell, she was so very kind anticipating my little wants, rubbing my aching limbs. She didn't expect to stay so long but couldn't get home on account of storms and instead of complaining of homesickness, she was cheerful, added a great deal to our happiness. All of ____ she told me too if she heard of my being sick she would come and stay with me again. I am so glad that you can have an opportunity of becoming acquainted with our Marietta friends.
Give my love to Cousin Lizzie, Cole & all the friends.
Write to me when you have time. Your Aunt, Jane S.W."[5]
It is sad that Jane spent her final years unable to continue writing to her relatives and other missionaries. Losing her sight brought a veil of silence to the remainder of her days. Her dear cousin Elizabeth lived until February 28, 1889, but apparently received no more letters from Jane after 1883, or if she did, her family no longer saved them with the earlier letters. Andrew Williamson did say, in 1884, however, that Jane "is better than I ever expected to see her again. Her mind appears to have entirely recovered, and except that she is entirely blind she is very well for a lady of 82." [6]
Andrew was attending a meeting in Minneapolis when he visited with Jane so even though he wrote this letter from St. Peter, it appears Jane was still living with the Cunninghams in Bloomington Ferry. By 1885, however, Jane was living back in St. Peter with Martha and William Stout. The 1885 census clearly records her name with the family which includes William Stout, Martha Stout, Alfred Stout and Jane Williamson, who was eighty-four years old when the census taker came around in the spring. The Word Carrier Dakota newspaper for May 1888, also reported that Jane was at her home in St. Peter. It is clear that at some point, John and Amelia Williamson brought Jane into their family at the reservation in Greenwood, South Dakota, but no date has been found. John and Amelia were away from Greenwood and serving at Pine Ridge from 1890-91 so it's unlikely that Jane was in Greenwood while they were away.
William and Martha Stout and their son Alfred left St. Peter sometime between 1885 and 1900 and settled in Gresham, Oregon. The federal census was taken there on June 11, 1900, and William Stout was no longer living. Martha is recorded as a widow with Alfred, who is listed as thirty years old. It may be that their move from Minnesota prompted Jane's move to join John and his family in South Dakota.
The nearest indication we have that Jane was living in Greenwood by 1893 is a letter that John Williamson wrote to Andrew on November 10, 1893.
"I don't see but what Aunt Jane's general health is as good as when she came here and she may continue with us for months, but one thing has occurred to me that I wished to consult you about and that is the disposition of her body in case of her decrease. I asked her about it and she did not express any particular choice in the matter. She immediately commenced talking about the expense of funerals and did not want any more expense than could be helped. Then I asked her if she would prefer to be buried at St. Peter and she said she had expected to be buried by her brother, but it would be a good deal of expense, so she would not object to be buried here. I have two children buried here and she could be too but there is something appropriate in being buried by the side of those you have spent your life with, where it is not a burdensome duty. So I feel satisfied to either course, but as you have taken the care of Aunt Jane, I think you should decide the matter. And I would like to know what you have to say of this matter.
Your loving brother, John"[7]
The next letter from John to Andrew that has been found was written over a year later, on February 20, 1895.
"Aunt Jane I think is failing some but slowly. The doctor does not think there is any particular disease preying on her but a general failing of her powers. She is most of the time in a dreamy state but not a quiet state because she is too energetic. She is generally knitting though she has not touched her knitting for weeks. And she imagines something is wrong with it and someone must fix it for her and if no one is there to answer her she becomes much excited and cries over it so someone must be by her all the time or nearly so. And her mind is now so weak she can't remember whether it is day or night a good part of the time. She does not sleep as much as we do I think. At least she never sleeps more than an hour or two at a time day or night. Someone sits in the rocking chair by her bed all night and sleeps what they can. We have a girl that is very good help for my wife.
"Your Aff. Bro.
John P. Williamson"[8]
Jane passed away on March 24, 1895. John wrote to Andrew a few days later:
"There was nothing unusual in Aunt's demise. I wrote you I think a week before her death. We could see there was no improvement and probably a sinking because she would take no nourishment but we saw no evidence that her departure was imminent until the morning she died. My wife told me to come and see her about daylight. She lay quiet but it was not just like asleep. Her breathing was slower and rather non labored than usual and her pulse was weak and irregular. At first I thought that she would only last a few minutes but after a while she seemed to gain a little. She noted what I said to her. Sarah asked if she would like me to pray and she said yes and distinctly said Amen at the close of my prayer and started to say something more but did not articulate so we could hear her. Mr. Smith and Mrs. Brazeau came in after a while but she recognized them but said nothing. She continued about the same. I thought would last till night but just at noon her breath became suddenly weaker and…..here the copy of the letter ends.[9]
The Dakota newspaper, The Word Carrier for April-May 1895 published the following obituary for the beloved Aunt Jane.
"There fell asleep March w4, 1895, at the home of her nephew, John P. Williamson, D.D. Greenwood, S.D., Miss Jane Smith Williamson, aged ninety-two years sixteen days.
"In the Dakota mission we all knew Aunt Jane. A good many other people knew her too, because there was something about her that was hard to forget. She was very short, only four feet eight inches. She was a very ready talker. But it was not for these things she is specially remembered. She is remembered for her burning Christian zeal. It rested as a coal of fire on the head of every one she came in contact with. And her zeal was specially directed to two objects: the salvation of the African and the Indian races.
"Aunt Jane was born in South Carolina, cradled in the arms of African nurses who were brought to the free state of Ohio by her father that they might become the Lord's freemen. She saw the children of these slave women who her mother had been forbidden to teach to read in South Carolina, grow up under her instruction and that of others to become enlightened Christians, and some of them ministers of the gospel. Living in the border land on the banks of the Ohio until she was forty years old, she had the opportunity of witnessing many a wordy conflict over the slavery question, and probably she was not always a silent witness, for stories are still told in hat neighborhood of the days seventy years ago when Aunt Jane was teaching in the log schoolhouse, and though she said she was not afraid and did not want them to come, armed men stood guard round the house to provent the mob from coming and cleaning out the place, because it was, as they said, an abolition nest. We think also there was probably some ground for the accusation, because Aunt Jane prayed for the colored people to the last day of her life and would say she thought we ought to do more for the colored people than for the Indians, because there were so many more of them.
"Aunt Jane wanted to come with her brother, Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M.D., and be a missionary to the Indians when he came in 1835, but thought it her duty to stay where she could take care of her father, Rev. Wm. Williamson, in his old age. After his death she came in 1843, and was in active work teaching the Indians at Lac qui Parle and Kaposia (now West St. Paul) and Yellow Medicine for nineteen years, until the massacre of 1862. Since then she has not been in active work among them, but her busy mind has found many ways of serving them. And many of the strong Christians in our Indian churches both in pew and pulpit were her pupils; so being dead she yet speaketh. Aunt Jane's labors among the Indians were in perilous times. At Kaposia the mission house was more than once assaulted by drunken Indians with clubs and knives. From Yellow Medicine the missionaries fled for their lives at the time of the massacre. Aunt Jane with her brother and his wife were the last white people to flee, going along hours after the rest had fled. I think Aunt Jane would rather have died there, but thought it her duty to leave."[10]
The story concludes with a retelling of the time that Jane saved Thomas's life by feeding a starving Indian man who wanted to kill Thomas. All of the versions of that part of the legend of Jane Williamson are told in Dakota Soul Sisters, Jane Williamson Part IX.
Jane's biographer, Rev. R.J. Creswell concluded his summary of her life as follows:
"Without husband or children, alone in the world, she did not repine, but made herself useful, wherever She was, in teaching secular learning and religious truth, and in ministering to the sick and afflicted, the down-trodden and oppressed. She never sought to do any wonderful things – but whatever her hand found to do, she did it with her might and with an eye to the honor and glory of God. Hers was a very long and most complete Christian life. Should it ever be forgotten? Certainly not, while our Christian religion endures." [11]
Longtime readers of Dakota Soul Sisters may recall how I described the way Jane Williamson came into my life back in 2001. (See March 24, 2014, Introduction to the Story of Jane Smith Williamson). I had first heard of Jane when I was in elementary school but hadn't thought of her for over forty years when her name suddenly came to me while I was walking in Kaposia Park in South St. Paul on a beautiful autumn afternoon. I wondered what had become of Jane and whether her story had ever been told.
That "encounter" with Jane in Kaposia Park has become part of my own set of legends about Jane Williamson. There have been others. As every researcher, genealogist or historian knows, there often come times in your work when for no apparent reason, you put your fingers on a file that appears to have nothing of interest to you only to find it contains exactly what you needed. In other cases, you might just be browsing for a photograph and assuming you'll never find the one you need, when it pops up in a totally unlikely location.
Jane's story has come to me that way many times, not the least of which was in July 2003, when I made my first trip to Greenwood, South Dakota. My sister and I had made our usual visit to Mission Sunday on July 13, 2003, at Lac qui Parle State Park where a restored version of the original Dakota Mission Chapel hosts the annual gathering. At the potluck following the morning worship service, I asked Rev. Clifford Canku to give me detailed directions to the cemetery at Greenwood which he did. He basically said to go to the Indian school at Marty, South Dakota, and turn south to the river.
We were staying in Sioux Falls so the next day we set out from there for Marty, which is about 125 miles to the west. It was hot and dry and dusty all the way. When we got to the school, I pulled into a parking lot outside of what seemed to be the only building that was open. There was a sign on the road ahead of me pointing to Greenwood but I just wanted to be sure we were in the right place. As I went to enter the door to the building, a Dakota man came out and greeted me and asked if he could help. I thanked him and said I just wanted to be sure I was on the right road to get to the cemetery at Greenwood.
The cemetery at Greenwood, South Dakota is located at the highest point over looking the Missouri River. The monument on the left is the burial site of Struck by the Ree, a famous Yankton chief.
He got the strangest look on his face, his jaw dropped open and he said, "What? Why are you going out there?" I explained that I was a historian looking for Jane Williamson's grave and he actually seemed to grow pale. He shook his head slowly, mystified and said, "I don't believe it. I just mowed the grass out there yesterday." He made it clear that he'd had no reason to mow the grass at the Greenwood Cemetery. He certainly didn't know I was coming, but I think to this day that Jane had something to do with it.
The inscription on Struck by the Ree's marker reads: Here lies Paoani Apapi [Palaneapape] Struck by the Ree Head Chief of Yankton Sioux Consumation of the Treaty of 1858 Ceding to the United States the [south}east quarter of South Dakota. He was in his day the strongest and most Faithful friend of the Whites in the Sioux Nation Aged 84 yrs.
In any case, we headed out the barren road to Greenwood. The road to the cemetery came in on the left hand side and led us to the highest spot above the Missouri River. Indeed, the grass had been mowed inside the cemetery gates. If it hadn't, we would not only have never found any graves, but we wouldn't have even tried to walk in since the grass around the cemetery was several feet tall and snakes can be abundant in that part of South Dakota. Instead, we meandered our way into the cemetery. The tallest and most dramatic stone marked the burial site of Struck by the Ree or Strikes the Ree, Chief of the Yanktons, who lived from 1804 to 1888. Struck by the Ree was the first Indian child who was baptized into Christianity by Lewis and Clark when they reached this part of the Missouri River in 1805. I couldn't help but be moved by the fact that in 1805, a little two-year-old girl in South Carolina was being taken from South Carolina to Ohio so that her father could free their slaves in a free state. Now that little two-year-old Jane Williamson was buried within a few feet of this Yankton chief who had become the first child baptized during the Corps of Discovery Expedition in 1805.
Jane's stone is as clear and crisp as it was when she was buried in 1895. The insignia marker next to the stone is too dark to read but it is the official Daughters of the American Revolution grave marker for descendants of Revolutionary War families.
Then, of course, I found Jane. The lettering on her pink granite stone is as sharp as the day she was buried in 1895 and standing proudly next to the stone is the marker which identifies her as a Daughter of the American Revolution. She is buried under a small grove of shrubbery near John and Sarah Amelia Williamson and two of their children, as well as other family members. It had only been two years since her name had come to me on the site of the Kaposia Mission, now Kaposia Park, in South St. Paul, Minnesota. As I stood there, I realized that yes, I had found Jane, but I knew very little about her life and that this day really marked the beginning of the journey to tell her story. Now, sixteen years later, I still want to find out more.
This photo of Greenwood was probably taken in about 1900 and it shows the Chapel and School house with the tower.
When I visited Greenwood in 2003, this is all that remained of the chapel. Greenwood at that point was basically a ghost town. There were two trailers off in the distance but no other signs of life except for two very happy dogs who came out to welcome my sister and I to town. When I returned in 2009, the entire place was bustling with all kinds of trailers. Families were living in the former reservation building and although the ruins were still there, the place was coming back to life.
The church at Greenwood wasn't built until long after Jane was gone. John P. Williamson lived long enough to see its completion and was buried from the new building in 1917.
Greenwood at one time was quite a major community along the Missouri River. This photo, again taken about 1900, gives some sense of the size of the village when Jane lived there.
Aunt Jane (1803-1895)
[1] Cresswell, Rev. R. J., Among the Sioux: A Story of the Twin Cities and The Two Dakotas, The University Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 1906, p. 77.
[2] Jane Williamson to Mary Riggs, December 25, 1862, MNHS, Riggs Family Papers, P726, Box 1. Marion Robertson had passed away years before 1881 and although Jane mentions becoming ill after giving Marion her skirt, she never mentions such a thing again.
[3] Jane Williamson to Elizabeth Burgess, March 14 and 23, 1881, Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College, Item 45, Folder 5.
[4] Iapi oaye: the Minnesota Sioux Tribe's "Word Carrier". Minnesota Historical Society Microfilm Call #: 1063. Mary and John Renville's daughter Ella had passed away on February 14, 1882, so Jane would have shared Mary's grief at this loss in another mission family.
[5] Jane Williamson to Elizabeth Burgess and Winifred Williamson, February 12, 1883, Dawes Memorial Library, Marietta College, Item 46, Folder 5. The Lizzie in the letter is Elizabeth Williamson Voris Cutler, the daughter of Elizabeth Burgess. Cole is apparently a grandson of Elizabeth Burgess. I don't know who Winnie' cousin F_______-Brown might be.
[6] Andrew Williamson to "Dear Friend," written from St. Peter Minnesota, August 14, 1884. Dakota Prairie Museum, Aberdeen, SD, 1-74-14-243
[7] John Williamson to Andrew Williamson, November 10, 1893, MNHS, Williamson Papers, P726, Box 1
[8] Ibid., February 20, 1895
[9] Ibid., April 1, 1895
[10] Iapi oaye: the Minnesota Sioux Tribe's "Word Carrier". Minnesota Historical Society Microfilm Call #: 1063
[11] Cresswell, Rev. R. J., Among the Sioux: A Story of the Twin Cities and The Two Dakotas, The University Press, Minneapolis, Minn., 1906, p. 79.
Posted in Dakota Mission, Jane Smith Williamson, Marion Robertson Hunter, Martha Williamson Stout, Nancy Hunter Lindsey, Sarah Amelia Van Nuys Williamson, Women in Minnesota	| Leave a comment
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