The original Dakota presbytery was organized at Lac-qui-parle in the first days of October, 1844. Dr. Williamson and myself brought our letters from the presbytery of Ripley, Ohio, and Samuel W. Pond brought his from an Association in Connecticut. The bounds of this presbytery were not accurately defined, and so for years it absorbed all the ministers of the Gospel of the Presbyterian and Congregational orders who came into the Minnesota country. By and by the presbyteries of St. Paul and Minnesota were organized; but the Dakota presbytery still covered the country of the Minnesota River. At a meeting of this presbytery at Mankato in the spring of 1865, when our first Dakota preacher, Rev. John B. Renville, was licensed, an incident took place which illustrates the meekness and magnanimity of Dr. Williamson's character. On its own adjournment the presbytery had convened and was opened with a sermon by Dr. Williamson, in the evening, in the Presbyterian church. He took occasion to present the subject of our duties to the down-trodden races, the African and the Indian. Doubtless some who heard the discourse did not approve of it. But no exceptions would have been taken if the Jewett family, out a few miles from the town, had not been killed that night by a Sioux war-party. Men were so unreasonable as to claim that the preaching and the preacher had some kind of casual relation with the killing. The next day, Mankato was in a ferment. An indignation meeting was held, and a committee of citizens was sent to the Presbyterian church to require Dr. Williamson to leave their town. Some of the members of the presbytery were indignant at this demand; but the good doctor chose to retire to his home at St. Peter, assuring the excited and unreasonable men of Mankato that he could have had no knowledge of the presence of the war-party, and certainly had no sympathy with their wicked work. In years after this, I traveled hundreds of miles, often alone with Dr. Williamson, and while we conversed freely of all our experiences, and of the way God had led us, I do not remember that I ever heard him refer to this ill treatment of the people of Mankato. Like his Master, he had learned obedience by the things he suffered. Never brilliant, he was yet, by his capacity for long-continued, severe exertion, and by systematic, persevering industry, enabled to accomplish an almost incredible amount of labor. His life was a grand one, made so by his indomitable perseverance in the line of lifting up the poor and those who had no helper. From the beginning he had an unshaken faith in his work. He fully believed in the ability of the Indians to become civilized and Christianized. He had an equally strong and abiding faith in the power of the Gospel to elevate and save even them. Then add to these his personal conviction that God had, by special providences, called him to this work, and we have a threefold cord of faith, that was not easily broken.