Thomas Smith Williamson had been ten years a practising physician in Ripley, Ohio. There he had married Margaret Poage, of one of the first families. One after another their children had died. Perhaps that led them to think that God had a work for them to do elsewhere. At any rate, after spending a year in the Lane Theological Seminary, the doctor turned his thoughts toward the Sioux, for whom no man seemed to care. In the spring of 1834 he made a visit up to Fort Snelling. And in the year following, as has already been noted, he came as a missionary of the A. B. C. F. M., with his wife and one child, accompanied by Miss Sarah Poage, Mrs. Williamson's sister, and Mr. Alexander G. Huggins and his wife, with two children. This company reached Fort Snelling a week or two in advance of Mr. Stevens, and were making preparations to build at Lake Calhoun; but Mr. Stevens claimed the right of selection, on the ground that he had been there in 1829. And so Dr. Williamson and his party accepted the invitation of Mr. Joseph Renville, the Bois Brule trader at Lac-qui-parle, to go two hundred miles into the interior. All this was of the Lord, as it plainly appeared in after years. At the time we approached the mission at Lac-qui-parle, they had been two full years in the field, and, under favorable auspices, had made a very good beginning. About the middle of September, after a pretty good week of prairie travel, we were very glad to receive the greetings of the mission families.... A few days after our arrival, Mary wrote: "The evening we came, we were shown _a little chamber_, where we spread our bed and took up our abode. On Friday, Mr. Riggs made a bedstead, by boring holes and driving slabs into the logs, across which boards are laid. This answers the purpose very well, though rather uneven. Yesterday was the Sabbath, and such a Sabbath as I never before enjoyed. Although the day was cold and stormy, and much like November, twenty-five Indians and part-bloods assembled at eleven o'clock in our school-room for public worship. Excepting a prayer, all the exercises were in Dakota and French, and most of them in the former language. Could you have seen these Indians kneel with stillness and order, during prayer, and rise and engage in singing hymns in their own tongue, led by one of their own tribe, I am sure your heart would have been touched. The hymns were composed by Mr. Renville the trader, who is probably three-fourths Sioux." * * * * *