Rev. John Poage Williamson Biography


	This biography appears on pages 1702-1704 in "History of South 
	Dakota" by Doane Robinson, Vol. II (1904) and was scanned, 
	OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

	This file may be freely copied by individuals and non-profit 
	organizations for their private use. 

	Any other use, including publication, storage in a retrieval 
	system, or transmission by electronic, mechanical, or other 
	means requires the written approval of the file's author.


	REV. JOHN POAGE WILLIAMSON, one of the able and honored members of 
the clergy of the Presbyterian church in the state, and the pioneer 
missionary among the Indians in Dakota, was born in Lac qui Parle, in 
the county of the same name, Minnesota, on the 27th of October, 1835, 
being a son of Rev. Thomas S. and Margaret (Poage) Williamson, the 
former of whom was born in South Carolina and the latter in Ohio, while 
they were numbered among the earliest settlers in Minnesota, the lineage 
of each being of Scotch-Irish derivation. Rev. Thomas S. Williamson, M. 
D., was a man of distinguished attainments and was for forty-five years 
a missionary of the Presbyterian church among the Sioux Indians in 
Minnesota, continuing his earnest and self-abnegating labors there until 
his death, in 1879. He was a son of Rev. William Williamson, a soldier 
in the Continental line during the war of the Revolution, who removed 
from South Carolina to Ohio in 1803, in order that he might manumit his 
slaves. Margaret (Poage) Williamson, the mother of our subject, was the 
daughter of Colonel James Poage, who became general surveyor of 
government lands west of the Alleghany mounains at the close of the 
Revolutionary war, and for his bounty he received forty thousand acres 
of government land. He settled in Kentucky, where he was a member of the 
legislature in 1796, and he afterward founded the town of Ripley, Ohio, 
whither he brought his twenty-four slaves and set them free. His father 
was Robert Poage, who was a colonial soldier under Washington at the 
time of Braddock's defeat. Margaret (Poage) Williamson was summoned into 
eternal rest in 1872. 

	John P. Williamson passed the first twelve years of his life on 
the frontier in Minnesota, before there was a public school established 
in the state. However, his paternal aunt, Miss Jane Williamson, a 
mission teacher to the Sioux Indians, gave him much faithful 
instruction. In 1847 he was sent east, and he studied two years in South 
Salem Academy, Ohio; one year at Harmar Academy in Marietta Ohio; one 
year at Mount Palatine Academy, LaSalle, Illinois; two years in Knox 
College, at Galesburg, Illinois, under Jonathan Blanchard, the noted 
abolitionist; and two years in Marietta College, Ohio, where he was 
graduated as a member of the class of 1857. He then entered Lane 
Seminary, in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he completed his theological course 
and was graduated in 1860. He was licensed to preach by the Presbyterian 
church in Minnesota in 1859, and in the year following his graduation he 
held pastoral charges at Allensville and Zoar, in Switzerland county, 
Indiana. He was appointed a missionary to the Indians and commenced 
mission work in the autumn of 1860 at Redwood agency, Minnesota, and has 
ever since continued his work among the Indians. By the massacre of 1862 
the white persons at Redwood Minnesota, were all killed or driven away, 
and the Indians were exiled. Mr. Williamson's scalp was providentially 
spared and he decided to follow the exiles with the gospel. He arrived 
at Crow Creek, South Dakota, on the 31st of May, 1863, with thirteen 
hundred Indians, in charge of Colonel Clark W. Thompson. This officer 
immediately built the cedar stockade called Fort Thompson, on the site 
of the present Crow Creek Agency. The Indians were removed from this 
point in 1866 and Mr. Williamson followed them to Niobrara, Nebraska. 
where he labored among them until March 1869 when he located at Yankton 
Agency, South Dakota, where he has resided during the long intervening 
years. For the past twenty years he has been general missionary, having 
the supervision of all the Presbyterian missionary work among the Sioux 
Indians, and having visited practically all of the Sioux agencies at 
varied intervals. He was the first missionary of any denomination among 
the Indians of South Dakota, and when he came there were less than half 
a dozen clergymen of all denominations in what is now the state of South 
Dakota.

	Mr. Williamson cast his first vote for General John C. Fremont, 
the first presidential candidate of the Republican party, of whose 
principles and policies he has remained a staunch advocate from the time 
of its organization to the present. He was elected to the legislature in 
1896, serving during the fifth general assembly, and looks back with 
particular satisfaction upon the course of the Republican minority in 
re-electing Senator Kyle in that session. He was appointed United States 
special agent for the Flandreau Indians in 1873, and remained in tenure 
of this office for a period of five years. 

	On the 27th of April, 1866, was solemnized the marriage of Mr. 
Williamson to Miss Sarah A. Vannice, of Winnebago City, Minnesota She 
was born in Iowa, in 1843, and is a daughter of Cornelius C. and Susan 
L. (Dickerson) Vannice. Mr. and Mrs. Williamson have seven children, 
namely: Winifred Lee, Guy W., Thomas C., Jesse P., John B., Laura L., 
and Helen V. Mr. Williamson is the author of a number of publications in 
the Dakota Indian language. He originated and published for many years 
the Iapi Oaye, a monthly Indian paper. His English-Dakota Dictionary 
will preserve his memory as long as the Dakota language is spoken.