Jane Smith Williamson
This lady, eminent for her piety, her good works and her missionary labors among the Dakota Indians, was born at Fair Forest, South Carolina, March 8, 1803. Her father, the Rev. Williamson, a Presbyterian minister and a Revolutionary patriot, and her mother, Jane Smith Williamson, brought her to Ohio, an infant, in 1804. Her father and mother believed slaves had souls, and brought their twenty-seven slaves to Ohio, and set them free. Her mother had been fined in South Carolina for teaching her own slaves to read the Bible, and she and her husband removed to Ohio to free their slaves, and to be able to teach them to read and write. She was brought up in an atmosphere of sincere and deep piety and of devotion to Christian teachings. For early educational advantages in a new country were necessarily limited, but she made the most of them. She studied grammar and syntax practically, and mastered all the branches open to her study while she was a girl.
She was accurate in the use of language, both spoken and written. She wrote a hand like copper-plate, and was thorough in everything she studied. She read all the good and useful books which were accessible to her. She had an excellent memory and a lively imagination, and with a wide reading, she early acquired the art of writing most interesting letters.
From her parents and grandparents, she inherited that marked sympathy for the colored race which was an eminent characteristic of her entire life. At all times and on all occasions, she stood up for the colored people. In her young and mature womanhood, when there were no public schools in her county—or none worth the name—she taught subscription schools both in West Union and Manchester. In West Union, the venerable David Dunbar, now of Manchester, was one of her pupils, and in Manchester, Mrs. David Dunbar and Mrs. D. B. Hempstead, of Hanging Rock, were among her pupils. She never excluded a pupil because his or her parents or friends were unable to pay tuition. She sought out the poor and invited them to attend her school. She accepted colored pupils as well as whites.
Her teaching the colored people aroused bitter feeling in the community, but she was such an excellent teacher that it did not decrease the number of her white pupils, and her control of her pupils was so perfect that the bringing of the colored pupils into the school did not affect the government of her school. The progress made by her pupils was rapid, and her teaching so thorough that the presence of the colored pupils did not drive the white ones away. There were many threats of violence to her school, but she was not alarmed. On more than one occasion, friends of hers, dreading the attempt to forcibly break up her school, took their rifles and went to her schoolhouse to defend her. Some of these men were rough characters, and hard drinkers, and some of them were pro-slavery, but they were determined her school should not be disturbed. They regarded her as a fanatic in her views, but, as they regarded her as an efficient teacher, they did not propose that her work should be interfered with.
She was always a volunteer in houses where there was sickness. Atthe age of twenty-six, she went to General Darlinton's and nursed the mother of Mrs. Rev. E. P. Pratt through a spell of sickness. Mrs. Urmston was then a young married woman, just come to Ohio from Connecticut.
On June 8, 1835, she was teaching near "The Beeches," in Adams County. The next day she learned of the death of Dr. William M. Vorhis, of cholera, at Cincinnati, and it became her painful duty to inform her cousin (his wife) of the fact. At first, she told her that Dr. Vorhis had been very sick in Cincinniati. As cholera was prevalent there, the wife at once divined the truth, and swooned away. She went from one swoon into another, and Miss Williamson, in order to terminate her swoons, went out and brought in her two little girls, one seven and the other three years of age, and, leading one by each hand, asked her if there were not two good reasons for her to live and to work for.
Her love for children was a distinguishing trait of her character. She won their affections entirely, and thus ruled them without any apparent effort.
The missionary spirit was a part of her life, born with her, and a heritage from several generations. When her brother, Thomas S. Williamson, went as a missionary to the Dakota Indians in 1835, she wanted to go with him, but felt that she must remain at home and care for her aged father, who survived until 1839, and died at the age of seventy-seven; but she did not get to go to her brother until 1843, when she had reached the age of forty. Her life, prior to this, had been a preparation for missionary work. For years she had been an active worker in Sunday Schools, prayer meetings and missionary societies. In her day school, she had made public religious worship a prominent feature.
When she reached Minnesota, she went to work directly and worked with great energy, and with an untiring industry greatly beyond her strength. She had an unusual familiarity with the Bible. She taught several hundred Indians to read the Word of God, and, the greater part of them, to write well enough to write letters. She ministered to all the sick within her reach, and devoted a great deal of time to instructing Indian women in domestic duties. She led the women in prayer meetings, and spent much time conversing with the women as to their souls. The privations of the missionaries, at that time, were great. White bread was then as much of a luxury as cake would now be considered.
Lac-que-Parle, her first missionary home, was two hundred miles west of St. Paul. It was more than a year from the time she left Adams County before a single letter could reach her. She was out in the Indian village when the first mail reached there. She heard of its arrival, and was so eager for news from her old home that she ran to her brother's house as swiftly as a young girl. She saw no signs of the mail, and asked where it was. They told her it was in the stove-oven. The mail carrier had brought it through the ice, and it had to be thawed out. The mail contained over fifty letters for her, and the postage on them was over five dollars. This in 1844.
She moved to Kaposia, now South St. Paul, in 1846, and to Pajutazee, thirty-two miles below Lac-que-Parle, in 1852. The Dakotas called her "Dowan Dootanin," which means "Red Song Woman."
She gathered the young Indians together, and taught them, as opportunity offered.
In the great outbreak of 1862, when it seemed as though the work of the missionaries had failed, she never lost hope or faith.
In the Fall of 1894, when nearly two thousand converted Dakota Indians were gathered together, to plan for religious work among their people, she was the only survivor of the first missionaries.
In the Fall of 1881. she saw a poor Indian woman suffering with the cold. She took off her own warm skirt and gave it to the woman, and from this she took a cold and a spell of sickness followed, resulting in her total blindness.
After the Indian outbreak of 1862, the way never opened for her to resume her residence among the Dakotas, but she was given health and strength for nineteen years' more labor for the Master. Her home continued to be with her brother, at or near St. Peter, until her death in 1879, and in his old home two years longer. In that time she did much for the Indians who lived with her brother, toward their education. She kept up an extensive and helpful correspondence with native Christian workers.
As a Sunday School teacher, she labored with untiring patience for the conversion of her pupils, and to train them as Christian workers. She was active in female prayer meetings and missionary societies. She lost most of her patrimony in lending to those most needing money, instead of to those most certain to pay. Her friends, however, were liberal in their donations to her work, and she was able to relieve most of those under her observation in serious want.
Here is the story of a modest, unassuming heroine. 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 downtrodden and oppressed. She never sought to do any great or wonderful thing, but only to do good as the opportunity offered. It has been thirty-two years since she left Ohio, and most of her friends there are dead, but those living, who remember her, recall her with great love. So long as she can reflect on the record of her life, she cannot recall any opportunity slighted, any duty left undone.
She died March 24, 1895. at the home of her brother, Rev. John P. Williamson, at Greenwood, South Dakota.
From History of Adams County, Ohio from its Earliest Settlement to the Present Time - by Nelson W. Evans and Emmons B. Stivers - West Union, Ohio - Published by E. B. Stivers - 1900