Grandmother Pond,
The Last Living Member of the Heroic Band of Pioneer Missionaries to the Dakotas, in the 81st Year of Her Age.
HER HUSBAND DROWNED.
Mr. and Mrs. Hopkins were first stationed at Lac-qui-Parle. After one year they were transferred to Traverse des Sioux, near the present site of St. Peter, Minnesota. Here they gave seven years of the most faithful, devoted, self-sacrificing toil for the lost and degraded savages around them. They built a humble home and established and maintained a mission school. Five children were born to them there. Two of these were early called to the celestial home on high. Their life at Traverse des Sioux was a strenuous, isolated, but a fruitful and happy one. It was destined, however, to a speedy and tragic end.
Early in the morning of July 4, 1851, Mr. Hopkins entered the river for a bath. He was never seen alive again. A treacherous swirl in the water at that point suddenly carried him to his death. His wife waited long the carefully prepared morning meal, but her beloved came not again. He went up through the great flood of waters from arduous service on the banks of the beautiful Minnesota to his glorious rewards on the banks of the still more beautiful River of Life.
Broken-hearted, the young wife, only twenty-six years of age, laid him to rest on the banks of the river whose treacherous waves had robbed her of her life companion. Sadly she closed her home in Minnesota and, with her three little fatherless children, returned to her old home in far-distant Ohio.
Rev. Robert Hopkins enjoyed the full confidence of his colleagues and was greatly beloved by the Indians. His untimely death was an irreparable loss to the mission work among the Sioux.
SECOND BRIDAL TOUR TO THE WEST.
Shortly after the tragedy at Traverse des Sioux, Mrs. Sarah Poage Pond, wife of Rev. Gideon H. Pond, died at Oak Grove Mission of consumption. In 1854 Mr. Pond visited Ohio, where he and Mrs. Hopkins were united in marriage. She made a second bridal tour from Ohio to Minnesota, and toiled by his side till his death in 1878.
In every relation in life in which she has been placed, Mrs. Pond has excelled. While she long ago ceased from active service in mission fields, she ever has been, and still is untiring in her efforts to do good to all as she has opportunity. She is strong and vigorous at the age of eighty. She still resides at the Oak Grove Mission house, her home since 1857, universally beloved and regarded as the best woman in the world by about one hundred descendants.
