ld meet her husband.

II

GRANDMOTHER POND.

Grandmother Pond is one of the rarest spirits, one of the loveliest
characters in Minnesota. She is the last living link between the past
and the present--between that heroic band of pioneer missionaries who
came to Minnesota prior to 1844, and those who joined the ranks of this
glorious missionary service in more recent years. Her life reads like a
romance.

Agnes Carson Johnson Pond is a native of Ohio--born at Greenfield in
1825. She was the daughter of William Johnson, a physician and surgeon
of Chillicothe, Ohio. By the death of her father she was left an orphan
at five years of age. Her mother married a worthy minister of the
Associate Reformed Presbyterian church, Rev. John McDill. She had
superior educational and social advantages and made good use of all her
opportunities. She was educated at a seminary at South Hanover,
Indiana. There she met her future husband, Robert Hopkins. He, as well
as she, was in training for service on mission fields. They were
married in 1843. He had already been appointed as a missionary teacher
for the Sioux Indians. The young wife was compelled to make her bridal
tour in the company of strangers, by boat and stage and private
conveyance from Ohio to the then unknown land of the upper Mississippi.
It required thirty days then, instead of thirty hours, as now, to pass
from Ohio to the Falls of St. Anthony. The bride-groom drove his own
team from Galena, Illinois, to Fort Snelling.

[Illustration: 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 sw