401 E 104th St
Bloomington, MN 55420, USA

Gideon H. Pond House - National Register of Historic Places

Statement of Significance:

The Gideon H. Pond House was erected in 1856 by the Reverend Gideon H. Pond, one of the early missionaries to the Dakota Indians, on a bluff overlooking the Minnesota River in what is now Bloomington. Gideon H. Pond was born in Washington, Litchfield County, Connecticut, June 30, I8l0. Mr. Pond, with his brother, Samuel W. Pond, a school teacher at Galena, Illinois, came to Minnesota in I83U as lay missionaries to tutor the Dakota Indians in farming, domestic arts and Christianity.

They began their labors among small bands of Dakotas encamped around Lake Harriet and Lake Calhoun now in south Minneapolis. They built a log cabin on the east shore of Lake Calhoun and opened a mission school. Three years later, Gideon Fond, leaving his brother in charge of the mission, went to Lac qui Parle, Minnesota, to join the Reverend Thomas S, Williamson at a mission overlooking Lac qui Parle Lake.

He returned a few years later to Lake Harriet and in I8I4.3 changed the location of the mission to the banks of the Minnesota River. The Dakotas had moved their encampment to this location because mf repeated conflict with the Chippewa Indians. Gideon Pond erected the brick house for his family and a mission schoolhouse for the Indians.

Gideon Pond and his brother, Samuel, learned Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French. They developed the “Pond Alphabet” of the Sioux language. In I836 they published a spelling book. A 3,000-word dictionary, translations of Scripture, and a "Grammar and Dictionary of the Dakota Mission" printed in 1852 by the Smithsonian Institution, were other fruits of their long labors with the Dakotas.

At their Oak Grove Mission in Bloomington, the Pond brothers preached to the Indians in their own language on Sunday mornings and the white people of the area in the afternoon. Often the officers from port Snelling would ride 8 miles to the Mission for services.
In 1855 the the first Presbyterian Church of Oak Grove was organized in the Gideon Pond House. The Reverend Gideon Pond served as pastor of the church until 1873. He died January 20, 1878 at the age of 68.