Minnesota,  the  State  immediately  northwestward  of
Wisconsin,  was  originally  foreign  missionary  ground.  In
1835  the  American  Board  began  labor  among  the  Dakota
Indians  about  Fort  Snelling ;  but  the  few  churches  which
they  gathered,  some  of  which  contained  white  persons,
were  affiliated  with  Presbyterianism.  In  1849  the  ''Amer-
ican Home  Missionary  Society"  entered  the  field;  and
as  its  first  missionaries  thither  were  Presbyterians,  the
churches  gathered  in  1849  at  St.  Paul  and  at  Stillwater,
as  well  as  that  formed  in  1850  at  St.  Anthony,  were  of
that  order.  But  in  1850  Rev.  Charles  Seccombe  and  Rev.
Richard  Hall,  missionaries  of  the  same  society  and  of  Con-
gregational sentiments,  reached  Minnesota.  The  day  for
founding  mixed  churches  had  about  gone  by ;  and  though
Seccombe  had  been  commissioned  by  the  society  to  St.
Anthony,  the  little  Minnesota  Presbytery,  which  had  just
been  organized,  refused  to  install  him  over  the  Presbyterian
church  at  that  place  unless  he  would  join  the  Presbytery.
376  THE    CONG  REG  ATIONALISTS.  [Chap.  x.
This  just  demand  was  met  on  Seccombe's  part  by  an
equally  justifiable  refusal  to  give  up  his  Congregationalism,
and  he  therefore  gathered  the  first  Congregational  church
of  Minnesota  at  St.  Anthony  on  November  i6,  1851, — the
body  now  known  as  the  First  Church  of  Minneapolis.
Attempts  on  the  part  of  the  "  Home  Missionary  Society  "
to  unite  the  two  churches  in  St.  Anthony  resulted  in  the
ultimate  junction  of  both  in  a  Congregational  body.  In
Februar}',  1852,  Hall  founded  the  second  Congregational
church  in  Minnesota,  at  Point  Douglas.  Four  years  later
the  State  Association  came  into  being;  and  by  1858  the
Congregational  churches  in  the  region  numbered  thirty,
largely  owing  to  the  efforts  of  Seccombe  and  Hall.  The
impulse  thus  early  imparted  has  given  Congregationalism
a  strong  hold  on  this  State.
