Thomas Williamson and Alexander Huggins organize a church at Fort Snelling, probably the first Protestant church in Minnesota. Although Gideon H. and Samuel W. Pond had started their Dakota mission the year before, they had not yet organized a church. The French had a Catholic mission on Lake Pepin in the 1700s, and Father Lucien Galtier would establish a Catholic church in Mendota in 1840. The First Presbyterian Church of Minneapolis descends from the fort's church.