Almeda Jones St. Clair

Almeda Jones St. Clair
A formal portrait of an indigenous (Dakota) woman, wearing a dark dress with a high collar and long sleeves, seated in a wicker chair and holding a book
Almeda Jones St. Clair, from a 1909 publication
Born(1868-02-28)February 28, 1868
Dakota Territory
DiedDecember 8, 1952(1952-12-08) (aged 84)
Redwood County, Minnesota
Other nameAmelia St. Clair
OccupationsEducator, missionary, lacemaker

Almeda Jones St. Clair (February 28, 1868 – December 8, 1952), also known as Amelia St. Clair, was an American Indigenous Christian missionary, teacher, translator, and expert lacemaker,[1] whose lace work was shown at the 1900 Paris Exposition, and presented to Queen Alexandra.[2]

Biography

Almeda Jones was born in Dakota Territory, the daughter of Mary Jones. She married Henry Benjamin Whipple St. Clair, a Sioux Protestant Episcopal clergyman,[3] in 1889. They had thirteen children together,[4] and celebrated fifty years of marriage together in 1939, at a community event at the Birch Coulee Indian Mission in Minnesota.[5]

As a minister's wife,[5] St. Clair taught and worked in various indigenous communities in the Upper Midwest. She taught lacemaking at Bishop Whipple Mission in Minnesota,[2] initially as assistant and translator for missionary Susan Salisbury.[6][7] Her lace designs included a pillow covering made for Queen Alexandra.[8] She also sang hymns in "the Dakota language" for community groups.[9] In the 1930s, she and her family lived at the Flandreau Sioux reservation, and she taught at the Flandreau Indian School there.[10]

Her son Henry died in 1931.[11] She died in 1952, aged 85 years, in Paxton Township, Redwood County, Minnesota.[12] Her great-granddaughter, Iyekiyapiwiŋ Darlene St. Clair, is a professor at St. Cloud State University and director of the school's Multicultural Resource Center.[13]

References

  1. ↑ "Short Items Gazetted". The Redwood Gazette. 1901-06-12. p. 2. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via Newspapers.com.
  2. 1 2 Zempel, Gavin (October 9, 2023). "Lacemaking at Birch Coulee, 1893–1926". MNopedia. Retrieved 2024-07-29.
  3. ↑ Shelby, G. Frank (August 1905). "A Sioux Indian Chapter". St. Andrews Cross. 19 (11): 13–14.
  4. ↑ The History of Redwood County, Minnesota. H. C. Cooper, jr. 1916. pp. 431–432.
  5. 1 2 "Rev. and Mrs. Henry St. Clair to Observe Golden Wedding". The Redwood Gazette. 1939-11-02. p. 4. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via Newspapers.com.
  6. ↑ Eidsvig, Maxine V. (June 7, 2002). "Lace Ladies". Ojibwe News. Retrieved July 29, 2021.
  7. ↑ "Taught to Make Lace". Star Tribune. 1949-10-22. p. 9. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via Newspapers.com.
  8. ↑ Whipple, E. (1909). "The Church and the Dakotas of Birch Coolie". The Spirit of the Missions. 74: 203–207 – via HathiTrust.
  9. ↑ "'I See By the Gazette'". The Redwood Gazette. 1933-04-27. p. 9. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via Newspapers.com.
  10. ↑ U.S., Indian Census Rolls, 1937, via Ancestry.
  11. ↑ "Henry St. Clair Dies in Sisseton Monday". The Redwood Gazette. 1931-09-10. p. 12. Retrieved 2024-07-29 – via Newspapers.com.
  12. ↑ Death date found on her gravestone, and confirmed in the Minnesota, U.S., Death Index, 1908-2017, via Ancestry.
  13. ↑ Fulthorp, Deborah. "Iyekiyapiwiŋ Darlene St. Clair: The Sacred Story of a Dakota Woman Challenging Knowledge Inequity" in Colleen D. Hartung, ed., Women Advancing Knowledge Equity: The Parliament of the World's Religions (Parliament of the World's Religions 2023): 121.
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