When Reverend I.O. Sloan set foot in Bismarck in 1873, it was a “wild and wooly” Western town. Bismarck had a few new wood-framed buildings, but it was teeming with “tents and gamblers,” and loud profanity prevailed. “Pandemonium seemed to reign” in saloons and gambling places that were open 24 hours a day.
Although it seemed likely that Bismarck’s rougher residents “would rather go to a bear-fight than to church,” Isaac O. Sloan, the 53-year-old Presbyterian preacher, held a church service on June 15th, 1873.
Sloan conducted the worship in a brand-new tent and it was filled with people. “Every place of business was closed during the church hour,” out of respect. After the service, businesses reopened, and blacksmith George Gibbs’s booming voice could be heard all over town, shouting several times: “Hurrah for God!”
A legend grew. Some newspaper reporters printed false claims that gamblers had thrown poker chips into the offering plate. But a contemporary observer said that wasn’t true. The service was “reverently conducted,” and the congregation behaved with the same dignity and decorum as any church “back East.”
It was a momentous occasion. That very day, Bismarck’s leading citizens, including newspaperman Clement Lounsberry and three others, organized a Presbyterian congregation. Reverend Sloan became their minister, and they began work on a church building.
After several years in Bismarck, Sloan moved to Mandan and built a church there as well. Years later, he founded yet another church. It was on this date in 1892 that a newspaper mentioned the Glencoe church, southeast of Bismarck.
Reverend Sloan had a unique background. Born in 1820 in Philadelphia, he was educated at Pennsylvania’s Jefferson College and Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He served a church in Virginia from 1856 until the Civil War.
During the war, President Lincoln appointed him a hospital chaplain. Sloan comforted wounded and dying soldiers in field hospitals until the war’s end in 1865. After the war, he moved West, serving churches in Minnesota and then in Dakota Territory, where he became a beloved preacher, known for living by Christ’s words: “Love one another.”
Reverend Sloan retired in 1895, at the age of 75. He returned to Philadelphia, where he passed away in 1899 at the age of 79.
The congregation that began in 1873 still meets today, generations after Reverend Sloan’s arrival in Bismarck.
Dakota Datebook written by Steve Hoffbeck, retired MSUM History Professor
Sources:
- “Emmons County Record . . . Sloan,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, June 3, 1892, p. 8.
- “Bismarck, A Frontier Town,” New York Times, August 5, 1873, p. 2.
- “Church Organization,” Bismarck Tribune, July 11, 1873, p. 4.
- “Dakota: Bismarck,” Minneapolis Tribune, June 20, 1873, p. 1.
- Linda W. Slaughter, “Church Building On The Frontier,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, February 16, 1894, p. 7.
- “Colonel Lounsberry, N.D. Pioneer, Dies,” Fargo Forum, October 6, 1926, p. 12.
- Rev. I.O. Sloan, Collections of the State Historical Society of N.D., Vol. IV (Fargo: Knight Printing Co., 1913), p. 155-158.
- “Twenty Years Ago,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, July 14, 1893, p. 4
- Frances Chamberlain Holley, Once Their Home (Chicago: Donahue & Henneberry, 1890), p. 366-367.
- “How First Presbyterian Church Was Started,” www.fpcbismarck.comhistory, accessed May 17, 2025.
- Sloan, Isaac Oliver,” Biographical and Historical Catalog . . . of Jefferson College (Cincinnati: Elm Street Printing Company, 1889), p. 114.
- “Father Sloan Dead,” Bismarck Tribune, November 3, 1899, p. 1.
- “A Tribute to Father Sloan,” Bismarck Weekly Tribune, November 20, 1891, p. 5.
- “Presbyterian Church,” Mandan Pioneer, June 15, 1956, p. 1.
- “Glencoe Sloan Memorial Church,” in Burleigh County, Prairie Trails To Hi-Ways (Dallas: Taylor Publishing Co., 1978), p. 541.
- “Sloan, Isaac Oliver: Class of 1852,” Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York: Alumni Directory, 1836-1970 (NY: Alumni Office, 1970), p. 6.
- “Isaac Oliver Sloan,” U.S. Civil War Soldier Records and Profiles, 1861-1865, Ancestry.com, accessed May 10, 2025.
