Koren, Ulrik Vilhelm Rev. 1826 - 1910

KOREN, HYSING, NUESSETH, TORRISON

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 5/19/2024 at 21:00:45

Source: Decorah Republican Dec. 22, 1910, P3 C3-4

ULRIK VILHELM KOREN.
Monday evening, December 19 at 9:50 o’clock, Ulrick Vilhelm Koren closed his eyes in eternal sleep. Death came after an illness of eighteen months or more, during which the deceased was at times a great sufferer from an affliction of the heart. At no time during the period of his illness was it thought that he could recover in a moderate degree the health that he had enjoyed during the latter years of his life, yet the summons was sudden even to some of his most intimate friends. To-day Rev. Koren would have reached his eighty-fourth anniversary and it had been planned that a few would go out to his home to extend congratulations. Instead they stand with bowed heads, thinking of him as one who has gone before, waiting to welcome them in glad reunion.
Ulrick Vilhelm Koren was born in Bergen, Norway, December 22, 1826. There he grew to manhood. In his youth he was favored in educational opportunities, and later he attended the University of Christiania, where he graduated in 1852. During the ensuing year he taught in the Nissen mission school, and in 1853 he decided to come to America. He had received a call to what was then known as Little Iowa and while it meant becoming a pioneer and enduring the hardships of an unsettled country it was with a cheerful heart and an enthusiasm for the work that he had embraced that he accepted the call. Before coming to this country he was married to Miss Elsa Elizabeth Hysing. She too possessed a cheerful heart, a brave heart, and came with him to share the fortunes of a new country. They were the first missionaries of the Norwegian Lutheran church to cross the Mississippi river and establish a permanent home. How permanent that home and how steadfast their loyalty has been is shown by the fact that Washington Prairie, seven miles south of Decorah has been their abiding place in all the intervening years since 1853 when they came to their parish. And while it was not large as to numbers, it was not an easy task that had been assumed, for Little Iowa meant all of Northeastern Iowa and a good bit of Southern Minnesota. Then it was one large parish of scattered settlers—to-day it numbers twenty separate congregations with resident pastors at nearly all of them.
Their first home was a log cabin and there on Christmas day, 1853, Rev. Koren preached his first Christmas sermon. For his text he used the first fourteen verses of the second chapter of St Luke, and for fifty-five consecutive Christmas days he appeared before his home congregation, using the same text. Did his parishioners grow tired of his theme? Ask them to-day. We feel no hesitancy in saying that a mist will come to their eyes as they sorrowfully shake their heads—a mute expression of their wish that he were to stand before them again next Sunday to deliver once more that blessed message of “On earth peace, good will toward men.”
In 1855 Rev. Koren was elected secretary of the Synod, which position he filled until 1871 when he became vice president and continued to hold the latter office until 1891 when he was elected president, and remained in that position to the time of his death. Beside these offices he was a member of the church council from 1861 on, and president of the Iowa district from 1876 to 1894.
Rev. Koren was not simply a leader and a spiritual advisor in his church. Men such as he cannot and do not confine their interests to their own people. Any good cause found in him a willing supporter. In the days of the civil war he did not feel that he could go to the front but at home he was quietly but steadily supporting the cause of the union.
Decorah owes to him a debt of gratitude and a tribute to his memory that time should not be allowed to erase. When the question of moving Luther College to this city was being discussed it was this man who secured from the late George Phelps that beautiful tract of ground on which the college now stands and largely through whose instrumentality the college was finally located here.
Naturally it was in his church and among its members when Rev. Koren’s chief labors were performed. His was a busy life but beside attending to his pastoral duties, and the more arduous labors of the presidency of the Synod, he found time to devote himself to literary pursuits as well. For the church he wrote several pamphlets which have been accepted as authority and he was editor-in-chief of the church hymnal. In the controversy that arose in the church some twenty years ago, and resulted in a division of the membership, he was the leader of the Synod.
Seven years ago, at the time the Jubilee Synod was held in Decorah, Rev and Mrs. Koren celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage and also of their connection with the Washington Prairie congregation. At that time there was a generous outpouring of congratulations from near and far on this dual event in their lives, but it did not begin to express all the love and reverence that has been felt for this venerable paster and friends. And he was such a good friend! Never obtrusive nor effusive in his manner, but deep down in his heart was that warmth for his fellowmen that found expression in an unwavering adherence to the things he felt to be true and good and to those whom he honored by his confidence. The REPUBLICAQN knows what his friendship meant. An acquaintance formed soon after the elder members of the Bailey family came to Decorah grew into mutual esteem. In the later years this was extended on to the younger members of our home and the writer cannot—would not wish to—forget the many ways in which this esteem has been shown to him. As it was with us we know it has been with others, and that is why wherever Rev. Koren’s acquaintance extends there are those who will cherish his memory.
His death marks the second break in the family circle His son Albert a civil engineer, died eight years ago, but there survive to comfort their mother in her bereavement seven children—Henrietta, Marie, and Paul, who are at home, Mrs. Chr. Nuesseth and Mrs. I B. Torrison of Decorah, John of Boston and William of Princton, N. J.
The funeral services will be held to-morrow, (Friday), at the Washington Prairie church at one o’clock. The remains will lie in state at the church between the hours of eleven and one for all who desire to view them.

Transcriber’s Note: His first name is spelled two different ways but Ulrik is shown on his gravestone.

Washington Prairie Lutheran Cemetery
 

Winneshiek Obituaries maintained by Jeff Getchell.
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