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The churches now known as East Clermont
Lutheran, Marion Lutheran (Gunder), Norway Lutheran (St.
Olaf) and Highland Lutheran were originally a part of the
same parish begun in July 1851. Their history begins with
the arrival of Ole Valle and Ole Tollefson, the first
Norwegian immigrants to Clayton county in 1846. These
pioneer settlers made their homes in the hills and
valleys surrounding the Turkey River, developing the
"Clermont Settement", near present-day
Clermont, Fayette county; and the "Norway
Settlement" near the present-day community of St.
Olaf.
In 1955 the Elgin Lutheran church was
organized and Highland was released to form the
Elgin-Highland parish. |
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Subscriptions
to the first Luther College building fund taken in the Subscriptions to the first Luther College
building fund taken in the Clermont, Norway and Marion
congregations, dating back to the year 1858.
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Biographical
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Claus Lauritz Clausen was born on the island of Aeröe, Denmark, November 3, 1820. Brought up and educated for the ministerial profession, he went at the age of twenty-one, to visit with some friends in Norway. The emigration from that country to the United States had begun shortly before this date, and a cry from these settlements, "Come over to America and help us," was heard on the shores of Norway. After having made a trip back to Denmark and married there, he immediately embarked for America, where he, after a long and difficult journey, arrived at Muskego, Racine county, Wis., on August 6, 1843. In 1850 the Norwegian Synod wa organized, with Rev. Clausen as superintendent, the Synod then numbering three clergymen. Rev. Clausen moved west to St. Ansgar, Ia. and from this point served the people in the neighboring settlements until the civil war broke out and in 1861 he enlisted as chaplain for the famous 15th Wisconsin Regiment. A controversy opened in the Norwegian Synod over the question of whether or not slavery be sin, in which Rev. Clausen stood alone for the affirmative against the rest of the Synod. This, and other, dissentions on other important questions, caused Rev. Clausen in 1868 to leave the Norwegian Synod. ~American Lutheran Biographies, by Rev. J.C. Jensson, 1890; excerpts from the full text bio on pgs 138-139 ~Transcribed by S. Ferrall |
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Nils Brandt was born January 29th, 1824, in Slidre, Valders, Norway, whre his father and ancestors for generations were teachers and deacons of the parish. His father died when he was but eleven years old, but two of his brothers assisted him to prepare for the ministry. After studying with the pastor of the parish for three and one-half years, and one-half year in Christiania, he entered the university there in 1844, and graduated in 1849 with high honors. While tutor in a clergyman's family near Stavanger, he received a call to Rock River and Pine Lake churches, in Wisconsin; and, having been ordained by Bishop Amp at Christiania, reached Wisconsin in the fall of 1851, after an ocean voyage of eight weeks, and immediately visited the pioneer settlements in north-eastern Iowa and in Vernon County, Wis., as traveling missionary. On the first and second Sunday in Advent, 1851, he was installed in his parish by Rev. C. L. Clausen and Rev. H. A. Stub. During the three first summers he continued his missionary work in north-eastern Iowa and extended it to eastern Minnesota and western Wisconsin. He traveled on foot a great deal of the time, preached in groves, barns, and log-huts, wherever people would meet to hear the gospel, baptized as much as twenty-five children in one day, confirmed married women with several children, shared the hardships and frugal fare of the sturdy Norwegian pioneers, and has left a memory, cherished in these settlements now so prosperous, as the first minister preaching to them the gospel in their mother tongue in their new fatherland. In 1856 he returned to Norway, and while there he was married to Diderikke Ottesen, daughter of Provost Realf Ottesen, returning to his parish with her in the fall of 1856. In 1865 he was called as pastor of the congregation at Decorah, la., and tutor at Luther College. For seventeen years he remained in this field, gradually decreasing his work at the college as two more congregations called him as their pastor. He resigned his pastorate at Decorah, la., in 1882, owing to overwork resulting in heart disease, and traveled in Norway, succeeding in partly regaining his health. Intending to remain there, he resigned his other charges and for several months had temporary charge of a parish in Norway. Returning to this country in 1883 he made his home with his son, Rev. O. E. Brandt, in Cleveland, O., until his faithful wife was taken away by death, January 21st, 1885. She was buried at Decorah, la., where the students of the college and other friends erected a monument over her grave in token of their appreciation of her motherly and self-denying care for them during all the years she lived there. ~American Lutheran Biographies, by Rev. J.C. Jensson, 1890; excerpts from the full text bio on pgs 107-108 ~Transcribed by S. Ferrall |
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Mrs. Koren, nee Else Elisabeth Hysing, was born in Larvik, Norway. She married Ulrik Vilhelm Koren in 1853, shortly before they began their journey across the Atlantic to Iowa. |
Rev. Ulrik Vilhelm Koren was born in Bergen, Norway, Dec. 22, 1826, and received his education at the college in that city and at the University of Christiania, from whose school of Divinity he graduated in 1852. The following year he emigrated to America, where he had accepted a call as minister in the neighborhood of Decorah, Ia., and although he has several times received calls to other places, he has remained where he first located. His charge at first comprised a large territory, as he was the first Norwegian Lutheran minister west of the Mississippi, but it has since been divided into a great many charges. Rev. Koren is one of the pioneers in the West, and he had to undergo all the hardships so familiar to the early settlers. A little earlier in the same year in which Rev. Koren came to America, the Norwegian Lutheran Synod was organized, in whose affairs he has taken a most prominent and conspicuous part. Since 1861 he has been a member of the Church Council or the executive board of the Synod, and since 1876, when the Synod was divided into districts, he has been the president of the Iowa district. Rev. Koren was most active in securing the location of the Lutheran College at Decorah in 1861, and ever since he has taken great interest in this institution, and, outside those most directly connected with this school, he has probably done more to make it prosper than any other man. His culture and attainments, his intelligent interest in the Synod's institutions of learning, his enthusiasm and earnestness, his eloquent defense in speech and in print of what he has conceived to be the truth, and the mission of the Synod, to which he has devoted his life, has made him the most prominent of Norwegian Lutherans in this country. His published writings consist of a number of articles in the religious papers of the Synod, and as the student of the history of the Norwegian Lutherans in this country will readily understand, these articles are mostly of a polemical character. For this reason, when an attack has been made on the Synod by its opponents, most of their missiles have been directed against him as the most conspicuous champion of the Norwegian Synod. His great gifts as a preacher and the devotion and God-inspired energy in his work, which has gone on unceasingly for more than a generation, have won for him the lasting esteem and love of the members of his charge. ~American Lutheran Biographies, by Rev. J.C. Jensson, 1890; pg 416 & 417 ~Transcribed by S. Ferrall
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See also:
East Clermont Lutheran Church history & photos and Highland Lutheran Church history
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