A BRIEF HISTORY
by
MALCOLM ROSHOLT
In the beginning there was one Lutheran church
congregation in Alban township, later there were two, now there is one,
for with the organization of Faith Lutheran Church an old concept has
been reestablished and a new one affirmed. Action to consolidate the
Alban and Rosholt Lutheran congregations, in addition to a third at
Galloway, Wisconsin, was taken at individual meetings held by the three
congregations in January 1961 and the legalization of the new
incorporation became effective on April 1, 1961.
Behind this development lies a long history of church
harmony and also of church discord in which tolerance for the opinions
of the other man has been respected in the tradition of the Protestant
dispensation where every man is his own priest and in the American
tradition of democracy where every man is responsible to his own
actions.
Behind this development also lies a history of cultural
change and adaptation to new forces in the lives of a people who once
took the bold step of leaving their homes in Norway and Denmark and,
despite often bitter and merciless circumstances, were able to establish
themselves in new homes on the Wisconsin wilderness frontier where they
found greater economic freedom and even greater religious opportunity.
Throughout this period our people have exhibited a
certain stubbornness to change, some more so than others, some less so
but all fighting to preserve what is considered good from the past while
approaching with caution what appears to be new in the future, and this
is as it should be. The process still goes on.
The difference between the Ideal and the practical
accomplishment of this Ideal faced our forefathers even as it faces us
today. Apart from doctrinal matters, some of our problems in the past
arose over simple mundane questions, some over cultural affairs, and
some no doubt because of man’s inherent pride in family and race. We
have not pretended to be consistent except in one direction, namely, in
our everlasting quest for peace with God.
And it was this groping for an answer to the eternal
mysteries that prompted our people, before they were numerous enough or
rich enough to build a church, to meet in each other’s homes and
listen to a neighbor read from Martin Luther’s postil, a book
of sermons written for informal worship. When the weather permitted and
a pastor was available, the people gathered at Alban schoolhouse, a log
cabin, which stood about half a mile south of Alban corners. But the
first recorded evidence of a pastor in this area appears in a diary
written by Knut Halverson, a pioneer of the Tomorrow River settlement in
the town of Sharon. The visiting pastor was Nils Bryngelsen Berge who
conducted services in the home of John Furuvold on Tuesday, March 6,
1877. Pastor Berge, a native of Vos, Norway, after his ordination at St.
Louis, Missouri, in 1870, served briefly as an assistant to Pastor Amund
Mikkelsen in Scandinavia, Wisconsin, and in 1871 was called as resident
pastor to New Hope where he served this and other congregations,
including Alban after the latter was organized on April 30, 1878.
As the east Alban community at this time was made up of
a mixed population of Norwegian and Danish emigrants, plus a few second
generation Norwegians who had moved here from Waupaca county, the new
congregation took the name of The Norwegian-Danish Evangelical Lutheran
Church, a member of what was then known as the Norske Synode affiliated
with Concordia Seminary, a German-sponsored school of theology of the
Missouri Synod at St. Louis, Missouri.
While the records of this church begin with the baptism
on September 21, 1871 of Martin Kristian, son of Hans Jorgen and Anna
Drothea Fredericksen, we cannot be sure where the baptismal ceremony was
held. It is even possible that this and later entries in the early 1870s
of baptisms, marriages and deaths were post-dated on the basis of
records in the pastor’s office at New Hope after the congregation was
organized at Alban in 1878. But children of the pioneers of Alban recall
that services were occasionally conducted in Alban school by Pastor
Berge in the 1870s before a congregation was organized. For the most
part, however, these earliest pioneers drove to north New Hope church
and children attending confirmation classes usually walked to New Hope
to "read for the minister" (lese for prestenQ)
A decision to build a church for the new Alban
congregation was taken in the latter part of 1878 and apparently the
building was sufficiently wall along to lay the cornerstone that same
year. But it was not until several years later that a steeple was built
and even later before a bell was hung. This was not a matter of time,
but of available funds, and the pioneers built as they found the means
to build with. Practically all the labor was donated by the members of
the congregation, many of whom, in lieu of cash, contributed lumber and
building materials. For it was a matter of personal pride to have one’s
own church in the community. It not only identified people but gave them
a focal point of interest where they could share in each other’s
religious experience as well as cultural and economic advancement. As
the congregation was unable to employ a full-time pastor, services were
conducted at irregular intervals, often a month apart, supplemented by
special services at Christmas and Easter. Thus it was important to be in
church when the occasion offered and, following the service, to stand
outside and visit, trade horses or sell a cow.
In the 1880s a series of questions left unresolved since
the Civil War faced the Norske Synode. While the crux of the matter
eventually centered on doctrinal interpretation, this in turn had been
influenced by other matters which the new emigrants and their pastors
were confronted with when they left their homes in the Old Country and
sailed for the "land of their choice." The question of slavery
was involved; but even before the Civil War, the question of parochial
schools was involved. The pastors who came over from Norway and Denmark
to minister to the new churches wished to establish a form of
ecclesiastical hierarchy not unlike the Old Country and they also wished
to maintain their influence over the education of the youth in
opposition to the American common school which was considered to secular
and amoral. There was also a question of racial feeling. Throughout this
early period the German-sponsored seminary at St. Louis had dominated
the thinking of the Norwegian pastors and through them their
Norwegian-Danish parishioners. All these confrontations with American
democracy were an incentive to change and the majority of Norwegians
adhering to the Norske Synode were anxious to shed every vestment of
subservience which they could do in a democracy but could not do in the
Old Country and, to show their independence, began agitating for a new
church organization which would cast off the old and put on the new.
They dared not admit to themselves, apparently, that this is what they
were doing and, to put the stamp of authority from the past on their
actions, took up the matter of doctrine to prove the correctness of
their new position. The question at issue then was whether man could be
saved by grace alone without any merit on the part of the individual, or
whether man also had a part in his own salvation. It came to be called
naadevalgstriden after the Dano-Norwegian words, naade for grace,
valgs for choice, and strid for strife or struggle.
At a meeting of the Alban congregation held in 1887, the
members voted 17 to three in favor of a split with the Norske Synode.
There were patently others who were against leaving but did not choose
to attend the meeting. While much of the agitation for a split was led
by Pastor K. (for Kittil) O. (for Olson) Eidahl, called to New Hope in
1884 after the death of Pastor Berge in 1883, and who also served the
Alban congregation, it would appear that the majority in the
congregation were not in need of much convincing. They had been reading
the papers too. And for the next three years the Alban congregation,
like many others, including the one at north New Hope, was without a
synod or final authority. This was resolved in 1890 when these two
congregations, with many others, joined what came to be called the
United Church, a new synodical conference. With the formation of the
United Church, affairs at Alban returned to normal and Pastor Eidahl
went about his mission more or less as he had done before the trouble
started. But on a Sunday morning when the weather was clear, he could
probably hear the peal of another church bell about two miles to the
northeast, for here the three families who voted to remain in the Norske
Synode, now augmented by several other families, had built a new
although smaller church.
When the vote was taken in 1887 to split with the Norske
Synode, the majority who voted in favor of the split were the dissenters
from the established church and it would have seemed that the three who
voted to remain in the synod should have been the heirs to the original
building. Instead, the dissenters kept possession. It was an interesting
question of ownership, and if the question was ever brought up at a
meeting at all, it is not recorded, and the three families in the
minority had to find a new church building. Again, this was the
democratic way. The majority ruled. Had this happened in Norway or
Denmark, the dissenters would probably have lost their church building
and been sent to jail as well even as the government had once jailed
Hans Nielsen Hauge.
Thus while there was friction and some personal
animosity between neighbors, there were no overt measures taken by
either group to discipline the other, for this would have violated not
only the Sermon on the Mount, but the democratic principle on which this
nation is founded. They got along and made the best of it, and in the
end this was the reasonable thing to do, for one day they would join
hands and forget the whole affair. How much better this way than to
force the hand of either?
One of the collateral effects of the split was to focus
attention on Bible reading in the home. A man had to know what the Bible
said if he was to be able to defend his position on purely doctrinal
grounds. It was a time of deep soul searching and, no doubt, wonderment.
And even after the split came, one group tried to "convert"
the family of another to the other synod and it known that these
discussions among the laymen often lasted far into the night. We can
look back on this period with a certain envy because the quest for God
was so sharply defined and openly discussed.
A feature of the 1890s and early 1900s at Alban were the
several hioitidsdag, or festival days. Special Sundays every year
were reserved for a children’s festival when the young were given a
new status in the church community. There were mission festivals (missionsfest)
when services, held morning, afternoon and evening, featured a
missionary speaker, usually from Zululand or China. The kresmode
or district meeting attracted big gatherings. This was held in different
parts of the circuit but when it was held here or in nearby villages,
every effort was made by the members of the congregation to attend at
least one of the two-day affairs. There were also revival meetings (opvaekkelsesmode)
often lasting two days, and on February 14, 1905 a special service was
led by Pastor A. L. Dahl to fight for prohibition and against the
saloons.
Ordinary church services in the 1890s and early 1900s
were seldom finished in less than an hour and a half. As services were
not held every Sunday, many were accompanied by at least one baptismal
ceremony. As there were no bulletins issued to members of the
congregation, the pastor also spent several minutes describing upcoming
events, announcing the dates of the next Bible reading class, or Ladies
Aid Society meeting, or a funeral or business meeting. Pastor Eidahl,
who spoke German as well as Norwegian and English, often preached two
sermons at a single service, one in Norwegian and one in German. Both
ethnic groups listened in silence while he was preaching in the opposite
language. But after Eidahl left in 1904 this was given up.
Pastor Eidahl was followed by Olaus M. C. Farseth who
resigned April 17, 1910 to be followed by Ludvig Larson Masted until
January 1917; Thormod Severin Kolste served from January to May 1917,
and Nils Folkeson Kile from May 1917 to October, 1919. Thereafter the
congregation was served a second time by Pastor Kolste on a temporary
basis until the first resident pastor, Gerhard Augustine Peterson of
Minneapolis came in August, 1920. Meanwhile, the United Church and the
Norske Synode came together in 1917 both as members of the new Norwegian
Evangelical Church of America, and Peterson became the first pastor to
serve both the Alban and Rosholt congregations as well as a new church
body in Galloway called Christ Lutheran.
Pastor Peterson resigned in November, 1923 and the two
congregations were served temporarily by Severin Lewis Thompson of
Nelsonville and early in 1924 Wilfred A. Johnson of Capron, Illinois,
accepted the call to serve the three congregations as well as fourth at
Elderon, Wisconsin.
He resigned in 1946 to be followed by William L.
Anderson of Prairie Farm, Wisconsin, who resigned in August, 1956 to be
followed by Olaf Olsen who served until January 1, 1959, and in June,
1959 by Vein A. Holtan, of Stoughton, Wisconsin, who presently serves
the new congregation, Faith Lutheran Church, and two congregations in
New Hope.
Most of these pastors made a lasting impression on their
parishioners. There is no living memory of the first pastor, Berge, but
an entry in Norwegian appears in the daily register of Alban
congregation dated September 5, 1879, which reads (in translation):
A divine visitation service and catechization and a
short congregation meeting (was held). The congregation expressed much
satisfaction with Pastor Berge. T. B. Frick
Pastor Frick was at this time president or formand
of the eastern district and was apparently on an official inspection
tour or visitation. This entry is noteworthy because it is the first and
only one made for 1879. If Berge kept a register it is not available
because the next entry begins on May 20, 1883, two weeks after he died
and was buried at north New Hope cemetery. Thus we know only that Berge
must have been deeply respected and had become so much a part of the
community that he wished to be buried among the people he had once
served.
Pastor Eidahl is well remembered by older people of the
congregation. One said that he prepared his sermons and "pounded
the pulpit (and) believed what he preached." He was above all a
practical man and as the congregations were unable to provide him with a
sufficient salary, he went into the logging business as a sideline,
cutting railroad ties. He was also a sharp trader when it came to
trading horses, as one parishioner in east Alban - who thought he had
the best of the bargain - was to learn.
It was not until 1927 that the Alban trustees voted to
permit English sermons on a limited basis, actually three times a year,
but this was a decision not adhered to very long because more and more
English services were conducted.
The Norwegian language was hard dying in Alban and even
as late as the annual meeting held January 14, 1942, five weeks after
Pearl Harbor, the secretary was still keeping his minutes in Norwegian.
It was the last time. A year later the same secretary, Gust D.
Halverson, was recording the minutes in English. There was no motion to
approve this change. The secretary apparently took it upon himself to do
so, even as the pastor had long since ceased to preach only the allotted
three sermons in English per year. Finally, at the annual meeting held
in 1946 Harold P. Anderson moved that "from now on all services
will be conducted in the English language unless some other request be
made by members in the congregation and that an amendment to this motion
be made that we have two Norwegian services with Communion, one in the
spring and the other in the fall." This last provision was also of
limited duration. Either in 1957 or 1958 Pastor Olaf Olson, himself a
native of Norway, gave what will probably be the last sermon heard in
the Norwegian language in Portage county.
Meanwhile the movement to consolidation among various
Lutheran groups, many of them originally founded less on doctrinal than
on ethnic lines, was moving ahead. In 1917 the Norske Synode, United
Church and Hauge Synod came together to form a single body known as the
Norwegian Evangelical Church of America. This was the first step. Others
eventually followed and finally in 1960 the American Lutheran Church was
formed comprising several synods from among former Scandinavian and
German Lutheran bodies.
While is was generally realized that a closer bond
between Alban, Rosholt, Galloway and the New Hope congregations was
desirable, it was not until Pastor Holtan accepted the call to serve
these congregations that a move got under way to merge the Rosholt,
Alban and Galloway congregations. At a vote taken at the annual meeting
of Alban congregation on January 10, 1960 a ballot was cast
"favoring a plan for one congregation." The count was 40 to 13
in favor. A year later on January 8, 1961 formal action was taken for
the merger when the vote was 38 to 18 in favor. In a vote cast for
naming the new congregation, there were 24 votes cast for the name
"Faith" Lutheran Church, 22 for "Emmanuel" and two
for "United." Until a central church building is created, the
congregation will continue to alternate services between the Alban and
Rosholt churches.
CONCORDIA LUTHERAN CHURCH
When the split, or splittelse as it was known in
Norwegian, came in 1887 the Norske Synode people who left their original
church body were without a formal organization and a church. The same
happened in New Hope and Scandinavia and in each case the Synode people
eventually built another church. This explains why there is a
"north" New Hope and a "south" New Hope
congregation. The south New Hope church represented the old Norske
Synode.
The organizational meeting of the new church body in
Alban Township was held in the home of Andrew Brekke on June 29, 1889
"for those who would hold fast to the old Lutheran teachings and
unite with the "Norshe Synode" and the new congregation was to
be known as Concordia Evangelical Lutheran Church. The first annual
meeting was held December 20, 1889 when Pastor O. (for Ove) K. (for
Kristian) Ramberg was present. He had agreed to serve this congregation
as well as south New Hope and Scandinavia. A native of Norway, he later
became editor of Our Friend, a children’s magazine sponsored by the
synod.
Construction of a church building, which stood on Andrew
Linland’s forty, was apparently pushed to near-completion the same
year of 1889 because we know that services were held here on New Year’s
day in 1890, although the dedication and corner stone ceremony was put
off until September 1, 1890 which might suggest that the building was
not yet completed until the summer of 1890. The congregation made
special efforts to attract a record turnout by inviting four other
pastors in addition to Ramberg. These were Amund Mikkelsen who once
served in Scandinavia, Claus Frimann ("Finn") Magelssen of
Manitowoc-Sheboygan, Nils A. Forde of Stevens Point and Amherst, and
Anders J. Anderson of Marshfield and Wood county congregations.
Owing to the distance involved, services were held less
than once a month in the early years and between times the parishioners
usually traveled to south New Hope’s church. And at the annual meeting
held in 1899 the Concordia congregation voted to increase its share of
the pastor’s salary from $60 to $100 per year.
In the autumn of 1903 the railroad came into the
fast-building village of Rosholt, and at the annual meeting of Concordia
church in the country, J. R. Rosholt, who platted the original village,
offered land in addition to $25 towards a new church to be built in the
village. No action was taken until March 1905 when Adolph Torgerson made
a motion that the old church, which was in need of repairs, be
demolished and a new church built in the village. At a second meeting
held the same month it was decided to build a new church with the
understanding that J. G. Rosholt was to make a contribution of $750.
The movement for the removal of the church was urged not
only by Rosholt but also by the new pastor who had accepted a call in
June 1904, namely, Carl Severin Berthinius Hoel, a native of Aundal,
Norway, who also served south New Hope, Iola and Scandinavia
congregations of the Norskc Synode. The new church in Rosholt was
modeled after another one recently built in Stevens Point for Trinity
Lutheran on Strongs Avenue. In fact, the altar, which was installed at
Concordia, was an exact duplicate of the one in Stevens Point, both
created by A. P. Lewis. We know that the church was ready for occupancy
sometime in 1905 as the annual meeting was held ‘in the congregation’s
new church at Rosholt, Wisconsin on November 25, 1905."
At a special meeting held November 15, 1916 when the
question of forming a new synodical conference was being discussed, a
vote was taken with 31 in favor and 10 against the new synod - the
Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church of America which became a reality
in 1917. During this period a new Norwegian term was coined in reference
to this movement called unionisme (unionism). In the vote
referred to above, 10 members voted against union with the other two
synods and it was no doubt six of these who in 1922 withdrew from
Concordia congregation and later helped to found the new church at
Benson Corners. The reason for the withdrawal was made on the grounds
that "unionisme er synd" (unionism is a sin). The six
families, in a communication to the Concordia trustees, said they could
no longer "answer for their conscience (samuittighed) and
remain as members of the congregation." And they left in peace, but
later one of them was laid to rest in Concordia’s cemetery at Rosholt.
The last mention of the use of the Norwegian language in
church services was heard at the annual meeting in December, 1920 when
it was proposed that the Concordia congregation continue to hold morning
services as heretofore, "namely, two Norwegian to one English
service." This proposal was not adhered to for long and it soon
became the other way around - two English for one Norwegian service. The
first English entry in the church minutes was made at a meeting of the
trustees held June, 1929 when W. L. Selmer served as secretary pro-tem,
but at the annual meeting in November the same year, Ole Leklem,
permanent secretary, shifted back to Norwegian. A year later, Leklem
started out in Norwegian on the first page and on the second shifted
into English and completed the business of the meeting in the English
language. At the next annual meeting Leklem’s notes were all in
English as were the meetings that followed. The break with the past was
nearly completed in January 1935 when Martin Wolding moved "to have
all services during the year in the English language and any extra
Norwegian services to be conducted during the year left to the
discretion of the pastor." Interestingly, Mr. and Mrs. Martin
Wolding are the only members of the church still living after the church
was removed to Rosholt.
The first move towards making one parish which would
include the north and south New Hope churches in the
Alban-Rosholt-Galloway parish was taken in September, 1946 when it
became necessary to call a new pastor following the resignation of
Pastor Johnson earlier in the year. Pastor Johnson, long remembered for
his scholarly language, was forced to resign owing to ill health. At
this time, Our Savior’s Lutheran Church at Elderon withdrew from this
parish to join with one at Wittenberg, Wisconsin. Action on a joint
parish with New Hope’s two churches was not finalized however, until
1956. Pastor Olaf Olsen did much to bring the congregations closer
together. The blacktop road and modern automobile did the rest.
In 1948 the constitution and bylaws of the congregation
were amended and translated into English, the most significant
provision, probably, as quoted in the minutes: "The right to speak
and vote be extended to all members of the congregation that complies to
the regulations that are further specified in article seven." Thus
woman suffrage came to Concordia and the Pauline admonition that women
were to keep silent in church was no longer to be observed. They had a
right to vote and express themselves at the annual meetings, even as
they had long enjoyed the right to vote for a president of the United
States.
In accepting the call to Alban-Rosholt-Galloway-New Hope
parish in the summer of 1959 Pastor Holtan described the administrative
difficulty of working with five congregations and hoped that a
consolidation might be realized in the near future. At the annual
meeting of the Concordia congregation in January 1960 a resolution was
adopted 40 to 13 "that we favor a plan of forming a one
congregation council with one common budget." A year later a new
resolution was introduced for outright merger of the
Alban-Rosholt-Galloway congregations and the vote was 41 in favor, 14
against.
CHRIST LUTHERAN CHURCH
The first mention of any Lutheran religious service
being held in the unincorporated village of Galloway appears in the
daily register of Alban congregation for 1906 when this notation was
made, presumably by Pastor Farseth: "Mandagskvaeld, 7 Mai
Praeken paa Galloway," in other words, services were held
Monday evening May 7th, probably in a private home or in the town hall.
This was chiefly a logging center at the time dominated by Moore &
Galloway Lumber Company, which had a big camp on the east side of modern
Highway 49 overlooking the Little Wolf River.
No further religious services in Galloway are recorded
until 1916 when, at the annual meeting of the Concordia church in
Rosholt, it was recommended that Pastor Hoel hold services in Galloway
"whenever he finds it opportune to do so." In fact Hoel was
chiefly instrumental in organizing a congregation here and the
organizational meeting was held in the Franzen town hall on January 5,
1919 when it was decided to draw up a constitution and bylaws and also
to build a church. This congregation was almost entirely made up of
Norwegians, and services the first years were mostly in the Norwegian
language until 1929 when it was decided to adopt a ratio of two English
services for one in Norwegian.
This congregation, organized under the name of Galloway
Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran church in 1919, in 1921 was being
referred to in the minutes as Christ Lutheran Church. Owing to the small
community, the congregation experienced many difficulties. Services were
held infrequently and usually on Sunday afternoons or evenings. On a
number of occasions we find that annual meetings were postponed for lack
of a quorum. While plans for a church building were discussed shortly
after the congregation was organized, it was not until 1928 that a
building was completed. The dedication service on June 10, 1928, we are
told, was "well attended due to the wonderful weather
conditions."
NORWEGIAN PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS
No history of the churches of Alban-Rosholt would be
complete without mention of Norwegian parochial schools, which were held
in the community during summer months, usually for two weeks or more.
The most noted of the Norwegian teachers was Thor Helgeson of Iola,
author of the two volume pioneer history, Fra Indianernes Lande,
who, almost from the day he reached Waupaca county in the mid-1860s,
served for more than 50 years as an itinerant school teacher to the
Norwegians and Danes of Waupaca and Portage counties. He taught several
summers at Saumer (Brekke) school.
The purpose of the parochial school was not only to
increase Kristendomskunskab (Christian knowledge) but to continue
the study and practice of the Norwegian language, the latter a losing
battle against the overwhelming forces of American education and
culture. No further attempt was made to perpetuate the Norwegian
parochial school in Rosholt after around 1915 although confirmation
classes were being carried on in Norwegian until a short time later. The
writer recalls around 1917 when half way through the study of Luther’s
Forklaring, or book of explanations, the question of having
everything translated from Norwegian into English by his mother became
such a burden she changed her mind about having her son confirmed in
Norwegian and permitted him to enter the English class at Sunday school
to study the same book of explanations. And what a relief for both
mother and son! It was a break with the past which could no longer be
denied and confirmed what had long been suspected, namely, that we were
no longer Norwegians first and Americans second but Americans first and
Norwegians only by ancestry. |
