By WENDELL NELSON
Special to The Gazette
Bombarded as we are constantly by news of billion-dollar corporations getting bigger, we yearn for some evidence that small groups of people still matter. Such evidence exists in Amherst, in St. Olaf's Episcopal Chapel. For 132 years, a small congregation has kept the parish going, and after surviving hard times, it now thrives and looks bravely to the future.
The parish was founded in 1868, according to the sign in front of the chapel. The statewide Episcopal Church's Wisconsin Church Archives says, "Rev. Mark F. Sorenson, Rector of St. Mark's Parish, Waupaca... established (a) mission station in Amherst in 1868 in order to minister to Scandinavians in the vicinity. Services were probably held in private homes. Reported in 1878 as Unorganized Mission served by Rev. William C. Armstrong, General Missionary. Work revived by Rev. Hugh L. Burleson. Mission organized in 1895 and admitted into (Fond du Lac) Diocese. Members were largely Swedish and Norwegian Lutherans who had come into the Anglican Communion."
No other documentation of the 1868 founding has come to light yet. Amherst did not yet have its own newspaper, and the only Portage County newspapers being published at the time - The Wisconsin Pinery and The Plover Times - do not mention St. Olaf's. Ironically, they do mention a previously unknown church. The August 29, 1868, Plover Times carried an article entitled "Improvements of Amherst": "The village of Amherst is, (while many other places in the county are in statue quo [sic], or are actually failing) steadily improving. During the present year in addition to several dwellings there have been erected a large and commodious School House of two stories. Lemuel Harvey has built a large two story building for a store. - J.H. Morgan has enlarged his store house by an addition equally as large as the original building. Funds for the erection of a Presbyterian church have been obtained, $500 of which has been subscribed by the citizens. Amherst contains three Dry Goods, Hardware and Grocery Stores, one Drug Store, well supplied with drugs, one stove and tin shop, a good flouring mill now the exclusive property of A.H. Bancraft, two good hotels, two blacksmith shops and one wagon shop. Also one church, belonging we believe to the Methodist persuasion..."
So the article makes no mention of an Episcopal congregation's existing or being founded. This does not necessarily mean that the congregation did not exist, but it obviously does not prove it did exist, either. The Plover Times' Amherst informant would surely have been aware if the congregation had existed, and no doubt was when it was founded. So the group may not have been started by the time the article was printed, in late August of 1868, and may have been founded later in the year. But no other news of Amherst churches appears in the Times for the rest of that year, so we have no way of knowing that for sure.
A bigger mystery is that Presbyterian church. Was there a Presbyterian society in Amherst in 1868, and one large and prosperous enough to build a church? If so, where did the church stand, how long did it serve its congregation, and when and why did it close? (This is the first time this writer has ever heard of a Presbyterian church in Amherst.) If not, why did the Times mention it? Was there no group ready to build a church - did the editor (A.O. Brown) or his informant make an error, or did he or she pass along an unsubstantiated rumor - or was it some other group? Was it in fact an Episcopalian society that was established and ready to build a house of worship - is this the clue we were looking for? If so, was the church ever built, and where did it stand and what became of it?
In any case, the article appeared, not once but twice, in the Plover Times, originally on Aug. 29, 1868, and five weeks later, repeated verbatim on Oct. 3, probably because the editor needed a filler in a slow-news week. And the article was reprinted in The Wisconsin Pinery, Stevens Point's first newspaper, on Sept. 5, 1868. It is useful in telling us what else existed - what and whose businesses - in Amherst Village at the time, but it doesn't help us in our search for the Episcopalians.
The major mystery about the Episcopal congregation, other than when it was founded, is why it was made up primarily of Scandinavians, who came from overwhelmingly Lutheran nations. That mystery is exemplified in the congregation's and chapel's name. According to Donald Attwater's "The Penguin Dictionary of Saints" (Penguin Books, 1965), Olaf (995-1030 A.D.) was a king of Norway. "He was the son of a Norwegian jarl (chieftain or earl), Harald Grenske; and at a precociously early age was allowed to join a band of vikings. In the course of his rovings he fought for Richard of Normandy, and for Ethelred II in England against the Danes. In 1016 he made himself ruler of Norway. Olaf had recently been baptized, and he brought Christian clergy,
perhaps some from England, into the country...he used force and bribery to destroy heathenism and impose the new religion on his people. His rule caused widespread discontent and it was not long before he was driven out by the Anglo-Danish King Cnut. Olaf tried to regain his kingdom, but was killed in battle at Stiklestad on the Trondheim fjord….
"In circumstances somewhat resembling those of (St. Eric) of Sweden and others, Olaf Haraldsson became the national hero-saint of Norway: he had been zealous for Christianity (however crudely), he had died what was called a martyr's death, and his name was made to stand for Norwegian independence. His body was soon enshrined in what became the cathedral of Nidaros (Trondheim) and was a place of pilgrimage. In England churches were dedicated in his honour (St. Olave's) in London, York, Exeter, and elsewhere."
In addition to those English connections, an explanation for why the Amherst church was founded by Scandinavians is given by Miss M.J. (Minnie) Gasmann (1870-1964), a long-time teacher around Wisconsin, and a lifelong member of St. Olaf's Chapel. In 1949 and 1950, she was one of several older Amherst residents who wrote "A History of Amherst" in occasional columns in a weekly newspaper, The Amherst Advocate. In two columns on Feb. 2 and 9, 1950, she wrote a brief history of St. Olaf's. In the Feb. 2 column, she says Reverend Sorenson's - the founding priest's - wife was "Caroline Gasmann, daughter of Captain and Mrs. J.G. Gasmann who lived near Nashotah," in Waukesha County. The Gasmanns "had migrated from Norway in 1843 and settled near Nashotah. There being no Lutheran church there, they entered the Episcopal church. They moved to (farmland west of) Amherst in the early 1850s."
That explains why the congregation was founded by Scandinavians. Why the parish continued to be mostly Scandinavian is another mystery, but one answer may be simply that a tradition had been started, and that Scandinavians attracted more Scandinavians (mostly Norwegians), more and more of whom were settling in eastern Portage County. Also, in a village as small as Amherst - population in 1899: 556, according to Malcolm Rosholt's "Our County Our Story" - no single ethnic or national group was very numerous, so the congregation probably would never have survived if it had had to rely exclusively on Yankees or Englishmen, the Anglican/Episcopal Church's traditional membership, for parishioners.
In any case, so Scandinavian was the original congregation that its first services were "probably conducted in Danish by Fr. Sorenson, 1868-70, and since then in English," the Wisconsin Church Archives says. (Sorenson was apparently a native Dane who had received his divinity education at Nashotah House, the Anglican/Episcopalian seminary at Nashotah, the parish history says. The History of the Diocese of Fond du Lac audits Several Congregations, A.D. 1875-1925, published in 1925, says "The Rev. M.E. Sorenson was sent immediately (in 1856) as the first missionary (to the new St. Mark's Episcopal congregation in Waupaca. Was missionary from 1856 till 1870.")
Over the decades, Norwegians continued to predominate in the congregation. Some of Amherst Village's best-known and wealthiest families were members. Among them were the A.M. and J.J. Nelson families. According to their obituaries in the Dec. 30, 1927, and Jan. 2, 1931, Stevens Point Daily Journal, Andrew Magnus (1843-1925) and James Nelson (1846-1931), brothers who became wealthy by owning and running general stores, were born near Porsgrund, Norway, the same place the Gasmanns had come from. P.N. (Peter Nicholas) Peterson (1850-1926), another St. Olaf's member, was born in Norway, the son of another sea captain. After working on boats on the Great Lakes, he worked in A.M. Nelson's store before embarking on a farm-implement and potato-brokering business of his own, his obituary in the May 13, 1926, Advocate says.
However, some English and Yankee families were also members. According to "A Brief History of St. Olaf's Episcopal Church," written by parishioners, Isaac Simcox (1836-1911) was chosen senior warden of the congregation in 1895. His obituaries in the Nov. 23 and 30, 1911, Advocate say he was born in England, fought in the Union Army in the Civil War, and came to Amherst in 1868. He ran a hardware store here until 1892, when he retired to Waupaca. The treasurer was Imri Turner (1823-1913), who had come from England to Wisconsin in 1849, and settled in Amherst in 1885, his obituary in the Oct. 2, 1913, Advocate says.
Another Turner family was a pillar of the parish for most of its first 100 years, but they were Yankees: people of English descent but born in America. According to his obituary in the Oct. 27, 1910, Advocate, and to his entry in the Commemorative Biographical Record of the Upper Wisconsin Counties, a subscription history published in Chicago in 1895, Edwin Turner (1830-1910) was born in New York State to English parents descended from Revolutionary War soldiers, came out of the Civil War a captain of cavalry, and retired in 1894 from farming east of Amherst to a house he had built in the village, the house the writer owns and lives in now. Turner's unmarried daughter, Cora (1865-1953), devoted much other life to both St. Olaf's and the Episcopal Church statewide, according to many Advocate articles.
But the most Yankee, and perhaps the most Episcopal, of them all was George Washington Cate (1823-1905), usually called "Judge Cate." He was born in Montpelier, Vt., also descended from Revolutionary War and War of 1812 soldiers, and came west in 1845. But central Wisconsin was too uninhabited and wild for him to be able to make a living as a lawyer, so he worked as a lumberjack for three years before setting up his practice. He later was a circuit judge for 20 years, and served one term in Congress. He lived most of his later life in Stevens Point, but homesteaded a farm a mile northwest of Amherst (the present Maynard Ostrowski farm on School Road), and built one of the finest early houses in the county (but it was burned down in 1965).
There is more to the life of the parish than synopses of the lives of several members, of course. There were the 36-plus priests and lay readers, their services to the parish, and their influences on it, for example. Then there were the parishioners themselves, the adults and children, with their different personalities and contributions to the church. And there were the church rituals for the major passages of life: baptisms, weddings and funerals. Finally, there were all the church activities for simple fellowship and for raising money to maintain a parish and built a chapel: the meetings, the bake sales, the church suppers, the ice-cream socials, the bake sales, and the formal services. These were the heartbeat of the parish, and could be found in many random issues of the old newspapers.
According to the parish's own history, "A Brief History of St. Olaf's Episcopal Church," a maximum of 85 people in 25 families called themselves members in 1896. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, the membership low was reached, with only two people regularly attending Mass (one was Welton Johnson (1893-1978), a great-grandson of Captain Gasmann, and the other was Mabel Allen). But those two kept attending, and the Waupaca priests kept driving over to hold Mass and to otherwise serve the tiny parish. In 1933, the congregation debated discontinuing services, the parish history says; "No action was taken, however." And in 1935, members met to discuss selling off two or three of the lots adjoining the chapel, but "the congregation voted against the sale," though it could probably have used the money in those Depression times.
But it was just this fidelity, this determination, this refusal to give up, that have enabled the members of St. Olaf's Episcopal Church to keep their parish going these 132 years. Now the congregation is larger and more energetic than it has been in years, so we may expect to see it buck the tide of corporate size, and even thrive, in this, its third century.