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Rev. A. M. Andersen
founder of Trinity Seminary, Dana College's
mother institution
from the Dana Review, Fall 1983 Volume 40, Number 1 Dana College Blair, Nebraska
 Pastor A. M. Andersen, founder of Trinity Seminary, Dana College's mother
institution, lived long enough to see the school he established in 1884 reach
its 57th year.
Born in Denmark in 1847, Andersen died in California in 1941 when he was 94.
One of seven children of a pious farm couple, as a young man Andersen learned
the weaver's trade. After fulfilling his required military service, he
decided to become a pastor, a decision his father opposed so strongly that he
disinherited his son.
Andersen entered a folk high school in Denmark and took lessons from his home
pastor, who, Andersen wrote in his later years, "advised me to go to America to
be educated among my countrymen there."
He arrived in Wisconsin in the spring of 1872, worked on a farm over the summer,
and that fall went to Minneapolis to attend Augsburg Theological Seminary, which
at that time was supported by Norwegian and Danish Lutheran congregations in
this country.
In 1874 Andersen spent the summer in Two Rivers, Minnesota, teaching school and
"preaching Danish to the settlers on Sunday," he wrote.
How did he
come to Nebraska? He recalled that "At about the close of that vacation
came an urgent wish from Rev. H. Hansen, who had been sent to Nebraska
in the spring to survey the mission field among Danes in that state, for
help. Officers of the church wrote and asked me to come back to the
Seminary to pass examinations for the ministry in view of being ordained
and sent to Nebraska as assistant to Rev. Hansen. It was in
October, 1874. After visiting families in Omaha and several Danish
settlements in eastern Nebraska, we went to Dannebrog, Nebr., where a
congregation had been organized. A meeting was called, I preached, and in
a business meeting after the service I was called to be its first local pastor.
I accepted.
"From Dannebrog we went to Grand Island, where we had a meeting in a private
house in the evening. Next day we went to a settlement in Hamilton County.
"
It was on
this trip that the farm wagon Hansen and Andersen had hired became stuck
in the Platte River. Their driver unhitched the two horses and rode
one to a nearby farm for help while the two pastors, stranded in the river,
"sat in the wagon, shivering in the strong November northwest gale" until
help came - the farmer with a span of oxen and an iron cable. The
farmer's wife "had a good meal ready for us," Andersen wrote, "and we soon
forgot our adversities."
In Hamilton County they "had a fine meeting in a sod school house," because
there were no churches. Again, he was called to serve "one Sunday a
month," and he accepted.
Eventually,
he had three more mission points - three in Howard County, six, eight,
and 15 miles from Dannebrog, one in Seward County 100 miles away, and another
in Nuckolls County 120 miles from Dannebrog.
Andersen traveled with a horse and buggy. When his mare died, he borrowed
a mule from a friend. Because he couldn't serve all of those places on
Sundays, "those farthest off had to be satisfied with weekday services, and that
they were."
In 1875 Andersen married - "No
use to say that our means were small," he recalled.
He and his wife eventually had seven children. After
about one and one-half years in the Nebraska mission
field, he was called by a congregation in Racine,
Wisconsin. He stayed there for three and one-half
years, and then accepted a call back to Nebraska, this
time to the eastern part of the state -- to Washington and
Burt Counties.
"My work there," he wrote, "led to
the beginning of a mission in Blair. And in 1883 we
had a house built and moved there. "
Andersen served several other congregations as well -
including those at Argo, Fremont, and Kennard. In
1884 he journeyed to Denmark on church matters. Then
in September that year, at the church in Argo, the Danish
Evangelical Lutheran Church Association in America was
organized, and "that led to the beginning of our school,
Trinity Seminary," he wrote.
"I was elected
to start it, and it was begun in our house with a few students. In
the course of two years funds were collected and a building erected on
the hill west of Blair, that city contributing $3,000 towards it.
The cost of it was $7,000. It was dedicated October 21, 1886."
In 1884 and
1885 students not only attended classes in Andersen's home, but also lived
and ate there. After the central section of what we now call "Old
Main" was completed, the Andersens lived in a first-floor apartment in the new
building, and the students - all male - lived in dormitory
rooms on the third and fourth floors. Mrs. Andersen
continued to cook for the students for several years until
they formed a boarding club and hired their own kitchen
manager.
In addition to his teaching and administrative duties,
Andersen continued to serve four congregations. He
was also a member of Blair's first Board of Education.
In 1889 he
accepted a call to Hampton, Nebraska, to a congregation he had served earlier.
After five years there he returned to Trinity Seminary to teach theology.
In 1896 he went to South Dakota to serve congregations at Viborg, Spring
Valley, and Gayville. He and his family returned to Blair once more
in 1902 when he was named editor of the church publication, Danskeren.
From that year to 1909 he was a board member of the school
he founded.
The Andersens
remained in Blair until 1922, when they moved to
Beresford, South Dakota. He served a congregation
there, and then in 1935 moved to Glendale, California.
What kind of a man was A. M. Andersen? About his
father who had disinherited him, he later said that he
thought his father had been sincere in doing what he
thought he should, "so I loved him all the same, and I
don't doubt but that he also loved me."
Dr. William Christensen in his history of Dana, Saga of
the Tower (1959), writes that Andersen's daughter-in-law,
Mrs. R. C. Andersen, "recalls that when he arose he always
straightened himself up to his full height, pushing his
shoulders back." He was "very temperate in all
things, once refusing a second helping of one of his
favorite dishes with the words, 'Surely I could easily eat
another plate full, but I believe I have had adequate food
for this meal.' "
Andersen was a deeply religious person, Christensen
writes, who "read widely in different subjects and had a
keen interest in politics."
In his later
years his pioneering work among Danish-Americans was recognized by the
king of Denmark with the Golden Cross of the Royal Order of the Knights
of Dannebrog. And in 1938 Trinity Seminary, the school he had founded 54
years earlier, presented him with an honorary doctorate.
1899 Merger Brought Changes
In 1899 college
classes and coeds entered the scene at Trinity Seminary.
Because there
were few public high schools, academy classes were introduced when Trinity
Seminary moved into Old Main in 1886. A pre-seminary course offered
non-theological subjects from the beginning, and special summer classes for
women started in 1891.
But it was
in 1899-1900, when a co-educational Danish folk high school/college in
Elk Hom, Iowa, merged with Trinity Seminary, that a four-year college course
became part of the curriculum.
Under the
leadership of its president, Pastor Kristian Anker, Elk Horn College enlarged
its normal (teacher training) course and business department in 1890. Four
years later it added a collegiate (liberal arts) department "to satisfy
the urgent needs among our countrymen for a more practical and liberal
education. "
These three departments were transferred to Blair, and
Anker came with them as president of the merged
institutions.
A three-story dormitory to house women was built close to
the northwest corner of Old Main. The third and
fourth floors of Old Main continued to be the men's
dormitory.
Finding a name for the school took several years.
The 1900-01 catalog calls it "Blair College and Trinity
Theological Seminary," the 1902-03 catalog, "Trinity
College and Theological Seminary," and, finally, the
1903-04 catalog, "Dana College and Trinity Seminary."
There were
eight departments of study: the seminary, a four-year seminary preparatory
school, the academy, a Danish "Hojskolen" (high school), music, normal,
and commercial departments, and the college. In 1900-01 the entire
student body numbered only 96.
Because the school's faculty was small, professors found
themselves teaching in several departments - an English
teacher, for example, might teach English and American
literature and composition in the college department,
business correspondence in the commercial department, and
methods of teaching English in the normal department.
What were the early college courses like? According
to the 1900-01 catalog (the "Second Annual Catalog" of the
school and the first one in the Dana library archives),
two courses of study were offered to the liberal arts
student: a "Classical Course" and a "Science
Course." There were no electives and no majors as we know
them today.
The influence of the European system of higher education
at the time, with its emphasis on the classics and
languages, was evident in both courses. Freshmen in
the classical course, for example, took Latin and Greek
literature and history, Danish literary history and
composition, German, American literature and composition,
mathematics, zoology, church history, and elocution
(public speaking). Subheadings under these catalog
listings name the works to be read in each course.
Among other required classes were mental science,
political economy, ethics, astronomy, geometry,
trigonometry, geology, and sociology.
The science course differed only in that Greek was not
required, and there was a heavy concentration on
mathematics and the various sciences.
Nevertheless,
students today looking through this early catalog would be able to identify
with much of the course work, because they're still reading Shakespeare,
Milton, Browning, Emerson, and Hawthome, taking Danish and German, learning
about Greek and Roman history and reading The Iliad and The Aeneid (but in
English translation) in humanities, and studying zoology
and English history.
If yesterday's
students could sit in on classes today, however, they'd find that the content
of courses with familiar titles had changed - consider, for example, what
has happened in the sciences and sociology since the turn of the century.
And certainly some courses, such as broadcast journalism and computer science,
would astonish them. |
