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Rasmus
Meland, who was instrumental in organizing Nondfjordlaget and was its first president as well as its
vice-president, secretary, treasurer, and annual editor during the ensuing
years, was born December 1, 1869, on the homestead of John J. Meland, three miles north of the village of Frost in
Faribault County, Minnesota.
He attended English and
Norwegian parochial schools until he was seventeen years old, when he was
able to enter Luther College,
Decorah, Iowa,
as a student. There he studied for six years before teaching public and
advanced private school in Faribault County, Minnesota,
during the year of 1892-1893. In the fall of 1893 he became a student at
Luther Seminary, Robinsdale,
Minnesota, from which school he graduated
in June, 1896.
On the 25th of August of the
same year he married Dina B. Moe, and in October he received and accepted a
call from Waco, Texas.
He was ordained in the South Blue
Earth Church,
December 13, 1896, by
Rt. Rev. T. A. Torgeson, president of the South
Minnesota district of the Norwegian Synod, to which the Texas
congregation belonged; and he was installed in the Waco
church Christmas Day, 1896, by Rev. 0. T. Rikansrud.
In September, 1900, he received and accepted a missionary call from northern Minnesota.
While there he organized four congregations in a three-year period. He
transferred to Grantsburg, Wisconsin,
where he also organized several rural congregations besides one congregation
in Grantsburg. Upon recommendation of the district president he received and
accepted another call to Lodi, Wisconsin,
where he remained for nearly 13 years.
At the Norwegian
Lutheran Church
convention in Fargo, North Dakota,
in 1918, he and a few convention delegates organized a Lutheran Information
Bureau, which was to help the many Lutheran church people, who sold their
farms and prepared to locate on new farms. He was elected the secretary of
the bureau, and the following year he was requested to move to Minneapolis,
Minnesota, to devote his full time to
this job. The next year, however, a collapse in real estate business took
place, and very few farms were sold. Hence this placement work became
unnecessary.
Then he and a few Luther men
organized a Teacher’s Agency with the main purpose of placing Lutheran
teachers in Lutheran schools and in Lutheran communities. Thus he kept
successfully busy until the depression in the early thirties when it became
nearly impossible to place any teachers.
After moving to Minneapolis
he also assisted in organizing a Guidance Bureau and was its first and only
president, as it was disorganized in a few months. In addition, he was a
charter member of the Norwegian National League and was its corresponding
secretary for many years. While he was its president, he succeeded in getting
the League to begin the publishing of a Norwegian newspaper by the name of
“The Minneapolis Posten.”
Rev. Meland,
the founder of Nordfjordlaget, who was made
a Knight of the St. Olaf order in 1947 by King Haakon
VIII of Norway,
died April 3, 1961, in Minneapolis.
His survivors include three daughters and two sons.
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