Ludvig Marinius Biørn

D. Vangsness located and suggested this bio be posted for Rev. Biorn:

BOOK - HISTORY OF GOODHUE COUNTY, MN. PUBLISHED IN 1909.

Ludvig Marinus Biorn, now deceased, was born in Moss, Norway, September 7, 1835. His father was a minister in the state church of Norway, and some of his ancestors held high military and ecclesiastical positions in Slesvig. Biorn became a student at the University of Norway in 1855, graduating as a theological candidate in 1861.

The following year he emigrated to America, being called as pastor by the congregation of the Norwegian Synod in Manitowoc county, Wisconsin. Here Rev. Biorn met all the hardships incident to pioneer life. The war, too, added to the difficulty. Company F, of the Fifteenth Wisconsin Regiment, was mostly taken from his congregation.

In 1879 he removed to Goodhue county, to the congregations of Land and Minneola. The year before the crops of the Northwest were a failure, and Goodhue, with the rest of the counties of this section, were suffering from that failure. With his parishioners, he set to work with a will, enlarging his congregations, establishing schools, forming missions and other societies in connection with the church. He taught the young and the old, visited the sick, assisted the poor and buried the dead.

Reverend Biorn was one of the leaders of the Anti-Missourians in the great predestination controversy, and when, after the division of the synod, the United Church was organized out of three Norwegian Lutheran denominations, Reverend Biorn became the vice-president of the new body. The North, in 1893, said: "Reverend Biorn has a frank, honest, prepossessing face. He is a thoroughbred gentleman, a popular preacher, an able writer, and, last but not least, there is a vein of true poetry in his psychical makeup, which has found expression in a number of poems, two or three of which are gems of their kind."

Reverend Biorn died June 14, 1908, and a grave in Land's church cemetery marks the resting place of his body, but his life still lives, and will continue to live as long as those who knew him live. The result of his labor will live much longer.

He was first married to Bollette Fleisher, who died in September, 1881. In 1884 he married Mathilda Johnson, of Wittenburg, Wis. Eleven children survive: Ragnar Biorn, of Minot, No. Dak.; Mrs. Anna Foxen, residing in Norway; Herman, a practicing attorney at St. Paul; Nels, a physician of Ada, Minn.; Mrs. Mellby, wife of Professor Mellby, of Northfield; Sigurd, Aimar, Valborg, Harold, Nina, and Inga, of Zumbrota.

Burial: Lands Lutheran Church Cemetery Zumbrota Goodhue County Minnesota, USA

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