Ludvig M. Bjørn

Ludvig Marinus Biorn, was born in Moss, Norway, September 7, 1835. His father was minister in the state c hurch of Norway, and some of his ancestors held high military and ecclesiastical postions 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 Manitowac county, Wisconsin. Here Rev. Biorn met all the hardships incident to pioner 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 h s congregations, establishing schools, forming missions and other societies in connection witht 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, Reverand 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 thorough bred 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. He was first married to Bolette Fleisher who died in September 1881. In 1884 he married Mathilda Johnson, of Wittenburg, Wis.

From History of Goodhue County Minnesota edited by Franklyn Curtiss-Wedge , Chcago: H. C. Cooper, Jr., & Co., 1909 (pp 405-406)