Heart Prairie Lutheran celebrates 175th anniversary
Heart Prairie Lutheran Church on Whitewater Lake is commemorating its 175th anniversary this year, and a celebration will be held Sunday, June 30.
Eventgoers are invited to wear a Norwegian bunad.
Festivities will begin at 6:30 p.m. with a display of Scandinavian crafts and Heart Prairie memorabilia. Attendees also may sample some Norwegian finger foods.
At 7:30, listen to an oral history of Heart Prairie from the Revs. Jerry Wendt and Larry Froemming. The latter wrote a book about the church for a seminary project in 1974.
Norwegian music will be performed. And siblings Dave Cleven and Cathy Zange will share family memories, including excerpts from an 1861 letter that surfaced in 2009 (in Norway).
In the letter, Jorgen Nielsen, a schoolteacher at Heart Prairie, writes, “Sorg og lykke bor side ved side.” That translates to “Sorrow and happiness live side by side.”
He writes about their happiness of eldest son Niels’ wedding to Ingeborg Aslaksdatter at the Heart Prairie church on Friday, Nov. 1, 1861, and their sorrow of youngest son, Halvor, leaving Whitewater on Saturday, Nov. 2, 1861, to join the 13th Wisconsin Infantry Regiment in Janesville during the Civil War.
Jorgen, Niels and Ingeborg are buried in the cemetery surrounding the church, but Halvor Nielsen is not.
At 8:30, the lanterns will be lit and the evening will conclude with an oil lamp service inside the church. In 1846, two years after approximately 16 families organized their congregation and before the present building was constructed, bilious fever struck and 22 people (mostly children) died between September and December. Most of these graves are located on a farm near the crossing of Engel and Clover Valley roads near the flowing well.
It is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1948, the congregation merged with the First English Lutheran Church congregation in Whitewater.
Heart Prairie Lutheran Church was built around 1857.
The church is still used for services during the summer and on Christmas Eve, without any electricity or indoor plumbing.
