pioneer lay preacher, founder of the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, b. Voss, Norway. A follower of Hans Nielsen Hauge, leader of a pietistic state church reform movement, young Eielsen early became a lay preacher in the Scandinavian countries. Although deeply religious, he developed a strong feeling against the aristocratic state church ministers in Norway. In 1839 he migrated to the U.S. where he became an anti-clerical force among the Norwegian settlements in the lower Lake Michigan area. In 1843 he was ordained by a German Lutheran clergyman, and three years later, at Jefferson Prairie, Rock County, he launched the Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. He was resident pastor at Jefferson Prairie (1846-1872), and also continued as pastor-at-large in Norwegian communities in Wisconsin, Minnesota, South Dakota, and Texas, and among the Potawatomi Indians in Missouri. No more controversial figure existed in early Norwegian-American church history, none was more influential among those pioneers. After 1873 he lived in Chicago. Dict. Amer. Biog.; T. C. Blegen, Norwegian Migration to Amer. . . . Transition (Northfield, Minn., 1940); O. M. Norlie, Eielsen Was First (Northfield, Minn., 1942); WPA MS.

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[Source: Dictionary of Wisconsin biography]