Scandinavian Baptist Church

A small rural church in the Town of Onalaska on Hwy. M north of Larson Coulee Hill was home to the Scandinavian Baptist Church congregation, a mission church associated with the Scandinavian Baptist congregations in the city of La Crosse. Former residents of the area also recalled it being called Jostad Coulee Baptist Church. The congregation was likely formed about 1869 and disbanded in 1914 or 1915. A deed record documents a sale between Tornette Larson for one acre of land to the Scandinavian Baptist Church for $50 use as a church cemetery on July 21, 1869.

The Scandinavian Congregations eventually merged together and formed Calvary Baptist. In 1921 the church property in the Town of Onalaska was transferred to the Calvary Baptist Church of La Crosse. This congregation eventually joined the First Baptist Church of La Crosse.

Louis Larson, in a chapter titled "Pioneering in Wisconsin and Minnesota" in the La Crosse County Historical Sketches (series 6) published in 1942 described his experience with the Scandinavian Baptist Church:

"The Lutheran church to which we belonged was the one in Halfway Creek, near the Nutting travern, about three and one-half miles from home. Scarcely a Sunday came but there was company for dinner after church, either from La Crosse or Onalaska farm friends. In later years we sold three acres on the corner of the farm fronting the main road through the Coulee, and a Baptist church was erected there. Here services were held for many years, including Sunday School. Many persons joined the church while others attended."

Dr. J. E. Engstad, in a chapter titled "Reminiscences of My Childhood" in the La Crosse County Historical Sketches (series 2) published in 1935 described his association with the little church:

"By now this little Baptist Church...set in a solid conservative Lutheran settlement, must have been forgotten by the earliest settler. It has been remodeled into a cottage....Syver Olson and my Father were called Dissenters, individuals who had strayed from the State Church. In the little white Smith school house that was used for services by the early Lutheran ministers, a sentence was dropped during the anti-slavery debates, that Slavery was not in itself a sin. It was this single sentence that cleaved the Lutheran Church in America in twain until our own day....

[Syver Olson and his elder son S. E. Olson] joined the Baptist Church...being anxious to spread the teaching of the Gospel as they conceived it, sent a Baptist student to the Coulees, with the result that a church was built in the upper end of Jolstad's [sic] Coulee. We did not join the new organization, but Father sent me to the Sunday School which was conducted there."

Professor Hans Eirik Aarek of Stavanger University College in Norway has done some research into a group of northern Norwegians who left their homeland of Tromsø as Quakers. Based on the names Dr. Aarek provided, it seems reasonable that a number of these families eventually joined the Scandinavian Baptist congregations when they settled in La Crosse.

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