"History of Cottonwood and Watonwan Counties of Minnesota, 1916"



The Rev. Lars P. Thorkveen, of St. James, one of the best-known ministers of the United Lutheran communion in Minnesota, for years visitator for the Windom district of that church and present secretary-treasurer of the beneficent "Skolekasse," is a native of the kingdom of Norway, born in the parish of Lorn, February 20, 1857. He received an excellent education in the government schools of his native land and when twenty-three years of age, in 1880, came to the United States. Shortly after arriving in this country, Mr. Thorkveen entered the Lutheran College at Decorah, Iowa, where he further fitted himself for his theological studies and then came to Minnesota and completed his theological course in the German Lutheran Seminary at Afton. On January 19, 1888, he was ordained to the ministry of his church at St. James and has ever since made his home in that city, though his various pastoral and missionary labors as superintendent of religious schools, secretary of the board of regents of the United Norwegian Lutheran Church of America, etc., have taken him to widely separated points in Minnesota and other states during that period.

During his long ministerial service the Rev. Lars P. Thorkveen has served as pastor at Albion, Long Lake. Olaf, Rosendale and Butterfield congregations. The church at the latter place he organized in 1896 and the twentieth anniversary of the founding of that church was made much of by the congregation of the same in 1916. As a missionary Mr. Thorkveen is known Among the various congregations of the churches thus under his visitational care he is exceedingly popular and his services in the performance of the marriage ceremony and in the preaching of funeral sermons are in wide demand, making him one of the very busy men of St. James. For years Mr. Thorkveen has taken an active interest in the affairs of that beneficent-organization for the care of neglected children in the mission field of his church throughout the United States and Canada, the "Skolekasse" and for some time has been performing admirable service in that behalf as the secretary-treasurer of the organization.

Mr. Thorkveen is a student deeply versed not only in theology, but in the daily affairs of men, and his counsel and admonition in the long years of his service hereabout have been of inestimable value in this community. Spiritual ministry cannot be paid for at its true value. Fitted in many respects to occupy more conspicuous positions, he has been willing to minister to the spiritual wants of his fellow-men in the humble walks and has been content to spend his life in what might be called the humbler places�his missionary work ever having been to him a labor of love; contented to speak the gospel to the few, even though to be prepared for this he had spent long years of careful preparation. Public spirited and enterprising, energetic and progressive, his voice ever has been heard in behalf of all proper measures designed to advance the common interest in this section of the state and it is not too much to say that he is accounted one of the real factors in the wonderful progress and development of this region within the past quarter of a century and more.





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