Freeborn County, Minnesota - Chapter 14: County Schools, 1911 (part 2 of 2)

The Luther Academy Chorus, which all students are invited to join, works principally at part songs selected by the director. This choir also takes part in the annual concerts of the Albert Lea choral union.

The Glee Club and the Warblers are smaller singing organi¬ zations, whose members are selected by the directors from among those students who have the best voices and who can read music most readily. The Glee club is a chorus of boys; the Warblers of girls. These singing organizations and the band furnish music for meetings of the literary societies and for other entertainments at the school, and afford much pleasure and benefit to the mem¬ bers as well as to others. It should be said in connection with the founders of the school, that as early as the seventies, Rev. E. Wulfsburg and others agitated the matter of a Lutheran Acad¬ emy, and proposed that Ballard's Point be selected as a site. But this dream was not realized, and it was the Rev. Smeby who matured the plans and brought them to a successful conclusion, thus being regarded as the real father and founder of the school.

Rev. J. E. Thoen, principal of the Luther Academy, at Albert Lea, was born in Winnishiek county, Iowa, May 10, 1864, a son of Elling N. and Anna Sophia (Brekke) Thoen, natives of Norway. He attended the country schools, St. Ansgar's Seminary, at St. Ansgar, Iowa; St. Olaf's College, at Northfield, Minn., and the Luther College, at Decorah, Iowa, graduating from the latter col¬ lege in 1892, with the degree of B.A., having in the meantime taught school four years. Later he attended the Luther Sem¬ inary, then at Robinsdale, Minn., now at Hamline, Minn., and was ordained after his graduation from that seminary in 1895.

He then went to Hemmingford, Kan., where he had for a parish a territory some 300 by 250 miles in extent, embracing twenty-one different preaching stations. In 1898 he received a call to preach at Wells, Minn., and in 1903 came to Albert Lea and assumed his present duties. He was married in 1895 to Caia Christina Wulfsberg, whose father was one of the first pastors of the Central Ereeborn congregation in this county, and founder of the Luther Publishing House, of Decorali, Iowa. Prof, and Mrs. Thoen have seven children: Einar Wulfsberg, Anna Dedriake, Erling, Ingolf Norman, Rudolph Sigfrid, Henrietta Constance and Esther Katherine.