Minnesota Seventh-day Adventist Trivia

Q: Where were the first Seventh-day Adventist churches established in Minnesota?

A: Some time around 1861, five churches were established at Deerfield, Pleasant Grove, Ashland, Cleveland, and Oronoco – all of these being in the Owatonna-Rochester area

Q: After 1869, what year was there no state-wide camp-meeting and why?

A: 1945.  Due to World War II, the U. S. federal government prohibited conventions and meetings which would attract more than fifty people from other towns.  The SDA General Conference was also postponed for a year due to the same reason.

Q. What lady was the daughter-in-law of a former Minnesota SDA Conference President and also the wife of a former Minnesota SDA Conference President?

A. Jessie Seaward-Flaiz-Wells married Walter Collins Flaiz on August 2, 1911 - Walter being the son of former Minnesota SDA Conference President, Charles W. Flaiz, president 1897 - 1902. Walter's sister, Etta, married F. A. Detamore of Minnesota and was the mother of Fordyce Detamore who worked with the Voice of Prophecy for many years. Walter died in 1940 and about five years later, Jessie married George Washington Wells who had been Minnesota SDA Conference President 1912 - 1918.

Q. Who became an Adventist because she went to a tent meeting which had previously been shown to her in a dream while a child?

A. As a young girl about 11 years old from a staunch Lutheran family living around Redwing, MN, Jennie Holton read her Bible and decided on her own that the seventh-day was the Sabbath. She then had a dream of a tent meeting with a bright light and inside ministers were speaking. Years later, in 1894, her ten year old son John told her of some tent meetings and asked her to go. She resisted going at first but when she finally went to the meetings she recognized the speakers from her dream 30 years before - the speakers were Elder Charles W. Flaiz (later MN SDA Conference President) and Otto Bernstein (later became the first Principal of MWA).

Q. What current church built in 1944 during the height of World War II has a tooth in it's foundation and was constructed from materials that the members (including children) had gleaned from tearing apart a church building in another town?

A. The Maple Plain church was constructed in 1944 at the height of World War II. The scarcity of materials led the industrious members to buy a Lutheran church from between Delano and Montrose, disassemble that church, and then construct the present-day church from those materials. Children were an integral part of that process ... Myrna Andersen-Parker recalls pulling nails from the boards, Bob Blake helped move the boards and was knocked unconscious when hit by one, and Myvon Parry-Polensky remembers a workman had her drop her loose tooth in the foundation when it was poured!

Q. What two Minnesota SDA families have gone to SDA schools together for four generations, starting in Denmark?

A. Arlene Larson-Frishman of Bemidji relates that her father, David Larson, Sr., went to church school in Denmark with Christian Andersen who relocated to the Hutchinson area. Three of Christian’s children – Harriet, Kenneth, and Alvin – attended MWA with two of David's children, Arlene and David, Jr. Later Arlene’s children attended MWA with Harriet Andersen-Anderson’s children and, more recently, their grandchildren attended MWA together. So four generations of Larsons and Andersens have gone to SDA schools together with the first generations starting in Denmark! Presently Arlene’s granddaughter, Laura Cummings, and Harriet’s daughter, Kim Anderson-Wooster, both work at MWA!

Q. What Minnesota Conference President was elected General Conference President at the 1888 General Conference held in Minneapolis, Minnesota?

A. Ole Andres Olson from Artichoke, MN, was President of the MN Conference from 1883 to 1885 and then moved his ministry to the Scandinavian countries. In 1888, at the General Conference held at Minneapolis, MN, Elder Olson was elected to serve as the General Conference President, a post which he held for nine years. While he especially labored for the Scandinavian people in this country and in the Scandinavian countries, in later life he also ministered in other countries around the world.

Q. What Minnesotan born Adventist minister and missionary became a General Conference President and has an Adventist college named in his honor?

A. William Ambrose Spicer was born and raised in Minnesota in a Seventh-day Baptist home. In his teens his family learned of the Seventh-day Adventist message in tent meetings and William joined the church. At 16 he went to Battle Creek to prepare for his life's work. He ministered in the United States, England, India, Africa and at the General Conference level, being GC President 1922-1930. Spicer Memorial College in India is named in his honor. His son William married Verna Hill, sister of Milo Hill, MWA music teacher.