Portions of this collection have been digitized and are available online through our digital collections.
To learn more about this collection please see the finding aid link found above, and/or visit the College and Lutheran Church Archives to use these primary sources.
Augustana Lutheran Church. Lutheran Minnesota Conference. Annual Convention Minutes, Reports, and Related Papers of the Lutheran Minnesota Conference, 1858-1962. LCA Collection 195. 2 Records Center Cartons and 1 Hollinger box.
ABSTRACT:
The Lutheran Minnesota Conference Minutes and Reports collection contains the published minutes, reports, programs, and other supplements from the Conference’s annual conventions. Included in the minute books and reports are directories, convention agendas, financial reports, statistics, and reports from various committees, congregations, and affiliated church bodies. Also included are handwritten copies of the minutes from 1858-79. Minutes were published in Swedish until 1929, when they began publishing them in English. From 1920-28, both a Swedish and an English edition were published.
The Lutheran Minnesota Conference was officially organized on 8 October 1858 in Chisago Lake Church in Center City, Minnesota, as the Minnesota Conference of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Northern Illinois. “Membership was defined as follows: ‘All members of the Evangelical Lutheran Synod of Northern Illinois, living in Minnesota and near-by states, who are members in good standing in the said synod, shall have the right of membership in this conference and shall be considered as members of the same after having been present at a regular conference meeting and having made application therefor.’”1
The Minnesota Conference was under the Synod of Northern Illinois for a short time. Afterwards it was part of:
The Red River Valley Conference was created in 1912, and the Canada Conference in 1913, both from areas that were originally part of the Minnesota Conference.
In 1962, The Lutheran Minnesota Conference of the Augustana Lutheran Church and The English Evangelical Lutheran Synod of the Northwest combined to create the Minnesota Synod, which was part of the Lutheran Church in America.
1 A Church is Planted: The Story of the Lutheran Minnesota Conference, 1851-1876 by Emeroy Johnson (pg. 7).
