Ole Amble

by Annette Lind

In the April issue of the Sisterhood News our editor Lauren Nielsen requested submissions from our membership. She suggested articles or stories on Denmark and the Danes or an article about a famous or historically significant Dane/Danish American in your lodge or family. I hope many of you are giving some thought to this request. For me it brought to mind a man—not a family member, not a lodge member, in fact, not even a Dane—but a man’s whose influence in the lives of many, many Danish immigrants in the United States was significant. He has even influenced my life although he died twelve years before I was born. Having been born and raised in the suburbs of Milwaukee where I still live, it is a bit strange that going home for me has included a place in Michigan known as Sidney. It was in Montcalm County, Sidney, Michigan that my Danish grandfather, Hans Peter Hansen (Sailor Pete), purchased farmland with the money he had earned as a sailor on the Great Lakes. It was to Sidney that my Grandmother Mette Nielsen came to marry her childhood sweetheart in 1900. It is there that my mother Anna and her brother Viggo were born and it is in the little cemetery that surrounds the North Sidney church that all of the deceased relatives I have in the United States, except my parents, are buried.

Before I was born my grandparents had passed on, so a visit to Sidney was always a visit to that cemetery. While I never lived there the names on so many of the tombstones are familiar to me, and the stories of so many of those names are my family stories. But there is one name that seems to make its way into so many of the stories, Ole Amble. It is his name that appears on my grandparents wedding certificate. His name is on my mother’s baptismal and confirmation certificates. It was a sadness in my mother’s life that Ole Amble had retired from his duties just before she married my dad, a Danish immigrant who, on his way around the world, stopped in Sidney to earn money working on the Madsen family farm, met my mother and never did get around the world. Of course I also knew the name of Reverend

Kildegaard who did marry my parents and bury my

My grandmother Mette Hansen with Ole Amble and the Ladies Society.

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grandparents, but it is Ole Amble that is a hero and major presence in the family stories. I am sure that my family is not the only one in whose stories this Lutheran minister plays a part. Lutheran ministers have played a major role in the lives of many Danish immigrants. It could not have been a particularly easy life but it was the life of Ole Amble for 53 years. As a little girl I remember our minister living in a lovely home next to the church and ours was his only congregation. That was not true of Ole Amble. While I knew our personal stories, I was able to find quite a bit of information in a recent article published in The Daily News for Montcalm County and Ionia County by Gary L. Hauck on February 25, 2020. Ole Amble was born in Norway in 1847, the oldest of 16 children. He attended a teacher’s college in Norway and worked as a tutor. But he felt a calling from God and entered the ministry. Like many he made the decision to find his life in the new world. The United States called. In Marshfield Wisconsin he attended the Augsburg Technological Seminary and was ordained in 1872. His first calling was to a small church in Iowa where he served for two years. The Danes in Montcalm County learned of Amble’s “unique spiritual leadership” and contacted him. In 1874 he arrived at the Little Denmark Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church. The congregation grew and by 1876 was divided into three districts. Later two more districts were added, one of them North Sidney where my family worshiped. Ole Amble became a circuitriding minister, eventually ministering to seven churches. He rode on horseback or carriage or wagon to preach to his congregations. When the North Sidney church was destroyed by a tornado in 1902 he led the congregation in rebuilding. My grandfather and grandmother were a part of that rebuilding which was completed in 1903. In Hauck’s article he quotes John Dasef from his “History of Montcalm County,” “To the Danish people, Ole Amble is not only pastor, but teacher, lawyer, doctor, father and general friend.” No wonder in my family he was thought of as a hero. He retired in 1927 at the age of 80. A special retirement picnic was held to honor Reverend Amble at Bass Lake. Over 2000 people attended. It was the largest gathering in that location’s history. By 1933 his health was deteriorating. After a period of hospitalization in the Greenville Hospital he went to live in the home of Reverend Kildegaard and his wife where he lived until his death in 1934. Today his grave can be seen in the Little Denmark Cemetery north of Gowen, Michigan. A special marker on the grave gives a brief biography. His influence on my mother was significant. She spoke of him often and as a result he has also been an influence on my life. Hauck stated in his article that “people were drawn to his simple preaching of God’s grace, conciliatory manner and spiritual warmth.” He never married but it is said he thought of all the people of Montcalm County as his children. According to Hauck, with over 1000 parishioners he was the preacher for one of America’s largest protestant megachurches in the 19th century. In his time in Montcalm County he preformed 808 marriages, 2,650 baptisms, 1500 confirmations and more than 2000 funerals. That is quite a record.

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