Find our where the high school youth group went on The Secret Sojourn, and read an article about the trip on the Covenant Church news site.

by E. Malcolm Parkinson.

Foreword by Roger W. Palmquist, pastor of Salem Covenant Church
from 1977-1984.

Foreword

History may be measured by many means, and frequently in a
volume of this kind the decision is made to mark the passage of
years by showing pictures which are primarily of buildings or
artifacts, and by delineating events as they occurred within the
periods associated with specific ministers of a church.

In preparing an historical survey of the life of our
congregation we have chosen a different route. Believing that
history is essentially the record of people, that time
itself is meaningless apart from the manner in which people make
use of it, and that the life of any church ought more be indexed by
the pilgrimage of its members than anything else, we have elected
to report on the first 100 years of our history by showing how God
has worked in the lives of those people who have comprised our
particular family of faith.

By so doing we stand in a good tradition, for we are a family
whose nourishment comes directly from the Holy Scriptures, and as
one reads the Bible he must be impressed by the fact it is
singularly the story of people and their relationship to the
Father. From the time when God covenanted with Abraham to form the
Hebrew nation until the day of the Christian community which
emerged after Pentecost, the Scriptures bear appropriate witness to
landmark places and loyal leaders of the faith, but most of all to
the many souls who, by their commitment of trust, became known as
special “children of God.”

We are honored to think of ourselves as the children or
people of God, and whereas our tale is brief when measured
against the longer years of the Church-at-large, we count ours to
be a significant story because of this. As you read, we hope you
will sense the sometimes strong, sometimes gentle manner in which
God has dealt with us in love striving always to mold us after the
image of the Savior in whose spirit we were formed and continue to
live.

Part One

The Swedish Evangelical Free Church of Worcester was founded
during the first large wave of Swedish immigration into Worcester
in 1879 and 1880. The church began officially with 28 charter
members on September 6, 1880.

Many Swedes coming to America had been attracted by farming in
Maine and the Midwest, but the wire mills and machine shops along
the Blackstone River ended the long trek for many from the fjords,
remote villages, and towns of the far-off Scandinavian peninsula.
The shop of Frank B. Norton which burgeoned into the ceramic
grinding wheel firm of Norton Emery Wheel Company welcomed Swedes
as employees, many with skills in pottery they had acquired in
their youth. Ichabod Washburn, through his son-in-law Philip Moen,
who traveled to Sweden where he learned Swedish and offered
employment to prospective emigrants, attracted hundreds of
mechanics to the wire industry of Worcester. Many of these men
settled with their families in Quinsigamond Village. Washburn and
Moen, later named the American Steel and Wire Company, became the
largest employer of Swedes in Worcester, many of whom came from the
mining and iron-working districts of Sweden, bringing their
metalworking skills with them.

Piano wire, telegraph wire, and wire for hoop skirts were
already being manufactured here, and by the 1880’s tens of
thousands of miles of barbed wire emerged from Worcester shops to
fence the western United States. The invention of the telephone by
Alexander Graham Bell in 1876 precipitated a demand for copper
wire, as did Thomas Edison’s electric light some years later.
Worcester produced wire for a myriad of tasks ranging from
suspension bridges and Atlantic cables to overhead lines supplying
electric power for streetcars. Thus when the Swedes began to pour
into the city in the 1880’s, Worcester was developing as a
nationally important industrial center known for its iron and steel
products, emery grinding wheels, looms, envelopes, carpets,
firearms, hydraulic elevators, railroad carriages, and the diverse
products of over a hundred manufacturing businesses.

In its founding, the Evangelical Free Church of Worcester
combined two traditions: a largely Swedish heritage drawn from the
Mission Friends, and the long-established norms of the New England
Congregationalists. The Mission Friends derived from the immigrants
who had broken away from the Swedish state church yet who had
retained much of Lutheranism in their religious life in America. In
the 1870’s the Mission Friends with their revivalistic fervor
yearned for a more vital form of Christianity than they found
within the confines of the Lutheran synods. Gradually they parted
company with the Lutheran churches in America, at the same time
emphasizing the personal knowledge of Jesus Christ as an
indispensable requirement for church membership.

Despite being united ethnically, the Mission Friends harbored
under their wing some congregations that were almost Lutheran in
theology and in the daily practice of Christianity. Others believed
in total independence of congregations, refusing to subscribe to
the concept of a denomination formally uniting groups of
congregations into one body. Still others wished to be joined to
the American Congregational churches. When the Mission Friends
formed “The Swedish Evangelical Mission Covenant of America” in
1885, the Worcester church had already affiliated itself formally
with the Congregationalists, a decision that was common in New
England where the Congregationalists were strong, and willing to
help new and struggling immigrant churches in every way, including
financially.

For its first minister, the fledgling church had called the Rev.
A. G. Nelson, who had been instrumental in its establishment. After
he declined the post, George Wiberg, a Congregational minister from
Iowa, accepted. It was in 1881, during Wiberg’s pastorate, that the
church joined the fellowship of Congregationalists, apparently the
second Swedish church in the country to do so. At first, services
were held in a large rented hall which held 250 people. The hall
quickly proved too small, and the growing congregation moved for a
brief time to the Warren block at Washington Square.

The congregation, although not wealthy, soon bought land on
Providence Street where, at a cost of $9,395, a church building was
erected. The first services were held there in January, 1883. Over
half of the total cost was loaned by the other Congregational
churches in Worcester. But many members lived in northern
Worcester, and in Quinsigamond Village in the southern part of
town, both areas where Swedes clustered. Since neither area was
near Providence Street, which was not centrally located, church
members began to talk about looking for an affordable site near the
heart of Worcester.

As the church grew, a new chapel was opened in Quinsigamond
Village in 1891 for holding prayer meetings, a Sunday School, and
for preaching the gospel to the Swedish population in that part of
town. From that venture, the second Swedish Congregational Church
of Worcester sprang in 1895, known today as Bethlehem Covenant
Church.

The congregation was close to the Covenant Church of America in
its attitude toward foreign missions and was anxious to bring the
Christian message to distant lands. Thus the church saw its first
missionaries go to the fields of most concern in China and Alaska.
In the treaties imposed upon the Chinese as a result of the
Anglo-French hostilities which lasted from 1856 to 1860, foreign
and Chinese Christians were granted freedom to follow their faith
and proselytize. Consequently, the number of Protestant
missionaries there increased so rapidly that by 1890 about 1,300
were scattered across the country, many of them American. Christine
Anderson and Anna Nordstrom went from the Worcester church to China
in 1890.

Part Two

Christine Anderson eventually ran a school for girls and young
women, where she was joined by her niece Dorothy Anderson in 1925.
Both women refused to leave China in the political turmoil of the
late 1920’s. Instead, they remained at the school where they both
died in 1930 from typhus which they contracted while nursing some
of their students who were already suffering from the disease. The
Worcester church continued to support the school financially until
1952, when it became impossible to send funds into the newly
founded People’s Republic of China.

Hanna Svenson, who was closely associated with the Worcester
congregation, went to Alaska in 1890 as a Covenant representative.
There she married another missionary, A. E. Karlsson, and together
they ran the Children’s Home in Unalakleet. Alaska had been
transferred in 1867 from Russia to the United States, a gigantic
wilderness with a tiny population of 30,000. Missionary work then
passed from the Russian Orthodox Church to Protestant
denominations.

Unfortunately, the involvement of most of the Covenant
missionaries in northern Alaska in feverishly prospecting for gold,
disrupted their original single-mindedness in evangelization. One
missionary prospector struck it rich in 1899 with his claim “Number
Nine Above.” The legal suits that then dragged on for years over
possible Covenant ownership of the missionary’s mine wrought havoc
with the work of the entire mission effort in Alaska. The
remoteness of the land, its hostile climate, and the pervasively
harsh life there were formidable obstacles to any missionary
without the added twist of getting caught up in the gold rushes.
Consequently the Karlssons left Alaska in the debacle following the
discovery of “Number Nine Above.” Undeterred, however, they soon
returned to continue their work.

When a fine building on Salem Square was offered for sale by its
occupants, the congregation pondered on whether or not to buy it.
Some members of the congregation in Providence Street balked at the
idea of purchasing a massive building at $40,000, but faith and
daring prevailed as the First Swedish Evangelical Congregational
Church of Worcester moved into its new building in 1896. Originally
with an imposing Corinthian facade, it had been completed in 1848
as a Congregational Church at a cost of more than $27,000, and then
had been remodeled in 1871 at a cost of $30,000. The sanctuary
could seat 1,100 people.

When the congregation moved into its new home, it was primarily
a Swedish church for Swedish people, as this one bylaw stated in
English:

This church is a union of men and women who believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ, and who or most of whom also understand the
Swedish language and desire to worship together in brotherly love
and unison, for the upbuilding together in the most holy faith, to
lead and encourage each other during the life’s sojourn and as
co-laborers for the spreading of the gospel both far and near, and
especially among the Scandinavians in and about the city of
Worcester.

By 1900 the Salem Square church was only one of roughly a dozen
that had sprung up to serve the spiritual, social, and ethnic needs
of the Scandinavian community. The immigrants worshipped mainly in
Swedish churches belonging to the Baptist, Lutheran, and Methodist,
as well as Congregational, denominations; Worcester was also served
by two Swedish corps of the Salvation Army. The oldest of these
churches was the Methodist Episcopal in Quinsigamond Village,
founded in 1878. Some of these congregations catered to the needs
of small, well-defined groups, such as the Swedish speaking
immigrants from Finland, who attended their own Swedish-Finnish
Lutheran and Congregational churches.

At the turn of the century it was possible for churches to build
up huge Sunday Schools. From a modest beginning with six children,
ten adults, and two teachers, the Sunday School grew rapidly to
include branches scattered throughout the city to reach a total of
512 pupils, including 35 adults, who were taught by 39 teachers.
Swedish was the language used, and over 500 of 700-odd volumes in
the Sunday School library were written in the mother tongue.
However, only about 250 of the pupils could actually read Swedish,
a problem not peculiar to Salem Square, but one that numerous
Swedish churches faced nationwide. Children who were taught English
at state school, yet who heard Swedish spoken at home and in their
social circle at church, lived in effect in two worlds.

To preserve the mother tongue, a Swedish School lasting about
five weeks each summer was introduced. For many, the only time they
had any formal training in the language of their parents was at the
summer school. Achieving oral and written fluency among
second-generation immigrants is always an elusive goal, for a
language can easily become stilted and cease to evolve when the
community speaking it is separated from its country of origin. Thus
by World War I Swedish was in danger of becoming for many people no
more than a liturgical language. But if the summer Swedish School
soon vanished, the weekly Sunday School remained with its Christian
message adapted for presentation to people in all stages of life
from earliest childhood to adulthood.

Of all the men who have pastored the church, the baritone singer
Johannes Alfred Hultman was the only one known internationally.
Born in Sweden in 1861, he came with his parents to Iowa in 1869
where he worked as a shepherd. After studying and teaching music,
he spent 14 years as a pastor in Omaha, Nebraska where he composed
and sang gospel songs. From l900 to l906 he was pastor of the Salem
Square church. Well-known in the Worcester area, he could pack the
church with 1,200 people for his song services. Today some members
of the congregation still recall those services vividly when, as
children, they were moved around the packed church to make room for
adults. Although no longer pastor of the church, he returned to
live in Worcester during World War I.

Part Three

Affectionately called “Solskenssångaren,” the “Sunshine Singer,”
he is reputed to have conducted over 12,000 services in the United
States and Sweden from 1897 until his death in 1942. He had his own
portable organ which he often took to his services. Some people
still remark on the fact the he gave away the money collected at
his singing services. The house in which he was born near Sävsjö in
Jönköping still stands, an official memorial to a magnificent
singer. He is quietly remembered in the Salem church today through
his tunes in The Covenant Hymnal.

Initially industrial workers, the Swedes in Worcester and at the
Salem Square Church soon branched out to other occupations. While
some immigrants rose to the rank of foreman or superintendent,
others left the mills and machine shops to start their own
businesses. G. A. Sponberg, for example, abandoned drop forging to
open a successful shoe store in 1899. Sometimes the newer
immigrants and the younger natives of the city became salesmen or
launched out on their own. Emil Jacobson came from Sweden about
1890, at first finding employment in mill work and then going into
partnership in a grocery and provisions store. One chairman of the
church, O. G. Hedlund, started a coal company, selling most of his
fuel to the local Swedes. One family owned a jewelry store, another
manufactured glass showcases and store fixtures. The women, too,
found employment, often in domestic service or as saleswomen or
dressmakers.

The opportunities for work in Worcester and the sense of
community among the large Swedish population acted like a magnet to
attract Swedes who had settled in other parts of America. August
Berg typifies such restless nomads. Landing in America as a young
man of twenty, he worked in Michigan in logging and lumber. Then,
after spending some time in Brockton and Worcester, he returned to
his homeland only to sail across the Atlantic again to Alberta,
prospect in British Colombia, work in lumber camps, and cut
railroad ties. Attracted back to Worcester in 1896, he settled in
the city as a carpenter, rose to foreman in a lumber firm, and then
in 1906 started his own business. In 1909 he entered a partnership
with another lumber dealer. August Berg was one of the many
enterprising and hardworking Swedes who made the Salem Square
Church their spiritual home.

Some members of the congregation left Worcester permanently. In
1891, when Iver Johnson moved his firearms and sporting goods
company, lock, stock, and barrel 20 miles north to Fitchburg, about
20 members of the congregation migrated with him to retain their
jobs. It was from that group the nucleus was formed of the church
that became the Pilgrim Covenant Church in Lunenburg,
Massachusetts.

Swedes in Worcester have always viewed music as an important
part of their lives. Apparently the first Swede to settle in the
town was a musician and singing clubs quickly formed in the Swedish
communities. The church saw its first choir formed in 1882 under
the directorship of Eric J. Hedlund who worked hard to ensure that
the members learned their parts by heart, for most of them could
not read music. The choir rapidly became an indispensable part of
the church, its music woven into the worship of the congregation.
Some of the early directors studied music in Sweden, as did Axel
Francke, a graduate of the Royal Academy of Music in Stockholm.
Francke published a Sångalbum which he used with his own
choir.

During the tenure of Pastor Hultman, the organist and choir
director was Oscar MessIer. He had graduated from the Royal Academy
of Music in Stockholm and had studied with Hultman in Nebraska. He
enjoyed the music of the Swedish composer Gunnar Wennerberg which
he often used for settings for the choir’s renderings of the
Psalms. Under Messier, the choir had over 40 members and set up its
first bylaws.

Interest in music was not confined to the choir, for the Young
Peoples’ Society started a string band about 1898. Neither radio
nor record player existed at that time, so young people did not
hesitate to play instruments to make their own music. Led by the
enterprising E. I. Hedlund, who had organized the church’s choir,
the members played a wide variety of instruments including guitars,
mandolins, violins, clarinets, and zithers.

The band often played at open-air meetings and at the Swedish
Chapel in Chaffins, now the Congregational Church. As in other
youth activities, the band swung between enthusiastic periods of
playing and total inactivity. The string band eventually stabilized
after 1910 under the direction of William Nord, performing
frequently at services in Salem Square and other churches.

William Nord epitomizes the truly skilled and inventive
craftsman found in the industries of Worcester. He not only made
bellows for Simplex player pianos to earn his living, but also
constructed musical instruments for his own pleasure. When she was
a member of the string band, Emma Nord played a mandolin that her
father had constructed. It is tempting to call someone such as
William Nord an artist-craftsman because he played the zither,
mandolin, violin, coronet, and flute and he taught music.

After William Nord, Petrus Lundberg led the band until he was
forced by illness to give up the position in 1947. Unfortunately,
the string band no longer exists.

Pehr Gustav Holmes is the only United States congressman to have
belonged to the First Swedish Congregational Church. Members of the
church usually did not become deeply involved in politics, some
even looking askance on the pursuit of any political position. City
councilman was the limit of political involvement for the few who
ran for office. Thus Pehr Holmes’ political career in Worcester and
Washington formed a unique exception to the pattern of political
activity at Salem Square Church. In contrast to his political life,
however, his activities in industry, especially the setting up of
his own firm, resembled much more closely that of other men in the
congregation.

Part Four

His father came to Worcester from Sweden in 1885 as a steel
worker with experience in smelting and puddling. Pehr was then just
a boy of four. He left Millbury Street school at the age of 14 to
spend a year tending machines at Reed and Prince Screw. He then
spent two years as an errand boy and clerk in a store before
learning the trade of electrotyping, engraving, and electroplating
in Brunell’s electrotyping plant. After remaining as a journeyman
until 1909 in the plant, he bought out a company and set it up
under the name Holmes Electrotype Foundry to manufacture
electrotypes and various printer’s items.

Joining the city council in 1909, Pehr Holmes soon became an
alderman, served on almost every major municipal committee, and
then held the mayorship from 1917 to 1919 when the United States
was at war. A Republican, he represented Worcester in Congress from
1931 to 1948.

A man who retained his links with his Swedish background
throughout his life, Pehr Holmes served on the boards of virtually
every Swedish-American society in Worcester. His favorite pastime,
which he pursued passionately, was the breeding and racing of
pigeons.

By the beginning of the 1930’s radio stations dotted the United
States, broadcasting everything from yodeling and agricultural
hints, to medical tips and the New York Philharmonic under the
baton of Toscanini. Rival networks jostled for listeners, and
everyone listened to Amos ‘n’ Andy.

For the first time people could hear foreign dignitaries and the
notorious speak from thousands of miles away. In 1931 listeners
were scandalized by G. B. Shaw viciously berating the American
people in a broadcast relayed from abroad. Americans could tune in
Pope Pius XI, Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian pacifist, and Leon
Trotsky, the political exile. Radio offered an opportunity to
listen to messages available in no other way.

Religious broadcasting too was common. Salem began to broadcast
over WORC in Worcester with a service at 5:30 A.M., on Christmas
morning, 1929. Sunday services went over the air until 1944. Wedged
between the endless variety of radio programs, the services reached
those unable to attend church and those who did not wish to attend
regularly.

To continue the work of the Church through successive
generations, new pastors, ministers, missionaries, and other
workers are always needed. Playing its part in transmitting the
Christian gospel from one generation to another, the Salem Square
congregation has seen a number of its members enter the ranks of
the ministry. Most of its ordained members have become pastors of
churches in America and Sweden.

Others have been led by their faith to emulate the missionary
zeal that dates back to the founding of the Church almost two
thousand years ago. As missionaries, representatives from the
Worcester parish have taken their faith to South America, to the
northernmost reaches of the American continent, and to the Far
East. One member of the congregation, Sigfrid Mosby, who was
ordained in 1927, spent most of his life in Venezuela until poor
health compelled him and his wife to return to the United
States.

The experiences of a congregation cover the spectrum of life
from happiness to tragedy, from poverty to wealth, from sickness to
health, from war to peace, from birth to baptism, from marriage to
death. Not all who came to the Salem Square church were willing to
risk sacrificing their lives in one of the great upheavals of the
twentieth century, World War I. To avoid military service in
wartime, some emigrants left Sweden, settled in Worcester and
attended the Salem Square Church, only to leave the United States
after the war had ended to avoid military service in America.

Yet some traumatic episodes in the life of a society cannot be
so easily avoided. The Great Depression of the early 1930’s hit
Worcester and the Salem Square Church. During that difficult time,
people helped each other quietly and unobtrusively. Even the pastor
volunteered to take a cut in his salary, a reduction which was
difficult for him to get back in later years.

Despite the Depression and the ominous political events in
Europe that succeeded it, life went on at the church. The Alert
Circle run by the young women enjoyed its Halloween parties;
Sigfrid and Amanda Mosby continued to represent the church as
missionaries in Venezuela; links with the Swedish Covenant
denomination strengthened; few suspected that war would soon engulf
most of the world.

Although many members of the congregation still spoke Swedish
fluently, the language was no longer the primary tongue of the
children of immigrants. In some cases, parents spoke in Swedish
only when they did not want their children to understand what they
were saying - a welcome luxury for bilingual parents. Pastor
Brunstrom, in the 1920’s, knew that Swedish should give way to
English as the language of the church. As a former educational
administrator, and as a keen world traveler attuned to the
disadvantages of not speaking the native language of countries
through which he passed, he understood the shortcomings of
continuing to emphasize Swedish at the expense of English.

By 1928, under Pastor Brunstrom, the church board had decided to
have two Sunday evening services in English each month, a move
welcomed by young people who wanted to bring non-Swedish friends to
services and by the increasing number of people who were marrying
outside the Swedish community. Not surprisingly, the transition to
English occurred gradually, for France Ericson, pastor from 1929 to
1944, used Swedish regularly. Reluctantly he wrote his annual
report for 1939 in English, a symbolic gesture belatedly
acknowledging a trend he considered unavoidable, but apparently no
one objected to the transition. Thus the pastoral report to the
church for 1938 was the last in the mother tongue of Salem’s
founders.

Part Five

Despite the fact that armed hostilities erupted in Europe in
1939, consciousness of World War II became acute at the church only
after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941. Soon more than 60
people from Salem, most of them young, left for training or active
duty. The absence of so many affected the choir and seriously cut
into the activities of the young people’s groups. The demanding
schedules of wartime production and a decrease in car driving
reduced attendance at services, while trial blackouts occasionally
prevented people from coming to the church. Even the topics of
talks to the adult organizations were sometimes directed toward the
war effort. Lectures were given on Japan, on precautions to be
taken during air raids, and on decorating the home with patriotic
materials.

To allow the church to keep up regular contact with the many
members in the armed forces, the Young People’s Society eventually
started a monthly newsletter, The Home Front, in April,
1943. Since many more men than women saw military service, the task
of editing The Home Front fell to Ruth Palm and Virginia
Peterson. The newsletter was sent to everyone in military service.
Issues carried news about the church, mainly the Young People’s
Society, crosswords, puzzles, poems, sometimes sermons by the
pastor, a section entitled “Chatter”, that bordered on harmless
gossip, and inevitably a list of mailing addresses. Salem’s
members, scattered throughout America, and across Europe, North
Africa, India, and the Pacific, welcomed the regular news about
their friends back in Worcester or serving in some remote part of
the world.

The Home Front also recorded the rushed comings and
goings of those who were able to snatch a few days leave at home.
We read that in 1943, Verner Carlson arrived home in time to lead
the Easter sunrise service. Yet real motivations are frequently
hidden, for The Home Front does not mention that he and
Mildred Allen had intended to get married that Easter, but were
unable to do so because Verner had to rush back quickly to his
unit. Such is love; such is war.

The tradition of a male chorus separate from the choir goes back
to 1888 when the church was situated in Providence Street. Like
other church groups, the chorus changed its name occasionally.
Fyrbåken, the lighthouse, stood firmly as the name until persistent
misspellings such as Fyrbåken persuaded the members to choose
another title. They replaced the Swedish Fyrbåken with the Latin
Te Deum, a reference to Te Deum Laudamus, a
fifth-century hymn, one of the most magnificent in the Christian
tradition, and the subject of numerous musical settings.

Some of the finest portraits churches possess are of their
choirs and choruses. The portrait of the Te Deum members
reveals the pride they experienced and the pleasure they derived
from singing at concerts and special services. But sadly, striking
though the photograph is, the absence of young men betrays the
presence of war when it was taken in the early 1940’s.

Among the immigrant children brought up and confirmed at Salem
Square Church, Brigadier General Oscar Solbert became the most
renowned internationally. Coming as a boy to the United States in
1893, he soon showed that keen interest in engineering exhibited so
frequently by Swedes in Worcester. After attending Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, he studied at the U.S. Military Academy at
West Point, graduating in 1910. A member of the Corps of Engineers,
he then served at the military school as an instructor from 1914 to
1917, one of his students being Cadet Eisenhower.

Solbert’s abilities and personal characteristics, especially his
strong self-assurance, showed themselves not only when he served as
military aide to President Coolidge but also as honorary
aide-de-camp to European royalty on their American tours - to the
Prince of Wales, later titled the Duke of Windsor, in 1924, and to
the Crown Prince of Sweden in 1926.

As a man who relished a challenge, Solbert returned from
civilian life during World War II to become chief of the
Psychological Warfare Branch of the Army and to chair the Joint
Psychological Warfare Committee of the Army and Navy. He was
promoted to brigadier general in 1944. A recipient of the
Distinguished Service Medal and the Legion of Merit, he was also
honored by the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark,
France, Holland, Norway, Poland, the United Kingdom, Yugoslavia,
and his native Sweden.

In civilian life, Solbert worked with George Eastman the
photographic inventor, and later, as director of the George Eastman
House in Rochester, he contributed to establishing the photographic
museum there as one of the finest in the world.

In 1947 the church was invited to join the Evangelical Mission
Covenant Church of America, and in the following year the
congregation voted to join the national denomination. In some ways
the shift in affiliation from the Congregationalists was natural;
firm links with the strongly Swedish Covenant had endured since
shortly after the founding of the Worcester church, and the more
conservative theological stance of the denomination appealed to
many of the members of Salem. Tenacity of ethnic ties and a
tradition of conservative theology composed an attractive
combination, resulting in the eventual union of the Salem Square
Church with the national representatives of its Scandinavian
heritage.

In 1949, after the congregation had adopted its new name, Salem
Square Covenant Church, little of substance had altered and life in
the parish continued much as before. But such a major step, however
strongly supported in a congregation, is never taken without pain
or sadness on the part of those members, however few, who retain
ties of loyalty to their traditional home denomination.

Part Six

Congregationalists had helped many Swedish groups establish
churches in New England. It was natural for them to assume that the
Scandinavian immigrants would quickly be assimilated into their
denomination, so they probably underestimated how staunchly the
Swedes would retain their links with each other. Thus, although the
Worcester church did join the Congregationalists, remaining part of
their denomination officially until 1949, it had gradually
strengthened its ties to the Covenant, some of its members
believing the Salem Square Church to be Covenant in all but
name.

Strong traces of the Congregational legacy still linger in
Salem, partly explaining the control of the church’s decisions by
the congregation, and the frequently low consciousness of being
part of a national group. Some members even think of Salem as if it
were an independent church. Autonomy is still prized in
Worcester.

The National Geographic Magazine carried an article in
its February, 1955 issue entitled “Cities Like Worcester Make
America.” To illustrate the article, the magazine reproduced lavish
color photographs of Worcester’s museums, colleges, and industries,
as well as a superb picture of the Salem Square Church taken from
the Worcester Common. The caption attached to the picture mentioned
that the city contained almost 140 places of worship.

The article paid tribute to Worcester as a manufacturing center
that had fostered inventors and industrialists. At that time about
700 manufacturing firms operated in the city, some having been
founded by members of the Salem Square Church. A prominent
industrialist from Salem who died in 1955, aged 82 years, was
Viktor J. Johnson. Born in Sweden, he settled in Worcester as a
young man about 1890. After working as a cabinet maker, he
organized the Worcester Wind Motor Company to manufacture wind
motors for player pianos. The company also produced vacuum
cleaners. When the steadily increasing popularity of radio cut into
the market for player pianos, Johnson quickly turned to making
radio cabinets and furniture. By 1921 he had organized another
firm, the Viko Shoe Company to make corrective shoes for women.
When America entered World War II in 1941, the firm was turning out
2,000 pairs of shoes every day. Footwear manufacturing was then an
industry important to Worcester. His son Helmer succeeded him as
president of the company.

Viktor Johnson believed strongly in assuming both social and
spiritual responsibilities. He had been a founder and trustee of
Fairlawn Hospital, a director of the Skandia Bank and Trust
Company, and a director of the Guaranty Bank and Trust Company. At
the Salem Square Church he had held various offices and had acted
as Sunday School superintendent. Unquestionably, he typifies the
generation of Swedish immigrants who came to Worcester in the early
years of the church and who left their mark on the industrial map
of the city.

The church received its campground, a generous gift, in 1947.
Less than 20 miles from Worcester and consisting of waterfront on
Charlton Reservoir with an adjoining open field, the site promised
unlimited possibilities for the church. Ironically, the most
intense use of the camp site coincided with the first few years of
its existence before extensive facilities were constructed. Use of
the camp had already fallen off somewhat when a large log cabin was
erected by the men of the church in 1954, after which services held
at Charlton proved popular. Summer vespers became a regular
feature, Vacation Bible School was held at the camp, and splash
parties, picnics, and overnight stays were enjoyed year after year.
Probably the youth groups have benefited most from having a camp
close to Worcester, though the annual church picnic on July 4,
Independence Day, still stands as the major event of the year at
Charlton.

From the 1950’s onward, with plenty of cars and unlimited
supplies of gasoline available, members of Salem, like so many
Americans, were undaunted by having to drive long distances to
beaches or private vacation spots. Thus the camp was not used as
much as it could have been, people preferring to travel farther
afield. However, with gasoline prices high and supplies uncertain,
more people are turning to Charlton for recreation in the summer.
Maybe the camp has yet to see its heyday.

Salem held its first St. Lucia Festival in 1961. Traditionally
in Sweden on Lucia Day, December 13, a daughter in a house rises
before dawn to act as Lucia. Wearing a white gown and crowned with
a wreath surmounted by lighted candles, she and her attendants
waken her family to serve them in bed with pastries and coffee. She
symbolizes the slowly returning light after the longest night of
winter, which in the old calendar was the night ending at dawn on
December 13.

The introduction of a modified version of the traditional
celebration betrays perhaps an unconscious attempt to rescue and
keep alive the slowly fading Swedish background of the church. The
festival is an excellent way of getting people of Swedish origin
together with those who are not of Swedish background to join in an
ethnic celebration that does not demand a detailed knowledge of
Scandinavian culture or an acquaintance with the Swedish language.
Today the festival is a popular event on the church calendar.

After World War II the church faced problems arising largely
from its location in the center of the city. The Sunday School, for
example, suffered from the church’s being situated in a commercial
and industrial zone with no community existing around Salem Square
for the school to serve. All the pupils traveled long distances to
reach their classes. Members of the church seemed reluctant to
attend evening services on Sunday and during the week, and by the
1950’s attendance was discouraging. Some members of the
congregation began to wonder if the church should move to a new
location.

Part Seven

By 1959, discussion of the future of the church was in full
swing, especially since urban renewal was about to change the face
of the downtown area around Salem Square. A representative of the
Worcester Redevelopment Authority even addressed the Brotherhood,
the men’s society, on future plans for the city center. But the
congregation decided to stay in its building, resolving to remain
an inner-city church and to try to face realistically the needs of
the small population that lived near Salem Square.

In 1960 a long-range planning committee began its work of
mapping out the future. However, a congregation will not decide on
a major move if it can simply set aside such a decision; so as late
as 1965 the church was unsure whether to refurbish its building or
construct a new one at a location that would have to be decided.
Uncertain of the future, the church went about its business until
1966 when the congregation decided definitely to forfeit its
building to urban renewal in the shape of Worcester Center.

Once the congregation had decided irreversibly to change
location, events moved rapidly. In December, 1966, the church voted
to buy Hill Farm on East Mountain Street at the outskirts of the
city. A building committee was organized and a number of architects
interviewed. The architect who was chosen then consulted with
approximately 60 members of committees before drawing up his final
designs. Groundbreaking took place as early as October, 1967. A
spirit of excitement soon spread through the congregation, many
members working hard, if not furiously, to prepare for the move to
the suburbs. When the cornerstone was laid in June of 1968, people
were already anticipating the mission the congregation could pursue
in its new building in a new community.

To take care of the hundred details clamoring for attention,
committees were organized for building, worship, music, church
school facilities, fellowship and recreation, the kitchen,
administration, finance, promotion, and memorials. Everything from
kitchen equipment to burglar alarms had to be chosen. The
congregation even balloted to choose a name for the church. After
the second round of voting, Salem Covenant Church emerged as the
winner. Briar-Mountain Covenant, the next most popular choice,
identified the church by its geographical location, the junction of
East Mountain Street and Briar Lane. The third choice in the
balloting, Covenant Congregational Church, harked back to the
original denomination with which the church had been identified for
almost the first 70 years of its life.

Even though the Salem Square Church and the Roman Catholic Notre
Dame church stood side by side in the center of Worcester for
decades, little formal contact had been established between them.
Salem had been active in the Worcester Council of Churches for some
years, but the ecumenical winds did not blow strongly enough until
the mid 1960’s for direct contact to occur between the neighboring
congregations.

In 1967 Salem enjoyed a pulpit exchange with Notre Dame Church
during the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. Then in 1968 pulpits
were exchanged again, and the Salem choir combined with those of
Notre Dame and another Catholic church, Our Lady of Mount Carmel,
to sing at morning worship in Salem and at an afternoon mass in the
Notre Dame church.

Unfortunately, the mutual understanding and cooperation
developed just when the Salem congregation was about to leave its
downtown location. The plaque given by the Notre Dame clergy and
parishioners to their old neighbors now hangs in the Narthex of the
new building as a witness to the friendship between the two
Christian churches. The members of Salem Square, too, presented a
plaque to the Notre Dame church.

When 1969 began, a half-million Americans were fighting a war in
Vietnam, and the world was anxiously awaiting one of the most
stunning and difficult achievements of all time, the sending of men
to the moon and their safe return from outer space to the earth.
Such were the monumental contrasts of modern life when the newly
named Salem Covenant Church held its first service in February of
1969. With the move to a new building, the church entered a new
era. At the same time, John E. Nilson succeeded John Wiens as
pastor.

Upon settling into the new building, many members of the
congregation maintained a low profile on the Swedish component of
the church’s cultural and ethnic heritage, encouraging people of
other backgrounds and traditions to become members. By 1969, the
Swedish language and the consciousness of links to Scandinavia had
faded noticeably. Although a substantial fraction of the
congregation were of Swedish descent, no young people spoke the
language fluently, and no services were held in Swedish. Today even
the very menus at social events tend to be more Italian than
Swedish. Most new members were born in America; few are immigrants.
The last emigrant from Sweden to join the church came to Worcester
in 1946. Recent immigrant members come from Ireland and
Yugoslavia.

The first few years of the 1970’s brought a resurgence of
interest in adult education. This facet of the church’s mission had
been interrupted in the hectic activity of planning the move to the
new building. New programs were set up and curricula forged for
weekly adult classes to encourage the systematic nurturing and
enrichment of parents, church leaders, and witnesses to the
faith.

Major changes were introduced in the administrative structure of
the church. The large board of trustees that handled church
business was replaced by a set of small committees, called
commissions, with specific tasks to perform. The heads of the
commissions, together with the pastors, chairman and vice-chairman
of the church, now constitute the church council, a body of about
twelve people.

Part Eight

The ministry of serving the community that had been talked about
for so long was begun, for the church was now situated in a
residential area and could reach out to people who lived in its
vicinity. After some time, a community worker was hired whose task
was to cultivate links with local people.

Among the few furnishings brought from the old church that a
visitor to East Mountain Street will see are the stained glass
medallions from the windows. The ten symbols expressing traditional
Christian beliefs and doctrines stand at the back of the nave. The
star represents divine guidance, and the anchor, hope and
steadfastness. Lilies traditionally symbolize purity, while the red
rose recalls the martyrdom of those who died for their faith. The
dove with an olive branch clasped in its beak recalls the Hebrew
story of the Flood, and is also a symbol of the Holy Spirit. The
letters IHS are derived from the Greek name for Jesus. Alpha and
Omega, the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, represent
God the Son as the first and last of all things. The cross and
crown imply victory through the crucifixion of Christ, and the
bunch of grapes and ears of grain portray the wine and bread of
Communion.

When the United States embarked on a course of economic and
military aid to the Saigon regime after the partitioning of Vietnam
in 1954, few people suspected that America was entering its longest
war. By 1964, having gradually become entangled more and more
deeply in South Vietnam’s affairs, the United States was engaged in
a major conflict with the Viet Cong, the guerrillas of the National
Liberation Front. Continuing relentlessly to intensify, the
fighting reached its fiercest level in the Tet offensive at the
beginning of 1968, the Americans then increasing their troop
strength to more than a half-million men by April, 1969.

Hostilities continued throughout Indochina until 1973, when the
United States, both North and South Vietnam, and the Viet Cong
signed a peace agreement in Paris. Soon afterward, the American
forces withdrew completely from Vietnam. The formal peace
settlement then quickly fell apart, the capital, Saigon,
surrendering in April, 1975, after which North and South Vietnam
were reunited.

It was in 1975, when South Vietnam collapsed completely, that
enormous numbers of people fled the country, tens of thousands
coming to the United States. Churches in the Worcester area agreed
to sponsor Vietnamese families, helping them to adjust to new lives
in America. Working through Catholic Charities, Salem cared for a
family that had lived outside of Saigon. Arriving in Worcester in
November of 1975, the family stayed with the assistant pastor,
James Ecklund, and his wife until they were able to rent an
apartment of their own. Members of the congregation helped them
materially, aided them in shopping, drove them to job interviews,
to English classes, to the doctor and the dentist, and befriended
them; one person in a church in Alaska sent a generous check to
help them. But the severe New England winter proved unendurable,
and the lure of relatives in Mississippi and Alabama too strong for
them to settle in Worcester, so by the end of 1976 the entire
family had moved south.

Far fewer men went from Salem to Indochina than went abroad in
World War II. One of the few members of the church who saw
front-line action in Vietnam was Bruce Roseen. During his year
there the massive Tet offensive was launched, giving plenty of work
to the Army Medical Corps in which he served. Bruce still lives in
Worcester.

Throughout the hundred years of the church, the ladies of Salem
have engaged in fundraising efforts and in helping members of the
church. As early as 1882, a Sewing Circle was formed in which
groups of ladies met regularly at each other’s homes to crochet,
knit, and sew while drinking coffee. Such groups were common
amongst Swedish immigrants. Each spring and fall, the ladies
auctioned off the articles they themselves had made and donated the
proceeds to the church. They also helped new immigrants both
materially and spiritually. One of the groups eventually met in the
church building on Providence Street, though the others continued
to meet in homes on Belmont Hill and in Quinsigamond Village which
were closer locations for mothers who brought their children with
them to the Circle’s meetings.

The Ebenezer Society grew out of the Sewing Circle in 1907,
continuing its devotional and fundraising functions. The society
voted in 1910 to concentrate its efforts on reducing the church’s
mortgage, and helped to see it paid up in 1929, a project in which
the ladies faithfully persisted. They also provided equipment for
the kitchen, furnishings for the church, money to support the
Mosbys who were missionaries in Venezuela, and sent gifts to the
congregation’s missionaries in China. They visited those who were
ill or confined to their homes, and helped people in innumerable
ways.

The younger women of the church founded their own society,
called the Alert Circle, in 1915. The purpose of the society
resembled that of the Ebenezer group which consisted of the older
women. At least one understandable difference between the
generations persisted for a long time: as late as 1944, the annual
report of the Ebenezer Society was printed in Swedish, when for
years the Alert Circle had presented theirs in English. Both
societies combined in 1962 to form Covenant Church Women.

The tradition begun by the Sewing Circle of making items for
gifts or for sale endures in the White Cross Workers wing of
Covenant Women. In their commendable endeavors, they still roll
bandages, and cut squares for Foreign Missions, make slippers,
washcloths, and utility bags for state hospitals, and sell aprons
and quilts to donate money to the church.

Part Nine

As in any other church, recent changes at Salem have been
precipitated by outside forces and circumstances as well as by its
own members. At Salem, as in many Christian congregations, women
now assume roles previously reserved for men. Today a person is
just as likely to be ushered to a seat in a service, or to be
served communion, by a woman as by a man and women frequently form
the majority of the Church Council. Such changes are the climate of
the times, and affect the church as it bends with the social and
cultural winds irrespective of whether it stands downtown or in the
suburbs. However, one massive undertaking did result directly from
the move to the edge of town. In the early 1970’s the church
initiated a study of options for the development of its 55-acre
site. Out of this study emerged the possibility of constructing
middle-income housing for the elderly. The church then set up Salem
Community Corporation in 1974 to plan the housing project, and the
First Baptist Church of Worcester joined in the venture. The
project continues to go through the planning stages.

As Worcester industry has changed in the past one hundred years,
so have the occupations of the congregation. The wire-drawing firms
have almost vanished from the city. Few now work with iron or
steel; only one or two people are engaged in drop-forging metal.
However, grinding-wheel and abrasives manufacturing that initially
brought Swedes to the city, remains a major industry in Worcester
and still attracts members of the church. Domestic service has long
since collapsed as an important female occupation. Women in the
congregation now tend to find employment as nurses, teachers, and
secretaries. Now jobs are represented that did not exist when the
church was founded: the high technology of the computer era has its
specialists, while the modern emphasis on social services,
including counseling and rehabilitation, finds its way into the
working lives of the congregation.

Beginning with the Swedish community, the Salem Church has
witnessed to the Christian faith for a hundred years. Like other
churches in Worcester, its origins lie in the great trek of
immigrants from Europe and around the world. Worcester is built
from groups of Armenians, Blacks, Chinese, the English, Finns, the
French, Germans, Greeks, Hispanics, Hungarians, the Irish,
Italians, Jewish people, Lebanese, Latvians, Lithuanians,
Pakistanis, Poles, Swedes, and people from most parts of the world.
Many of these groups brought their own religious traditions to
America. With its witness to the Christian faith, Salem Covenant
Church takes its place amongst the endless variety of a society
that in its diversity and unity is a microcosm of the world
itself.

Acknowledgments

The archives and publications of Salem Covenant Church, and
personal interviews with many members of the congregation formed
the major sources for the history. Obituaries in The Worcester
Telegram and The Evening Gazette provided aditional
information on church members.

The author gratefully acknowledges the help of the chapters of
the Salem Square Church in Carl W. Larson, From Nordic Tradtion
to Covenant Aspiration. Wocester, MA: By the author 1969.
Information on the history of the Evangelical Covenant Church was
based partly on Karl A. Olsson, By One Spirit. Chicago:
Covenant Press, 1962.

Most useful among the sources on the history of Worcester were:
Thure Hanson, Swedish-American Souvenir. Worcester, MA:
1910; James E. Mooney, editor, Worcester Massachusetts
Celebration, 1722-1972. Worcester, MA: Commonwelath Press,
1972; Charles Nutt, History of Worcester and its People. (4
volumes) New York City: Lewis Historical Publishing Company, 1919;
Anton H. Trulson and W. Elmer Ekblaw, Who’s Who in Viking
Industry and Craftsmanship in Northeastern United States.
Worcester, MA: Svea Publishing Company, 1946.