130 year celebration of Asphult Church & Cemetery this Sunday

The Asphult Cemetery Association will hold a 130 year Celebration with a service on the cemetery grounds on Sunday, July 28, 2019 at 2:00 p.m.

Pastor Gordon Syverson will officiate with music by Philip Lee. A lawn chair or blanket is suggested to sit on during the service and celebration.

Donations will be taken and the money will be used to repair the pillars at the front of the cemetery, a Veterans memorial and upkeep expenses for the cemetery.

The cemetery is in rural McIntosh and used to also be the site of Asphult Lutheran Church.

The settlers that formed the congregation of Asphult were comparatively young men with families. Time moved the woodlands of Hill River Township gradually to cropland that produced food for the settlers and their families. As the men and women who courageously settled this land began to realize their dreams, they also began to feel the need for a spiritual home.

The Asphult congregation was organized on January 4, 1889 by Rev. James Moody. The services were held at the Nystrom Church until 1911 when the church building was erected. The Swedish Evangelical Lutheran Congregation became Asphult by a unanimous vote.

Thus, the Asphult Lutheran Church came into being. 

Shortly after the congregation was organized, land for a cemetery and the future church building site was secured. Two  and a half acres of land was bought from Nels Jeppson for the price of $25. That sum was donated by Nels Jeppson to the church building fund. They chose, indeed, a beautiful location for the final resting place of the departed and for the site of the future church.

The church saw many pastors in the early years, and had time spent with the position of pastor vacant. The congregation usually shared a pastor with other congregations as most of the churches could not extend a pastor enough pay on their own.

By free will subscription $703 was secured for the building of Asphult Church and at a special meeting in July 1911 the envisioned church work began. The church closed in the late 1960's and the building was moved to Thief River Falls in 1970 where it still stands in the Pioneer Village. The Asphult congregation joined together with Salem Lutheran Church in McIntosh. 

Salem Lutheran Church was recently closed and taken down. (The bell tower and bell from Salem Church can be seen in Hill River Township at Norris Syverson's home.)

Asphult Cemetery still operates and is governed by an association of family members from the area and those with family buried in Asphult Cemetery.