Carl Aaron Swensson was an American Lutheran minister and founder and President of Bethany College.
Background
Carl Aaron Swensson was born at Chandler’s Valley near Sugar Grove, Pennsylvania. He was a son of Jonas and Maria (Blixt) Swensson and the eldest in a family of seven children. His father, Jonas Swensson, a minister of the Swedish Lutheran Church, was president of the Augustana Synod of the Swedish Lutheran churches in America.
Education
As a youth he attended a parochial school at Andover, Illinois. He graduated with the class of 1877 from Augustana College at Rock Island, Illinois. The same year, he entered the Theological Seminary and was graduated in June 1879.
Career
He succeeded Review Doctor Olof Olsson, Lindsborg’s Swedish immigrant pioneer leader who later became President of the Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois. Doctor Swensson received his A. M. from Augustana College in 1889. His Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Upsala, in 1893.
His Doctorate. Doctorate. from Thiel College, Greenville, Pennsylvania, and from Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
He was decorated with the order of "Knights of the North star" by King Oscar II of Sweden in 1901. He was a delegate to the Republican Convention during 1896.
He was president of the Kansas Teachers" Association 1889–1890. Traveling extensively throughout America, Doctor Swensson was a popular orator, writer and author
He was an author of devotional books In the Morning Hour (Swedish:I Morgonstund) and By the Fireside as well as of several books of travel in Swedish and English.
He was also editor of and contributor to church and secular papers. Doctor Swensson’s books and other writings were popular in Sweden and several times he traveled there. A marble statue of Doctor Swensson is displayed prominently on the Bethany College campus.
Swensson, Carl Aaron The Swedes in Kansas: A paper written by President Central America Swensson, of Bethany College, Lindsborg, for the annual meeting of the State Historical Society, January 17, 1888 (Kansas State Historical Society 1890)
Granquist, Mark and Maria Erling The Augustana Story: Shaping Lutheran Identity in North America (Augsburg Fortress Publishers 2008).
Membership
He was a member of the Kansas Legislature 1889–1890, having been elected to the Kansas House of Representatives. He was a member of the State Historical Society and of American Academy of Political and Social Science at the World"s Columbian Exhibition in 1893. He was a member of the Building Committee for Sweden"s Building at the Saint Louis Exposition in 1904.