Background
Erik was the son of Hans and Helga Serine (Eriksen) Andersen. He was born on October 11, 1857 near Stavanger, Norway.
Erik was the son of Hans and Helga Serine (Eriksen) Andersen. He was born on October 11, 1857 near Stavanger, Norway.
After completing his early schooling, he worked as a miller in Tou mill near his home; hence his surname Tou. In 1881 he went to Minneapolis, Minn. , to learn more about mills, intending to return to Norway later.
Disheartened at the poor prospects for employment, he became a student in Augsburg Seminary, and was graduated with the B. A. degree in 1886, and the degree in theology in 1889.
He took up missionary work in Madagascar. They were first stationed at Tulear and St. Augustine, 1889-90, and then in Manasoa, on the southwest coast. They were the first missionaries in the region south of the Onilahy River, occupied by the Tanosy tribe. Tou preached at two main stations and thirteen substations, established a school, in which Malagasy and French were taught, a theological seminary, and two foundling asylums, which were converted to orphanages when the French government took full possession of the island.
He advocated, and finally saw realized, a free dispensary and the teaching of scientific agriculture at his station. Much of the flourishing Christian life in southwest Madagascar owed its beginnings to his efforts.
He faced an almost impossible task in the midst of an immoral, grossly superstitious tribe, yet, after a few years he claimed that Christianity had done more for the Tanosy than had three hundred years of partial contact with European civilization. The climate was unhealthful, and financial support entirely inadequate.
In a fascinating book, Den lutherske Frikirkes Hedningemission paa Madagaskar (1898), he related his earlier experiences on the island. His later experiences were detailed in articles for the press, and were published in the Lutheraneren, Luthersk Kirkeblad, Folkebladet, Gasseren, and, occasionally, in Skandinaven, and Visergutten. He also wrote for these papers on theological themes and great missionaries of the past, and translated into Norwegian The Miracles of Missions (1891), by A. T. Pierson. At his death he left seven volumes of diaries. Other diaries, antedating these, along with records and books, were consumed when his home was destroyed by fire in Madagascar.
With his health much impaired, Tou left Madagascar in 1903 after his marriage to his second wife, Alida Olen, of Benson, Minn. , who had worked as a deaconess at Manasoa. He was missionary pastor in Pukwana, S. Dak. , from 1904 to 1909, and at Napoleon, N. Dak. , until his death. His hardships were many in these sparsely populated regions of extreme summer heat and winter cold. Hard travel, loneliness, poverty, and exposure shortened his life.
In the United States he again gathered a valuable working library and his correspondence was extensive. From 1915 he was editor of Gasseren.
A short time before he died he was made a member of the Lutheran Board of Missions of the Lutheran Free Church.
In 1889 he was married to Caroline Elisabeth Knudsen, of Fulton, Iowa. Three of his children and his wife died.
