Ole Andres Olsen

Who was Ole Andres Olsen?

Ole Andres Olsen was a Seventh-day Adventist minister and administrator. He was General Conference president from 1888 to 1897.

Born in Soken, near Christiania, Norway, Olsen emigrated to the United States to Wisconsin at the age of 5. By the age of 9 his parents had begun to keep the seventh-day Sabbath. He was baptized in 1858.

From 1876 to 1877 he attended school at Battle Creek College. In 1869 the Wisconsin Conference granted him a ministerial license. On June 2, 1873, he was ordained as a minister. The following year he was elected president of the Wisconsin Conference. He served in a variety of administrative posts.

At the 1888 General Conference session he was elected General Conference president. Olsen was one of the first individuals to advocate the formation of Union Conferences. After he was not reelected as church president he went as a missionary to South Africa. In 1901 he was asked to head the work in Great Britain.

Olsen died of a heart attack on January 29, 1915.