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Aalborg Branch

AALBORG BRANCH, Danish Mission, consists of Latter-day Saints residing in the city of Aalborg, which, in point of population, is the fourth city in size in the little kingdom of Denmark. The city had about 20,000 inhabitants in 1850, and 50,000 in 1930.

Soon after Apostle Erastus Snow and his associates had established themselves permanently as the founders of the Scandinavian Mission, and the first branch of the Church had been organized in Copenhagen Sept. 15, 1850, attention was paid to the city of Aalborg, where there was a large branch of Baptists. To these Elder George P. Dykes commenced to preach the gospel in October, 1850, baptized his first converts (all Baptists) Oct. 27, 1850 and organized them into the second branch of the Church in Denmark, Nov. 8, 1850, with Hans Peter Jensen, later a resident of Brigham City, Utah, as president. This branch has had a continued existence ever since, and has produced thousands of Latter-day Saints, among whom was the late Pres. Anthon H. Lund. The missionaries in Aalborg met with considerable opposition in the beginning and in 1851–52 the saints in Aalborg were subject to much persecution and mobbing. On one occasion their meeting hall was almost destroyed and many of the local saints were ill-treated by the mob. Nearly all the windows in the private dwellings of the saints were broken. From Aalborg missionaries were sent into all the surrounding country districts, where a number of branches were established. When the Aalborg Conference was organized in 1851, the city of Aalborg was made its headquarters, and the branch was for many years one of the most flourishing branches of the Church in Europe.

Aalborg Conference

AALBORG CONFERENCE, Danish Mission, consists of Latter-day Saints residing in the northern part of the Jutland peninsula, Denmark, and contains four organized branches of the Church, namely, Aalborg, Brønderslev, Frederikshavn and Hjørring, with headquarters in Aalborg. Aalborg Conference was organized Nov. 16, 1851, with Christian Christiansen as president; it consisted of the northern half of the Jutland peninsula, but when the Vendsyssel Conference was organized in 1852, and the Aarhus and Skive conferences were organized in the summer of 1857, the boundaries of the Aalborg Conference were changed. About New Year, 1864, the Skive Conference was discontinued, and its former membership partly added to the Aalborg Conference, while all of Vendsyssel was added to the Aalborg Conference in 1868. Since that time the Aalborg Conference has consisted of all that part of North Jutland which lies north of the Limfjord, as well as the islands in said fjord and also the so-called Himmerland which extends south as far as Hobro and the Mariager Fjord. Aalborg Conference constituted a part of the Scandinavian Mission until 1905, when it became a part of the Danish-Norwegian Mission; since 1920 it has belonged to the Danish Mission.