West Paint Creek Synod Cemetery Association to host a “Music in the Country” open house event July 12 at West Paint Creek Church

West Paint Creek Lutheran Church in rural Waukon will be the site for “Music in the Country” Sunday, July 12, a musical event featuring Alan & Roxy Fauque, a saxophone and piano duo, from the Madison, WI area. Beginning at 2 p.m. and hosted by the West Paint Creek Synod Cemetery Association (WPCSCA), ice cream, bars, and coffee will be served in the church’s newly remodeled fellowship/dining area, located at 1351 Elon Drive.

Alan and Roxy Fauque moved to Wisconsin from Bozeman, MT. They perform together at social events and as contemporary worship musicians, displaying their considerable musical background in many other avenues.

Roxy once prepared 126 sixth graders to perform a premier composition at Carnegie Hall in New York City. She also was honored with a Yale Distinguished Music Educator award. Upon arriving in Mount Horeb, WI, she taught music in the schools there for four years.

Alan has performed in a myriad of venues and genres. He is currently a member of the “All That Jazz” big band, well as a classic rock band called “Whoz Playing”.

FOUNDATIONAL BEGINNINGS
Drive east of Waukon 5.5 miles for the event - or anytime - to be taken back to March 10, 1891. This church and cemetery property of 1.17 acres that includes a .597-acre cemetery was donated by Peter Paulson and his wife Sophia Ericksdatter (Bakkum) Paulson on that date.

The church was built by local parishioners who were expert carpenters and carvers, in 1892. After differences in doctrine and pre-destination in liturgy, of the traditional Norwegian Lutheran Churches, devout church members split away from their former church to a new church, one mile north.

In 1910, 900 people of Norwegian descent migrated to Allamakee County, many still first generation born in Norway. These sturdy pioneers raised strong Norse sons and daughters and the Allamakee prairie at that time was covered with beautiful deciduous trees and Eastern White Pines. Eastern native white pine trees still surround the church on the east side near Maud Road, and to the north side on Elon Drive.

These Norwegian immigrants left Land, Oppland, Flyke county, Norway, their homeland and modeled this church after what the church members left in Norway. This church is a simplified version of the Carpenter Gothic Style with lancet arched windows, gable-front roof, and strong vertical elements with the bell tower and spire. This church and cemetery is the only Norwegian Evangelical Lutheran Synod church within the immediate area and carried a rich legacy of 135 years of hard-working Norwegian farmers, wives, and families.

ALTAR PAINTING
Inside the church is a beautiful altar painting by Herbjorn Nilson Gausta, (born in 1854), who painted the scene of Jesus with the angels and the Roman centurion soldiers. Gausta was a popular itinerant Norwegian painter in the Upper Midwestern states of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin for painting Lutheran church altarpieces.

Gausta was born on the Gausta farm in Mael Parish, in the municipality of Tinn, in Telemark County, Norway. In 1867, Gausta immigrated to America with his parents and four sisters, settling on a farm near Harmony, MN. He entered a training program for parochial schoolteachers at Luther College in Decorah in 1872, but then left three years later with a stipend approved by the community of Decorah to study art in Europe. Gausta studied at Knud Bergslien’s Academy of Art in Olso and attended the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich, Germany.

He returned to Decorah and taught at Luther College during the 1886-1887 academic year while living with Pastor Ulrik Vilhelm Koren, (the first pastor of the Paint Creek congregations), and his family, at the Washington Prairie parsonage near Decorah.

Later, Gausta began painting full-time and moved his studio to Minneapolis, MN, where he supported himself principally by painting portraits of prominent Norwegian Americans and producing altarpieces for Lutheran churches. His landscape and genre paintings were well-received, particularly those painted during his early years. He left an early record of immigrant life in his portraits and paintings, and he helped establish a place for art in the culture of Norwegian Americans. There are almost 60 paintings by Gausta in the Fine Arts Collection of Luther College.

He was later offered a teaching position at the University of Minnesota where he worked until his death in 1924. Gausta, who never married, is buried in Harmony, MN, alongside a 16-foot granite monument that was erected in his honor in 1927.

A NOTED TREASURE
March 7, 2019, this Carpenter Gothic or Rural Gothic property was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

As one walks outside and inside in the church and cemetery today in 2026, one does not see the tall prairie grass or any strapping young farmer splitting logs into fence posts, since the wooded forests have long since been cut down and used for cropland. One sees modern farms and homes with modular farm outbuildings replacing the traditional red or white barns of yesteryear, but the rural nature and agricultural use of the land is still intact.

Folks, old and new, move to Allamakee County, Iowa to experience the quiet and serenity of small-town living at its best. The views from the church and cemetery are breathtaking, as one can see for miles around the beautiful rolling hills.

WPCSCA COMMITTEE AND ITS MISSION
The WPCSCA committee started out in 2017 with members Greg Gilbertson, Jan Thies Dennison, Karen Anderson Soper, Margaret Anderson Hermeier, Gloria Sander Payne and Jon Michael Payne, and Mel Anderson. In 2020 the committee added five new committee members: John Alan Anderson, Jane Stock Regan, Daryl Hansmeier, Bryan Willger, and Barb Kruger Hanson. The committee’s mission is: “Preserving and maintaining our past for future generations.”

Since 2017 the committee has held many fund-raisers and received wonderful donations made from families and friends, to improve and maintain the church and cemetery grounds.

Additional information about the “Music in the Country” open house event will also be advertised in a future edition of The Standard.

To read the full article, pick up the Wednesday, July 1, 2026 print edition of The Standard or subscribe to our e-edition or print edition by clicking here.