Photograph of Reverend Bernt J. Muus c.1880. Muus was a leading nineteenth century Norwegian-American Lutheran clergyman whose legal and personal clashes with his wife, Oline Pind Muus, led the couple to court in the early 1880s.
Divorce in Minnesota's nineteenth century Norwegian-Lutheran community was a rarity. Legal separation between a leading pastor and his wife was unheard of. But an 1879 court case in Holden Township led to both those outcomes, and triggered a public debate about married women's legal rights.