Carl Sandburg was ten years old when the pastor of the First Swedish Lutheran Church died of pneumonia. The Reverend Carl A. Beckman, in his coffin at the church, was the first dead person the boy had ever seen.

Afterward, several clergymen were brought in to preach and seek the approval of the congregation. One was a young man named Carl A. Nyblad. He had been born in Sweden and attended Augustana College. Some members of the church believed he had a spiritual quality in his face. Others were not so sure of that.

Shortly before his selection, a bastardy suit was filed in Knox County against Nyblad. The young woman filing the suit had lived in the same household. Sandburg and his friends went to the trial at the Knox County Courthouse. Nyblad was acquitted, but the congregation of the First Lutheran Church decided not to call him to their pulpit.

Nyblad organized a new church, which he called Elim. The name meant refuge in the desert. A number of families moved to the new congregation. Services were held in a hall on South Broad Street. It had few characteristics of a church.

Members of the new church helped to establish it by contributing money, labor and time. The basement of the new church was constructed at the corner of Kellogg and Ferris Streets. Several men, including Victor Larson, signed promissory notes to finance its construction.

Some time before 1895, Nyblad left Galesburg. Three years later he returned as the rector of St. John's Episcopal Church in Galesburg. About six years after that, he moved with his family to Chicago. The members of the Elim church were left with a number of debts.

Carl Sandburg's memories of Carl A. Nyblad were bitter. He had seen a man take advantage of poor Swedish families to establish a new church over which the pastor could preside, but he provided little in the way of solace when the families needed it.

Sandburg saw a man who smoked cigars on his way to teach the confirmation class of which the lad was a member. He perceived Nyblad as a man who was proud and lazy. Nyblad spent most of his sermons raging against the Salvation Army, which nobody could understand.

Mr. and Mrs. Sandburg didn't go back to the First Lutheran Church. They occasionally went to the Swedish Methodist Church or the Mission near their home. Mostly, they read the Bible and kept faith with the God they had learned to love as children in Sweden.

Carl Sandburg affiliated with no church the rest of his life.