Marcus Møller Thrane (1817-1890) was the leader of the first organized labor movement in Norway. After a few years as an office worker and a teacher, Thrane began his campaign to improve conditions for Norway’s industrial workers and for the husmann, cotters, who were their rural counterparts. He used his platform as editor of the Drammens Adresse newspaper. In 1848, he founded the Drammen Arbeiderforening, Drammen Workers’ Association, which quickly grew to around 300 local affiliates and 30,000 members around Norway. 

Thrane advocated for universal voting rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and measures to close Norway’s 19th century wealth gap. The 1848 February Revolution in France was an inspiration for him, but for the authorities in Norway, it was a source of worry. They kept a close watch on Thrane and his labor movement. In 1851, they arrested him based on rumors that he’d been fomenting revolution during a labor conference. The charges did not hold up to scrutiny. Records show that judges knew Thrane was innocent of any crime, Still, they sentenced him to prison, and in all he spent eight years there. 

Thrane immigrated to the United States in 1863, where he renewed his work as an editor and archivist. He started the short-lived newspaper Norske-Amerikaner (1865-1866) and a philosophical and religious monthly called Dagslyset (1866-1878), both in Chicago. Thrane clashed with the Norwegian Lutherans, which led to a war of printed words. The church published “Advarsel til Alle Kristne,” A Warning to All Christians, in 1866, condemning the socialist ideas in Thrane’s Norske-Amerikaner. His response was slow coming (1881), a sharp satire of the Wisconsin Synod Lutherans that he titled Den Gamle Wisconsin Bibelen, The Old Wisconsin Bible. 

His son Arthur had followed him to America and became a physician at Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1868. Arthur D.H. Thrane and his wife, Amalie Struck, move to Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Together they had eight children, several of whom became professional musicians. Their children include: Victor, Ella, Irma, Dr. Marcus M., Robert, Lucile, and Arthur David Thrane. 

Photographs, letters, and manuscripts of members of the Thrane family, including: Dr. Marcus Thrane of Hood River, Oregon and his siblings Victor and Robert, and son Marcus Cecil. Their great grandfather was Marcus Møller Thrane, a radical reformist and socialist in Oslo who spent a number of years in prison in Norway for his views.