Frederick Walter Vasenius

Provided by: Kit Collings

My grandfather, Frederick Walter Vasenius was born on Nov. 3, 1873, Tuusula, Finland to Maria Fredrika (Skogster) and Albert Fredrick Vasenius. His grandfather once had a large estate, which nowadays is divided among numerous children grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Vasenius attended elementary schools in Helsinki and took a navigation course for 1st mate (Swedish), Helsinki, 1899-1900. He worked up the ranks to become a clipper ship captain. How he met Irene Barsokevitz and the two of them were converted to Seventh Day Adventism is lost to history. Frederick felt he could not do his duty as captain of the Clipper ship if they came to port on the Sabbath. Perhaps because he had functioned as the ship's doctor (usually the duty of the captain) he decided to come to America to attend George Washington University, Medical College where he received a medical degree.

Dr. Vasenius returned to Helsinki where he married Irene Barsokevitz on October 10, 1909. They sailed for Africa landing at Asmara, Eritrea, with plans to be medical missionaries.

Vera (her niece) told my folks that Irene sold tickets in the railway station in Helsinki. She also said she had chestnut brown, curly hair, greenish brown eyes, a beautiful singing voice, was jolly and cheerful. Anna-Lisa wrote that her sister had liked children and used to buy things for her.

While this account was not written by Vasenius, but one of the missionaries who arrived at about the same time and worked with them at the mission pens it. "The slow ship on which we traveled took the better part of a week to reach Massaua, a seaport said to be the hottest on earth. Many subsequent visits to this spot have convinced me that it lives up to its reputation. Stores and offices in Red Sea ports are open only in the early morning and late afternoon. From ten or eleven o'clock until three or four the dazzling white streets, hot with quivering air, are deserted. One wonders how Europeans can live in heat like that: but houses in the hot coastal lowlands are usually built of heat-resisting materials, such as concrete or masonry.

"The narrow-gauge railway from Massaua to Asmara is a marvel of modern engineering. The track spans deep ravines and threads its way along narrow ledges where chasms drop off several thousand feet to the valley below. At the time I arrived in Massaua, the railway had been completed to Nefasit, where passengers ate lunch in the albergo before continuing on the journey in a charabanc drawn by several teams of strong mules. There were relay stations on the narrow, dusty roads, where fresh teams were exchanged for the tired animals.

"I found the air becoming cooler as we climbed to higher altitudes, and before long we put on all the clothes we had with us. Banks of clouds rolled down the mountainsides like a misty waterfall. When we reached the top of the plateau, the clouds disappeared, and we soon found ourselves in sunny Asmara, where I was welcomed by Pastor Anol Grundset, who had arrived with his family some months earlier. Two other workers, Missionaries E. N. Lindegren and J. Persson were at the station to greet me, I shared temporary lodgings with our mission direction, L. R. Conradi, and Dr. and Mrs. F. W. Vasenius, during the special committee meetings in which the mission work was organized and planned."

The director of their group, "Pastor L. Conradi was the primary leader of the (SDA) church in Europe, with headquarters in Hamburg. He was possessed of a vigorous missionary spirit and in the early years of the 20th century inspired the rapidly growing churches in Germany and Scandinavia, including Finland to be involved with missionary work. For the greater part the Germans went to German colonial territories, including Tanganyika, and Scandinavians went to countries in the Middle East. They planned to commence work in Ethiopia, which they expected would be shortly opened from missionary service. This is where your grandparents entered into the picture."

"Settling near Asmara, the missionaries allocated much time to the native language. Only after several contacts with the Italian governor in 1909, permission for the erections of a station was obtained. All attempts by the Finnish physician Dr. Vasenius to acquire permission for the establishment of medical work in Aksum, Adua, Harrar, Djibouti, or other parts of Ethiopia were in vain." Vasenius may have been the choice to negotiate because of his education or because of his experience as a captain where he learned nine or ten European languages.

Irene wrote her niece from Asmara, Eritrea, on August 3, 1910. While the postcard is written in Swedish, undoubtedly it tells of her pregnancy. A son, Aarne Elias Vasenius, was born to them on September 27, 1910.

"The Italian authorities did not grant our request, suggesting instead that we buy a place in or near Asmara. The committee purchased two farms located near one of the main highways leading to the city from the south. Since our mission appropriations were small and strictly limited, we set to work doing everything ourselves. Our energetic superintendent, Pastor Grundset, and Dr, Vasenius worked on the scaffold with the rest of us until the mission compound, consisting of two dwellings, a school building, workshop, stables and good well had been completed. Even the stones for foundations and walls were quarried by us. ...In spite of all my care to boil the milk-sometimes all over the stove-I came down with a severe attack of dysentery, which weakened me so I could scarcely crawl out of bed. Dr. Vasenius had gone on a tour, and, since I was absent from work, my friends thought I had gone with the doctor. When he returned and heard that I had not been seen for some days, he called and found me weak and emaciated from dysentery. With his good care I was soon on my feet again."

"The promise entry into Ethiopia being delayed, they were transferred to Tanganyika to a circuit of mission stations that had recently been opened in the area of Musoma on Lake Victoria. They probably traveled by boat to Mombasa, and thence by rail and road to Musoma. Dr. Vasenius is listed as being at Ikizu, where a school had been started, part of the time, and at Buseqwe, part of the time. The latter is about half way between Ikizu and Musoma.

"The mission was provided with a schooner to ply on the lake. Manuscripts were prepared for a dictionary, a hymn book, the four Gospels, and for primers in the various districts."

"In 1909, among the first resident missionaries in Eritrea (now Ethiopia) were two medically trained person, V. E. Toppenberg, a nurse, and Dr. F. W. Vasenius, a physician from Finland. They established the first S.D.A. mission station in Ethiopia on an old Italian homestead one mile out of Asmara, but there is no record of their medical work. They both later transferred to the Victoria Nyanza Field (Tanganyika) and it is recorded in 1912 that Dr. Vasenius gave more than 800 treatment to the sick in Buseqwe District, but health care was not clearly not their principal work.... We have pathetic cases of women coming to our missions to give birth to perhaps their sixth or seventh or even ninth child, not one of the previous ones being alive.... Occasionally the mothers come (back) to show their child, and a great portion of them give their hearts to God." Tanganyika was German East Africa.

But not all of Dr. Vasenius' patients were downtrodden. One woman was married to an East Indian trader. The husband paid for the delivery and medical services with an African gray parrot. They named the parrot, Polly who learned to mimic the human voice perfectly. When people sat down to eat she said, "Our kind, heavenly father," in Dr. Vasenius' voice. She called, "Doktor," like the German who came to play chess or checkers.

Another one of their neighbors was a British officer who had a gramophone sent to him. He told the doctor he didn't like it and after looking at it Fredrick decided to buy it from him. The next time the officer came to the mission Dr. F. Vasenius offered to play some music on it. The officer stammered and turned red-faced. When the gramophone played beautifully the doctor explained that he had taken the packing out.

One day a group of excited natives arrived to request Dr. Vasenius help to bag a man-eating leopard. Whether Vasenius did not take off the safety or the gun bearer was slow to give him the rifle is not known. At any rate the leopard charged and clawed the doctor's face. He went back to the mission and sewed up the cuts with the help of a mirror and a kerosene lantern. Vasenius built a microscope even grinding the lenses that is still being used in the mission in the 1960's-perhaps they still are. The doctor successfully treated his son's malaria and the Vasenius' had a second child in 1912, a girl they named Oune. She died a few months after she was born and was buried under a favorite tree at Ikizu. Frederick had told Irene how much he loved her during a rainstorm when they stood under that tree. Also Irene developed Black Water Fever and died the same day as her daughter, January 22, 1913, and was buried next to her daughter.

World War I was heating up and while the natives had raided the mission from time to time, now there was a new threat. "Missionaries experienced major difficulties during the 1914-1918 war and were moved from place to place." "When the British forces advanced into Tanganyika in 1914 ...most of the SDA missions in Lake Province were looted and destroyed." Reportedly the mission where Dr. Vasenius lived was the worst hit.

"The German district officer moved his headquarters and archives to the Ikizu Mission, where there was more room... When the British forces made landings on the shores of Lake Victoria, they seriously threatened the German positions.... With the exception of Dr. Vasenius in Ikizu, we (Toppenbergs) were the only missionary family left to look after a dozen mission stations... We (Toppenbergs) arrived and visited with the doctor and the German official as they prepared to leave.... Finally we told Dr. Vasenius that unless further dangers appeared, we felt that we should return to our station. Therefore the next morning before the German officers and the doctor were ready to start out on their retreat south, we turned back in the opposite direction."

How he ended up with the Brit's instead of serving with the Germans is unknown. But he became a 1st Lieutenant in the British Army in charge of a military hospital in Bukoba, British territory, from 1916-1918. During that time Aarne was placed with a Dutch Nanny in South Africa. One of his playmates was Ian Smith who became prime minister of Rhodesia. After the war was over Dr. Vasenius was in service for the South African Government. He did not want to go back to Finland because his son would have to go to school there on the Sabbath. Finally, in the spring of 1919 he found a tramp streamer that would take them to America. If they could not stay there, the ship would take them on to Europe.

The crossing was difficult for Aarne who did not have his sea legs and "fed the fishes" as they teased him when he threw up over the side rail.

Dr. Vasenius would remarry and have two more sons and practice medicine in Chisholm, MN. Just after Vasenius bought a ticket to go and visit family in Helsinki he went out to shovel snow and had a heart attack. He died several days later on April 23, 1956.