Nelson, David Theodore

David Theodore Nelson was born in Hillsboro, North Dakota. His parents were both from Norway and emigrated to the United States with their parents.

David Nelson graduated from Mayville High School in 1908, entered the University of North Dakota and transferred to Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, after one year. He received his B.A. degree 1912 and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. When he left for Oxford in September 1914, the war had already broken out in Europe. After the fall term at Oxford, he joined The Commission for Relief in Belgium, a project started by Herbert Hoover. After almost a year's absence he returned to Oxford only to leave again for Paris in December 1915.

He signed up at the Lycée Pasteur in Neuilly on December 21, 1915 and soon joined Section 1 in Beauvais. He served 4 months in Picardy, among others, with V. G. White, E. and H. Townsend, J.F. Brown, J.M. Sponagle and C.P. Winsor, and W.Y. Stevenson. During his time the section was quartered in Jaulzy, Vic-sur Aisne and Méricourt. He was released on April 28th and returned to Oxford in May, 1916, to complete his studies.

He returned to the United States in April, 1917, when he entered the U.S. Army and became an officer in the intelligence service. In November 1918 he was sent to Paris to work with the American Commission to Negotiate Peace. He came back to the United States in July 1919.

"His planned term at Oxford turned into a five-year adventure due to the war that had begun that summer" is stated in the foreword of the Letters and Diaries of David T. Nelson, 1914-1919, compiled and edited by his son John P. Nelson in 1996.

After the war, he worked for a year in New York with Guaranty Trust Company; was for a time a reporter for the Chicago Herald Examiner, and for a time president of O. Torrison Co., in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. He also was a teacher in Hannaford and Bisbee, North Dakota, and at Mayville State Teachers College before he became a member of the faculty at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa, in 1922.

Link to The Papers of David Theodore Nelson at Luther College Archives