page_title: Johan Augustinussen
section_title: Mayor
hierarchical_section_title: Johan Augustinussen / Local offices / Mayor
caption_attribution_description: Norsk bokmål: Nesnas fem første ordførere. Fra kommunestyresalen i Nesna
context_page_description: Johan Augustinussen, also written Augustiniussen, was a Norwegian curate/choirmaster, teacher and politician.
  Despite a lack of formal education, straight after his confirmation he was appointed as the communal school teacher in his native village of Nesna, and at the young age of 22, he was employed as the village's teacher and choirmaster, a position he held for almost 50 years. He also wrote poems and folk songs, and was very interested in music.
  Johan Augustinussen became the first mayor of Nesna in 1838. He was mayor for a total of 14 years. He also held a number of other positions in the local community, and represented the county of Nordland in parliament for eight terms from 1848 to 1870. Only Sivert Nielsen sat more terms in the Storting for Nordland county during the 19th century. He was politically aligned with the farmer's alliance, led by Ole Gabriel Ueland. Initially, like Ueland, he supported Søren Jaabæk and Johan Sverdrup, but Augustinussen sympathized more with central parties after a while, as Jaabæk and Sverdrup moved in a more radical direction.
context_section_description: The Formannskap laws were passed in 1837 and effective from 1 January 1838. Each prestegjeld would constitute a formannskap (formannskapsdistrikt). The prestegjeld in Nesna consisted at that time of Nesna and Dønnes sockens, and Johan Augustinussen was one of the three members in the first formannskap in Nesna. The other two were Johan Abrahamsen from Nesna and Johan Friderich Buch from Dønnes. The minutes from the first formannskap meeting are brief:
  On 8 July 1838 were the undersigned members of the formannskap for Nesna prestegjeld gathered to choose a mayor; to which Choirmaster Johan Augustinussen was elected, and to the position of Vice mayor Johan Abrahamsen was elected for Nesna.
   Thus is witnessed by [Signed Johan Augustinussen, Johan Abrahamsen, Johan Friderich Buch]
  Augustinussen had since 1830 been a teacher and choirmaster, and in that capacity also a member of the school commission. In 1835 The Medicinal Journal for Helgeland reported that he had also been engaged as an assistant to the district doctor Johan Friederich Winther in the vaccinating against smallpox. He was 30 years old when he was elected as mayor, and was mayor of Nesna for terms, from 1838 to 1848 and from 1850 to 1854. Only two subsequent mayors of Nesna, Elias Olsen and Arne Langset, have served for an equivalent period. During his first term, the mayoral office was considered an office of trust; the herred often made decisions on the wording, but "it is left to the mayor to make them necessary". This is also shown as the herred was summoned for the first time on 20 October 1839, fifteen months after the mayoral election. The mayor did not seem important enough to take a person out of work unnecessarily.
caption: From the mayoral gallery in the municipal hall in Nesna. As first mayor Augustinussen is furthest to the left in the picture. The next four are Fredrik Christian Sand, Elias Olsen, Jacob Fredrik Zahl and Carl Jøsevold.
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