Claus Lauritz Clausen was in Acrö, Denmark, on 3rd November, 1820. After marrying Martha Rasmussen in 1842 the emigrated to the United States.

In 1843 Clausen became pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church at Heart Prairie on the shore on Whitewater Lake in Wisconsin. In 1851 he began publishing a Lutheran Church newspaper. The following year he became editor of Emigranten, the first Norwegian language newspaper published in the United States.

In Emigranten campaigned against slavery and on the outbreak of the Civil War his close friend, Colonel Hans Heg, commander of the Scandinavian Regiment, persuaded him to become its chaplain. After the war he lived in Saint Ansgar, Mitchell County. Claus Lauritz Clausen died in Austin, Minnesota, in 1892.