The efforts of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, organized at Neenah, Wisconsin, in 1872, have been several times directed deliberately to the organization of new Danish colonies, always, of course, with a view to strengthening the church or to carrying out some of its peculiar ideas. Of the four colonies,--in Shelby County, Iowa, in Lincoln County, Minnesota, in Clark County, Wisconsin, and in Wharton County, Texas,--that in Iowa is the most noteworthy and successful. Soon after 1880, the church secured an option on a tract of 35,000 acres in Shelby County from a land company. In return for 320 acres to be given by the company to the church for religious and educational purposes when one hundred actual settlers were secured, the church promised to use its influence to secure settlers for the whole tract. The company agreed for three years time to sell only to Danes at an average price of $7 per acre, for the first year, with an advance not exceeding $.50 per year for each following year. The end of the first year found more than the required number of settlers, the church received its grant, and still maintains its worship, a parochial school, and a high school, in a community which numbers about 1,000 Danes. The other colonies have been less successful.[140] [140] Bille, _History of the Danes in America_, 26-28; A. Dan, "History of the Danish Evangelical Lutheran Church in America," in Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, I, 166-171. The Danish element in America has always lacked unity and solidarity. Even in their European home the Danes possess no strong national ambition, and no national institution claims their enthusiastic and undivided support. The Danish church, or churches, has gripped its immigrant sons and daughters less closely than similar organizations among the Swedes and Norwegians. It is estimated that only one out of fifteen of the Danes in the United States belongs to some church, while one out of five of the Swedes, one out of three and one-half of the Norwegians, and one out of three of the total population of the country, is connected with an ecclesiastical organization.[141] [141] Nelson, _History of the Scandinavians_, II, 49.