Portrait from the 1921-22 Iowa State Redbook.
A one-term member of the Iowa State House of Representatives from Humboldt County, Omen Nervig was a transplant to Iowa from Wisconsin, being born in the town of Moscow on November 22, 1868. A son of Ole and Ingeborg Nervig (both Norwegian immigrants), Omen Nervig resided in Wisconsin until the age of fourteen, whereafter he moved with his family to Faulk County, South Dakota. In 1893 the family relocated to Iowa, settling in Lake Township in Humboldt County.
In March 1905 Omen Nervig married in Eagle Grove, Wright County, Iowa to Sophie J. Smith. The couple would be married for over forty years and had four children born to their union: Irma (1906-1982), Ethel Nyline (1908-1990), Orville James (1913-2004), and Mildred Ileace (1916-2002).
Remarked as being a "farmer by occupation", Omen Nervig was a member of the local farm bureau and in 1920 became the Republican candidate for the Iowa State House of Representatives from Humboldt County. In November of that year, he defeated his Democratic opponent Lorenzo William Housel (a former Connecticut state representative and future candidate for Iowa Governor) by a wide margin, 3,183 votes to 996. Taking his seat at the start of the 1921-23 session, Nervig would serve on the following House committees: Agriculture, Compensation of the Public Officers, Constitutional Amendments, County and Township Organizations, Dairy and Food, Horticulture, Institute for the Feeble-Minded, and Motor Vehicles and Transportation.
Following his one term in the legislature, Nervig returned to Humboldt County and in 1933 began serving as the treasurer of the Lake Township Board of Education. Shortly before his death, Nervig was admitted as a patient at the Lutheran hospital in Fort Dodge, Iowa, where he died on January 2, 1948. His wife Sophie survived him by eleven years and following her death in 1959 was interred alongside him at the Trinity Lutheran Cemetery in Hardy, Iowa.
Portrait courtesy of www.legis.iowa.gov.
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