Ola Hanson

Ola Hanson (June 25, 1864, in Åhus, Sweden – October 17, 1929, in St. Paul, Minnesota) was a Swedish-American missionary who worked with the Kachin people in Burma.

Hanson came to the United States in 1881, settling in Oakland, Nebraska.

[1] Hanson was sent to Kachin State in 1890 by the American Baptist Missionary Union to help William Henry Roberts, who was running a Kachin mission in Bhamo city, and was followed in 1892 by George J. Geis, who established a mission at Myitkyina.

His team formulated an orthography for the Kachin language using the Latin alphabet, and created a grammar and Katchin–English dictionary.

After living with the Kachin people for 28 years, he returned to his native Nebraska in 1928.