Pioneer Stories - The Peder & Helena Mortensen Family

November 9 was a day that Mette Mortensen never forgot. During her long life, every year on that day she reflected on her family’s journey from Denmark to Utah. Mette was 11 years old when her family emigrated as part of the Willie handcart company. November 9, 1856, is the day the company finally arrived in the Salt Lake Valley.

The Mortensen family came from the small Danish island of Møn, a beautiful place on the Baltic Sea with lush countryside and white-sand beaches. In 1856, Mette’s parents, Peder and Helena (Lena), had eight living children, ages 28 to 6. Peder was a shoemaker and a cooper, making barrels, buckets, and tubs. The family also owned a small farm and raised animals. They were well respected and relatively prosperous.

“As soon as my father and mother heard the gospel they were not very long in accepting it,” Mette recalled. When missionaries first came to Møn in 1855, Mette’s two oldest brothers, Morten and Anders, went to hear them preach. Morten had been studying for the Lutheran ministry and intended to confound the elders. Instead, as he and Anders listened, they “received the spirit of testimony.” They returned home and related their experience to their family. Within a short time, all of them were converted, feeling that they had “found the precious gem sent from heaven.”

After joining the Church, the Mortensens were shunned and persecuted. “It began to create a feeling of hatred towards our family, and persecution began to reign to quite an extent and our lives and property were endangered,” recalled Lars, who was 12 at the time. The family decided to sell their home and farm in Denmark and gather with the Saints in Utah. On March 31, 1856, only about a year after they had first met the missionaries, they said farewell to their beloved home and sailed up the Baltic Sea to Copenhagen. As one family historian wrote, “All that meant security and home to them was gone.”

Leaving their home was the first of many sacrifices the Mortensens would make. While they were in Copenhagen for a few weeks, waiting to continue their journey, the Scandinavian mission president asked them to make another sacrifice. Lars recalled, “It was deemed that my oldest brother [Morten] should remain and preach the gospel.” Anders said that when this request was made, “[our] feelings could hardly be described. ... [We] had forsaken friends, relatives, and now were asked for the eldest son to be left and separated from [us], perhaps never again to be together in this life.”

The thought of being separated was difficult for this closely bonded family, but an even greater worry was that they would need Morten for the long journey ahead. “Our family was not in a very good condition for such a journey,” Lars wrote. Peder had been crippled by an accident in his youth and suffered from rheumatism. The oldest daughter, Kirstine (Stena), had a bad knee. The two youngest children were nine and six. Could they make such a difficult journey without Morten’s help?

The family gave the request serious thought and prayer. Seeing their concern, the mission president told them, “If you will consent to his staying and filling a mission, I promise you in the name of the Lord that you shall, every one, reach the land of Zion in safety [and] that God will protect you on land and on sea.” Anders said that when this promise was made, the family all said, “Amen.” The money that had been paid for Morten’s passage was used to pay the way for Bodil Mortensen, a young girl from another family.

With approximately 160 other Danish Saints, the Mortensens left Copenhagen on April 23, 1856. This group went by steamship to Kiel, Germany; by train to Hamburg; by steamship across the North Sea to Grimsby, England; and by train across England to Liverpool. On May 2, Mette’s 11th birthday, the Mortensens went to the docks in Liverpool and boarded the Thornton. Two days later they set sail for America.

On June 14, after a six-week voyage, the Thornton arrived in New York City. Most of the passengers then traveled to Iowa City, which was the Church’s new outfitting site for handcart and wagon companies. There the Mortensens made another sacrifice. The proceeds from the sale of their property were sufficient to buy a wagon and oxen for the journey west, and that is what Peder intended to do. As Mette recalled, however, her father was “promised by those in authority if [he] would come with the handcart company and help others to come, that not one of the family should be lost.”

 

Although it was difficult to give up a wagon, the Mortensens shared their means to help pay the way for others and joined the Willie handcart company. Anders was asked to drive one of the company’s six supply wagons, and Peder and Stena were allowed to ride in the wagon because of their difficulty in walking. That left Lena and 19-year-old Hans as the only adults in the family to pull the handcart. They were helped by 13-year-old Lars and 11-year-old Mette; 9-year-old Mary and 6-year-old Caroline walked much of the way.

In Iowa City, the Willie Saints spent three weeks preparing for their journey. During that time the Mortensens helped build handcarts, sew tents, and gather provisions. Finally, on July 16, the company was on its way. “The children were happy” during the first part of the journey, Mette recalled. “We thought only of the new home we were going to.” However, Mette was also saddened that her family had to trade and discard fine china, bedding, and other treasured items because they had to lighten their load. Nine-year-old Mary had a pair of fancy slippers that she loved. She promised her mother that she would carry them every step of the way if she could keep them. Mary soon became fatigued, however, and left the slippers on a rock beside the trail.

After nearly a month of pulling their handcarts across Iowa, the Willie company arrived in Florence, Nebraska Territory. There they rested for a few days, repaired handcarts, and obtained supplies for the last 1,000 miles of the journey.

The Willie company took 45 days to travel the 522 miles across Nebraska to Fort Laramie. Mette described the night when a terrible thunderstorm and buffalo stampede resulted in the loss of 30 head of cattle. Most of these were oxen that pulled the supply wagons, and their loss was a severe setback that slowed the company’s progress. This loss seriously affected the Mortensen family as Peder and Stena were no longer able to ride in a supply wagon and had to be carried on the handcarts.

The Willie company reached Fort Laramie on September 30. They were dangerously low on food, so they reduced their daily ration of flour. Two weeks later they had to reduce rations again, with children receiving only six ounces of flour a day. The hunger “was hard for me to understand,” Mette said, “for we always had plenty of good food at home.”

The hunger also took a toll on other family members. Mette recalled, “As we neared the mountains, suffering became intense, especially from hunger and cold.” Mette’s younger sister Mary begged her mother to give her all the food she could eat just once and said she would never cry again. In what Mette described as the family’s darkest hour, one day Hans pulled the handcart off the trail and lay down beside it, telling his mother he couldn’t go another step. “We children stood by crying, thinking of the terrors in store for us,” Mette recalled. Ever resourceful, Lena searched through the handcart and found a little brandy she had kept to use as a medicine, mixed it with water, and gave it to Hans with a crust of dry bread. “Be brave, my boy,” she said. “We must go on.” By the time they got going again, the other handcarts were far ahead. The Mortensens didn’t reach camp until after dark, but Mette was happy that this crisis had passed. “Oh! how thankful we were,” she said.

With food so scarce, Lena planned and managed wisely to keep her family going. She baked small biscuits and kept them in the pocket of her apron to give her family throughout the day. “Mother would cook and fix [the flour] in some way so that we got the most good from it instead of giving each their portion of raw flour as some did,” Mette recalled. Once when her children were starving, Lena remembered that an old pincushion she had brought from Denmark was filled with bran. “With joy, she tore it apart, mixed the bran with the dough, and baked the bread which was eaten with relish,” a family history records.

Peder was likewise resourceful in helping his family. Using his skills as a shoemaker, he oiled pieces of shingles and attached them to worn-out shoe tops so his children’s feet were somewhat protected when the soles wore out.

The Willie company faced their most trying day on October 23, when they climbed Rocky Ridge during a fierce snowstorm. Some of the people traveled all day and night, finally arriving in camp at 5:00 a.m. Thirteen people died from this ordeal and were buried in a common grave at Rock Creek. Mette recalled with admiration the service of her exhausted brothers, who “helped shovel the snow and picked the frozen ground” to dig the grave. Mette also recalled a gesture of great generosity and respect from her mother at this time. Lena helped wrap the bodies of those who died and used one of the last of her “hand woven linen sheets [to help cover the bodies] before the dirt was put in.”

Two days earlier, on October 21, a small group of rescuers had arrived to help the Willie company, and on November 2, when they reached Fort Bridger, there were finally enough rescue wagons that everyone could ride. “We were helped the last miles of the journey into Salt Lake but after what a lot of suffering,” Mette said. Despite this suffering, the entire Mortensen family survived. The promises they had received in Denmark and again in Iowa City were fulfilled. Lars wrote that the family’s faith in these promises and their determination to serve the Lord were “ever a stimulant to press on through trials and difficulties to the end of our journey”

Reflecting on her experiences in the Willie handcart company, Lena said: “We had to have stout hearts and great faith in meeting these great trials. ... We wept as we went on our journey. We went before the Lord and pleaded for him to make good the promises which were given us by his servants when we were in old Denmark. How we implored Him to raise the sick and give us strength to carry our burdens without complaints.”

More than 70 years later, when Mette was in her 80s, she wrote or dictated a recollection that was written on the back of Parowan Stake Relief Society letterhead. Even after all those years, she began with a reference to November 9—the day she arrived in the Salt Lake Valley: “As the 9th day of November arrives each year, in memory I am taken back over the trip that was made from my home in Denmark where I was born ... to Utah and the land of Zion.” Although Mette acknowledged great suffering during the journey and also during the years of pioneering that followed, in another narration she concluded with these words of affirmation: “My faith has never changed,” she said, and “I am happy my home is with the Saints.”

Kathryn Mortensen Harmer, a great grand-daughter of Lars Mortensen said this of her ancestors: “In thinking about my beloved Mortensen Willie handcart family, I think first of my great-grandfather, Lars Mortensen. He turned 14 during his journey across the American plains. Lars was reportedly the kindest man anyone knew, according to my own father, Arlington Russell Mortensen, and others. It would seem that all the normal negativity of life was removed as Lars pulled his handcart under heartrending conditions. Surely as Elder Jeffrey R. Holland said of our pioneers, “They did it because the faith of the gospel of Jesus Christ was in their soul; it was in the marrow of their bones.”