Caroline Pederson Hansen Autobiography

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CAROLINE P. HANSEN

I, Caroline Pedersen Hansen, was born September ), 1859, at Bindslev SognHjorring county, Denmark. I was the second child in the family. One, sister, Bine was two years and five months older than me.

My father's name was Christian Pedersen, and my mother was Jensine Christine Sorensen. My parents joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints three years after I was born. They were baptized the 21st of August 1862.

In the year 1866 they emigrated to Utah. By that time there were two morechildren in the family, one a boy named Peder and my baby sister Ida, Just a little over one year old.

We boarded the Sail Ship Kennilsworth at Hamburg, Germany, May 23, 1866. The ship sailed north on the east of England, to go up north of Scotland. We had fierce
head-winds and were driven back out of our course until at one time we could see the mountains up in Norway.

We were just sixty days on board that ship. Towards the last the water we had to drink was full of white "wrigglers." There was lots of sickness and a number of people died and were buried in the sea.

The last day on board a steamship came out and met us and we were placed on itand it took us to land. This ship took us to New Haven, Connecticut, where we arrived on the morning of July 18, 1866. We stayed there only a few hours then were placedon a train. History tells me that we went through Connecticut, Massachusetts andVermont to Montreal, Canada. We rode in cattle cars part of the time. The road was on the north side of the St. Lawrence River. At one time part of the train jumped the track, but none of our people were hurt. When we were across in the United States again we had better train service. But while we were passing through the State ofMissourithe people were very bitter against us. Our train ride ended July 29, 1866at a place called Wyoming in the state of Nebraska. There were Church teams there waiting for us and we soon began our trip across the Plains with Ox Teams. But while we were there getting ready to leave we found it very hot, and I remember my father building us a hut out of brush to shade us from the heat. I remember I got so sunburned I could peel the skin off my arms.

My brother Peder was sick most of the way. My father and my sister Bine were made to walk most of the way. One day the teamster told us all to get out of the wagon and walk because the roads were so bad. My brother was too sick to walk and too big to carry, so we Left him in the wagon. When we were going into camp we glanced back and saw a man coming along carrying something heavy, and it was my brother. The teamster had put him out of the wagon and this man had found him lying by the side of the road under a bush. Then, one morning I woke up and my father and mother were sitting by the bed crying. My brother was lying there beside me dead.

Some days after that, when father and sister Bine were walking, there was some deep water to cross, so they were told to jump into one of the wagons. Bine happened to get into a wagon where they had Scarlet Fever. She took sick, and little sister took the fever from her. So both my sisters lay-there in the wagon together sick. I sat by them and stayed with them but did not take the fever. One afternoon father
stepped up to the wagon and asked how little Ida was. Mother said she had just been snoring and sleeping so good. But father said, "Well, look at her." And mother did so and found she was dead. Sister Bine died just eight days before we reached Salt Lake City. Just think! Three little children wrapped in just a little piece of sheet, buried in just shallow graves and left by the wayside.

When we arrived in SaltLake my mother was so worn out with sorrow and with sitting in the wagon holding the sick children that she was so bent over she could not straighten up. People said she looked like she was sixty years old. We landed in Salt Lake Cityon September 10, 1866. We had been one-hundred-twenty-nine days since we left Hamburg, Germany, and we had left our home about ten days before that. There had been four children when we left. Now, I was the only child left.

We went out to Holliday and lived in a little adobe room a few weeks and father got a job working at a molasses mill. He got molasses for pay. He also got work helping harvest peas. When winter came we moved in with a family, the man's name was Jens Swensen. They had only one room and it was partly a 'dugout,' There was only a dirt floor, a kind of fireplace to cook over. They had one bed in one corner, and in the corner next to the fireplace was a grain bin. We used that for our bed. My father was sick and in bed most of the winter, but my mother was better and would go out and beg a little milk. The people we lived with had a cow and chickens, and they had killed a pig. Oh, I will say it was hard to cook and eat in the same room with them and us with our pea soup and bread with a little molasses.  We did get awful hungry.

One day when they were eating, the man was picking a bone and father, lying sick in bed said, "When you get through with that bone, then let me have it. So when he had picked all the meat off he whistled at my father and said, "Here, here!”and handed the bone to my father and laughed. It makes tears come to my eyes now when I think of my poor sick father have a bone handed to him like he was a dog. Those were hard times.

As soon as it came Spring my father went just north adjoining this man's place and took up a piece of land and dug a place in an old canal bank and laid some brush over it. There we lived during the summer. Father planted a little crop but grasshoppers took it all. Father and mother both went to workfor people wherever they could. In the fall father made adobes and built us a one-room house. It had a dirt roof and dirt floor. There was a fireplace and a piece of white sheeting nailed up for a window. I shall always remember the "latch string" on the outside
to open the door.

There, In that home, my brother Peter was born that winter. We were very poor,but the Relief Society, or some other good sisters brought a few nice things for little brother. The Grasshoppers were still bad the next year so father, instead of trying to plant and raise a crop, went off to work on the Railroad. The Union Pacific which was being built from Omaha, to Ogden. When father came back he had money and bought us a cow, a step-stove and a few other necessities and he brought me my first doll. It was a little china doll and the only doll I ever owned.

The next year the grasshoppers were still with us. It was their sixth year. But when they got big enough to fly, about July, they left. I remember well they were so thick in the air that we could not see the sun. Before they left they had taken nearly all kinds of crops except peas, People had found out they did not like peas so they planted peas-all who could get the seed to plant. My father had quite a patch of peas. I had to work along with my father in the field. Sometimes my mother helped too. It was while we were harvesting peas that I met for the first  time the boy who later became my husband. I was ten years old at that time and he was seventeen. He had just come from Denmark. He had long dark curly hair that hung in ringlets to his shoulders. He was bashful as anybody I ever saw. I am sure that neither of us ever dreamed of the acquaintance we were destined to make.

Among other work I had to do was to drive the cows out on the range. And to hunt them up and bring them home at night. Barefooted, I had to go for miles up on what we called the Bench, and up into the canyons where the cows would go to find a little feed.

When I was nine years old my mother had taken me down to the old Bishop, David Brinton, and had me baptized. That was on the 7th of May, 1869, before I turned ten in September. I remember one night I asked my mother to let me pray at the
family prayer. She said, "Can you pray?" "Yes", I said, and after that I took my turn in family prayer. I used to go lots of times, while a child, and pray by, myself. My parents were very faithful in attending meetings, and I enjoyed going to church with them and with one or two girl friends. I also attended Sunday School I remember so well, going with my parents to Salt Lake City to attend Conference. I had so wished that I could get close enough to President Brigham Young and to some of the Apostles to shake hands with them. They used to do that in those days. I had always been taught to have great reverence for anyone in authority. 

I attended school in the winters. There was just one teacher for the whole school. I never had the necessary books, so I only learned to read, write and spell. My mother taught me to read the Danish language. When I was fifteen my mother had a very severe and long spell of sickness so I had to quit school.

By this time the family had increased until I had four brothers, Peter, Christian, David and Heber. One night I dreamed that David was dead and it came to pass almost exactly as I had dreamed it.

In my sixteenth year I began going out to work, doing housework for families. I worked for several good families until I was nearly nineteen years old. Then it was in the early spring of the year that I went to work for the curly headed emigrant boy who I had me the first time when I was ten years old. He was now a married man and had a home adjoining my father’s place. On the occasion of the confinement of his wife, who we now call “Aunt Bengta”. I worked for her some time and shortly after that I became her husband’s plural wife-a condition which was quite common in those days. We were very happy in our innocence that day, little dreaming of the trials ahead of us which we have to endure in trying to live together in that kind of condition. We were married July 25, 1878. The marriage was performed in the Old Endowment House in Salt Lake City. We had just two small rooms to live in. Aunt Bengta was a good woman, which maybe seen in that she was willing to share her husband with me. But she proved to be a very jealous disposition, and she had a vvery violent temper. I was just a young inexperienced girl, and I came into her home to share with her, her husband and such comforts as she had. But we all wanted to do right and I thank the Lord that he sustained us and we stayed with it.

At the fall conference of that year our husband was called on a mission. In those days they used to call men without having said anything to them about it. He was sent to the State of Nebraska. He only stayed away seven months because by that tlme it was found out that we were in poor circumstances. But he had made some converts and had baptized them, and had done a good work.

He arrived back home on the 25th of June 1879 and on the 26th of July my first baby came, a girl, we named her Ida Caroline. But she only stayed with us one month, and on the 26th of August she died.

When it came winter I began to feel very much like I should like to have a
home of my own. We were still poor, or hard up from the effects of the mission our
husband had performed, and because of sickness and death in our home, I decided to
pray to the Lord about it, so as to know if it was right and best for me, and that
if it was that He should open up the way for me. I prayed about it several times
without saying anything about it to anyone and shortly my prayers were answered.

Some good old folks not far from where we 1ived had a little house where I could 1ive all to myself.   While living there I took very sick with the Measles.  My
husband and other kind hands cared for me and after getting over it I soon felt fine.

The next spring my father gave me a small piece of land, four acres, and my
husband traded my father out of four more acres and there we built a small house
all my own. My husband made the adobe.  I helped him carry them out. When that
little house was built it was only one room, but it was real nice and looked very
nice to us, to me in particular.  I shall never forget how happy I was, and as soon
as we were moved in and  I was alone I bowed down before the Lord and poured out my soul in prayer and gratitude for having a house of my own.

On July 30, 1881 another little baby girl came to gladden our hearts and
home. One more year, just three years since our husband had returned from his
first mission, he was called again to go on a mission. This was at October
conference 1882. This time he was to go to Denmark.  We were very thankful and
proud of our husband, that he was considered worthy to go on a mission.

The Lord had blessed us very greatly during those three years.  We had no
debt, not a dollar. We each had our own comfortable little home.  We were well
provided with clothing; we had our cows to milk; we had some chickens and pigs. The small farms we had gave us some income.  He had wood stacked up to last us for
two years, and we got along happily those two years, me and my little girl who we
called Signora.

My husband returned home in the fall of 1884 and on the 5th of February 1886
a son came to us.  We called him Solomon because lt was a solomen time. The anti- polygamis rage was on in full fury.  Men with plural families either had to be in hiding or flee for their lives, or else they had to go to the “pen” and pay a heavy fine besides.  A lot of men were arrested, some of them serving more than one term

Aunt Bengta and I both had small babies and could not very well go with our man to Mexico, where a number of families went to escape this persecution.  We did not
want our husband sent to jail to serve for a long term, so we consented for him to take another wife and go to Mexico, and there locate and make homes for us to go to later. For some reason they did not get into Mexico, but after having nearly reached
there, were told to turn back, which they did and came back through Arizona up into Southern Utah.  There they settled in Cannonville, Garfield County. Not a very inviting place, but a place where it was thought we could live in peace.

Within another year we sold my dear little home.  I left my parents and all, and
with my two little children went with my husband and made our home in Cannonville.

The next year May 14, 1888 our next baby girl was born. We called her Dozzine
because she was my husband's 12th child.  Aunt Bengta also had a baby girl the same
day. We were increasing very fast.

Along in the summer I went home on a visit to my parents where I stayed for
nearly one year.   During this time my parents, my brother Christian and I went to
Logan, Utah to do Temple work for our dead relatives.



In July and August my little son Solomon was very sick with Typhoid Fever.  We had the Elders come in a number of times and we had the doctor for him several
times, and one night, sitting by him it looked like he could not live. I had made
my father and mother go to bed because they were so worn out. But when he looked
so bad I went and asked them to get up and help me pray for him. Mother and I
kneeled down by the bed and prayed for him while father annointed him and administ-
ered to him. He took a change right then and next morning he was much better. When my husband came from Southern Utah after me, he told of an experience he had had at the very time we had knelt by Solomon's bed. He had dreamed that he came into the room and saw me kneeling there. He came up there and saw his little son, how bad he looked, and that when my father layed his hands on the little boy's head, he too layed his hands on the head of his little son and rebuked the sickness. In the morning he made a date for he felt sure that what he had dreamed was true  and when we met we found that it was exactly the same time. We knew that through the mercies of the Lord, our faith and prayers, and the power of the priesthood our little boy had been spared.  It must not be forgotten that at the time this happened my husband was in Southern Utah, more than three hundred miles away so that he was there only in Spirit, but he always has said that he was there just as I have told it.

When I returned to Cannonville, I found that my husband had built a nice
little house for me.  He had planted some very choice fruit trees when we first
located in Cannonville, and they were now beginning to bear fruit. He was a very
hard working man and knew how to do things so we were beginning to get along very
nicely, much better than the people who lived there before we came there. Although
they were families with just one wife, some times they were jealous of us because we got along better than they.  But we all worked and helped our husband and helped on another so the Lord blessed us.

On July 13, 1890, my son Julius was born. At this time my husband was working
at taking a canal across the East Fork to take the water down in a valley three miles above Cannonville where they were starting to build a new town which they called Tropic.  There my husband built me a nice one and one-half story sawed log house.  For a long time it was the nicest house in our new town.  I moved there in the year 1892. There my husband became the Bishop of the new ward.  He also became the owner of a big saw mill.   I took turns with Aunt Bengta and Aunt Mary in going to the Saw Hill in the summer to cook for the men. Altogether I was at the mill  three summers.  I also made another trip home to have a visit with my parents.

In Tropic my other four children were born; Josephine, Heber, Martha and Joseph.  M husband’s other wives also had a number of children and we became a very
large family.   We had a good ward, the people now were doing well and were generally happy.  As a family we got along very fine.

While we were still living in Cannonville, my husband had taken a fourth
wife, Marie Frost, and though she was in Tropic a short time , she went back to
Cannonville, trading homes with Aunt Bengta who came to Tropic.

On the 15th of day of May 1901 my father died - 78 years old. A good old age when you consider what he had gone through. That fall my mother came down to visit with me  just a short time. When she went back home I went with her. It was while we were
at Marysville, on our way, where we stopped overnight we experienced a heavy earth-
quake. It was a very strange experience. Some people it made sick as well as scared them, but no one was hurt, although a lot of damage was done to houses.

While on this visit to Salt Lake I helped to do some more Temple work for our people.
This time we went to the Salt Lake Temple.

In 1904 we moved to Idaho.  My husband took me and my family up there the first year. I now had eight living children.  My oldest daughter Nora, had married and stayed at Tropic until the next year when she also came to Idaho. We located at Sugar City, Idaho, and later at Salem, where we again built a good little home and expected to stay always.  All four families came to Sugar City and Salem.

In the year 1909, on the 13 day of July we had the very great sorrow of losing our daughter Dozzine (Dosie). She was a young woman twenty-one years old, a very fine young girl. She was sick only a few days, and left us in very great sorrow.  It took us years to get over it.

We were having a. very hard time in getting along financially.

          On January 24, 1911 my mother died.  I went down to Holliday and stayed with her during  her last sickness.  She was 76 years old.  She had lived in the same place where we had moved into the "dug out" in the canal bank 43 years before.  Only now there was a very fine home, built by my people by there perservance and endless industry. They had become independent and comfortable. When my parents had passed on and left what they had accumulated to we who were left, just my brother Christian and me.  About this time my husband and Aunt Mary moved out on a dry-farm where good luck began again to smile on his efforts. They raised fine crops. He needed my boys help and they wanted to be by their father, so we, too, moved out there and done fine for a year or two. After that for two years in succession heavy winds blew our crops out.  At the same time my husband’ health broke so he couldn’t work. Our son Heber was called on a mission, so we sold our cows that kept us and moved to Oakley where my daughters Josephine and Martha were living.

While living in Oakley I put in one winter in Logan doing work in the Temple for fifty people, and for several years have done considerable visiting around with my children.

On the 25^th day of July, 1928 my husband and I celebrated our Golden Wedding Anniversary.  About ninety of the family gathered at Holiday where we had lived so long ago. We had a wonderful time, after which some of us made a trip down into Southern Utah and visited Tropic, our old home.  We took in the scenery of Bryce Canyon, and to me it was a very enjoyable time. 

This is a very brief history of the seventy-two years I have lived.  Much more could be written abou the many places we have lived, for we have moved about a good deal and I want to state that every time we made a move we always laid the
matter before the Lord, praying for his guidance and always felt that we did every-thing for the best.

We were a large family. In fact, four families in one.  Much of our time we lived among a poor class of people, Particularly at Cannonville, and it was a poor country with not much of a chance for making a living when we first went there. But the Lord blessed us in a very wonderful way many times. We were never without bread,
while some of our neighbors families where there was only one wife, came to us for flour many times. My husband worked very hard to support us all. Of course we did have some hard times, and He had our "ups and downs" still I feel that all had turned out for our best good, We have all tried to live honest and upright lives.

I hope and pray that my children will try as hard always to live right as.their father has done, for he had always tried to act justly to each one of us; to all people and do his duty in the Church, This is my testimony to you all.

In conclusion, I want to say that I KNOW THE: GOSPEL OF JESUS CHRIST IS TRUE****

It is now several years since I wrote the foregoing. I feel that I should add a little more, for s since then I have endured some of the hardest trials of my life.

      While living at Oakley my home was next door to my daughter Josephine.  We were very closely associated with each other, sharing the joys and sorrows that came our way each day. My husband lived at Rexburg with Aunt Mary, where he had become Probate Judge and a well known and loved and respected Patriarch. He sent me a monthly allowance and came to visit me as often as possible. And although the separation was hard on us both, we realized because of financial conditions we could not change.

In June 1931, Josephine's husband, Parley Scharling died, and in July my only living brother, Christian, died, leaving me the only survivor of my mother's eight hildren.

     The fall of that year, Josephine and her three small girls moved in with me. Times were very hard and she didn't have much to live on, but we helped each other. She had never had very good health even as a child, and in November she became very sick and was never well again. With the help of my other children I did what I could for her during the next year. But on November 4, 1932 my husband was called to the Great Beyond. I was sick with over work and worry and now my means of support was gone, so I was pursuaded to go to Utah and live with my son Julius and daughter Martha.

In April 1933 Josephine also passed away and although relieved that her suffering was ended it was a sorrow hard to bear.  I stayed in Utah nearly two years. Then both my daughter and daughter-in-law were expecting new babies and could not care for me. My son, Solomon, meanwhile had sold my home in Oakley and built a room for me at his place in Declo, Idaho. Here I lived during the winter of 1934-1935.   In July 1935 I came to Pocatello, and here I am. I have a room and "keep my own House" in Heber’s home.

     In January 1937 my oldest son Solomon passed away after a very short illness. This was a great trial to me, and I am greatful that I had lived with him for a few months.  His kindness to me at that time is sweet to remember.

      I am now past 81 years old and although not enjoying the best of health, I am able to care for myself most of the time.   I have my old age pension and enjoy the independence it gives me. I feel that I have much to be thankful for.   I am sure the Lord had over ruled things for my good. 

Signed Caroline Hansen

 Dearest Children:   Sitting here alone pondering on my past life. I feel like I want to put my thoughts on paper for I do feel so thankful to my Heavenly Father for all his blessings to me.  Of how my dear parents were moved upon to receive the Gospel and come here to these Valleys of the mountains, where the Lord said He would gather His people in the last days.  How can I be thankful enough to Father in Heaven that my life was spared when my brother and sisters died.   But I was permitted to 1ive and raise a family.  How glad I am when I think how faithful and true were my parents right to the last.   And I pray to the Lord every day that I may be faithful to the end.   That. when I leave this earth I may be worthy to gather
with them, and oh , that my children might all see and understand this beautiful plan of Salvation that we may meet each other there.

Dearest Children, I am also thankful that you have a good faithful father.  I do
know that he always tried his best to do right and to teach us all to live the Gospel. Children, we do know that the Gospel is true.  We feel that the Lord greatly blessed us.  Although we have not had much of this world’s goods, we have never suffered for either food or clothes. 

Caroline Hansen

Copied from her Book of Remembrance Dec. 29, 1940 by Amy P. Hansen
Recopied by Joan "Bailey" Ashby

Andrew Janus Hansen & Caroline (Pedersen) Hansen Family
Back Row: Dozzine, Julius, Solomon, Signora
Middle Row: Heber, Andrew Janus Hansen, Caroline (Pedersen) Hansen, Josephine
First Row: Joseph, Martha Ruth

Caroline (Pederson) Hansen