Aalborg 1853 · Moroni 1857

Niels and Christiane Christensen — Handcart Pioneers of 1857

They sailed from Copenhagen in April 1857 with three small daughters, crossed to Philadelphia aboard the Westmoreland, and walked west from Iowa with the seventh handcart company. Andrea died on the plains. The rest reached the Salt Lake Valley on the thirteenth of September. Niels Jr. was born at Mill Creek two years later, and eight more children followed at Moroni.

Christiane Jeppesdatter and Niels Christensen. Restored and colourised from the family’s original photograph.

All twelve of those children were written up properly once: Niels & Christiane Christensen: Danish Pioneers of 1857, 344 pages, presented at the family meeting in 2007. This site is not yet that book. Two of the twelve carry full narratives here, preserved from the family’s first website in 1997; the other ten are dates and records until the 2007 history is brought online.

The parents

Married 18 January 1853 · Ålborg, Nordjylland, Denmark
Caroline, the first of the twelve, was born there that November.

Twelve lives on one scale

Each bar is one life, drawn against the same century. The five short ones are the reason this family’s story is usually told in a single sentence. Select a bar to read that child’s page.

Start here

• The Twelve ChildrenAll twelve, in birth order, with everything the family and the records hold.
• The CrossingDenmark to the Salt Lake Valley, 1857, and the move south to Moroni.
• Family MeetingsThe 1997 and 1998 gatherings of the descendants.
• ContributeTen of the twelve have no family narrative. Five named gaps you may be able to close.