Denmark to the Salt Lake Valley, 1857.
Niels Christensen was born in Lyby, in Viborg, in April 1832. Christiane Jeppesdatter was born the following summer in Lem, some miles away. They married at Aalborg on 18 January 1853, and their first daughter Caroline was born there that November. Andrea followed in 1855 and Christena in March 1857.
They left Denmark that spring, with three daughters under four. On 18 April 1857 they sailed from Copenhagen aboard the steamer L. N. Hvidt, bound for England. There they boarded the ship Westmoreland, which landed them at Philadelphia on 31 May 1857. On 3 July they set out from Clear Creek, Iowa, with the seventh handcart company, led by Christian Christiansen.
The family’s record of the overland journey is contained in one line: Niels Christensen, wife Christiane and 3 daughters in this company. Andrea died 6 August.
The company reached the Salt Lake Valley on 13 September 1857, thirty-eight days after Andrea’s death. They settled at Mill Creek, east of the city, and stayed roughly two years — long enough for Niels Jr. to be born there in May 1859. Then they were sent south to help settle Moroni, in Sanpete County, where the growing season was short and the water was never enough. Everything that follows in this family happened there.
Married at Aalborg
Caroline, the first of the twelve, is born there that November.
Copenhagen
They sail aboard the steamer L. N. Hvidt, bound for England.
Philadelphia
Landed from the ship Westmoreland.
Clear Creek, Iowa
They set out with the seventh handcart company, led by Christian Christiansen.
Andrea dies on the plains
Not yet two. Her marker stands in Moroni City Cemetery; the register records the plot as “On The Plains.”
The valley
Niels, Christiane, Caroline and the infant Christena arrive — two of the three daughters who left Denmark in April.
Mill Creek
Niels Jr. is born there in May — the first of the twelve born in America, and proof of where the family still was that spring.
Moroni
Eight more children are born in Sanpete County. Four of them die there small.
Christiane dies
She was fifty-one. Heber, the youngest, was five.
Niels dies at Moroni
Aged sixty-eight, seventeen years a widower. Buried in Moroni City Cemetery.
The twelve children, in birth order, are on The Twelve Children.