Family Meetings

The descendants have gathered three times — 1997, 1998 and 2007 — and the ten-year plan set at the first meeting was carried out.

13 September 1997 · East Mill Creek

Roughly 120 descendants gathered at the East Mill Creek Chapel — near where the family lived for its first two years in the valley, and exactly 140 years to the day after they walked into it. Every family line with living posterity was represented. A descendant of each line reported on their ancestor, and Geneil Mower Taylor presented her research on Niels and Christiane themselves.

The meeting distributed a book of family history and genealogy gathered from descendants, agreed to form a family organisation, and set itself a ten-year horizon: the sesquicentennial of the arrival, 13 September 2007.

Descendants gathered at the first family meeting, September 1997

The first family meeting — East Mill Creek Chapel, 13 September 1997.

22 August 1998 · Provo

A second meeting followed the next summer, in a conference room offered by Jerrol Syme, a descendant of Christena. The first version of this website was created out of these two gatherings.

22 September 2007 · Provo, and the book

Ten years on, the descendants met again at Provo on Saturday 22 September 2007 — and the book agreed on in 1997 was presented complete.

Banner reading: Welcome to the Niels and Christiane Christensen 150th Anniversary, September 13 1857 to September 13 2007

The banner at the door: September 13 1857 — September 13 2007. The gathering was held on the Saturday following the anniversary itself, as the 1998 meeting had been.

Published 2007

Niels & Christiane Christensen
Danish Pioneers of 1857

David S. Christensen · Geneil Mower Taylor · Amy Oaks Long

344 pages. The book drew on research by Amy Oaks Long, on Geneil Mower Taylor’s earlier work on Niels and Christiane, and on material submitted by family members about the lines they descend from.

The day

The gathering, photographed together in the cultural hall.

A man speaking into a microphone beside the stage, the portrait of Niels and Christiane propped on the stage edge and a Danish flag hung at the end of it — Presenting to the meeting, with the portrait of Niels and Christiane propped on the edge of the stage and the Danish flag hung at the end of it.

Copies of the book stacked on a table at the front of the hall, beside a framed painting on a stand — Copies of the book on a table at the front, beside a framed painting.

Two life-size cutout figures of Niels and Christiane seated in chairs beneath a banner reading Families Are Forever — Cutout figures of Niels and Christiane seated at the front, under a banner reading “Families Are Forever” and a sign naming them the guests of honour.

Four photographs from that afternoon. All forty-two are on the photographs page, numbered so that the people in them can be named. If you know who is in them, or what a picture shows that the caption misses, please tell us — the captions describe only what is visible.

See all forty-two photographs from the 2007 meeting →

What was set in 1997, and what came of it

A published history of the familyDone. 344 pages, presented at Provo in September 2007, in the year it was written for.
Further genealogical researchDone, and still going. Much of it now sits in FamilySearch’s public tree, which did not exist in 1997. Two dates on this site were corrected from those records in 2026 — see Sources.
A family organisationProposed at East Mill Creek and carried far enough to produce the book. Whether it was ever formally constituted is not recorded here.

An idea for 2027. 13 September 2027 falls 170 years to the day after Niels and Christiane walked into the Salt Lake Valley, and twenty years after the book was presented. It is being floated, not planned. If a fourth gathering appeals to you, say so — info@christensenfamily.org.

Photographs and recollections from 1997 and 1998 are still wanted for this page.