Peter Niels Hansen, From Denmark to Sanpete County

W welcome other histories of Peter Neils Hansen and of his children and other descendants and will be more than happy to post them on this or other blogs.

PEDER NEILS HANSEN

Verla Davidson (wife of Raymond Davidson, who is son of Amasa A. Davidson) is entering this on the computer July 6, 1990. She found three versions of this history, which Raymond and Verla had copied from records of Amasa A. Davidson years before. Two of these versions are close enough so that they have been combined into the following version (Version 1), and the third (Version 2) is entered separately because
it is quite different from the other two.
The first paragraph of the first version has been deleted but copied back in by HLD at the end of the first version for reference's sake. HLD
VERSION 1:
"Compiled, from old records and bits of memory of those who knew him, By Fenno and Amy Casto (great grand-daughter), August 21, 1933."
"Copy of material supplied by Mary Lamb to her niece May Mower of Fairview. This was supplied me(Who--Amasa A. Davidson?) by Amy Casto her daughter. December 4, 1949"

A TRIBUTE TO AND BRIEF HISTORY OF PEDER NEILS HANSEN
June 9, 1833
BORN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO, June 9, 1933

Peder Niels Hansen's mother, Inger Pederson (or Pedersen), was of French Descent. She was married at the age of twenty-five in the year 1829 to Niels Hansen who was then twenty-six. They were both born in Denmark and lived there until Neils died in 1853 and his wife with the children joined the Latter Day Saints church in 1855 and shortly thereafter came to America, arriving in the latter part of 1855 or the early part of 1856.
Inger Hansen and her five children: Christine twenty-five; Peder Neils Hansen, nearly twenty four; Anna, nineteen; Bertha, sixteen; and Emma (listed Inger in some records), ten, went right to Iowa where they joined with the body of the church. They traveled from Iowa to Florence, Nebraska, a distance of three hundred miles, with handcarts in the last Handcart company. [if this is accurate then they had come form Europe on the ship Horizon, and they traveled to Nebraska with the Martin handcart company] At Florence the mother, Inger Hansen, and her daughter, Christine, died, It seems to be a combination of good judgment and inspiration that Peder and his three younger sisters stayed the winter in Nebraska and came to Utah the following year 1857
Upon their arrival in Utah the four children were given homes with different people, two of which we have no record. The other two, Emma and Peder Neils, went to live at the homes of President Brigham Young and Lorenzo Young. Peder Neils only stayed with Lorenzo Young a short time. He left him and located in Ephraim in the year 1858. Then in 1860 he was called to help in the settling of North Bend (later Fairview). He helped in the building of the fort; took part in the Black Hawk War; and then bought him a farm, built a dugout and farmed until he, with others, were called in the early part of 1862 to take their ox teams and go to Far West and meet a party of emigrants.
It was on this trip that he met his future wife, Marie Jensen. She was the Daughter of Hendrick Jensen and Maren Gotlip. Maren Gotlip was a foundling on the doorstep of the Gotlips, who were wealthy people. With her was a note saying that the mother would call later and claim the baby (girl). The clothes in which the child was found indicated that she was from a family of the better class.
The mother never called to claim the baby so Maren was legally adopted by the Gotlips. In 1836 Maren was married to Hendrick Jensen and to this union was born eleven children, the oldest of which was Marie. In 1851 Hendrick joined the church and in 1852 his wife came into the fold. At this time the Gotlips claimed such an act on the part of Maren was a disgrace so they disowned her, and she changed her maiden name from Gotlip to Johansen. In 1853 Marie joined the church and a few years later came to America. Her parents also migrated to America (Utah, according to another record) a little later (a few years later, according to above-mentioned record). Marie came to America as a companion to a rich old lady who also had joined the church. On the way over Cholera broke out on the ship and the old lady contracted it and died. Due to lack of wind the ship, a sailing vessel, was becalmed and they were eleven weeks on the ocean. They ran out of food and water and all they had to live on for days was ship biscuits with no water to drink.
When Marie finally arrived in America she was entirely alone except for a girlfriend she met on the ship by the name of Anna (Anne, according to other record). These two made their way to Missouri where they joined the Emigrant band that Peder Neils Hansen had come to meet. When Peder Neils saw Marie, he asked her to ride in his wagon to Utah. She said that she would but also told him to let the older ones and children ride. She and her friend Anne walked all the way across the plains. They had but one pair of shoes each so they walked barefoot and carried the shoes. When they arrived in Salt Lake City, Marie and Anna were sent to Fairview with Peder Neils Hansen. They were the only ones of the Company to be sent to Fairview and when they arrived they knew no one and had no place to go.
Peder Neils was a very kind and sympathetic young man as was his friend Joseph Biswick. Each young man had his little farm and a dugout to live in, so they offered to marry these two girls and give them a home, such as it was. Peder Neils Hansen married Marie, and Joseph Biswick married Anna.
Being asked years later if she just married Peder for a home, Marie answered, "What chance did I have to think of love? I had left my lover in the old country to join the church and come to Zion. And here I was without a home or friends, and so when Peder offered to share his with me, and knowing as I did from my short acquaintance with him that he was a nice and respectable young man, I was thrilled to accept his proposal. And it was after we were married that we thought about love and came to know that we really loved each other."
The dugout in which Marie went to live in was oblong in shape, having four divisions or rooms in a line. It ran East and West with the doorway at the West and a fireplace at the East. On each side of the fireplace were two openings that served as windows, and the roof was made of mud. The East room was kitchen and living room, the next were bedrooms and the West one a sort of storage place. To get in and out of the dugout they had to go up and down dirt steps.
The winter during which their first child was born was a very rainy one. It started raining in January and continued to rain throughout the month of February. The baby came on the tenth of February 1863, and at that time the dugout was almost a pool of water caused by the rain leaking thru the roof and running down the steps. They dug a hole at the bottom of the steps for the water to accumulate in, and as the hole would fill up the nurse, Annie Cox, and Peder Neils would take turns carrying the water out; but the steps soon became too slick to get up and down, so one of them would have to stand at the bottom and dip the water up while the other one would take it and empty it out.
While crossing the plains Peder Neils had killed a buffalo and had the hide made into a robe. Annie Cox said that this robe, which was used to cover over the mother and babe to keep them dry, was the only thing that saved their lives. The baby was a girl and they named her Mary.
About a year and a half later, on September 24, 1865, a son was also born in the dugout, and they named him Peter Henry. About a year later they started building their first house. It was made of adobe and it had four rooms with a hall running thru the house from the east to the west, leaving two rooms on each side. Due to the fact that they had to make and dry their own adobe bricks and make all their lumber by hand, it took over two years to complete the house. During this time another boy was born (August 28, 1867) in the dugout. They called him Joseph.
When the house was completed they moved in and lived there until they died. In this home six more children were born. Emma, February 27th, 1869; Celestia, April 23, 1871; Annie Elizabeth, May 27th, 1873; James Edward, July 3, 1876; Nels, April 8, 1881, and Inger Marie, March 7, 1882.
Peder Neils and his devoted wife were faithful church workers all their life and they always had time to attend to their religious duties even though they had to work long and hard on their farm. Peder Neils Hansen was very active in civic and social affairs of the town and contributed greatly to the success of its several enterprises. He helped in the building and establishing of the co-op store of which he was a Director. He was also a member of the City Council and took a very active part in school matters. In brief, it may be said that he was an outstanding citizen, an able leader and an ardent worker.
His useful life came to an end February the fourteenth 1895 and his wife passed on to join him in the great beyond fourteen years later on the seventh of September. Thus ends the record of a noble character and his help mate.

Notes by Amasa A. Davidson
The dugout mentioned was built half underground and half of or as a log cabin. It had a dirt roof.
****When the indians were on the warpath and the people were called into the fort, Marie would not go but stayed in the dugout which Peder locked so that it would look as if no one were there. He would take his turn standing guard at the fort and then come home to his wife. Marie spun yarn from wool and wove it into cloth for clothes. She had a big dye kettle in one corner of the kitchen which was used for dying cloths, for heating water to wash and for soap making. In later years she wove blankets, and carpets but she had two spinning wheels which she kept till she died.****When Peder met Marie at the Missouri he met and asked Marie to ride with him to Utah. She said Yes which meant that she would marry him when she got to Utah but she walked all the way and would not be with him in order that the others might not talk about them. She had him haul# old folks. ****From old friends I learned that Peder was always thoughtful and considerate of his wife. But she would never let him tell her that he loved her. She was bitter because her sweetheart threw her down when she joined the Church. She told me that she was sorry that she had not been a more loving wife for Peder. ****Peder married a young girl as a polygamous wife in later years at the behest of the Bishop but when he took her to Marie he had to take the girl back to the Bishop. Marie refused to live in polygamy.****Peder brought his wife's folks to Utah. That is, paid their way.

"It is very appropriate at this time that we pay tribute to our progenitor, Peder Neils Hansen, who was born one hundred years ago last June the ninth, (1933); but it seems to me that the greatest tribute that we can pay to him would be to all raise our right hands as an evidence that we promise to strive harder to find the genealogies of his ancestors and do the work for them. This would be the supreme tribute that we could pay him at this time ".


VERSION 2:
A TRIBUTE TO, AND BRIEF HISTORY
1833 OF PEDER NIELS HANSEN, BORN ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO 1933 Given at 1933 reunion by Amy Mower Casto, his great granddaughter
NOTE: The following history, including corrections made in October, 1965, was obtained from:
(1) an interview of Amy Mower Casto and her husband, Fenno B. Casto, with Mary Hansen Lamb at her home in Wales, Utah in the spring of 1933;
(2) information given by Anne Elizabeth Hansen Davidson, the sixth child of Peder Niels Hansen (Anne Elizabeth was the founder of the Peder Niels Hansen Family Organization. In June, 1931, she invited Mary Mariah Mower - a granddaughter of Peder Niels - and her daughter, Amy Helena Mower, to her home and proposed the organizing of the reunion. She said, "Mary, I want you to head the reunion and push it because you have a deep feeling of the importance of doing genealogical and temple work for our ancestors". She added, "I wanted Amy here because after we are both gone, I'm sure she will continue this important work");
(3) information obtained from Carl Nielsen, the husband of Inger Marie Hansen, the youngest of Peder Niels Hansen's children;
(4) the family record of Henrick Jensen, the father of Peder Niels Hansen's wife, Marie Jensen;
(5) a visit in 1933, to the family home of Peder Niels and Marie Hansen, which had replaced their dugout home;
(6) records of original Danish research between September 1934, and June, 1936 by Thorvald Hatt (These original records and the book arranged therefrom by Ovena J. Ockey of the Genealogical Society of Utah are, in 1965, in the possession of Amy Mower Casto, Holladay, Utah.);
(7) pages 119 to 132 of the book, "These - Our Fathers - A Centennial History of Sanpete County 1849 to 1947" published by the Daughters of Utah Pioneers of Sanpete County in 1947.
Peder Niels Hansen's mother, Inger Pederson, said to be of French descent, was married at the age of twenty-five in the year 1829 to Niels Hansen who was then twenty-six. They were both born in Denmark and lived there until Niels died in 1853 and his wife with the children, joined the Latter-day Saints Church in August, 1855 and shortly thereafter came to America, arriving in the early part of 1856.
Inger Hansen and her five children, Christine, twenty-five; Peder Niels, nearly twenty-three; Anna, nineteen; Bertha, sixteen; and Inger, ten, went right to Iowa where they joined with the body of the Church. They traveled from Iowa to Florence, Nebraska, a distance of three hundred miles, with handcarts in the last Handcart Company. At Florence, the mother and her daughter, Christine, died and in the year
1857, the remainder of the family crossed the plains to Utah.
Upon their arrival in Utah, the four children were given homes with different people, two of which we have no record. The other two, Inger and Peder Niels, went to live at the homes of President Brigham Young and Lorenzo Young. Peder Niels only stayed with Lorenzo Young a short time. He left him and located in Ephraim in the year 1858. Then in 1860 he was called to help in the settling of Fairview. He helped in the building of the Fort; took part in the Black Hawk War, acquired a 20-acre farm and a city lot, and built a dugout on this lot.
In the early part of 1862, he, with others, was called to take their ox teams and go to Far West and meet a party of emigrants. It was on this trip that he met his future wife, Marie Jensen. She was the daughter of Hendrick Jensen and Maren Johansen. Maren Johansen was a daughter of Johan Gottlib Vilhelm, a foundling, adopted by Mr. and Mrs. Hans Jorgensen, thereby becoming Johan Gottlib Wilhelm Hansen.(The Danish researcher reports Johan was illegitimately born in Copenhagen about 1785 and his parents' names unknown, also that as a baby he was left outside the City Charity house from where he was obtained by the Hans Jorgensen family.)
Maren Johansen was born 30 Oct 1811 which was three years before her parents, Johan Gottlib Vilhelm Hansen and Dorthe Fredriksen were married. In 1836, Maren was married to Hendrick Jensen and to this union was born eleven children, the oldest of which was Marie. In 1851, Hendrick joined the Church and in 1852, his wife came into the fold.
In 1853, Marie joined the Church and a few years later came to America. Her parents also migrated to Utah a little later. Marie came to America as a companion to a rich old lady, who had also joined the Church. On the way over, cholera broke out on the ship and the old lady contracted it and died. Due to the lack of wind, the ship, a sailing vessel, was becalmed and they were eleven weeks on the ocean. They ran out of food and water and all they had to live on for days was ship biscuits with no water to drink. When Marie finally arrived in America, she was entirely alone except for a girl friend she met on the ship by the name of Anna. These two made their way to Missouri where they joined the emigrant band that Peder Niels Hansen and the others had come to meet. They walked all the way across the plains and carried their only pair of shoes. When they arrived in Salt Lake, Marie and Anna were sent to Fairview with Peder Niels. They were the only ones of the Company to be sent to Fairview and when they arrived, they knew no one and had no place to go.
Peder Niels was a very kind and sympathetic young man, as was his friend, Joseph Biswick. Each young man had his little farm in the big field on the south of Fairview and a dugout to live in, so they offered to marry these two girls and give them a home, such as it was. Peder Niels married Marie and Joseph married Anna.
Being asked years later if she just married Peder for a home, Marie answered,"What chance did I have to think of love? I left my lover in the old country to join the Church and come to Zion. And here I was, without a home or friends, and so when Peder offered to share his with me, and knowing as I did from my short acquaintance with him that he was a nice and respectable young man, I was thrilled to accept his proposal. And it was after we were married that we thought about love and came to know that we really loved each other."
The dugout, on the city lot, which Marie went to live in was oblong shape having four divisions or rooms in a line. It ran East and West with the doorway at the west end and a fireplace at the east. On each side of the fireplace were two openings that served as windows, and the roof was made of mud. The East room was kitchen and living room, the next were bedrooms and the West one a sort of storage room. To get in and out of the dugout, they had to go up and down dirt steps.
The winter, during which their first child was born, was a very rainy one. It started raining in January and continued to rain throughout the month of February. The baby came on the 10th of February and at that time the dugout was almost a pool of water caused by the rain leaking through the roof and running down the steps. They dug a hole at the bottom of the steps for the water to accumulate in and as the hole would fill up, the midwife, Annie Cox, and Peder Niels would take turns carrying the water out; but the steps soon became too slick to get up and down, so one of them would have to stand at the bottom of the steps and dip the water up, then the other would take it away and empty it.
While crossing the plains, Peder Niels had killed a buffalo and had the hide made into a robe. Annie Cox said that this robe, which was used to cover over the mother and babe to keep them dry was the only thing that saved their lives. The baby was a girl and they named her Mary.
A year from the following September, a son was also born in the dugout, and they named him Peter Henry. About a year later, they started building their first house on their lot at 2nd South and 1st West in Fairview. It was made of adobe and it had four downstairs rooms with a hall running through the house from the east to the west
leaving two large rooms on each side. It also had two attic bedrooms on the west side (the front). Due to the fact that they had to make and dry their own adobe bricks and cut all their lumber by hand, it took over two years to complete the house. During this time, another boy was born to them in the dugout. They called him Joseph.
When the home was completed, they moved in and lived there until they died. In this home, six more children were born. Two were boys: James Edward and Nels; and four were girls: Emma, Celestia, Annie Elizabeth and Inger Marie. Peder Niels and his energetic wife were devoted parents and faithful Church workers all their lives. They always had time to attend to their religious duties even though they had to work long and hard on their farm.
Marie became a very talented weaver. She carded wool and spun it into yarn. She dyed the yarn many bright colors and hues with dyes she made from barks and other available items. She used onion skins and saffron for yellow, timothy hay for brown; locally grown plants for indigo blue and various items for other color combinations. Then with her eight harness loom, which her husband made, she fashioned beautiful
blankets with woven-in designs. She made cloth as needed for clothing and also made some rag rugs for the home; but as their family grew, her blankets, for which there was a great demand, became a substantial source of income for the family.
Peder Niels was very active in civic and social affairs of the town and contributed greatly to the success of its several enterprises. He helped in the building and establishing of Zion Cooperative Mercantile Institution of Fairview, of which he was a Director. It is said that the Co-op started business in Peder Niels Hansen's home on May 10, 1869. He was also a member of the City Council and took a very active part in school matters. In brief, it may be said that he was an outstanding citizen, an able leader and an ardent worker.
His useful life came to an end February 14, 1895, and his wife passed on to join him in the great beyond fourteen years later on the 7th of September. Thus ends the record of a noble character and his helpmate.
From material accumulated over the years. Assembled and put into final form by Amy Mower and her husband, Fenno B. Casto. October, 1965.