MORTENSEN, Hans Peter

1844 - 1891  (46 years)  Submit Photo / Document

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• Name	MORTENSEN, Hans Peter
  Birth	30 Mar 1844	Bjørup, Systofte, Maribo, Denmark
  Gender	Male
  WAC	3 Dec 1879	SGEOR
  _TAG	Reviewed on FS
  Burial	8 Jun 1890	Parowan, Iron, Utah
  Death	5 Jan 1891	Parowan, Iron, Utah, United States
  Headstones	Submit Headstone Photo
  Person ID	I20136	Joseph Smith Sr and Lucy Mack Smith
  Last Modified	19 Aug 2021

  
  

  Family ID

  F10668

  Group Sheet  |  Family Chart

  
  

  Family	HADDEN, Louisa ,   b. 19 May 1850, Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, Iowa, United States Council Bluffs, Pottawattamie, Iowa, United Statesd. 20 Oct 1941, Parawan, Iron, Utah, United States (Age 91 years)
  Marriage	11 Mar 1868
  Family ID	F10659	Group Sheet  |  Family Chart
  Last Modified	24 Jan 2022

  
  

• Photos		James Applegate
  		Applegate's, Munson's and Reynold's shared home swept away by the Hatchtown Dam Flood in 1914
  		At least one living or private individual is linked to this item - Details withheld.

  
  

• Notes

  The family had a great desire to gather with the Saints in the Salt Lake Valley, but they were too poor to emigrate together. In consequence Anne Margrette would emigrate in 1855; Bodil would emigrate in 1856 with family friends Jens and Elsie Nielson; and Bodil´s parents Niels and Maren Kirstine, along with her brother Hans Peder and little sister Maren would emigrate in 1857. Although Jens and Elsie Nielson had money from the sale of their farm to travel by wagon, they decided to travel by handcart and share their proceeds to assist others without sufficient means. Thus, in 1856, Bodil would travel with Jens and Elsie Nielson and their son Niels to the Salt Lake Valley in the Willie handcart company. Many unforeseen events would occur along the way, which would delay this company and cause them to travel too late in the season. Hans Peter (Nielsen) Mortensen was born on 29 March 1844 in Systofte, Maribo, Denmark. The stirrings of the revolutionary year 1848 left Denmark with a liberal constitution (1849) providing for freedom of religion, without the repressive backlash that numbed much of the rest of Europe. However, even in Denmark the local citizens often banded together and persecuted those who joined the Church. I feel this may have increased the pressure on the saints to immigrate quickly to seek safer circumstances, sometimes even when they lacked the means to buy passage to Utah. Peter’s parents were baptized 12 Nov 1852. Peter was ten years old when his older sister, Ane Margrete Nielsen, sailed from Liverpool on the Ship ‘James Nesmith’ on 7 January 1855. She arrived in Salt Lake City on September 7 1855. All of the children were named Nielsen in Denmark because their father’s name was Niels and they were still using patronymics to determine last names. In about 1856 the children changed their last name to Mortensen, the same last name as their father, because after their immigration to America that is what they would use. In 1856 Peter’s younger sister, Malene Bodil Mortensen, departed, planning to join her sister in Utah. Bodil was only 9 years old (10 years old when she died) and traveled with the Jens Nielsen family. Bodil died in October, 1856 at Rocky Ridge, Wyoming. She was with the Willie handcart company when they were caught in a blizzard. She died with her arms filled with brush she had gathered for the fire. The story of the brave 10-year Bodil Mortensen is well know in Church history. Peter and his parents did not learn of her death until they arrived in Utah in 1857. Peter and his parents and youngest sister, Maren (Mary), sailed from Liverpool April 25, 1857 on the Ship ‘Westmorland’, Captained by Robert R. Decan. There were five hundred and forty-four Saints on board, of whom five hundred and forty were from the Scandinavian Mission. The other four Saints were Mathias Cowley, Lorenzo D. Judd, Henry Lunt, and George W. Thurston, returning missionaries from Great Britain. Mathias Cowley was appointed president of the company with Henry Lunt and O. N. Liljenquist as his counselors. The emigrants had sailed from Copenhagen, Denmark, on the steamer ‘L. Hvidt’, on the eighteenth of April, in charge of Hector C. Haight, then presiding over the Scandinavian Mission, who accompanied the Saints to England. Arriving at Grimsby on the twenty-first, they continued the journey by rail the following day to Liverpool. The voyage across the Atlantic Ocean lasted thirty-six days, during which time the usual good feelings, harmony and union characteristic of Latter-day Saint emigrants prevailed. An old man and two small children died on ship board and five couples were married. One child was born. It was named Decan Westmoreland for the captain and for the ship. On the thirty-first of May the company arrived at Philadelphia, where the emigrants were received by Elder Angus M. Cannon who, in the absence of John Taylor, acted as emigration agent at that port. (Here they learned of the assignation of Parley P. Pratt and of Johnston’s Army on its way to invade Utah.) The necessary arrangements for the continuation of the journey were quickly made, and on the second of June the company left Philadelphia for the West. Traveling by rail via Baltimore and Wheeling they arrived in Iowa City on the ninth of June. Three children and a brother from Bornholm, Denmark, died while journeying by rail. Most of the emigrants crossed the plains immediately in Captain Mathias Cowley's wagon train or Christian Christiansen's handcart company. The remainder, who lacked means to continue the journey to the Valley, stopped in the States in order to earn money. (Millennial Star, Vol. XIX, p.313, 411, 445; Morgenstjernen, Vol. III. p.52.) Peter’s family arrived in Salt Lake City in the summer of 1857. They saw Johnston's Army while they were crossing the plains.. The family had been scheduled to go to Brigham City, but they changed and went to Parowan where their friend, Niels Jensen had gone. Bodil was with the Niels Jensen family when she died. I learned from a story on file in the Old Rock Church Museum in Parowan that when Peter’s mother learned that Peter’s sister, Bodil Mortensen, had died in the Willie handcart company that she pined greatly and didn't live long. She died on 24 Feb 1862 in Parowan. They were living in a dugout while their home was being built in town, on the lot where the Seminary was built years later. Before his mother died, his father hired Elizabeth Carson Lewis to come take care of his meat, render lard, etc., and wash and care for his children. His father married Elizabeth Carson Lewis in 1863 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. According to an account in the Old Rock Church, on Tuesday 17 Dec 1961 one ‘Peter Mortenson’ hauled the first load of rock for the building of the Old Rock Church. (There were two Peter Mortensens in Parowan.) Our Peter was seventeen years old at that time. The other was crippled. Peter grew up and married Emma Adair. Emma Adair is a first cousin to Peter’s step-mother, Elizabeth Carson Lewis Mortensen. According to an account in the Old Rock Church, they had two children, Peter and Mary (Maren?). I heard from Aunt Barbara (my father’s sister) that Emma left Peter under the pressures of polygamy and went to Nevada. The 1870 census shows an Emma Adair, age 23, living in Eagleville in Iron County, Utah. Also listed in the same home is a 4-year-old girl named Mary E. Adair and a 17-year-old girl named Julia Adair (Could this be Emma=s sister?) The census did not list Emma’s son, Peter, in that household. My PAF file shows that Emma died on 27 April 1872. (I have no source for that information.) I have not been able to learn more about Emma Adair. There are many prominent Adairs in the Church. Peter married his second wife, Louisa Hadden, on 11 March, 1868. The 1870 census shows Peter, a laborer, married to Louisa and they are listed with a one-year-old boy named Peter A. (Alonzo). The 1880 census shows Peter and Louisa with 5 children including my grandfather, Joseph Reuben, as a two-year-old. Peter and Louisa lived in Parowan the rest of their lives and raised their family there. Peter died of sugar diabetes on 5 January 1891, when my grandfather, Joseph Reuben, was only 13 years old. We are not sure what Peter did for a living nor how he served his community. In Parowan I heard that he may have been an artist and painter. I find it characteristic of my ancestors in this generation that little is known of them. I believe that life was not easy as they quietly lived out their lives in a constant struggle against illness, economic hardships and some Indian troubles. (I could almost write, ‘Life was tough, then they died’). Much of what we know of this generation we piece together from the stories of their better-known pioneer parents. This untitled watercolor (copied here in black and white) was painted some ten years after the sea voyage, in 1867, by C.C.A Christensen. He did so from memory, and except for the star on the sail, and a few other small details, this painting is noted as being correct for the ship Westmoreland. (As was stated later by a fellow passenger on the 1857 voyage, possibly Nicolai Sorensen. See http://www.sorensenfamilyhistory.org/journey_west/westmoreland.htm)