JENS GOTTFREDSON, PIONEER OF SEVIER AND SANPETE COUNTIES

JENS GOTTFREDSON, PIONEER OF SEVIER AND SANPETE COUNTIES
Jens Gottfredson was born in Jetsmark, Hjorring, Denmark, 9 April 1810 and was christened 15 April 1810. He scarcely knew his mother only that her name was Mette Christine, and that she was a widow, or so he thought. When he was very young he was bound out as an apprentice to learn the coopers trade. The master was very strict and grandfather became a proficient workman, first as assistant and later as master mechanic. (I remember seeing the coopers planes and other tools.)
The circumstances of his birth were not unusual at that time in Denmark. His mother had two children out of wedlock by two different men and Jens was the second of the two children, as we descendants learned fifty-three after his death, from church micro filmed records. His mother had registered his father as Gotfred Christopherson, hence the name Jens Gotfredson. It is not known how the spelling was later changed. Jens Gotfredson never knew, nor did his son Peter. Hens had his mother sealed to a man named Lars Mulli, of whom he had heard her speak kindly, and she was also sealed to Erastus Snow, apostle, as was the custom in the early days of the church if they did not know the father’s name. These sealings, of course, had to be done over after the instructions of President Woodruff. Jens never knew that his mother later married a man named Anders Thomasson and that he had two brothers and a sister by this marriage, the oldest only seven years younger than he. He was just a displaced person but he gained two fine wives and the Gospel and many descendants. He has now been sealed to his mother and the man she married.
Little other is known about his boyhood. He served in the Danish Army for six years and held the rank of corporal before he was married.
He married Karen Jensen, August 12, 1845, who was born May 23, 1812 at Westerby, Oland, Denmark. She came from a well-to-do family who kept several servants and had large buildings and barns and kept a number of teams, cows, sheep, pigs and poultry of different kinds.
The journal of his son Peter, from which more of this information is taken, says that his people all belonged to the Luthren or State Church, but were readers of the Bible and learned many things for themselves, and Jens and Karen joined the Baptist feeling it conformed more nearly with the Bible teachings.
During the early winter of 1851, two Mormon missionaries came to the house and asked to stay over night, to which Grandfather told the Mormons they were not to preach to Gospel to his wife. They thought they should not deceive him. One of the missionaries was Christian D. Fjelsted. During the evening Jens told the Mormons of the doctrine of the Baptists, or baptism by immersion, as was the method in the days of the Savior, and also other beliefs that were scriptural, with which the Elders agreed. They said, “That is not all” and opened their Bible and read and discussed doctrine this family had never heard before. They invited the Elders to come back again, which they did.
The oldest son, Peter Gottfredson, was a little lad, only five years old at the time, but he remembered these missionaries distinctly. His impression was that they were good men. The even spoke to the boy, which pleased him and made him feel important.
It was not long until the parents were converted and were baptized in December 1851, when they had to cut quite a thick ice to perform the ordinance. (By Geneological Records a Baptism by proxy was performed again in 1932.) At the time of the Baptisms and joining the church they had three children: Peter the oldest, born 17 April 1846, Hans born 4 August 1848, and Mette Christine named for her grandmother born 24 August 1850, known later as Aunt Stine Tuft. On 2 July 1852 was born another son they named Joseph Smith Gottfredson, which really caused complications. The law said new babies must be registered in the State Church, but the Priest said he would not have such a degraded name on his records. (The records show that Karen also had a daughter, Annie, born out of wedlock, 21 March 1838, who married an uncle of Mrs. Lars (Marie) Jacobsen of 365 West 6th North of Logan, Utah. His name was Jens Christian Jensen and she was the second wife. Mrs. Jacobsen’s daughter did the writing for her mother and she is Mrs. Andrew Anderson (Treenie) and lives at 295 West 5th North, Logan, Utah. It is not known if this girl emigrated or if she is sealed to the parents.)
After joining the church persecutions were heaped upon them. Jens was set apart as a local missionary and companion of Elder Fjelsted. While they were out proselyting a mob gathered and seized them and let them down a deep well in the ice old water with the long rope. They said they were “baptizing them by immersion, etc. Even Peter who was with his Grandfather in Westerby did not escape. (Tried to make him swear.)
The ambition of the parents was to gather with the Saints in America and every effort was put forth in that direction. Where they lived in Denmark the soil was very poor and sandy, having no doubt been washed up from the ocean. The native vegetation was small brush called heath, and there were wild blueberries which they gathered. The houses were few and scattered with small garden adjoining. Most of the land was unoccupied. A sluggish stream ran through the country, called Red Oe. A poor quality of grass grew along its banks where water over-flowed in the spring of the year. The fuel was mostly peet or turf, a sod dug out of bogs in square blocks and laid on the ground to dry. It was mostly decayed vegetation, and served the purpose very well. There was not much money.
The mother arranged to have Peter go to Westerby in the fall of 1852 (age 6 years) and live with his grandmother to help them save for their future journey to Zion. His Grandfather had died and his Grandmother had married their main hired man, whose name was Peter Christian Ton. Peter called him “grandfather”. He stayed with them for almost three years and learned to love them as his parents. When he went there his parents lived in a small town called Kaas, but then they moved to Aalborg, a city of considerable size, and Jens took up the business of peddling. He would buy goods at auctions and other ways and then go to the country where there were no stores and sell his wares. He bought some skates for Peter and his wife took them with her when she went to visit her people, which wasn’t often. On this occasion Peter had not seen his two brothers and sister for two years. The summer of 1855 Peter’s grandmother who had been an invalid for six years with rheumatism, died. Then Jens, in the fall, went to get his son as the time to leave was nearing. The step-grandfather had married their main hired girl and she was not as kind as his grandmother had been. Jens and Peter walked all the way from Oland to Aalborg, a distance of six Danish miles or 24 American miles.
They were prepared to make the journey to America in December. Peter was the family historian it seems, and described this journey in his journal.
Andrew Jenson – “History of the Scandanavian Mission” reads as follows:
“On Thursday, Nov. 29, 1855, a company of Scandanavian Saints numbering 447 souls sailed from Copenhagen, on board the ship “Loven”, bound for Utah, under the direction of Elder Canute Peterson, who was returning from his mission to Norway. After a pleasant journey they reached Keil in Holstein, and thence the emigrants continued their journey by rail to Gluckstadt, thence by steamer to Grimsby, England, and thence by rail to Liverpool where the Scandanavian emigrants were joined by 42 British and 30 Italian Saints and went on board the ship “John J. Boyd.”
The Jens Gottfredson family had a few days visit in Copenhagen with Jens’ older sister whose name had been Karen Kirstine Madsen, who was married to a man named Hans Jensen Trelde. They had a coffee and tea shop in the big city.
Historian Jenson quotes Elder Charles R. Savage, one of the emigrating missionaries as follows: “We left Liverpool on Wednesday Dec. 12, 1855 at 7:00 p.m. and had a fine run down the channel, sighted Cape Clear on the Friday Morning following, and had mild weather with a fair wind for two days after. During this time we had leisure to devise plans for the maintenance of order and cleanliness during the voyage. Notwithstanding that our company consists of Danes, Norwegians, Swedes, Icelanders, Italians, English, Irish, Scotch the rules adopted proved efficient in maintaining the spirit “Entente cordiale” among us all. The Saints by sound of trumpets, called to prayer morning and evening. Meetings were also frequently held in the Danish, English and Italian languages during the voyage. On the whole we enjoyed ourselves first rate, notwithstanding the gales and hurricanes we experienced, from the breaking of the fine weather in longitude 15 degrees to our anchoring off Sandy Hook.
About midway on our passage we fell in with the clipper ship “Louis Napoleon,” from Baltimore to Liverpool, laden with flour with all her masts and spars carried away and leaward bulwarks stove in. Upon nearing the ship we found her in a sinking condition. The Captain and crew desired to be taken off, which was done. This acquisition was a great advantage to us as the bad weather, sickness and exhaustion from over-work has made quite a gap in our complement of sailors. We had much sickness on board from the breaking out of measles, which caused deaths among the Danish, chiefly among the children. In the English and Italian companies we lost three children. The weather got worse after crossing the Banks, so much so that we were driven in to the Gulf Stream, three times and many of the sailors were frost-bitten. Our Captain got superstitious on account of the long passage. However, the Lord heard our prayers and I his own due time we arrived at our destination. On the evening of the 15th of February, we were safely anchored having been 66 days out of Liverpool.
“Our supply of water was almost exhausted. We had on our arrival only about one days supply of water on board. The provisions were very good and proved abundant to the last. On our taking the pilot on board he informed us that there had been many disasters during the months of January and February; many ships had been wrecked. We had made the passage without the loss of a single spar.”
The Historian continues: “On the 10th of February 1856, the emigrants landed in New York, and after tarrying a few days at Castle Garden, the journey was continued on the 21st or 22nd by rail via Dunkirk and Cleveland to Chicago, where the company, according to previous arrangements, were divided into three parts, one of which, consisting of about 150 souls went to Burlington, Iowa, Another to Alton, Illinois, and the third to St. Louis, Missouri. Most of those who went to Burlington and Alton, remained in those places for a year or more, working to earn means wherewith to continue the journey to Utah. The part of the company which went to St. Louis arrived in that city on the 10th of March and soon afterward to Florence, Nebraska, where they joined the general emigration that crossed the plains in 1856.”
In Peter Gottfredson’s journal he mentions that Canute Peterson became the President of the Sanpete Stake of Zion. He was the father-in-law of Anthon H. Lund.
Of the journey Peter says: “We had a rough voyage over the Atlantic. We had head winds most of the way. When we were about one third of the way over, we were driven back to the coast of Ireland. The vessel was on fire twice and one time it was serious. It started in the Captains cabin and burned through the deck and filled the ship with smoke so the passengers had to go on deck. Some trunks and other baggage that was on fire had to be thrown in to the sea. There was much sickness on board; as I remember more than thirty deaths. I will here describe a funeral at sea. After the customary services the corpse was sewn into canvas or sheet, a large lump of coal at the feet. A plank raised and the dead would slide into the sea fore-most and all was over.”
“Several of the sailors were disabled and some died. The captain was very cruel to the sailors. At one time the vessel sprang a leak; water was running in fast; about thirty Sailors were working over a double lever pump with ropes attached to the ends of the levers. One sailor was not working to suit the captain. He picked up a rope with a heavy hook on one end, and from behind struck the sailor in the head with the hook killing him instantly. I stood close by watching the pumping and saw it, as did others. The ship was getting short of able bodied sailors to man the ship and the captain planned to draft passengers to take the place of disabled sailors.”
“One morning I had occasion to go on deck very early and looking ahead saw what I thought was a steamship. I sent below and told the folks we would soon be to land as a steamship was not far ahead. Some of the passengers went up to see, and when the captain turned his glass on it, he discovered that it was a wrecked vessel. What I thought was a smoke stack was the sump of a broken mast. Part of the bulwarks had been torn away by the sea and the waves had swept over the ship and one of the sailors had been swept overboard.”
“Mutiny occurred on our ship when our captain did not want to rescue the sailors of the disabled ship. The Mates did, so they put the captain in confinement. The first mate and two sailors took a small boat and rowed to the disabled ship. The second mate took charge of our ship. They hung the boat by ropes from the end of the yard-arm. (A long timber fastened across the mast, about twenty feet above the deck and reached out on either side a little past the side of the ship. The large sail was fastened to it.) The boat was hung to the end of this arm. The rocking of the ship set the boat swinging with the three men in it. The mate in the back with the steering oar and the two sailors each with a large oar were ready to pull when the boat struck the water. The boat went out with a big swing; the ropes ran through the pulleys and the boat struck an out-going wave. It went through the foam and out of sight on the further side of the wave. It looked as if the boat had been swallowed up in the sea, but soon we saw it gliding up the side of another wave a hundred yards from our ship. Our ship was turned around, for a first the wrecked ship was on our right, after a little it was behind us, and then on our left and further away.”
“The sailors from the wrecked ship came to our ship in a large white boat that held all of them, as I remember, thirty five. They pulled up beside our ship and a rope ladder was let down which they came up on. Then their boat was hoisted onto our ship. Our Mate and the two sailors were hoisted up in their boat. The wrecked ship was loaded with flour from America to England. It was left to drift where it would. We watched it as long as we could see it. Among the rescued sailors were two negroes, the first I had ever seen.”
“At one time the captain said to Canute Peterson, “If I hadn’t D---d Mormons aboard I would have been in New York six weeks ago.” Peterson said to him. “If you hadn’t Mormons aboard you would have been in hell six weeks ago.”
The drinking water got bad before they landed and provisions gave out, except some hard sea biscuits. Jens had brought his Danish Military uniform and sword, gun and bayonet, which had been presented to him. They were sewed up in canvas. When we landed they could not be found. They had either been taken or lost. He wanted to keep them as relics. When we landed in New York it was said that the captain was not on the ship. It was thought he had gone away in a fishing or trading boat. Several had met the ship a day or two before it landed.”
Apostle John Taylor was at New York to look after the emigrants when they landed. He was very kind and attentive to them. We stayed there about a week, says Peter, we learned that it was providential that we were so long on the sea; for when we got to New York the trains had been snow-bound for several days after we landed and we would have been on our own expense. The ship company furnished the provisions as long as were on board the ship. When we left New York the roads were yet in a bad condition and we had to travel very slow. I remember in places the men would walk beside the train.”
The Gottfredsons stopped in Alton, Illinois. The children picked up the new language very fast. It was harder for Jens (grandfather). I remember when he was in his 80’s he still talked Danish to Peter (father), but insisted they answer him in English.
Jens got a job at a brick kiln at Alton, Illinois at a dollar a day. In June he and Peter took chills and fever and were confined to their beds for some time.
Grandmother Karen was afflicted with what the doctor called “weaver consumption”. She had woven on a loom most of her life and lint from the material was breathed into her lungs which caused irritation. He condition grew worse and on July 4th she passed. This was 1856. She had dreamed about the trip to this point several times and told the family she was not going to reach Utah.
A young girl who was helping them out in their trouble, and who had come over on the same ship, consented to marry Jens and the ceremony was performed by a returning missionary, Christian Christiansen. They moved to St.Louis, Missouri and stayed there about a year. Jens took up work at the Filley Foundry, where the Charter Oak stoves were made. The children went to Sunday School there and learned the names of the letters in the alphabet in the English language, and the boys went to school the winter of 1856-57. The second grandmothers name was Karen also. This marriage was the 12th of August 1856, and was very successful. She was a good woman and the only grandmother any of us ever knew.
The spring of 1857 the family attempted the trip to Utah with Christiansen’s hand cart company and sailed up the Missouri river to Florence, Nebraska. When the hand cart company had traveled about 120 miles up the Loup Fork river, they crossed over and camped on the west side in a cottonwood grove. The river was a fourth of a mile wide at the ford and had a quicksand bottom. That night grandmother gave birth to a premature baby girl who lived only three days. Is it any wonder? The baby was blessed and named Platine for the Platt river of which the Loup Fork is a tributary. The company went on and left them there. This baby was born 17 July 1857.
They place the mother on the hand cart and pulled her back over the river and up north to a small settlement called Genoa. Genoa had been settled that spring by a few Mormon families. There Jens staked off a quarter section of land adjoining the settlement and built a dug-out for the family shelter in the side of a hill. There he left the family and went back to Omaha to get work. He had no chance to send them food and they went without. The people raised a little frosted corn and buckwheat which ripened. The family got a little of that; ground it in a coffee mill and mixed it with wild plums and sour grapes that grew in plenty along Beaver Creek and the Loup Fork river. They did not see bread for more than a month. Later Jens got a chance to send them a sack of flour and some bacon.
In November grandmother hired a man with a yoke of oxen to take them to Omaha where they stayed until spring. It was there they heard of Johnston’s army going to Utah to fight Mormons. The neighbors were kind and tried to persuade them not to go to Utah. That was still their desire, so when a small company of emigrants stopped there from Denmark to Utah they got their chance. With this company was grandmothers Sister and her fiancée, Rasmus Olsen, and her brother Peder and his wife. Olson was quite well-to-do. He bought four yoke of oxen and a new Schuttler wagon and took the Gottfredsons with them to Salt Lake City. The company consisted of six wagons with emigrants under the leadership of Iver N. Oversen, a returning missionary from Pleasant Grove, Utah, and also two other men who were loaded with merchandise taking to their homes in Utah.
Before they reached Fort Laramie they fell in with a company of soldiers going to Utah. They were part of Johnston’s Army who had been sent back East for supplies. The emigrants traveled with the soldiers until they reached Devil’s Gate on the Sweetwater and were treated fine. They were allowed to camp just outside their picket line and were often given groceries by the soldiers. They night-herded the emigrants oxen with their stock that they were driving loose. They had big mule teams.
Some of the oxen were alkalied and died which made the loading too heavy for those left. The people had to leave some of their things there. Among those things were some new stoves, which they buried by a roadside hopeing to recover them later. Now all who could had to walk. Peter was 12 years old now and his father allowed him to go on with the soldiers to help drive the loose stock. They gave him a mule to ride. The troops pushed on to Fort Bridger faster than the ox teams could travel. Peter stayed there until the others arrived.
They arrived in Salt Lake City on the 20th of September 1858. Many of the people who had moved to the southern valleys on account of the army had moved back, but some had decided not to return, so homes in the city were cheap. Jens bought a house and lot containing an acre and a quarter on the south-west corner of the ninth ward for sixty dollars and paid for it with a plush over-coat rated at thirty dollars and a Colt revolver that Hans had found in the plains rated at thirty dollars. The house was one large room built of adobe with slab and dirt roof. The following summer they raised thirty five bushels of volunteer wheat on the lot worth two dollars a bushel. It had been planted in wheat the summer before.
After arriving in Salt Lake, Jens worked at his trade making cooper ware, casks, barrels, tubs, etc. He got two first premiums at the fair; one in 1858, the other the next year. The boys got small jobs and made a little money. After school was out the next spring, Peter earned enough to buy a young cow and an old wagon. Jens traded his house lot for a yoke of oxen, and they moved to Ephraim in Sanpete County. Peter worked for and lived with the Oscar Winters family two winters and a summer. The spring of 1860, Jens moved the rest of the family to Mt. Pleasant. He bought a piece of ground on the north-west corner of town and built a house on it of rocks picked up on the land.
The next four years of Peter’s journal is mostly all about himself and his jobs and experiences, mentioning the family only when he went home for a short time between jobs.
The spring of 1864 Jens contracted to take the Mt. Pleasant dry stock and part of the Mt. Pleasant sheep, to herd in Thistle Valley. Peter had herded before so he was asked to manage it. The two younger brothers would watch the sheep. Peter had intended leaving home that spring to get work where he could get better wages, but his father needed his help and said he would give him a hundred dollars for five months that he should keep the stock in Thistle Valley. Jens had a written contract to the effect that he should have his pay in wheat at two dollars a bushel. He was to have two dollars a head for cattle and 50 cents for sheep. Some wages for a boy of 18! Also he was old enough to enlist in the army, but his folks talked him out of it. They didn’t draft the boys for the Civil War.
The boys had some difficulty with the Indians. They said that was their ground and that the stock ate the grass and they wanted beef and mutton for it. They frequently brought an order for mutton from Bishop Seely and always wanted the best. After much trouble that Peter tells about in detail, the Indians managed to take the boy’s supplies and bedding and left them with only straw ticks. They left and drove the sheep to Mt. Pleasant and other men went and gathered up the cattle. There are so many interesting things that my sketch is getting too long, but I must tell the results of this herding deal. He says:
“During the summer of 1864 there was a gold rush into Idaho and Montana. Large companies of Easterners passed through Utah in all sorts of conveyances and on horses, mules and donkeys and some on foot carrying their supplies. The price of provisions got high. Flour sold in Montana as high as a hundred dollars a sack, a dollar a pound, and other provisions in proportion. Wheat raised to six dollars a bushel in Salt Lake. Jens had some difficulty getting his pay for herding, in wheat, according to the contract. Some wanted to sell their wheat and pay with greenbacks. It was at the close of the war of the rebellion and greenbacks were only worth thirty cents on the dollar. Confederate money was worth nothing at all. Merchandise was not much higher than it had been formerly, or before the war.” Peter tells how well he came out on the deal so Jens must have done as well.
This same year the authorities called a number of families to settle the Sevier Valley. Jens was called to Omni, now Richfield. This call had come early in the year, but because of the herding contract, he had been excused until fall. He sold his house and land in Mt. Pleasant to Hans C. Davidsen of Pleasant Grove for a thousand dollars and got most of his pay in stock and teams. The weather turned cold and they tell of some hard experiences they had. They nearly froze on the trip but made it in two days. The rest of the family came out in the Spring of 1865. The others had been there about a year and had quite a start of log houses and dug-outs covered with dirt. A fort wall had been started around the public square and a rock meeting house was built on the south-west corner of it.
Jens got two town lots a block west of the north-west corner of the fort and built a dug-out to live in while he built a house of adobe. He disposed of some of his young stock and joined Bishop Higgins in building a grist mill on the spring creek north-west of town. They got it finished in time to make flour, such as it was, before spring.
During March and April 1865, a canal was dug with spade and shovel to bring water from the river to the sough part of town. It was nine miles long, 12 feet wide at the top and 10 feet wide at the bottom and two feet deep. The workers on it got paid on land. For ten rods they got five acres near town and ten acres further south and 2 ½ acres of meadow east of town. Jens and the boys each dug 10 rods. Peter traded for town lot east of town in a willow patch. It was on what is now called 1st north and 2nd east street. There were no buildings east of there at the time.
That year, 1865, the Indians went on the warpath. Peter gives details in his life story beginning page 70 and also in his book, “Indian Depredations” so I won’t give them here only as it immediately concerned Jens. The boys were enrolled under Captain Higgins. Among the 150 head of stock stolen by the Indians, from Richfield, ten head belonged to Jens. It was an exciting year for the settlers. In the fall the people were pretty poor and the older boys got their father’s consent to go back to Mt. Pleasant to find work. They hauled wood and sold it during the winter. Their sister Christine joined them in the spring and the three did not live at home any more. Joseph was at home and his grandmother had three living children and had lost one when nine months old besides the one she lost on the plains.
With Peter the journalist gone, Jens is not mentioned again until 1873. However, the records show a daughter was born in June 1866 who only lived two months, then another daughter, Sara, was born at American Fork in November 1868. The boys and Christine had many thrilling experiences both bad and good. The boys spent much of this time around Pioche, Nevada, Peter coming to Mt. Pleasant long enough to acquire himself a wife, then went back to settle his affairs. He says:
“We traded our teams for sixty-one Texas cows and a trained stock horse and a pack-horse and pack and riding saddles and equipment. Hans stayed in Meadow Valley, Nevada. I turned the cows in the hills and they wintered well. I had no trouble with them except when they were driven into town with the other stock. They would fight people on foot. They were used to being handled by men on horse-back. I broke some of them to milk but they had to be roped from a horse—“.
In the fall of 1873 Peter brought his wife and baby, a son named James Edward, after his two grandfathers, to Glenwood. They lived in a log house belonging to his father that winter and he hauled cedar posts (1000) and tended his cattle. In the spring he took up land where Vermillion and Sigurd now are. My father, Peter, took 160 acres and Isaac Smith got 80 acres. A daughter Adell, was born in 1888 and remembers her grandfather. Father settled a lot of his relatives on his 160 acres – his parents, his wifes parents and most all the uncles and aunts and there was plenty for all to do clearing land, fencing, establishing schools, Ward and chapels.
As an old man Grandfather, when he was in his 80’s used a cane. He and grandmother lived across the street (old Highway 89) from Peter and came across to our place and talked to father. He talked in Danish mostly, and father answered in English. The grand children loved to go to grandma’s and it was a great shock for them to learn that she was not their real grandmother. The house was a nice two story rock house built in 1876. It is in good condition and still standing in 1957.
In 1896 Jens decided he had lived long enough and took to his bed, getting up to care for himself but not out of the house. He would eat only hot milk with bread and a little sugar added. This was brought in by his daughters-in law or the grandchildren. “Grandmother Karen died the 9th of March 1898 and then grandfather moved to the home of Peter. He died three months later, June 29 1898, after Peter’s first wife had died and he had married his second wife and had a new family growing up. Jens was 88 years of age and buried beside his wife in the Glenwood, Sevier County, cemetery.


Sketch written by Adell G Jenson, his granddaughter.

Retyped by Lynda Bench…I tried to preserve the original version, i.e. spelling, grammar, quotations, etc.