Today I am pleased to present a guest post written by my fourth cousin, Della Smith for the continuing Idaho Territory Sesquicentennial series. Her story is about her 2nd great-grandfather Christian Madsen and his journey to Idaho.
Life
Story of Christian Madsen, born November 14, 1844 in Jutland, Denmark and died March 9, 1921, Safford, Graham County, Arizona
According
to my mother, Christian Madsen came to the US from Denmark in 1853
with friends of his parents who were given a sum of $500 to care for
the 9 year old boy in the new world. Supposedly, they abandoned him
on the streets of New York City once they arrived in the US, and took
his money with them. The Mormons picked him up and cared for him, and
eventually took him to Utah where they settled and he became an elder
in the Mormon Church. Later he relocated to Arizona and was still
affiliated with the LDS church. I don't know how much of this story
is true, but it's what I remember my mother telling me about him.
However,
a diary kept by Christian Madsen’s daughter (my great grandmother,
Dortha Roxana Madsen Rollins McKinney) said that the family who
brought Christian Madsen to America were actually friends of his
parents, and they stayed in the East for a while before they could go
to Utah. Christian stayed with them at that time, although they were
not very kind to him, according to what Dortha wrote in her diary, as
shown below:
"My
father came to America from Denmark at the age of 9 years. His
parents having been converted to the Mormon religion, prepared to
immigrate to this country. There happened to be, at that time,
another family who, for the same reason, was sailing for the U.S. My
father’s parents were not quite ready to leave, as they were trying
to dispose of their worldly goods. Having a large family, for some
reason or other, they sent father on with these people and gave them
five hundred dollars to care for him until they could join him there.
(NOTE: Christian Madsen's parents, Jacob and Dorthea, were not able
to come to the United States until around 1856 or later. Christian's
youngest brother was born in Utah in 1860.)
I
have forgotten the length of time that elapsed before they left
Denmark. They sacrificed a great deal of money and property, not
being able to take much out of their country. It took several weeks
to cross the ocean in those days. My father was very ill most of the
way. The people to whom he had been entrusted were unkind to him and
also neglectful of his comfort and needs. He was lonely and home
sick, a little boy on the wide ocean, friendless and frightened, in
route to a strange land where he could not even talk or understand
the language.
The
family he was with remained in the East for some time, several
months, or until they could arrange to start their weary trek with
other Pioneers across the plains to Utah, which was the place they
and my father’s family had started for, a home in the rocky
mountains of America, where they would be free to worship God
according to the dictates of their own conscience, free from the
hands of royal rule, to a land with new possibilities and freedom.
However,
these God loving and God fearing people continued with their
indifference toward the lonely little boy. They themselves suffered
terrible hardship, but they had no sympathy for anything but their
own. For many weeks they struggled with desert sands and mountain
trails with bleeding feet and half filled stomachs. They would camp
at night with hearts filled with fear from the attacks of hostile
Indians and fear of the loss of an animal out of their teams for
which there was no chance for replacement.
Many
hard and extreme were the sufferings of this one family among many
others of whom my father was a member at this time. Many were the
incidents, thrilling and heart breaking, which our father related to
us children as bed time stories in years following, and which have
almost faded from our memory. These were experiences that molded
into his life a stronger faith in both God and in the brotherhood of
man, unselfish, untiring against all obstacles. Truthful to the
extent of risking his life to keep his word to a friend or debtor,
honest to every one but himself, always running over the measure,
prayerful and hopeful in the face of the worst discouragements, such was
the character which grew up through great tribulation and which these
few weak words can make only a dim picture.
When
winter came, father worked in the mountains with teams of oxen,
getting logs for the lumber mills. The snow would be awful deep and
the big pine trees carried tremendous weight, too heavy work for
horses, except for hauling lumber or equipment and supplies. The oxen
would be shod the same as horses, but did not use harness, they were
yoked together with heavy neck yokes and were guided about their work
by telling them to Gee for one direction and Haw for another. It took
great patience, strong lungs and strong physique to handle these
powerful creatures.
Many
is the time I have ridden behind the oxen on the “running gears”
of the wagon. The boys used to ride on their backs as they would a
horse, except with no saddle or bridle, of course. The ways of
getting the logs to the mill was very interesting, but I won’t go
over that part of it. Suffice it to say this work kept father away
from home a great deal in the winter. It was a hard life and there
was much danger of having feet and often ears frozen. There were
blinding snow storms, and dangerous snow slides when the snow began
to melt.
Every
year men and teams lost their lives in that way, but at home we all
did our bit to take care of everything which was no easy job, and was
a great tax on our mother’s strength with all else she had to do.
However, there were always kindly neighbors or relatives to lend a
hand.
When
the sledding got too tough there was no possible chance for a man
coming home at night or over the weekend in those days of slow
transportation. But young as we children were, with our mother we
suffered great anxiety for his safety. We never failed in our daily
prayers to plead for his return to us. And what a welcome sound was
the creaking of the snow under his feet, which told us he was home.
Many, many times, long icicles were hanging to his whiskers. Men had
to wear a beard on their face in that extreme cold, or they would be
frozen.
I
remember how father would put three of us behind him on a horse and
take us to school and back during a snowstorm. Snow would fall in
large flakes so thick you could only see a short distance through
them. Very beautiful and quietly the snow would cover the ground,
several feet deep, then the wind would come, boosting and piling it
into large drifts against buildings and fences. We would walk over
the tops of fences under the frozen snow all winter, seldom seeing
even the top of a fence post. Once the snow was drifted and frozen,
it stayed that way until the spring thaw.
We
had to keep a shovel in the house all winter during snowstorms to
shovel the drift away from the door and a trail to the barn and
woodpile. We had no indoor water supply, such as pipes or faucets, no
sink in the kitchen or the luxury of a bathtub. The water buckets
would be filled from the well at night and in the morning would have
to be set on the hot stove to melt the ice. We never kept fires
burning at night, only in times of someone being sick. All day the
house was warm and cozy with the best of pinewood to burn, and no
matter how the storms raged outside, there was no time to loaf or be
idle.
When
father was home he took such days to work making a new set of
harnesses or mending an old one. He could make beautiful leather
harnesses. For heavy team work there was the extremely heavy harness.
Brass rivets were used where the greatest strength was needed. Other
parts were sewed with what we called buckskin string, and it really
was that very thing.
He
would take the hide of a fresh killed deer and, strange as it seems,
he preferred buckskin to the female of the species. He would scrape
off all the hair and treat the skin until it was soft and pliable,
almost as silk. It was a big job and took experience and skill. When
ready for use some of us would have to take a tight hold on one side
of it with both hands and keep the skin straight and smooth while
father held onto a part of it and with a keen, sharp knife, cut into
strands that could be threaded into a large harness needle. And he
sewed parts of the harness with that.
He
used an awl to punch the holes for the stitches, having no machinery,
but all made by hand. He had a big workbench which he sat astride as
he sewed and riveted. And oh how our fingers and shoulders would ache
holding that skin while father would cut and when ever he would slack
his grip or get to the end, we would reel backwards and often times
sit flat on the floor. We would laugh and make a joke about it, not
every time, of course, as it really was hard work but just as
important as the sewing and fitting.
We
kids that were large enough would take turns and mother even would
have to change off with us. Sometimes while the skin was large it
could be fastened to the wall by the top edge and it was fascinating
to watch the long evenly cut strings drop away from the edge of the
sharp edged knife. It was not harness only that father made from
buckskin. He braided the most wonderful whips which it would be
utterly impossible to describe the fine workmanship and durability.
The
threads were woven evenly and smoothly, all by hand. The whip was not
flat, but round. When it was finished there was a stick of smooth
hard wood called the whip handle to which it was attached. Some were
made long for the use of four horse teams, while others were short,
used only on one span team.
Like
the harness, there was the heavy or work kind and the fancy. How
priceless even one of them would be now, as a relic of days when the
finest work in art and for durability were made by just human hands.
Father
would sing and whistle all the while he worked. After 60 years or
more, the same songs are being sung again, "Darling Nellie
Gray", "Buffalo Gals", "Jeff Davis", "I
Long to be Single Again", and many, many others. We children
would romp and play around him and he worked. He would not be annoyed
with one noise and seldom scolded us. But at night when he was
reading, he wanted quiet. We kids used to laugh so hard the way he
would keep going shush over and over, not looking up from his papers.
In
1879 or 1880 or near that time, Grandpa Madsen died and soon after a
great change came into our lives. Some citizens of our town drifted
to Arizona and began writing unbelievable things about climate and
advantages of the sunny south. It spread a fever of unrest among many
of the families who were some of the afflicted with rheumatism.
Grandmother Welker (mother’s mother) suffered with asthma. The long
cold winter season was not a pleasant time to prepare for hurrying
through the short but beautiful summer to be battling the long cold
spell of snow, the springtime of mud when the snow melted, so many
were the excited conversations that took place on the sunny side of
the one and only store of the town.
And
while the blizzard was drifting the constant falling snow in the
months of February and March, the letters would arrive from the south
land telling of green fields, fruit trees in bloom, five crops of hay
per year, etc., etc., and the winter weary citizens began to plan to
hitch the teams to the covered wagons, sell or mostly gave away their
homes, farms and prosperity, and strike out again to what they hoped
to find, a utopia in a promised land. The green fields, the sunshine,
the blossoms, the long season to work were the upper most things in
their minds.
The
cheerful correspondent had not warned them of the disadvantages to
encounter nor did they realize the long months of intense heat they
would be so unprepared for, housing problems, a different way of
doing everything they had ever done nor did they know that from a
quiet peaceful God fearing little town of people where a man was a
man and every neighbor was just one big family, that just the
opposite conditions would face them.
I
do not know if having known this would have prevented the exodus, be
that as it may, on the day of September 13, 1883. The children and
other few necessities were loaded in the wagons along with grain for
the teams, bedding, clothing, and quite a supply of food stuff, but
leaving a heart rending amount behind, we set out. My brother John,
age 12 years, drove the wagon with one team of powerful horses in
which mother and the children rode. Father drove a team of four
horses. Grandma Welker drove a team and light spring wagon all the
way from Bear Lake County Idaho to Safford, Graham County, Arizona, a
distance over mountain trails as such they were. In some places the
men had to cut trees and break a way through.
After
several days of travel, the company would camp to let the teams rest
for a day or two. Then the washing and baking was done and the load
repacked. All the money that was received for possessions sold was
carried in the wagons. Three thousand dollars in gold was put some
where among the things. We were never molested although we met some
very suspicious characters and traveled through Indian territory and
at times Indians on horse back rode along for some distance, filled
with curiosity, and had they desired, could have made a tremendous
haul in everything.
On
that long trip from September 23 to November 5th, there were no
serious illnesses or accidents or loss that I remember. God’s
protecting care sheltered us and as was the habit at home, our
parents knelt in prayer morning and night and gave thanks for this
protection and asked for guidance in the great task they had
undertaken again as pioneers in a new and strange land."
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