Gertrude Jensen Johansen - - - Pioneer of the Month - March 2010

History of Gertrude Jensen Johansen

written by her daughter

Etta Marie Johansen Larsen

Gertrude Jensen Johansen was born in Noore Sundby, Denmark, April 30, 1869, a daughter of Simon Christian Jensen and Ane Marie Syndergaard (Sondergaard) Jensen.  Around 1880 she came to America with her mother (a widow) and four brothers and one sister.  Her father had died August 18, 1874 in Denmark when she was only five years old.  Also, two of her older brothers had died; both in the year of 1878.  One has to wonder if they died of the same illness.

They settled in Mt. Pleasant, Utah, living in a small house, on what was known as Main Street.  The house was across the road from the home of grandmother's brother, Andrew  Syndergaard.

Mother joined the church soon after they arrived and was baptized April 6, 1880 by L. C. Mariger.  She was twenty seven when she married Niels Christian Johansen in the Manti Temple (January 1, 1896).  To them were born eight children, Christella, Pearl, Heber Christian, Frances Simon, Mable, Aldeva, Lester Delbert and Etta Marie.

She died at home, Sunday August 14, 1938, after a month's illness of heart and liver complications.  When mother was sick, I was working in Ephraim.  I received a letter from Heber saying dad wanted me to come home to help take care of mother.  When I got home, Pearl and Aldeva would come every morning to change mother and the bedding, as all was so wet from her perspiring so much in the night.  I had never seen mother cry.  One day she was sitting up in bed crying.  I could see her in the dresser mirror across the room.  I asked her what was the matter.  She said, "why can't I die?"  That day her brother, Andrew, and sister-in-law, Minnie, came to see her.  That night dad got President Jacobs to come and give her a blessing.  The next morning she died.  Poor dad, he loved her so very much!

Mother must have had her schooling in Denmark because in 1814 the attendance for children between the ages of seven and fourteen was made compulsory.  I know that she was very good in art, having a picture that she had painted before coming to this country.  Also, I remember a sampler on which the A,B,C.s were cross stitched.  The dogs that I have were my great-grandparents, handmade by some ancestors.  I think they are porcelain.  She also had a shawl that went to the oldest child, so Stella got that.

Mother was a very good speller (but she had to write the word first in syllables).  Also, she knew her geography very well.  She didn't like to talk the Danish language, she said she was in this country now and she should learn the English language.  She was a very good penman, very neat.

Mother never liked to socialize, so I'm sure she didn't take part out in public or church.  You would always find her in the background.  She never had much to say.  She would go with dad to Sacrament Meeting, to the old folks parties (it was her assignment to make the starch cakes for this party), and she loved the picture shows.  In later years, we had a radio.  She liked to listen to one soap opera and to music while doing her handiwork.

Mother was married in a beautiful cream colored dress made by her and her mother.  After she married dad, they lived for a short time in the South Ward in a very small adobe house.  In their day they had candles, coal oil lamps for light, potbelly coal and wood stoves, scrub boards, stove irons for ironing, churns to make homemade butter, and later big old wood washers that you worked by hand, galvanized tubs for the Saturday night bath and homemade soap.

Dad must have saved money from work, for after they were married they got a new bedroom set, dresser, washstand, and bed; also chairs with wicker seat, a big rocker, and arm chair.

They moved over to grandmother's shortly after their marriage to take care of her.  She died a couple of years later and they continued living there.  This home was in Severin's name, but in later years he came hom from Montana and deeded it to mother.

Mother was kind, honest, shy and loving.  She never told us she loved us, but we all kenw she did for all the kind things she did for us, trying to make home the happy place that it was.  She always were home when we came from school, freshly baked bread, homemade butter, apricot jam, what a specially good cook she was; lemon pie, starch cake, plain white cake, cinnamon buns, rhubarb pie, suet pudding, sweet soup, to name a few deserts.

She never said a swear word that I ever heard.  I asked Byron one day if he had ever heard mother swear.  He said, "just once".  He was so shocked that he never got over it.  She called a farmer an "old bastard" because of something he had said to dad.  She never said a cross word and never complained.  Dad said he could never get her to talk back.  She would just walk away.  Not one of us kids took after her in this way.

It seemed as though mother's life was timed by the seasons of the year.  There are so many things to tell.  In the spring was housecleaning time, almost every room in the house had to be calcimined (a white wash paint).  Once in a while the woodwork would be painted, all the bed springs would be taken outside and washed off with homemade soapsuds, the straw ticks and feather beds would be aired (the straw ticks had been filled in the fall with fresh straw after threshing time).

Dad would bring the coal oil can up from the shop and pour coal oil down each leg of the beds; that was so we wouldn't have bed bugs, which a lot of people had in those days.  The stoves were all taken out and stored in the cellar for summer.  The curtains, doilies, etc. were taken down, washed and starched with flour starch, the curtains were stretched on curtain stretchers (which were pieces of boards with small nails in them), and the curtains were stretched to those nails; really hard on the fingers to do this job.

One time I remember that we had a new woven carpet; how carefully the straw was put under it and dad and mother on their knees stretched the carpet just right and really tight.  How beautiful that room was with mother's pretty flowers in the window and her starched curtains and beautiful doilies.  Mother had a hand crocheted bedspread that was just used for special occasions.  Just like our parlor was just used for special days.  I do remember Pearl and me, with special and hard to come by permission, got to wallpaper the parlor and take down the art gallery (which is what Pearl and Stella called it) from the walls, big pictures of the family.  I wish I had them today.  Well, the next day half the wallpaper had come off.  Mother said I knew you shouldn't have done it.  We did it over, but we finally decided that the wood wall where the stairway was would have to have paint.  We had a funny little kitchen where hardly two people could pass, it was so narrow and long.  A built-in cupboard served for a table also, stove and wash basin, one little window at the end of the room.  This room was hard to calcimine.  The ceiling was so high and it was a lean-to.  When  you got done you had more calcimine on you than on the ceiling and walls.

In the spring was also a time to clean yards, plant vegetable gardens and also the flowers.  All this had to be done before decoration day which was always the 30th of May.  We would have lots of relatives and friends to visit and eat.  Mother and my older sisters would be found making paper flowers to decorate the graves.  Mother always wanted to go to the cemetery really early before many people were there; then the next day mother and I would walk out to the cemetery, water the live flowers, even some that weren't ours.  Mother would say those needed a drink.  We would walk back and forth through the cemetery, then we would have lunch with Aunt Minnie who lived just a block north.  Then on the way home we would visit a relative of mother's (Ruth Christensen's mother). 

In the summer she was sewing fourth of July dresses, as well as shirts and pants for the boys.  Later she sewed for the grandkids.  Weeding the gardens, bottling fruit.  I never remember mother bottling vegetables, but she did pickles and relish.  Summer was the time to visit, sewing school clothes, piecing quilts.  Sometimes friends would bring their print pieces and have mother lay them out to blend just right for a star quilt.  She made some pieced quilts and lace pieces for her nieces and sometimes she got to sell some pieces.  She never waisted a piece of material.  In later years, mother made many beautiful quilts (star, double wedding ring, nine patch).  She washed and carded wool from sheep for a lot of her quilts.  Also, she did many pillow cases with wide lace.

When mother's brother and family lived in Axtell, Utah, mother and I would take a train trip there to visit.  Pearl and Heber lived in Centerfield for a while and we would also visit there, and then stop off in Ephraim to visit Stella and Ivan for a night or two.  In later years, Aunt Lena and Uncle Andrew moved to Salt Lake.  Mother and I visited them there.  Dad would never go with us.

In the fall mother was very busy sewing a school dress for each of us and maybe a blouse and skirt; also petticoats and underpants, shirts and pants for the boys.  Our socks were knitted. 

Dad would have two pigs fattened and ready to kill, one now and the other in the late winter.  Uncle Jim Johansen (dad's brother) would butcher the pig.  Sausage was made by grinding the scrapes of meat that had been trimmed from the hams, shoulders and bacon.  It was seasoned with salt and pepper.  After the meat was stuffed into the casings (entralls); this done by using a piece of cow's horn that had been hollowed out and sanded until smooth.  I still have one mom used because I also used it when I made sausage.  The entralls of the pig were prepared by first turning them inside out, using warm water to wash away the waste.  This was done several times.  They were then put in salt water overnight.  The next day they were scraped with a case knife until they were transparent, then again placed in salt water until the sausage was ready for stuffing.  (I never did this.  We bought our casings up at Wilcox's meat plant in Mt. Pleasant.)  Head Cheese and finkers were made from the meat on the head, the heart, the tongue, and the liver.  Everything of the pig was used, even the bladder was washed and blown up and tied to use as a football.

We could hardly wait to have a good dinner of sausage and ribs, fried to a golden brown, potatoes and brown gravy.  How delicious. All you needed to top off this dinner was a pickled beet or a little chow chow (which was Danish relish that had both cucumbers and green tomatoes, with onions, vinegar and spices, cooked until it had turned yellowish green).

About conference time the apples were picked.  All the families that could, came home to help.  You would of thought that we had a whole orchard of apples for the amount of people that helped.  They were all stored in mom's and dad's cellar and the family came and got them whenever they wanted any.  Mother would have a big dinner for all.  It was usually a very cold day.  If time permitted, they would help dig potatoes and carrots.  Sometimes parsnips and turnips had to be planted.

Around 1929, during the great depression, we had three turkeys for Thanksgiving.  Uncle Andrew from Axtell had sent us one, a farmer had given dad one, and dad had a young one given him in the spring (what a nuisance it had been) and he had fattened it ready to kill.  I remember how dad was forever telling us how thankful we should be, for there were many people who were hungry this day.  I'm sure we had one turkey for Thanksgiving dinner, but don't know what happened to the other two.

Remarks Made At Mother's Funeral, Thursday, August 18,1938. (Thanks goes to a friend,  Opal Ericksen (Roden) who took these remarks down in shorthand.):

"This Sister was a wonderful, good woman.  She had a hobby, that of making lace and embroidery; some of the prettiest pieces that I have ever seen.  She had given good advice and counsel to her children.  She was a beautiful wife and mother."  Brother William Olsen.

"Whenever they returned home from work or play, she was always there to meet them.  He home was her kingdom and she loved it.l  It is said that God could not be everywhere so he made mothers.  Sister Johansen was a good mother, wife and neighbor.  She was very ambitious.  She found joy in serving her husband and children, friends and neighbors.  I'm sure they have all tried to do what they could for her.  May God help us all to live such lives."  Mrs. Tina Nelson

"It seems almost unbelievable to a person living in this mortal stage and suffering as she has and not uttered a cross word.  It isn't any wonder that her children liked to gather at her fireside.  I feel that Sister Johansen's life has been that of a typical wife."  Pres. H. C. Jacobs

"Sister Johansen was brought way across the water with a family of children way back more thant 55 years ago to serve God and to make good the request.  This family left their home and surroundings, left friends and came here that they might live.  She has lived an honest, upright and righteous life.  Brother Johansen has stood by her side fulfilling his part.  His occupation has held him within his companion's call.  He will miss her.  Etta will miss her mother.  Brother Heber will also miss his mother.  May God help those who will miss her most, comfort them.  Amen"  Bishop H.P. Olsen