Peter Gottfredson Reminiscences

Mt. Pleasant Pyramid

June 21, 1929

Look What I Found On EBAY !!!

WOW ! The date is Sept 55.  I would have been  8 years old then.  Does anyone remember this?  Mail being delivered by bus....Hmmm.   The stores in the background I do remember.  Larsen's Drug Store on the corner with the post office next door.  I remember gray steps up to the Post Office.  I remember going to the far back end where our box was ....  #73.  Then there is the building I was trying to make into Safeway.  Ooops.  It was the Five and Dime or Pratts.  Having worked for the Postal Service, I found this to be a real treasure.  I worked in Spring City and Ephraim, never in my hometown of  Mt. Pleasant.

Hilda Madsen Longsdorf Obituary

Birth:  Nov. 28, 1877 Mount Pleasant Sanpete County Utah, USA Death:  Jan. 12, 1946 Mount Pleasant Sanpete County Utah, USA Mrs. Hilda Madsen Longsdorf, 68, last surviving member of a well-known Mt. Pleasant Pioneer family, died in her home from a cerebral hemorrhage. Mrs. Longsdorf, an active civic and social worker, had been prominently identified with the Mt. Pleasant Historical Assn, of which she was secretary more than 30 years. She had been busy the past week formulating plans for the annual association celebration on March 2. Author of the book, "Mt. Pleasant" a history of the city, published in 1940, she was a charter member and past president of the Twentieth Century club; past president of the O F A, and the O N O and B R G clubs, and served a year as captain of the Mt. Pleasant Daughters of Utah Pioneers. She was active in Red Cross work during World War I and chairman of Mt. Pleasant Red Cross chapter in 1924. She helped organize and was first president of the Mt. Pleasant Civic League, actively engaging in city beautification programs. A member of the Mt. Pleasant L D S North ward, she was active in the Y W M I A. Mrs. Longsdorf was born in Mt. Pleasant Nov. 28, 1877, a daughter of Andrew and Johannah Anderson Madsen, and was married to Showman D. Longsdorf, prominent merchant, Oct. 7, 1916. He died Jan. 2, 1935. Surviving are a foster son, Bill Tomlinson, who she raised, he is now in California; two nephews and six nieces, Bruce A. Madsen, Scofield; Antone. W. Madsen, Washington; Mrs. Johannah Hafen, Mt. Pleasant; Mrs. Louise M. Watts, Moab; Mrs. Alice M. Pannier, Mrs. Evelyn Jenkinson, Mrs. Leone M. Gunderson and Mrs. Annie M. Anderson, Salt lake City. Salt Lake Tribune January 13, 1946 Family links:  Spouse:   Showman Doyle Longsdorf (1857 - 1935) Burial: Mount Pleasant City Cemetery Mount Pleasant Sanpete County Utah, USA Plot: A_154_3_6 Maintained by: Penne Magnusson Cartrigh... Originally Created by: Utah State Historical So... Record added: Feb 02, 2000 Find A Grave Memorial# 141104

Added by: Blaine & Elaine Berger Added by: Penne Magnusson Cartright Hannum Cemetery Photo Added by: John Warnke (inactive)   Photos may be scaled. Click on image for full size.

Book Of Mt. Pleasant Endorsed by Deseret News, Frank Winn

And the book "Mt. Pleasant History" is

still available.  We have the third printing.

Available at Mt. Pleasant Relic Home

for $25.00.

Hilda Madsen Longsdorf

150th Anniversary of the Start of the Black Hawk War ~ By David R. Gunderson Pt 2

James Monsen ~ Building Fences ~ Wendover Years

Ibapah

Bonneville Salt Flats

Bonneville Ltd. Potash Plant during construction
courtesy of http://www.mindat.org/loc-180561.html

Granddaughter of James Monsen

see also: http://mtpleasantpioneerobituarypage.blogspot.com/2011/02/anna-sorensen-smith-obituary-1991.html

State Line Hotel  ~~~ Courtesy of Nevada Humanities

See Also: http://www.onlineutah.com/wendoverhistory_02.shtml

and: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stateline_Casino

Madison Rising - The Star Spangled Banner (America The Movie Version)

Home of Edward Fowles and wife Ann Elizabeth Parr ~ Researched and Compiled by Tudy Barentsen Standlee

“Expressing Regrets for 1857 Massacre,”

Mountain Meadows Massacre

“On September 11, 1857, some 50 to 60 local militiamen in southern Utah, aided by some American indian[s], massacred about 120 emigrants who were traveling by wagon to California. The horrific crime, which spared only 17 children age six and under, occurred in a highland valley called the Mountain Meadows, roughly 35 miles southwest of Cedar City. The victims, most of them from Arkansas, were on their way to California with dreams of a bright future“ (Richard E. Turley Jr., ”The Mountain Meadows Massacre,“ Ensign, Sept. 2007). 

“What was done here long ago by members of our Church represents a terrible and inexcusable departure from Christian teaching and conduct. We cannot change what happened, but we can remember and honor those who were killed here.

“We express profound regret for the massacre carried out in this valley 150 years ago today and for the undue and untold suffering experienced by the victims then and by their relatives to the present time.

“A separate expression of regret is owed to the Paiute people who have unjustly borne for too long the principal blame for what occurred during the massacre. Although the extent of their involvement is disputed, it is believed they would not have participated without the direction and stimulus provided by local Church leaders and members” (Henry B. Eyring, in “Expressing Regrets for 1857 Massacre,” Church News, Sept. 15, 2007).

Related Topics

Peace and Violence among 19th-Century Latter-day Saints

Additional Information

Richard E. Turley Jr., "The Mountain Meadows Massacre," Ensign, Sept. 2007 

“Mountain Meadows Massacre,” Mormon Newsroom

The Iron Horse (movie)

The information below ( with the exception of "the Ballad of the Iron Horse")
is taken from Wikipedia.

The Iron Horse is a 1924 American Western silent filmdirected by John Fordand produced by Fox Film. In 2011, this film was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the United States Library of Congress and selected for preservation in theNational Film Registry.

The film presents an idealized image of the construction of the American first transcontinental railroad. It culminates with the scene of driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit on May 10, 1869. There is a note in the title before this scene that the two original locomotives from 1869 event are used in the film, although this is false - both engines (Union Pacific No. 119 and Jupiter) were scrapped before 1910. Of course, a romantic story with love, treachery and revenge is also here. Main stars were George O'Brien and Madge Bellamy.

In December 2011, The Iron Horse was selected for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry.^[2] In choosing the film, the Registry said that The Iron Horse "introduced to American and world audiences a reverential, elegiac mythology that has influenced many subsequent Westerns."^[2]

Among the extras used in the Central Pacific sequences were several Chinese playing coolies who worked on the railroad. They were in fact retired Central Pacific Railroad employees who had helped build the first transcontinental railroad through the Sierras, who came out to participate in the filming as a lark. 

  Ballad of the Iron Horse 

Curse of Orson Hyde ~ submitted by Lee R. Christensen

KATHY:   An item for your “Hyde” file.   My mother ‘s Parke family was with Hyde in Nevada.  They too gave up their acreage to return to Utah without being compensated.  While doing family research in the Carson City area I talked with Nevada’s Land Commissioner and he said they had no reason to complain “they had not paid anything for the land ”.    Had they stayed the State would have asked them to pay for it.  Lee

The Curse of Orson Hyde

When the Mormon faithful returned to Zion in 1858 at the call of Brigham Young, many were required to abandon the fruits of their labors in the shadow of the Sierra Nevada. One such was Orson Hyde, the magistrate sent west to arrange the affairs of Carson County. He had constructed a sawmill in Washoe Valley between the present sites of Reno and Carson City and had sold the mill before returning to Utah. But he had managed to get only "one span of small oxen, and an old wagon," as part payment on the $10,000 sale price. The rest was never forthcoming, despite Hyde's best efforts to collect.

After five years Hyde had despaired of ever collecting, and planted his suit "in the Chancery of Heaven" by reading, in the Utah legislature of which he was a member, an open letter to the people of Carson and Washoe valleys. The letter read in part:

"The Lord has signified to me, his unworthy servant, that as we have been under circumstances that compelled us to submit to your terms, that He will place you under circumstances that will compel you to submit to ours, or do worse.

"That mill and those land claims were worth $10,000 when we left them; the use of that property, or its increased value since, is $10,000 more, making our present demand $20,000.

"Now if the above sum be sent to me in Great Salt Lake City, in cash, you shall have a clean receipt therefor, in the shape of honorable quitclaim deeds to all the property that Orson Hyde, William Price, and Richard Bentley owned in Washoe Valley. The mill, I understand, is now in the hands of R. D. Sides, and has been for a long time. But if you shall think best to repudiate our demand or any part of it, all right. We shall not take it up again in this world in any shape of any of you; but the said R.D. Sides and Jacob Rose shall be living and dying advertisements of God's displeasure, in their persons, in their families, and in their substances; and this demand or ours, remaining uncancelled, shall be to the people of Carson and Washoe valleys as was the ark of God among the Philistines. (See 1st Sam. fifth chapter) You shall be visited of the Lord of Hosts with thunder and with earthquake and with floods, with pestilence and with famine until your names are not known amongst men, for you have rejected the authority of God, trampled upon his laws and his ordinances, and given yourselves up to serve the god of this world; to rioting in debauchery, in abominations drunkenness and corruption . . . .

"I have no sordid desire for gold, and have manifested by my long silence and manifest indifference; and should not say anything now had not the visions of the Almighty stirred up my mind . . . .

"I care not what our mill and land claims are, or were considered worth - whether five hundred thousand dollars or five cents - twenty thousand dollars is our demand; and you can pay it to us, as I have said, and find mercy, if you will thenceforth do right, or despise the demand and perish. . . .'

Orson Hyde


From The Complete Nevada Traveler by David W. Toll




 I’m off to Yakima for Spring Break  and out of touch.      Seventy years ago it would have been Santa Cruz “where the girls are”.   Amazing how much wisdom you can pick up in seventy years>?   lee