BRIGHAM YOUNG AND TWELVE APOSTLES 1870 ~~~CITY AND VALLEY OF GREAT SALT LAKE 1870

Photo by Savage and Ottinger 

 

APOSTLE EZRAH TAFT BENSON SPEAKS AT MORONI FEED COMPANY ANNUAL MEETING 1949 ~~~Includes You Tube Video (not of the meeting)

 

PAST PRESIDENTS AND GENERAL AUTHORITIES OF THE LATTER DAY SAINT CHURCH

 

MARY WAHNETTA PETERSON SIMONS

 

Her Obituary

Salt Lake Tribune, The (UT) | Date of Publication: 10 March 2013Wahnetta Simons

Mt. Pleasant UT United States

03/19/1919 ~ 02/27/2013 Mt. Pleasant, UT-Our beloved mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, Mary Wahnetta Peterson Simons, age 93 passed from this life on Feb. 27,2013. She will be greatly missed. Wahnetta was born March 19, 1919 in Lyman, Utah to Sarah and Thorvald Peterson. She married Dee Simons November 2, 1939, together they had 4 children. Wahnetta is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints where she served over 10 years in the primary as well as other callings. She was sealed to her family in the Manti Temple. Family was the most important part of Wahnetta's life and she was happiest when she was with her family. She loved to laugh at the funny things her grandkids did. She always had a smile on her face when she was watching them. Her granddaughters gave her the nick-name of "Princess" and she loved it. She was our family's Princess and she will be greatly missed. Wahnetta worked hard all of her life. She spent 20 years at the Moroni Processing plant and then after retiring she spent many more years taking care of her ill husband. When she was not working she enjoyed cooking, crocheting, and her plants and flowers. The garden was one of her favorite places to sit and just enjoy the beautiful flowers around her. In the fall, she loved eating her tomatoes and cucumbers. As Wahnetta got older she has enjoyed going on long rides with family members and then stopping for lunch or dinner at a favorite restaurant. The family would like to thank all the people who work at the Alpine Valley Care Center in Pleasant Grove and the Golden Skyline Assisted Living Center in Ephraim Utah, especially Debbie and Helen for the wonderful and loving care they gave to our mother. Wahnetta is survived by her daughters Anita Mikkelsen, Darlene Stevens (Charlie), Lisa Johns (Jeff), 12 grandchildren, 18 Great grandchildren, 2 great-great grandchildren, and Sister MaDonna Hunt. She was preceded in death by her husband Dee Simons, son Dick Simons, son-in-law Andy Mikkelsen, grandson Sean Mikkelsen, and 11 Brothers and Sisters. Funeral Services were  held Tuesday, March 5, 2013 at 1:00 p.m. in the Mt. Pleasant 3rd Ward Building (yellow church on 295 South State). Friends may call Tuesday from 11:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. prior to services. Interment will be in the Mt. Pleasant City Cemetery. Online condolences available at www.rasmussenmortuary.com

TWIN SISTERS HONORED ON EIGHTY SECOND ANNIVERSARY

 

North Sanpete High School 1956 ~~~~~ Reunion 2016

Elisha Wilcox and Anna Pickle Wilcox ~~~ Pioneers of the Month December 2017

 The Wilcox  family came to Great Salt Lake, Deseret with the EzraT. Benson Company in 1849.  They departed on 15 July 1849 from the outfitting post at Kanesville, Iowa.  They traveled close together with the George A. Smith Company as they crossed the plains. Their family consisted of his father, Elisha, age 39; his mother Anna Pickle, age 34; Miner, age 14; Polly, age 12; Francis, age 10; Margaret, age 8;Sally, age 4; Joseph. age 1; and Hyrum, an infant. 

             When they got to the Elkhorn River they found two large companies on the bank of the river.  They had not been able to cross the river, because the ferry had been left on the other side, and a heavy rainstorm in the upper country had swollen the stream to the height of twelve feet.  Canute Peterson and Ira Sabe volunteered to swim across and reach the ferry. When they got about a third of the way across, Ira began to give out.  Canute knew he had to reach the ferry so he exerted himself to the utmost to reach the ferry, which he did.  He pulled Ira after he got there.  They got the ferry boat in operation and before evening had quite a number of the wagons across. 

             They had a few stampedes on the road, one on the Elk Horn River, but there were no damages until they arrived at Williow Springs which was east of Sweetwater.  Here they encountered a severe snow storm, freezing 17 head of cattle and one horse during the night.  Snow fell nearly to the top of their wagon covers and they had to dig their way out. The storm lasted about forty hours. 

            The cattle had wondered off but they found the majority of the in quite good condition.  There was an abundance of large willows in an area that served as both food and shelter.  They had to camp there for three days.  They were about 80 head short so they yoked up any animal that could do any work. They traveled about ten miles and came out of the snow to bare ground again and traveled on reaching the valley on 25 October 1849. 

 The above is taken from of

BIOGRAPHY OF LUCINDA ADALINE OLIVER WILCOX a daughter-in-law.

John Tidwell's Diary

John and Jane Smith Tidwell were the "Pioneers of the Month"  in March of 2009.  The link can be found below.  However, in searching Seely Family History by Montell and Kathryn Seely I discovered a more detailed account of the overland trip to the west, where John Tidwell was Captain.  The account is part of the Sarah Seely Tidwell history.  Sarah Seely married Jefferson Tidwell, a son of John and Jane Tidwell.

Go to link below: http://mtpleasantpioneerofthemonth.blogspot.com/2009/03/john-and-jane-smith-tidwell.html

Stella Harris Oaks ~ Mother Of Apostle Dallin Oaks ~ A Great Granddaughter of Orange Seely .....found in Seely Family History compiled by Montell and Kathryn Seely

Enn Ess Aitch Junior Class 1939

Early Scandinavian Converts

 From: http://historytogo.utah.gov/people/ethnic_cultures/the_peoples_of_utah/scandinaviansaga.html

The earliest Scandinavian converts to Mormonism were won not in Europe but in the United States among the Norwegian immigrants in the storied settlements at Fox River in Illinois, Sugar Creek in Iowa, and Koshkonong in Wisconsin Territory, within missionary striking distance of Nauvoo, the rising Mormon capital of the 1 840s. Joseph Smith, the Mormon prophet, hoped to recruit missionaries for Scandinavia among them who would lead their countrymen to settle in and around Nauvoo to strengthen Zion as converts from the British Isles were already doing. By 1843 the Norwegian Mormon congregation at Fox River numbered fifty-eight, including several of the famous "sloop folk" of 1825; Knud Peterson of Hardangar, immigrant of 1837, better known in Utah history as Canute, who would be one of the early settlers of Lehi; and Aagaata Sondra Ystensdatter, eighteen and also an immigrant of 1837, from Telemarken, who as Ellen Sanders Kimball, wife of Brigham Young's counselor Heber C. Kimball, would be one of the three women in the first company of Mormon pioneers to enter Salt Lake Valley in 1847. Norwegian congregations sprang up in Iowa and Wisconsin as well, and by 1845 one Lutheran minister lamented that nearly a hundred and fifty Norwegians in the western settlements--some eighty in the Fox River colony alone--had followed the "Mormon delusion."

After the death of Joseph Smith, Brigham Young visited the outlying congregations of the Saints in quick succession trying to hold the pieces together. He called on the Norwegian Branch at Fox River in October of the martyr year and on a hundred acres northeast of nearby Ottawa "laid out a city," called it Norway, and "dedicated it to the Lord." Brigham Young declared that it would be a gathering place for the Scandinavian people and that they would build a temple there. But the Norwegian converts had to abandon that hope as the Mormons had to abandon Nauvoo. A hundred Norwegian Mormon families made ready to go west with Brigham Young, but the dissenter James J. Strang threw them into confusion with his counterclaims to the succession. Most of the Norwegian congregation eventually joined the reorganization under Joseph Smith III, son of the prophet, who in the 1 850s united many splinter groups and individuals adrift around Nauvoo following the "Brighamite" exodus.

Jens and Inger Jensen operated The Elsinore Hotel.

Brigham Young, meanwhile, did not forget the Fox River converts. In December 1847, back with news of fresh beginnings in the valley of the Great Salt Lake, he sent word from Council Bluffs to the Norwegian settlement urging them to come west. In April 1849 twenty-two Norwegians, Canute Peterson among them, left Fox River in six wagons headed for the valley. At Kanesville, Iowa, they joined Apostle Ezra Taft Benson's camp on the east bank of the Missouri River to become known in Mormon history as the Norwegian Company. Already on the grounds were a group of Welsh emigrants under Capt. Dan Jones. From Kanesville the companies traveled together, a mingling of tongues typical of Mormon migration. At the Weber River they encountered Apostle Erastus Snow and two Scandinavians, John Erik Forsgren and Peter Ole Hansen, eastward bound to carry the gospel to the old countries. After battling waist-deep snows in the mountains, the Norwegian Company reached the valley on October 25, in time to be numbered in Utah's first census, along with one Swede and two Danes. An early Gentile Scandinavian on the scene was Christian Hoier, a Norwegian forty-niner on his way to California, who wrote a letter to Bratsberg's Amtstidende about these Thelebonder among the Mormons--the first of many letters and travelers' accounts about Utah that would find their way into Scandinavian newspapers.

The Swede in that first census was John Erik Forsgren and the Danes were Peter Ole Hansen and his brother Hans Christian. John Erik and Hans Christian, both sailors, had embraced Mormonism in Boston in the early 1840s and had gone to Nauvoo. Hans Christian had written the news of his conversion to his younger brother Peter Ole in Copenhagen, who hastened to Nauvoo, where Brigham Young set him to work on a Danish translation of the Book of Mormon while Hans Christian entertained the Saints with his fiddle. After the fall of Nauvoo, Forsgren marched to California with the Mormon Battalion in 1846 and Hans Christian Hansen came west in 1847 with the pioneer vanguard, Peter Ole following soon after. It is a smiling coincidence of history that in these early representatives Norway, Denmark, and Sweden were all three "present at the creation," significant tokens of the important role the three kingdoms (and Iceland as well before the decade was out)4 were to play in the peopling of Utah, harbingers of the harvest to come from "the land of the north."

North Sanpete Ninth Grade 1952-53

(The above photo comes from the yearbook) original not available

North Sanpete Rams ~ 1941

John Heber Stansfield .. continued

North Sanpete Seniors 1925-26

North Sanpete High School Commencement Program 1926

NORTH SANPETE JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL GRADUATION ~ 1953

North Sanpete High School Seniors - 1926

GIRDLEBUSTERS vs BELLYHOOS

There were quite a few laughs when we posted this picture  of Neil Hafen in his "Bloomers" over a year ago.  Now we have found the newspaper article that prefaced the "Big Event". 

North Sanpete High School Commencement Program - 1941