Ane Kjerstine Andersen Nielsen

Ane was taught by the missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints before she left Denmark.  She was baptized on May 25, 1853 at the age of 17, a couple of weeks before her father, Soren Andersen.  Ane Kjerstine's mother was against the church.

At the age of seventeen, Ane walked over 1,000 miles to Utah, the trek through the Plains and mountains, over rocks and through rivers, took about three months.  Sometimes she pushed and sometimes she helped her father pull the handcart that carried all their past and the beginning of the rest of their lives.  Both of them were missing the mother they had left behind in a grave in Denmark.

When the Pioneers reached the Salt Lake Valley on October 5, 1854, they were sent 100 miles south to an area called Cotton wood.  Ane Kjerstine and her father's company arrived there on October 22, 1854, with 28 wagons.  In the book, Ephraim's First One Hundred Years, Soren Andersen's name is listed as among the first settlers.  While this list only identifies men, Ane Kjerstine was also among the first settlers of Cottonwood (Ephraim).  She and her father built a house out of adobe bricks they made themselves, a three-room house with rocks carefully laid down for the floor and it had a dirt roof.  Later it was given wood floors and a tin roof.

It was a house she would live in all her married life, the one she would raise ten children in, card wool and spin thread in, and both joy and sorrow would visit. According to Saga of the Sanpitch, Volume 25: 1993, Jens and Ane Kjerstine's oldest daughter Maren Marie Kjerstine Nielsen, "was the first girl to be born in the old Ephraim Fort". 

Ane often told about her experiences when she was a young mother in this wild country.  One day she had to go for water, a block and a half away.  As she left the house, an Indian lurking in the willows saw her leave.  He entered her cabin finding a five-year-old daughter, her three-year-old sister and baby brother alone in the house.  The Indian begged for bread and meat.  The daughter fearfully gave him all they had and hoped he would leave.  Instead he went over to the crib and would have stolen her little brother but Ane returned just in time.  She could speak the Indian language fluently, and wasted no time in telling the Indian to leave, which he did , hurriedly!

She told us about a time he Indians had stolen all the cows the pioneers owned.  Word came that their cows were being driven up to the mountains.  The men quickly grabbed their weapons, saddled up their horses and rode off in hot pursuit.  They overtook the Indians and rescued their cattle and returned them to the settlement.

On Ane's house doorstep, was written the words "Vielcome," not in print but in spirit.  No one ever came to her home without receiving something, either a piece of cake, a slice of bread and butter, or even a lump of sugar.

Jens died four years after the last baby was born.  Ane remarried four years later, to a man named Ole Christensen.  They were married 26 years before Ane passed away at age 77.

Children:

Maren Marie Kjerstine, 24 March 1859

Jensine Petrine Brighamine, 9 September 1861

James (Jens) Peter, 24 Junhe 1864

Ane Kjerstine Caroline, 2 October 1866

Marie Magdalena, 28 March 1868

Thomas Louis, 11 December 1870

Louis Brigham Young, 15 December 1873

Neils Heber Daniel, 20 January 1876

Gertrude Marie Elnore, 28 May 1878

Joseph Henry, 12 January 1880

(Sources:  Family Search, T. Kelly Nielson (Great Grandson),  Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Volume III M to R, International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers, P.2153)