Anna Maria Pederson Larsen

Anna and her parents came in a wagon train of Danish Immigrants.  Anna walked most of the way and enjoyed the trip.  Because food was scarce they looked for food along the way.  She was picking berries one day along the trail when she looked up to see an Indian watching her.  She could not see the wagon train and became frightened but did not want the Indian to suspect this.  She kept picking berries and carefully moved out of his sight.  She was careful to stay close to the wagons after that experience..  Later, the group needed to cross a rive and an Indian offered his help.  The women were frightened but Ann fear the Chief might have his feelings hurt so offered to go first.  After Anna, he helped all the women across.  Ann was tall with long, dark hair and blue eyes.  She too a red scarf from around her neck and tied it around the Chief's arm.  He was so pleased that he rode around the camp holding out his arm and smiling.

Anna married Oluf Christian Larsen in 1863, one year after she had arrived in Salt Lake Valley.  His first wife and her child had died a few months earlier.  Soon after they married they were sent South to settle Archleville, Utah.  Her husband married two other wives.  Anna and Oluf because the parents of six children.

When Church leaders asked them to leave their home and settle a new place, she would leave her comfortable home and start out anew.

When they had sheep she would card, spin, dye and weave her own cloth.  She and her children worked hard to stay out of debt while her husband was gone on a mission to Norway.

Anna used her skill in medicine for the sick and in childbirth.  She was kind, sympathetic, patient, wise and a peacemaker.  She loved truth and was willing to sacrifice for it.  She welcomed again another wife for Oluf into their home in 1884.  Anna died at the age of sixty-nine.

Children:

Oluf, 16 February 1865

Niels Lewis, 27 January 1869

Amelia Maria (Anderson,) 20 May 1867

Johanna Elnora (Christensen,), 8 September 1872

Olivia Christina (Graham), 232 December 1875

Anna (Munn), 13 December 1879

(Source: Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Volume II F to L, International Society of Daughters of Utah Pioneers, P. 1712)