Dorthea Gregersen Jensen

Dorthea apprenticed and learned the art of domestic science and dewing to a marked degree.

At the age of twenty-four, she was baptized as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by a young Danish missionary, Jens Peter Hansen Jensen, who would later become her husband.  When she joined the Church she was disinherited by her father who was quite well-to-do.  When she was about to emigrate he relented, somewhat.

When Dorthea and her future husband came to Utah in 1866, traveling with them was Dorthea's mother, two brothers, Jens Peter's mother and his sister.

When they arrived in Wyoming, Nebraska, the last wagon train of the season had already waited quite some time for them.  They departed, August 13, 1866, in the Abner Lowry Company.  They encountered such cold weather as they were coming through the Wasatch Mountains, that the oxen, having no feed, froze to death.  They arrived on October 22, 1866.

Dorthea and Jens Peter were married the day following their arrival into the Valley.  They were sent to Ephraim to locate the two year old son of Jens Peter's sister, who was the only survivor of an Indian massacre that took the lives of his parents.

When they arrived in Ephraim, they moved in with the Thomas Bjerregaard family until 1871, when they built a nice adobe home.  The front room had a dirt floor for many years.  

In 1881, Dorthea was left with five children to care for while her husband returned to Denmark on a mission.  They owned twenty acres of land, but she had no teams or implements with which to work the land, so she made a living by raising small fruits and making fresh butter.

One winter she slipped on the ice and fell, breaking her hip.  She never recovered, but lay in bed for years using a pulley attached to the ceiling to move.

She died at the age of seventy-two years of age.

Children:

Jens Joseph, 10 August 1867

Peter Daniel, 17 May 1869

Adolph Willard, 10 March 1871

Sophia Kjerstine, 10 April 1873

Anna Cathrine, 6 May 1875

Hans Ephraim, 6 September 1876

Josephine Eline, 8 November 1878

Christian-Nephi, 18 June 1880

(Source: Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude Volume II F to L, International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers, P.1538)