Mette Marie Mortensen Frost

Mette was born into an affluent Danish family.  Their estate, not far ferom Copenhagen, had the name "Charlottesdahl."  Mette had a sister who she loved dearly.  In their teens they were carefully guarded by their parents.  They had a special carriage drawn by white horses.  Their driver often took them for a drive into the big city of Copenhagen and around the large park, Tivoli.

One day they heard Mormon missionaries preaching a new religion.  When she told her parents she was interested in the teachings of these missionaries they firmly told her that if she didn't cease her attempts to join i such a heretical philosophy she would be cut off from the family inheritance and her name would be stricken from the records of the family.

When Mette was eighteen years old she planned to follow her heart's conviction at all costs.  She sold her personal jewelry and intimate belongings to have enough money to buy a passage on a boat sailing to America.  She slipped away in the night wearing er large hand-loomed wool shawl, carrying a big tapestry bag packed with necessities she thought she would need for a long journey.  She followed the instructions given her by the missionaries and found a group of Mormon members who were making preparations to cross the Plains to Utah.

The group was under the leadership of a young man who had recently served a mission in Denmark, unknown to Mette.  His name was Jens Christian Frost.  He was kind to Mette and welcomed her to walk by his handcart.  When the carts were being loded, many items had to be discarded because of lack of room.  Mette found a small pillow made of velvet patches cross-stitched together.  This pillow and her wool shawl were all she had to keep herself warm, day or night.  She survivierd the hardships of the long handcart journey.  She was required to take her turn pushing or pulling the hand cart in pay for food.  Mette was blessed with stong determination.  They arrived in Salt Lake Valley about 1866.  This group of Scandinavians were set another hundred miles south to a settlement known as Ephraim.

In 1866, Mette married the young Danishman, Jens Frost, who had led their party across the wilderness.  He had already built a fine home.  Mette accepted the welcvome of the woman Jens had married in 1862, befoe his mission to Denmark.  Mette was treated kindly in her husband's house by the "sister wife" and children, but she longed for her own house.

She worked in the molasses factory in Moroni, a distance of five miles which she walked day and night.  She made molasses candy and was able to sell it.  Slowly she put away money for her dream house.  She then helped her husband build a one-room house with hand-made adobe bricks.  They were the parents of six children, four of whom died.

Mette helped her two girls obtain a good education.  Her daughter, Anna Marie later bought a large home in Ephraim for her mother.

Children:

Marie Brighamina, 11 March 1868

Anders Christian, 3 June 1870 (died as an infant)

Anna Marie 23 November 1871

Inger Marthine, 11 September 1873 (died as an infant)

Elsinora, 5 May 1876

Sara Catherine, 12 October 1878 (died as an infant)

(Source: Pioneer Women of Faith and Fortitude, Volume II F to L, International Society Daughters of Utah Pioneers p. 1023)