Preface: For all of the great history of the Latter-day Saints, there is a giant hole. We have NOT adequately explored the amazing lives of women in the Church. Fortunately, some work has been done such as the edited work by Maurine Carr Ward (1996): Winter Quarters: The 1846-1848 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards, and Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith written by Newell and Avery (1994). I have become convinced (over years of study) that pioneer women in the Church lived MORE amazing lives than their counterparts, and that is saying quite a bit.
One particular woman has come to my attention: Catherine Jensen Nelson (1832 –1918). We have little details of her life, but what we know sets the stage for further research.
She was born December 5, 1832 in Denmark.
In May of 1850 the first Mormon missionaries arrived in Copenhagen. It was after that time that Catherine Jensen joined the Church, possibly while she was studying nursing at the University of Copenhagen. According to FamilySearch.org, she married Nels Christian Nelson (1828 –1921) on November 11, 1855 in Denmark, just weeks before they journeyed together across the sea.
The Nelson's arrived to New York City via the ship John J. Boyd in mid-February of 1856 with Canute Peterson as the LDS captain. The narrative associated with the Canute Peterson Company (posted in "Mormon Overland Travel 1847-1869" by the LDS Church) indicates that the group was divided into three parts, which were sent to Burlington, Iowa; Alton, Illinois; or St. Louis, Missouri. This site states: "Most of these who went to Burlington and Alton remained in or near those places for a year or more working to earn enough to continue their journey."
Evidently, the Nelsons worked in the Midwest for slightly more than a year, and then when prepared to journey were approved to travel with the Christian Christiansen handcart company. Catherine and Nels are officially listed as part of the so-called "seventh handcart company", led by Christian Christiansen. This handcart group left Iowa City, Iowa about June 15, 1857 and arrived in Salt Lake City on September 13, 1857. This company consisted of about 330 people, 68 handcarts, and 3 wagons.
In a sense the Nelsons jumped out of the frying pan into the fire. As they left Iowa City toward their destination, they were literally walking into the infamous Utah War, while no doubt remembering the horrible fate of the Willie and Martin handcart companies of 1856. Their actions define deep faith.
To add to the magnitude of these momentous events, Catherine would have been pregnant when she walked across the plains, as she gave birth to Charlotte C. Nelson in Provo, Utah in October of 1857.
The Nelson family eventually settled Bloomington, Idaho in the mid-1860s. It was there that Catherine Jensen Nelson served as a prominent mid-wife. She delivered so many babies (numbered in the hundreds) that she became known as the "Doctor woman."
Catherine is known in my family for having delivered my grandfather, Arthur William Hart (Oct. 6, 1869 – Apr. 7, 1949), son of James H. and Sabina Scheib Hart.
Evidently, the following piece was published in the Star Valley Independent, an old western Wyoming/Idaho newspaper established around 1902 and is still running. My grandfather A. W. Hart sent the newspaper the following, which evidently was published in December of 1940:
I received the following letter from Brother Alf [Alfred A. Hart] on the occasion of my last birthday, October 16. I pass it on to you, my family, for a Christmas remembrance, Dec 1940.Arthur W. Hart
Bloomington, Idaho
October 16, 1940
Dear Brother Arthur:
A little incident which I read in the "Daughters of Utah Handcart Pioneers," will be of interest to you. This sketch was of Mr. and Mrs. Nels C. Nelson who came from Denmark in 1855. In 1865, they helped pioneer Bear Lake, making Bloomington their home. Mrs. Nelson, Catherine, was the only mid-wife and nurse in this neighborhood.
It was 71 years ago tonight, the 16th of October, the ground was covered with snow, the wind was howling and the snow drifting, when a knock came on the Nelson door. Catherine lay in bed with a six-day-old baby girl [actually, about 5 weeks old, the baby was Annie C. Nelson, born Sept. 11th, 1869]. The man, James H. Hart entered. He said his wife was sick and wanted Catherine to accompany him to his home at once.
She hesitated; he gave her a blessing. He promised her in the name of the Lord that no harm would come to her or her baby.
Catherine arose and dressed, bundled the baby up, rode behind this man on to his house. Her faith in his promise never wavered. The little old pioneer house, one room, dirt roofed was reached. That night a baby boy was ushered into the world. He was named Arthur William.
Every day for nine or ten days Catherine carried her baby to the Hart home washing, dressing, and caring for mother and baby Arthur. Not the slighted harm came to Mrs. Nelson or her baby. [Annie died at age 11 on Feb. 8th, 1881].
Affectionately, Alf
Conclusions: We still do NOT know enough about LDS pioneer women. Some work is being done, but it is a universe of history waiting to be more fully explored.
The gap is unfortunate because we modern peoples need strong female role models from the past. Actually, there are many potential models from the past, but … we just know too little.
To those female undergraduates who are considering careers in scholarship, I urge them to seriously consider graduate work in LDS history. True, one cannot get rich doing such work, but the other rewards are aplenty.
I would love to hear from others who have documented information on Catherine Jensen Nelson.
Copyright 2009 S.Faux (Email: foxgoku54 [at] gmail [d0t] c0m; URL: http://mormoninsights.blogspot.com). Readers may distribute this post for noncommercial purposes provided such distributing is of the entire post, including author's copyright and contact information. All other rights reserved.
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4 comments:
This is a post to warm my heart, in every possible way. Thank you, S.!
And I second your plea for scholarship (by men as well as women) in Mormon studies. So much has already been gathered but never really used in a serious way, and so much remains to be found in the hands of individual families, as this post illustrates. The raw materials are easy to come by -- we need the thought and creativity and desire of a new generation to build something wonderful with those materials, something that has never yet been seriously attempted, and perhaps we haven't even dreamed yet of the direction that building might take. The field is wide open.
Thanks, Ardis.
I did not mean to imply that men cannot do history on women, but IT IS necessary to have women doing women's history, as they provide an essential perspective too easily not captured (as the current situation attests) by male historians.
Oh, I understood, S. You're right that very often a member of a group can bring insight that would be far more difficult for others -- just as here on Mormon Insights you bring a certain understanding of Mormons in the military that isn't easily available to a non-military family, and as Bruce Crow and his Tennessee local history on Amateur Mormon Historian shows another niche that can't easily be filled by anyone else.
We all have grandmothers, so your appeal to uncover the stories of women should be understood by us all. Here's hoping you and Catherine Jensen Nelson may inspire some young woman to find the work she was born to do.
Thank you for this posting. Nels Christian and Catherine Jensen Nelson were my 2nd Great Grandparents on my Father's side. But until today, I knew very little about them, although I grew up in Paris, Idaho and was in the Bloomington Ward during my High School years. It's often easy to for us to forget that our ancestors lived lives full of faithful service.
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