October 1, 1879 to April 27, 1935

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE LIFE OF NIELS CHRISTIAN CHRISTENSEN

As told by his daughter, Ina Christensen Green, to her daughter, Helen Newman.

My father Niels C. Christensen was born October 1, 1879, in Denmark.

His mother left him with her parents to be raised by them in their home. His grandparents still had part of their own family at home and they raised him right along with their own. Even though they were his uncles and aunts, he grew to love them all very much and always thought of them like brothers and sisters.

When he was to be given his name, his grandparents asked an old schoolmaster friend of theirs to come and give him his name. He loved his name very much and was always proud of it.

Later, his mother met and married Aunt Johanna's and Uncle Christian's father. His mother really wanted him to come and live with them but he wouldn't do it. He said he was born a Christensen and would always be one. He was sealed in the temple to his grandparents.

He went to work when he was very young. I remember him saying he got off half a day for his mother's funeral. He also said he worked and paid all the expenses of her funeral. When it came time for him to go into military service he decided to come over to America to his uncles who were already here.

He lived with Uncle Chris and Aunt Caroline in Moroni. He got a job working on the railroad, on the section gang. He worked for $1.50 a day. He also kept the time cards and books for Mr. Jensen, his boss. Mr. Jensen didn't know how to read or write and my father was a very good penman and also good with figures. I don't remember my father saying how much schooling he had had, but he was determined that all of his children would go to school and get an education, this was important to him.

He kept working for the railroad and saved enough money to return to Denmark. There he met my mother. I don't know if he knew her before coming to America or not, but his aunt had married my grandfather.

He married my mother April 4, 1902, and stayed in Denmark as long as he dared to before being forced to go into military service. He then left Denmark for America, leaving my mother there.

He loved America very much and had been very lonesome for it. He said he felt "at home" again when he saw Mt. Nebo. He went back to live with Uncle Chris and Aunt Caroline and back to working on the railroad. He saved his money and when he got enough he sent for my mother and me. I guess he was lonesome for my mother, and he had never seen me as I was born after he left Denmark. I was 8 months old when I and my mother came to America.

My mother and I left Denmark the latter part of August, 1903. We came with a missionary from Mt. Pleasant, Mads Anderson. My father knew we were coming but not when. When we arrived they telephoned Uncle Chris to come and get us, but we had to wait until he did his day's work of delivering for the Moroni Co-op. My father had gone out to Uncle Julius' when we got to Uncle Chris' house. When Dad came home he wondered what was the matter as the house was all lighted up. He was very surprised and happy to see us. Father soon found a place for us to live and we had a home of our own. This was the first time in his life that he had ever had a place of his own. We moved once while they remodeled and added on to the house, and once they added on to the house while we lived in two rooms.

My father was a very hard worker and a good provider for his family. There were 11 children. We had good clothes and really good food as mother was a very good cook and an exceptionally good housekeeper.

My father worked for Aaron Hardy carrying mud or mortar, to use for laying up the brick on homes he was building. Father worked himself up and. Aaron took him in as a partner. They built a lot of homes in Moroni, some of them are still standing. Dad was very fast at laying up the brick and could also do plastering. He was also a good stone cutter and he cut much of the red rock up in the hills that was used for the foundations of the homes. I remember having to take his lunch to him up in the hills when he was cutting rock and how much I hated to because of the snakes up there.

He also helped to build on to the old Iranton plant in Provo. He helped to build on to schools and churches, some in Price and Eureka. He also helped to build the annex on the north end of the Manti Temple. They cut and used stone from the mountains around there.

He was a Boss (supervisor) for the WPA and supervised the building of a building at the high school to house the Industrial Arts classes. He built the building as the WPA specified but he told them it wasn't right, but they said to do it that way anyway. He ended up tearing down and rebuilding part of it. He also went out shearing sheep in the spring and was good at it, too.

My father and mother joined the Church and were baptized in the Manti Temple when my brother Ed was a small boy. I remember them going one dark and very cold morning. Later they were married in the Temple and really enjoyed going. They would gather up Uncle Chris, Aunt Christina, Aunt Johanna, and Uncle Yocum and go to do work in the Temple. Sometimes riding in his little old truck, but they were always glad to go and enjoyed it.

I remember my Dad working all day, coming home and mother wasn't there. She was either doing some errands or out quilting somewhere. Dad would go over to Uncle Julius' and you could see those two sitting out on the rock steps on the south side of the house, just talking. He really loved his uncles and aunts. He felt about them like brothers and sisters do, this was because of being raised with them in the same home.

I also remember him telling of going to see his real father in Germany. They were well-to-do people and owned a fleet of fishing ships. They were very nice people and at times came to visit him at his grandparent's home.

My mother was very lonely here in America, she was an only child and missed her father very much. When she left Denmark she left her father and stepmother there. She was just 5 years old when her own mother died and she cared very much for her stepmother. My father always told her he would get the money for her to go back to Denmark and visit her people whenever she wanted to go. But she never went, she always stayed home and took good care of her family.

My father was a very generous and thoughtful man. He sent money to my mother's family, my grandfather and his wife Tanta Karen, and to his own people. He also helped out neighbors and friends, he was always one of the first to help out a family when the man was sick or hurt.

My father was very well thought of and respected in our town. He could go to the Co-op and get anything he wanted. They never questioned him about paying for it. They knew his word was as good as if it was gold. He could also borrow money from the bank, just on his word.

He was always very close to his uncles and aunts. He loved them very much and appreciated them.

He was also very proud of his own family and loved them all very much. He was proud of his home and his wife who made life happy for all of them, especially him. He loved my mother very much. When his grand kids came along they were also a great joy to him.

My dad didn't mind working on Sunday when he was away from home. He always said he could do more in 6 days than 7, and they always went to church on Sunday. He took Mother and left us to do dishes and clean up and tend the younger children.

My dad was a very good sheep shearer and went out to Jericho and a place called Moderea where they sheared great big herds of sheep for several sheep men. Later in the season he went to Idaho and Wyoming to shear. He also made himself an outfit of his own with enough for two or four men to work on. He would come home at night and all his tools would be soaked in water and cleaned. He had his own machinery to sharpen them. He bought emery cloth and glued on plates that were round and he put them on a machine to grind his combs and cutters, as he called them. You could hear him out there every evening or early morning grinding these tools, as they had to be ready for the next day of shearing.

My dad was an early riser and was always to his job and ready to start before it was time.

Jake or Jacob Christensen says he has been with my dad many times and he thought he was one of the finest men he ever knew. He called him Uncle Neils, as all his uncles' children called him.

When my dad worked up at Dividend up by Eureka., he would have Uncle Christian who had a truck take Mother and us children up there to see him. His truck only had one seat so Mother and whoever was the baby at that time sat up in front and the rest of us rode in the back and were wind blown and sun burned by the time we got home again.

When my dad worked up at Price he didn't mind working on Sunday, he said that it was better than carousing around or staying in his room. So, on many a weekend he would telephone Mother to go to Mt. Pleasant and take the train over to Price. I think she had to change trains at Soldier Summit, which she didn't like, but never the less she went. Luella says she remembers Mother buying a very nice, fancy dress which was gray so she would look very nice for Dad.

Dad delighted in giving my mother nice things and always when he came back from shearing or other places, he brought my mother very nice gifts, and of course the children always got some, too. He once took Mother to Salt Lake and while there he took her out to buy a coat. She looked at them and the one she liked she thought was too expensive and she tried something else on. But my dad bought the more expensive one, which was a beautiful black sort of fur coat and Mother was very proud of it.

One time Dad took our car - this was after I was married - and Mother always wanted a china closet. So here they come back with one tied on the back of the car. It was very lovely with lots of glass in it and she displayed all her lovely pieces and treasures in it. Ed has the china closet today. I was promised I should have it, and I hope that some day I will. Mother always said I could have it after she was gone.

Every winter my dad put up ice for the Moroni Co-op Store. They used it to keep their meat in the summertime. He would go down to the reservoir and cut and haul the ice to the store. I remember seeing him walking beside the horses to keep warm as it was very cold and icicles would form on his moustache.

In the fall he would buy a field of cabbage from Uncle Julius and put it in our garden, then when spring came he would go peddling cabbage door-to-door in Ephraim, Manti, and other towns around. He would sell it for .02 to .02 1 /2 cents a pound and people thought it was too much.

Every year we had two cellars, one with bottled fruit and meat and a dirt one that had plenty of potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, and at least 20 bushels of apples. It was our job to get a big milk pan of apples up every day for us to have to eat at night. He always bought a 5-gallon can of honey from Oscar Hansen so we had plenty of honey candy. Every winter we would stretch it so it was nearly white and we enjoyed eating it.

Father went shearing sheep in Wyoming with the boys. He had an attack and he told the boys to get him out of there, as he couldn't breathe very good. The altitude was very high there, they came home and we later found out he had had a heart attack. He wasn't very well from then on but would work at times, other times he just stayed around home, did little things he felt able to do. He tried to always keep going but sometimes this wasn't possible. He lived his life like this for about 4 years. He got quite sick and was confined to bed, but it was for just one day, as he died the following day, April 27, 1935, (Uncle Christian's birthday) at 56 years of age. He accomplished much in those very short years.

Ina C. Green, Daughter

Photos of Niels Christian Christensen and family

Niels Christian Christense	Niels wife, Dagmar Marie Mikkelsen
(click the above photos to enlarge)

Last updated: Dec. 15, 2000.