Bodil and Jens Jr.

In 1856, nine-year-old Bodil Malene Mortensen left Denmark with family friends Jens and Elsie Nielson and their five-year-old son Niels, commonly called Jens Jr., while Bodil's parents hoped to follow fellow church members to Utah but lacked the funds for the whole family to emigrate together. Bodil's sister Anne Margrette had gone ahead to Utah in 1855 at age 15, and the next year Bodil traveled to America, went by train with the Nielsons to Iowa City, and then joined them in the Willie Handcart Company after the Nielsons gave money to help others, bought a handcart for themselves, and chose not to continue with a well-equipped wagon outfit for the remaining 1300 miles to Utah. Bodil, who helped care for Jens Jr., turned 10 near Florence, Nebraska. In Wyoming, severe snowstorms, bitter cold, and sharply reduced food rations brought great suffering to the handcart emigrants, and exposure and starvation caused many deaths. After a grueling push to reach rescue wagons at Rock Creek, Bodil and Jens Jr. died and were buried in a shallow grave with 11 others. Jens and Elsie's ordeal left Jens with a lifelong twisted foot set at a right angle to the other, and despite that injury and the loss of his son and Bodil, he developed unwavering faith, later telling Brigham Young that no job given to him would be too hard and recalling that as extreme as the handcart ordeal was, the trek through the Hole-in-the-Rock was more severe.

Bluff, Utah · United States