Pernille was the eldest of at least 7 children of Torsten Pedersen (1812-1897) and Elisabet Torrisdatter (1819-1889); both her parents were born in Knappum, Hedmark, Norway and did not emigrate. She was baptized at the Parish Church in Aasnes on 18 September 1842 and in 1863 or 1864, she married Halvor Kristiansen there. The couple emigrated to the United States with their first three young sons Martin, Kristian, and Theodore, along with Halvor's father's family, in July 1870. They traveled from Oslo via Liverpool to Quebec by steamship and then across land via Toronto to Arena, Wisconsin, where they arrived by 20 August, the day the census was taken. By 1875, they had moved to the Beef River area of Sumner Township, Trempealeau Co, WI. On June 8, 1885 Pernille and her husband became naturalized citizens in Whitehall WI. In May of 1889, they migrated to the Green River area of North Dakota, taking up a homestead claim near Wishek. In 1905, her husband Halvor moved to Saskatchewan to homestead there. Her son Karl Lauritz (Charles Louis) cared for her in Ashley before she died and then followed his father to take up his own homestead nearby in Saskatchewan. In 1909, Karl returned briefly to ND to marry Mary Inge Johnson, the sister of his brother John E. Johnson's wife Regina Olava, and then took his new bride back to Canada. Karl and Mary raised four children in Saskatchewan, Laura Inez (1910-1989), Carl Elbert (1914-2002), Mabel Estella (b. 1914) and Ina Luella (b. 1920). Pernille died in Ashley, North Dakota and was buried 11 June 1908 in a small rural cemetery about ten miles east of the Johnson homestead site. Charles (Karl Lauritz) provided her death certificate information.