Daughter of John Huston and Christianna Ettleman

Married August Olaus Kofoed Valentine, 7 Apr 1859, Brigham City, Box Elder, Utah, later divorced

Children - Catherine Louise Valentine, August William Valentine, John Elmer Valentine, Mary Ellen Valentine, Carlos Houston Valentine, Bernice Valentine, Christopher Columbus Valentine, Clara Valentine, Lucius Arnold Valentine, Argenta Valentine, Winnie Valentine

Biography - Olaus Kofoed FALENTINE was born 27 August 1837 on the beautiful island of Bornholm, Denmark. The island is famous for its picturesque vistas and its fishing. The island is also of later years known for being the summer home of the German Kaiser in his day.

As a child Olaus frequented the public country school three times a week. He had to walk "three Danish miles" to get to school and in the wintertime, he was obliged to leave home long before daylight in order to get there by eight o'clock. The instruction they received in the country schools in those days was meager, but they managed to learn to read, write, get the multiplication facts, and recite a lot of hymns.

In Bornholm church archive records researched by Hans Ogard, it states that Olaus Kofoed's parents Falentine FALENTINESEN and Engelina Margrethe KOEFORED were "well-to-do farmer folk living near Ronne", a city on Bornholm. The Falentines were industrious, frugal people who lived in amiable neighborliness with the rest of the people who mostly owned their own farms.

The Falentine family members were all very sociable, hospitable, free-hearted and much given to having a good time in their own particular way, especially in the wintertime when dancing, card playing, and general good natured carousing was much indulged in.

Olaus' father was for many years road supervisor and an officer in the militia. For this and other reasons, he was looked upon as rather a leader among his neighbors and friends, who frequently came to him for advice in matters of importance to them. Olaus grew up in this environment, used to hard work from an early age, with a child's limited share of the festivities and with but little ethical teaching outside that of the "Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not lie, etc." He loved to dance and was considered a "good waltzer", even by the adults when he was still a small boy.

It was however, mostly hard work that left its mark on his childhood days. Being the oldest of a family of five, he early had to assume his share of the farm work. He was barely big enough to reach the plow handles when he was set to plowing and many a night he cried himself to sleep with aching arms because he had to lift them so high to steer the plow. One of his childhood's best pleasures was to roam in the fields for flowers, the most beautiful varieties growing wild and in great profusion all over Denmark.

When Olaus was about 14 years-old, and had been confirmed in the Lutheran Church, the Mormon Elders came to the island and began preaching the Gospel and that made a complete change in the life of the boy Olaus Kofoed. In fact, the Mormon Elders brought great changes to the lives of the whole family and many of their neighbors.

Olaus' father was one of the first in that region who understood and embraced the Gospel's truth, which started a period of bitter persecution towards his family. Whereas, Olaus' friends and neighbors, many of whom had lived in congenial comradere with him sharing the hospitality of his family and home; they now joined the "mobocrats" and harassed the people who had joined this new and very unpopular religion. The very devil himself seemed to have taken possession of these people and they sought every opportunity to molest the Mormon converts, who were few in number-even threatening their very lives.

On one occasion when the Elders, Dr. Folkman and Ole Swenson, were at Olaus' house trying to hold a meeting, a mob came armed with all kinds of implements and demanded that the missionaries be delivered to them. Olaus' father Falentine knew what that meant and so he tried to hide the Elders. Falentine went out and begged to reason with the mob, but they threatened to kill him too, if he did not give up the elders. The mob stormed in and ransacked the house, cursing, swearing, and threatening. They found Elder Ole Swenson and beat him badly; and would have thrown him in the well, but some of them got frightened and turned their attention to other evil deeds. Olaus' mother Engel received a blow over the head with a shovel, the scar of which she carried to her grave.

Under these unhappy circumstances, life became very miserable for the children, who were made to share the ill fate of their parents. They were persecuted by their school fellows on a smaller scale, but not less vehemently. Olaus, young as he was, had listened to the Gospel message and understood it. He was baptized and shortly after, in November of that same year, his parents decided to let him emigrate with a party of friends who were going to Utah.

The boy Olaus was happy to get away from his tormenters and he left Bornholm on 1 December 1852. Olaus and the group of saints traveling together stayed in Copenhagen for two weeks and then departed that city on 15 December in a sailing vessel en route for Hull, England. It took another six days to cross the North Sea, where the group encountered a fearful storm. The Saints traveled "steerage" and conditions were indescribably difficult.

There were two-hundred ninety-seven Scandinavian passengers down in the hold. The hatch over the only exit to the deck and fresh air was nailed down and oil cloth nailed over it. There was no fresh air to be had. The seasickness was dreadful. The stench became almost unbearable at times. Some of the people wept and prayed, others cursed and swore, and a few sang hymns. Their cries and means reached to the deck, where two of the passengers had hidden in a nook and after the hatch had been battened down, they could not get down to their fellow traveler.

One of the hidden Saints on deck was James Olsen, a boy about Olaus' age and a young man with more courage than common sense, for they came very near losing their lives several times. The Helmsman was lashed to the wheel. The storm raged for twenty-four hours and during that time James and his companion got nothing to eat or drink. Down below the people did get food and water, such as it was. When they finally reached Hull, the travelers learned that one-hundred and fifty ships were lost during that storm. The company traveled by trail from Hull to Liverpool and there they boarded the ship "Monark" and set sail for New Orleans.

For eleven weeks the Monark was tossed about on the Atlantic Ocean driven hither and thither by all kinds of winds. Each morning the Saints were served their portion of sea-crackers, peas, and rice, with never a mouthful of vegetables of any kind, net even a potato. The water they had to drink all those eleven weeks had been brought from Liverpool in barrels. It became colored and stunk, nor was there even enough of it at that.

Yet the emigrants bore their trying journey with great fortitude. Some died of cholera and were buried in the ocean, others were married and spent their "honeymoon" under exceedingly trying circumstances.

The Monark sailed south and passed the coast of Cuba, where the golden grain was ripening and the oranges hung temptingly from the branches of the trees. The ship then steered into the Gulf of Mexico. When they got into the mouth of the Mississippi, they became lodged on a sandbar and had to have two tugs tow them up the river to New Orleans, where they arrived on 13 March 1853. Here they were put on a flatboat which floated up the river to St. Louis, where they landed some time in April.

It was late spring in St. Louis, and it snowed after the immigrants arrived. In consequence to the late season snow, the cattle were not ready, nor any of their other heavy traveling requisites, so the group of Saints spent a month readying such necessities, when the weather would allow. At this time Olaus suffered from dysentery, which lasted about three weeks and left him so weak that he was scarcely able to walk unaided.

Very likely his traveling companions did the best for him they could, but they were woefully ignorant in all matters of sickness and undoubtedly gave him complicated herbal remedies that aggravated his case and withheld simple things that might have helped him. However, Olaus survived and when the train of ox-teams finally got started, he became gradually better as time went on. At Keokuck, they were at last assigned to their respective companies and started on the Old Mormon Trail.

Once on "the trail" there were three-hundred miles to traverse before arriving in Kanesville, where the group crossed the Missouri in a ferryboat. It took about a week to cross the stream as there was no rope and they would land far below and only a few wagons could be put on at a time. After the group had all safely landed, Captain John Forsgren, called a meeting to give thanks to God for their safe landing. Then on to Winter Quarters and from there the group traveled up through Iowa to where so many of the old mob members had settled who were persecutors in the earlier days of Mormon chronicles. Indians were not in this region of the wilderness causing contention; however the plague of the prairie was the American Buffalo which roamed those plains in big herds. The bison came down from the hills for water by the hundreds and stampeded the Saint's cattle, which caused a great deal of trouble.

The company of Saints traveled on and on, except during the Sabbath, which was reserved for worship, until they reached Ft. Laramie, a government trading post. Form Ft. Laramie, the group traveled on to the noted Echo Canyon (some seventy-five miles long) and down the Weber River to a point below Echo. Then up over Big Mountain and Little Mountain, to the very top of the Wasatch Range! When the group reached the top of Little Mountain the first sight of the "promised valley" could be viewed far down below. The next day, 30 Sep 1853, the company journeyed down Emigration Canyon to Ft. Douglass and into the Great Salt Lake City.

It is impossible for those who have not tried such a journey to imagine the feelings of those weary, exhausted, sorely tried people when they at last reached their destination. The haven of rest to which they had looked forward these many months and to know that whatever else befell, they would at least have a foothold somewhere! It was just before the October Conference that the company pulled into Salt Lake City, having been on the journey eleven months and having traveled over eight-thousand miles.

The company was now disbanded. The people went to their several destinations. Captain Forsgren and the boys, (James, Olaus, and Itgersm) stayed in Salt Lake for about a week, seeing the sights. The Saints had just finished digging out the basement for the Temple. There was no Tabernacle or Assembly Hall, and the people met in a temporary building where the Assembly Hall now stands. After resting in the Old Tithing Yard until the end of the week, Captain Forsgren (with his brother and sister, and the two boys) including others, started for Box Elder, as it was then called, and reached this destination in five days, it being approximately eighty miles north of Salt Lake.

There was no Brigham City, of course, nothing but a waving mass of bunch grass and sage brush, some dugouts and a very few log cabins. Box Elder was a fort. The boys were taken to the home of Mr. John Forsgren and were kindly treated. These boys who had been genial companions for so many months soon separated but the friendship then formed was always kept up. They found work here and there. There was plenty to do and the pay consisted mostly of a very meager board. The people had but little themselves. Winter was coming on and Olaus suffered the agony of perpetually knowing hunger, for he was a growing boy with a good healthy appetite and he never dared to eat as much as his appetite demanded-in fact sufficient food wasn't there to be had.

That winter the people built three log cabins and a meeting house in the fort, which was used as a schoolhouse. In 1854, the next year, Apostle Lorenzo Snow moved to Box Elder and he brought a number of people from Salt Lake with him. That year the city was laid out and surveyed, so that things began to look more encouraging. Also in 1854, Olaus' parents arrived from Demark and they had succeeded in selling their farm, so Falentine and Engel were able to emigrate, paying the passage for and bringing seven people besides their own entire family.

Olaus now moved home and helped his father work at whatever came first to hand. They were hard, those first years of privation and exposure. The first year was difficult for the family, but their struggle to settle in was not as bad however as for others, for Falentine had brought some supplies and a few cows; so their family was better off than many others. When the crickets appeared however and ate their crops as fast as they came up, the people almost lost courage. Different kinds of substitutes were resorted to, in order to try to stretch out their meager ration of food in the hope for bread. One man even tried to mix sawdust with his scant supply of flour, but as you might imagine, that did not work out very well.

Olaus was able to go to school for only about three months after he came to Utah, but it sufficed to teach him to read English, and he had learned to speak it fluently before he had been in America one year. He engaged with other men and boys in whatever there was to do, such as hauling wood from the canyon, logging, and building crude bridges, or making roads and dug ways. He has often told his family how he used to go in the winter after wood and logs without shoes and with gunny sacks tied around his feet. After awhile, he got rawhide footwear, which would expand when wet or damp, and shrink up unmercifully when drying!

When Olaus was about 22 years old, he married a young girl by the name of Mary HOUSTON who was born on 17 July 1843 to John HUSTON and Christina ETTLEMAN. Mary's father's family were from Ireland and her mother's ancestry from Germany. Mary was only about 17 years old but had, like Olaus, become schooled in hardships and strictest poverty.

The couple began married life in a one-room log cabin with a piece of factory for a window light. A seaman's chest served for a table in the home, including one chair with a rawhide bottom, the crudest kind of a bedstead, and a bake kettle for a cooking utensil. Olaus stood to be married in a hickory shirt, which his bride had bound around with turkey-red calico. Mary had on a calico dress, as calico at that time cost one dollar a yard.

When their first baby was to make his advent, Olaus went to the canyon and got a load of tan bark, which he hauled to Salt Lake City and received twenty dollars for the whole. With such finances the family felt rich! The twenty dollars, of course, covered all expenses even with factory and calico at a dollar a yard. The dollar piece seems to have been their standard measure, for sugar was a dollar a pound, as was also coffee, and very likely other commodities.

The Falentines had their "ups and downs", their sorrows and sunny hours, like the rest of the Saints. They had however one thing which others may lack even in these days of plenty, and that was a close companionship of friends and neighbors. There were no rich and no poor for they were like one big family.

Each took a warm interest in every other's affairs and all mourned or rejoiced with one another. They were all very sociable and met together at all kinds of "Bees". Dancing was the most popular recreation and in that Olaus shone, for he was considered one of the best dancers in the community. For wholehearted sociability those days were far ahead of even the present.

In 1864, Olaus and his wife Mary, moved to Bear Lake thinking to better themselves, but they did not like it there and returned to Brigham the next year. In 1868, they lived in Honeyville, but they did not like it there either, so once more the family removed to Brigham City where they seemed to thrive best. Olaus freighted in the early 1870's between Corinne, Idaho, and Montana, a few years and later he went to logging for the Cooperative.

In 1876, he started to herd sheep for the "Co-op" and in 1880, he began running the cooperative sheep on shares and kept this up for about eight years. Olaus and Mary had the great sorrow of losing a beautiful accomplished daughter, Mary Ellen, who came home for the Christmas holiday, took typhoid, and died tragically at the age of seventeen.

Mary and Olaus also lost three other children, Catherine Louisa, John Elmer, and Lucius Arnold, in the early childhood. The couple had eleven children total including August William, Carlos Huston, Verniece, Christopher Columbus, Clara Arjente, and Winnie.

In 1883, Olaus was called to go to Denmark on a mission and his boys kept up the business of running the sheep while he was away. He labored in his Native Island, Bornholm, for nineteen months, when he was banished from Denmark for "leading the people astray by preaching Mormonism", so the complaint stated. Olaus was sent to Copenhagen where he was imprisoned for five days and was then banished from the country and sent to England.

While in England Olaus waited there until a company of Latter-day Saints was organized to depart for Utah and he then traveled with them home in July 1885. That same year Olaus married Sophie Hansen EGESEN, a woman he met while on his mission and with whom he had six children.

Mary couldn't live in polygamy, so she lived alone and suffered much heartbreak. Mary also was troubled with "milk leg" and had to go to a doctor and have her leg bled every few months. She kept a wet bandage on it most of the time.

On 22 Sep 1892 Olaus was called to be Bishop of the Second Ward, having been ordained a high priest and set apart as a High Councilman before then, which position he held until October 1905. Olaus held different positions of trust aside from his post as Bishop. He was an honest, upright, public-spirited man who never shirked a duty. He was kind and considerate in his family and an indulgent father, always willing that they should have the best he could afford, while it didn't matter about himself.

With his family he removed to Salt Lake City in 1914 and while there he labored in the Salt Lake Temple. On 11 Jan 1916 Olaus Kofoed Falentine died joining his wife Mary Houston who had died eight years previous to him on 12 July 1908, from sclerosis of the liver. Both had been faithful and devoted Latter-day Saints.

(Note: After emigrating to America Olaus Falentine became known as August Valentine.)