Son of Mads Jorgensen and Eva Sanderstrom
Married Eve Cathrine Hansen Zobell, 25 Nov 1880, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
Married Sarah Busenbark, 25 Aug 1925, Clawson, Emery, Utah
Married Josephine Helen Lee, 7 December 1937, Sanpete, Utah
History. I, Edward Joannes Jorgensen, was born on March 15, 1856, in Copenhagen, Denmark. When I was about three years of age my father, Mads Jorgensen, left his native land for Utah, he being a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My mother did not have sufficient faith in the doctrines of that church to follow him; hence she and I were left behind, I being her only child. After my father left it was a hard struggle for us to live in a large city without means of support, only by day's labor. We lived in a tenement house and she worked at all kinds of jobs until she obtained a position as nurse in a naval hospital in Copenhagen, during the war between Germany and Denmark, 1862-64. She stayed at the hospital and I was cared for by other families, she paying my board.
My mother being head nurse at the hospital, she would allow me to go and visit her. At times I would go to the harbor and see the dead and wounded come in, hauled in wagons like so many hogs, blood running from the wagons as they proceeded to the hospital and to the morgue.
I started to school when about six years old, the custom was that some could go in the forenoon and some in the afternoon, boys and girls were kept separate. About when ten years old I started to work. My first job was at a factory where mustard was prepared and bottled. It was not a very pleasant job. My part was to help label crocks and prepare paper which was used to stick over the top of jars and looked like bladder. It was made by heating on an iron plate with a gas jet under and rubbing wax on the paper, which made it look like bladder.
My mother, whose name was Eva Soderstrom Jorgensen, lived in a tenement house on the fifth story. I remember how I would walk up and down the street in the evening before I could muster courage enough to venture going up those dark stairs to my mother's room. So many ghost stories were told to children in that country that all children were afraid in the dark.
Many miraculous escapes from danger and death I have had, one, which I will here mention. I was down at the harbor with some of my schoolmates, where a schooner lay at anchor. I crawled out on the bowsprit of the boat and fell in the water and was about drowned when a sailor came along and rescued me. Another time I was walking along on top of a board fence, which surrounded a windmill like the old Dutch mills, which had four great wings. The fence had a railing on top just wide enough to walk on. I fell and was struck by one of the wings which rendered me unconscious. Nobody seemed to notice me. After a while I crawled out and escaped with a great scare, but nothing else except feeling very sick but dared not tell my mother what made me so. I had played truant from school and that is the pay I received. I thought very seriously of the affair for I only lacked about two inches of the great wings that could have caught my clothing and I could have been dashed in the air and then to pieces.
After a while I changed occupations and went to work for a bottle cork company where all kinds of corks for bottles were made, mostly by hand. When between twelve and fourteen years of age I went through a military drill which was part of the school education and we learned the drill so thoroughly that the old soldiers could not beat us. We had old army officers for our teachers. We drilled on a large prairie or pasture ground. The good old King Frederick the Seventh came to review us many times and how proud we did feel when he raised his hat in acknowledgment of our endeavors to become good soldiers.
All kinds of gymnastics we learned in school. When I was past twelve years old I got a job as errand boy for a bookbinder. There I stayed until I was about fourteen. My next job was at a chemical laboratory, the last place I worked before leaving for America. While at the bookbinders I learned enough of the trade to repair books for my schoolmates and earn a few cents off and on. It was not so easy for I had to walk every place I went, even if I had large racks of books on my back. No horses or any way of travel, except "shank ponies".
When I was fourteen years old I was confirmed a member of the Lutheran Church as was the custom in that country. When thirteen years of age I commenced to have faith in the religion as taught by the Latter-Day-Saints. I had attended some of their meetings and had compared that with the Lutheran religion. A missionary came to our home from Utah and brought word from my father and persuaded my mother to allow me to accompany him back to Utah. She had a desire to go too and he promised her that if she would allow me to go that I would have money enough to send for her next year. This promise I found later was a prophecy. The Elder was Peter Madsen of Provo, Utah, a brother-in-law of my father.
In June 1870, I left my mother and crossed the ocean on the ship Minnesota, arrived in Salt Lake City about the 24th of July. My father came there from Provo to meet me. We drove down to the lakeshore where he gathered a load of salt to take to Provo, his home, where we arrived two days later. Here my father had a family of three wives and six children.
After arriving here in Utah I found out that Elder Madsen did truly prophesy when he said my mother would be able to emigrate the next year. My father had borrowed the money to get me to Utah and had no means to send for my mother. I had never done a day's work in my life only such as mentioned above. How could I get over one hundred dollars to get my mother here? How could that elder promise this? I was but a small pale looking city boy, my weight only 95 pound when fifteen years old, but I have since grown to be a man over 175 pounds, the result of getting away from the impure air of a great city into the mountains with their fresh air and healthful surroundings.
The next year after I came to Utah a neighbor came and asked father if he would allow me to go with him to American Fork Canyon where a railroad was being built. He said I might get a job that I could do. My father consented. I went with the man and when we arrived, the boss said, "My boy, you look rather small for the work we have here," and asked me why I came away to work. I told him I had a mother in the Old Country and I wanted to earn money to send for her. He said he had nothing but pick and shovel work at present but if I could do that now, he thought he would have something better later. I started to work wages were $1.50 per day, board extra 50 cents per day. Working hours were then ten per day.
After working a week the superintendent called the men together and told us that wages would be $2.75 per day thereafter. The boss stood next to me and said, "My boy, you will be a man on the payroll- your wages will be $2.75 per day." After a while he allowed me to carry tools and get water for the men; he indeed was a kindhearted man. I soon became ill with Mountain Fever and had to stay in the cabin for three weeks and this man came to see me almost every day. When I finally grew able to get out of the cabin I found I was blind and had to find my way back on hands and knees. The boss told me to be sure and remain in the cabin until I was fully recovered that I would get full pay while I was sick. His name was McGinty, an Irishman.
I keep on working there for five months, had enough to send for my mother and to pay on my own emigration $50.00. I wrote to my mother telling her I now had the money and could send for her, but she had changed her mind, saying that as my father had another family that she would stay where she was. She said she was getting rather old to emigrate and hoped I would come and see her sometime, which never happened.
In August 1870, a railroad was being built in Bingham Canyon where I went to work for the summer; winter and spring I worked on my Father's farm, grubbing and doing chores. The next year I went and worked in Cottonwood Canyon on the railroad, helped Father clear land in spring and summer. I also worked at mining in Bingham Canyon and at Sheridan Hill, West Jordan, where I got leaded and was very sick. In the late seventies I bought a farm of thirty acres of wild land, broke it up, planted an orchard, enclosed it with a willow fence which looked quite ornamental in those days. My father gave me a pair of steers and I traded for a wagon which was rather light, so I bought one from my father which was $50.00 in lumber. I went to the canyon and got timber to make lumber and shingles for a house, made my own adobes, helped a neighbor build a house and in return he helped me build my house so the only cash expense was nails, windows and doors.
The way I paid for my farm was a little different than at present. It cost me ten dollars per acre, which I paid mostly in molasses from cane I raised on the farm. One hundred dollars per year for three years until paid, costing me three hundred dollars.
In 1880 I got married. I was then 24 years old and my wife 21. We were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House, November 25, 1880. Some time before that I was ordained an Elder, it was in 1873 by John Rollins. My little farm was beginning to bear fruit before we were married. My wife and I were working hand in hand and were very happy. We had a little team of ponies that could take us where we wished to go and we were getting along very good. Sometimes I would have to leave home for a time to earn a little money, for that was scarce.
I want to mention a time when I was about eighteen years of age and was hauling corn from the field in the fall of the year. My father had a team of horses, which would run away at every opportunity. I had a wood rack on the wagon in which were some sharp stakes taken from the hayrack. I was standing on a plank that slipped as I drove down a small hill. One of the stakes went into my arm, I being on it, having lost my footing. I spoke gently to the horses and they stopped almost sitting down to hold the wagon on the hill, the lines being on the ground, I being entirely helpless. The horses stopped right on the hill while I extricated myself. And remember, they were runaway horses . Nothing but the power of God, it seems to me, was the factor that saved my life. Oh, how thankful I was. For once in the lives of those horses they did not run away.
Sometime after that I was working on a train. We were hauling railroad ties between Pleasant Grove and Juab. We stopped at Santaquin Station to let a train pass. I went out on the platform of the station while waiting. When we started again I jumped on. Five loaded cars were behind the one I boarded. When I stepped on the car everything looked all right, but I took hold of one of the end stakes holding the ties. I was about to give up when the conductor came running along and pulled me out. The train was then going at a good speed and it would have been impossible for me to hold on any longer. Just another time that my life was saved. By accident? No, the Lord came to
In the year 1898 I was working in the Bullion Beck Mine in Eureka, Juab So., Utah. A plank, which I was crossing over a shaft 100 feet deep, broke, but a side tunnel 35 feet down saved me, there being some planks laying across the shaft at that point on which I fell and rolled off to one side. I sustained some bad scalp wounds, hurt my back and a miner's candlestick which I held in my hand penetrated my thigh and the steel point of it broke off and was left in my thigh. Still with all these minor afflictions I felt greatly blessed, for my life was saved once again.
In 1894 I sold out in Lake View to L. John Nuttall, Sr. for fifteen hundred dollars and moved to Castle Valley, took up a homestead, staying in Ferron, Emery Co., Utah in winters, worked on canal all next spring and then moved out on the farm in the spring, the first settler on the Clawson Flat. We did not get the water on our land until about May. Our crops were not planted until in June, so the grain froze and was not fit for anything but feed. We had a great deal of trouble to hold the water in the canal as it kept breaking out. One winter we lived four miles from water and had to haul ice and water that distance for two cows. We took our horses down once a day to drink and brought ice back. We gradually did better year by year.
I stayed on the homestead until we proved up and than I went to Castle Gate Coal Mines and worked during winter months to get what money we had to have. One year we had prospects of a good crop. We had 22 acres of good grain when all at once a swarm of chinch bugs lighted on it and all we got out of it was 200 bushels, not fit for anything but bran. This was quite a set back as I had rented the seed grain, paying one peck on the bushel rent. In 1907 while working in a mine in Midway, Utah, I got hurt when the roof caved in on me. I spent three weeks at Provo Hospital trying to get able to leave and for years after I felt the effects of it.
Another accident which happened several years before this I have considered very remarkable, the way I was delivered. I was raking hay with a mare that had not been hitched up but once before. As I dumped the hay, the shafts broke where the bolts go through the frame. The rake tipped forward in such a way that I was pinned between the rake and the horse's heels. I spoke gently to her and she stood while I extracted myself. I have always thought of this as a miraculous escape and consider it an intervention of Providence.
After getting my homestead in good shape, fencing eighty acres, planting 1000 fruit trees and making other improvements, I sold to an individual who was reported to me as being honorable and honest for $2,500.00. He paid $1,000.00 down and I got swindled out of the remainder. I bought a place in Clawson Town and as I depended on the money for the sale of the old place to pay for the new one, it put me in bad shape so that I had to rustle again as there was a mortgage on the last purchase.
As I pondered over my bad luck I thought of the little bee. When robbed of it's honey it goes to work again and gathers more. The little ant when his mound is scattered does not despair but builds again. Why should we give up and mourn when we are blessed with health and intelligence? So I started to build again, my dear wife being the main factor in encouraging me. We have had the misfortune of losing three of our children by death up to this time, 1913. One little girl seven weeks old died in Lake View, one boy eighteen months old died in Castle Valley, but the greatest sorrow came to us when we lost a man 24 years old. He had a wife and child. He was a large, robust man, never sick in his life before. Typhoid Fever took him within ten days. Not long after this my second son's wife died leaving him with two children. So the trials of life overtake us and the only thing to do is to think that God does all things well. We try to be patient and trust our dear Lord in all things.
Another instance was worth writing here, just another time when I was saved from death by the hand of God. It was about 1873-74 that my father was moving out to Scipio, Utah, and I was driving a horse team with a load of furniture. I sat on a quilt which was laid on a board across the wagon box and as I crossed a ditch I and the seat fell down on the horses and sat straddle of the tongue. The horses started to run and I could see I was not safe there so dropped myself down to the ground. Just as I dropped the horses turned the wheel and struck my elbow and knee just a little. That was all I was hurt. My father thought sure I would be killed, but lo and behold I was scarcely scratched.
My wife died in January, 1923 of stomach trouble or bowel ailment, probably appendix inflammation. She is buried in Ferron, three miles from Clawson.
End of Journal.
His last child was married in July after the death of his wife and he lived alone until August 1925, when he married Sarah Busenback Shurtz, a widow. His second marriage proved happy and congenial. After they were married they left Clawson and settled in Castle Dale.
The President of the Stake called them to work three months in the Manti Temple and after they had fulfilled that mission they wanted to stay the remainder of their lives in Manti and work for the dead. They sold their place in Castle Dale and bought one in Manti where they are now living (April 1937). They have done much temple work for their dead kindred and friends and will continue as long as they are able to do this important work.
Alice K. Hatch
The above history is taken from the book, Our Pioneer Heritage, Autobiographies of Six Pioneer Men.
Obituary. Manti- Edward Jorgensen, 84, a Manti Temple worker, died at his home Wednesday.
He was born in Copenhagen, on March 25, 1856. Before making his residence in Manti about six years ago Mr. Jorgensen was a farmer in Clawson, Utah. He has done temple work since living here.
He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jorgensen: two sons, William of Clawson and Jesse of Sandy, Utah and three daughters: Mrs. Eva Kathrina Blackburn of Mesa, Arizona, Mrs. May Blackburn of Clawson, and Mrs. Clara Caudis of Oakland, Calif. One sister and two brothers, all from Provo, Utah.
Funeral Services will be conducted in Manti North Ward Chapel Sunday at 2 p.m. by Bishop Charles G. Braithwaite. Interment will be in the Manti Cemetery. Friends may call at the Jorgensen home Sunday prior to service time.
Married Eve Cathrine Hansen Zobell, 25 Nov 1880, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
Married Sarah Busenbark, 25 Aug 1925, Clawson, Emery, Utah
Married Josephine Helen Lee, 7 December 1937, Sanpete, Utah
History. I, Edward Joannes Jorgensen, was born on March 15, 1856, in Copenhagen, Denmark. When I was about three years of age my father, Mads Jorgensen, left his native land for Utah, he being a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My mother did not have sufficient faith in the doctrines of that church to follow him; hence she and I were left behind, I being her only child. After my father left it was a hard struggle for us to live in a large city without means of support, only by day's labor. We lived in a tenement house and she worked at all kinds of jobs until she obtained a position as nurse in a naval hospital in Copenhagen, during the war between Germany and Denmark, 1862-64. She stayed at the hospital and I was cared for by other families, she paying my board.
My mother being head nurse at the hospital, she would allow me to go and visit her. At times I would go to the harbor and see the dead and wounded come in, hauled in wagons like so many hogs, blood running from the wagons as they proceeded to the hospital and to the morgue.
I started to school when about six years old, the custom was that some could go in the forenoon and some in the afternoon, boys and girls were kept separate. About when ten years old I started to work. My first job was at a factory where mustard was prepared and bottled. It was not a very pleasant job. My part was to help label crocks and prepare paper which was used to stick over the top of jars and looked like bladder. It was made by heating on an iron plate with a gas jet under and rubbing wax on the paper, which made it look like bladder.
My mother, whose name was Eva Soderstrom Jorgensen, lived in a tenement house on the fifth story. I remember how I would walk up and down the street in the evening before I could muster courage enough to venture going up those dark stairs to my mother's room. So many ghost stories were told to children in that country that all children were afraid in the dark.
Many miraculous escapes from danger and death I have had, one, which I will here mention. I was down at the harbor with some of my schoolmates, where a schooner lay at anchor. I crawled out on the bowsprit of the boat and fell in the water and was about drowned when a sailor came along and rescued me. Another time I was walking along on top of a board fence, which surrounded a windmill like the old Dutch mills, which had four great wings. The fence had a railing on top just wide enough to walk on. I fell and was struck by one of the wings which rendered me unconscious. Nobody seemed to notice me. After a while I crawled out and escaped with a great scare, but nothing else except feeling very sick but dared not tell my mother what made me so. I had played truant from school and that is the pay I received. I thought very seriously of the affair for I only lacked about two inches of the great wings that could have caught my clothing and I could have been dashed in the air and then to pieces.
After a while I changed occupations and went to work for a bottle cork company where all kinds of corks for bottles were made, mostly by hand. When between twelve and fourteen years of age I went through a military drill which was part of the school education and we learned the drill so thoroughly that the old soldiers could not beat us. We had old army officers for our teachers. We drilled on a large prairie or pasture ground. The good old King Frederick the Seventh came to review us many times and how proud we did feel when he raised his hat in acknowledgment of our endeavors to become good soldiers.
All kinds of gymnastics we learned in school. When I was past twelve years old I got a job as errand boy for a bookbinder. There I stayed until I was about fourteen. My next job was at a chemical laboratory, the last place I worked before leaving for America. While at the bookbinders I learned enough of the trade to repair books for my schoolmates and earn a few cents off and on. It was not so easy for I had to walk every place I went, even if I had large racks of books on my back. No horses or any way of travel, except "shank ponies".
When I was fourteen years old I was confirmed a member of the Lutheran Church as was the custom in that country. When thirteen years of age I commenced to have faith in the religion as taught by the Latter-Day-Saints. I had attended some of their meetings and had compared that with the Lutheran religion. A missionary came to our home from Utah and brought word from my father and persuaded my mother to allow me to accompany him back to Utah. She had a desire to go too and he promised her that if she would allow me to go that I would have money enough to send for her next year. This promise I found later was a prophecy. The Elder was Peter Madsen of Provo, Utah, a brother-in-law of my father.
In June 1870, I left my mother and crossed the ocean on the ship Minnesota, arrived in Salt Lake City about the 24th of July. My father came there from Provo to meet me. We drove down to the lakeshore where he gathered a load of salt to take to Provo, his home, where we arrived two days later. Here my father had a family of three wives and six children.
After arriving here in Utah I found out that Elder Madsen did truly prophesy when he said my mother would be able to emigrate the next year. My father had borrowed the money to get me to Utah and had no means to send for my mother. I had never done a day's work in my life only such as mentioned above. How could I get over one hundred dollars to get my mother here? How could that elder promise this? I was but a small pale looking city boy, my weight only 95 pound when fifteen years old, but I have since grown to be a man over 175 pounds, the result of getting away from the impure air of a great city into the mountains with their fresh air and healthful surroundings.
The next year after I came to Utah a neighbor came and asked father if he would allow me to go with him to American Fork Canyon where a railroad was being built. He said I might get a job that I could do. My father consented. I went with the man and when we arrived, the boss said, "My boy, you look rather small for the work we have here," and asked me why I came away to work. I told him I had a mother in the Old Country and I wanted to earn money to send for her. He said he had nothing but pick and shovel work at present but if I could do that now, he thought he would have something better later. I started to work wages were $1.50 per day, board extra 50 cents per day. Working hours were then ten per day.
After working a week the superintendent called the men together and told us that wages would be $2.75 per day thereafter. The boss stood next to me and said, "My boy, you will be a man on the payroll- your wages will be $2.75 per day." After a while he allowed me to carry tools and get water for the men; he indeed was a kindhearted man. I soon became ill with Mountain Fever and had to stay in the cabin for three weeks and this man came to see me almost every day. When I finally grew able to get out of the cabin I found I was blind and had to find my way back on hands and knees. The boss told me to be sure and remain in the cabin until I was fully recovered that I would get full pay while I was sick. His name was McGinty, an Irishman.
I keep on working there for five months, had enough to send for my mother and to pay on my own emigration $50.00. I wrote to my mother telling her I now had the money and could send for her, but she had changed her mind, saying that as my father had another family that she would stay where she was. She said she was getting rather old to emigrate and hoped I would come and see her sometime, which never happened.
In August 1870, a railroad was being built in Bingham Canyon where I went to work for the summer; winter and spring I worked on my Father's farm, grubbing and doing chores. The next year I went and worked in Cottonwood Canyon on the railroad, helped Father clear land in spring and summer. I also worked at mining in Bingham Canyon and at Sheridan Hill, West Jordan, where I got leaded and was very sick. In the late seventies I bought a farm of thirty acres of wild land, broke it up, planted an orchard, enclosed it with a willow fence which looked quite ornamental in those days. My father gave me a pair of steers and I traded for a wagon which was rather light, so I bought one from my father which was $50.00 in lumber. I went to the canyon and got timber to make lumber and shingles for a house, made my own adobes, helped a neighbor build a house and in return he helped me build my house so the only cash expense was nails, windows and doors.
The way I paid for my farm was a little different than at present. It cost me ten dollars per acre, which I paid mostly in molasses from cane I raised on the farm. One hundred dollars per year for three years until paid, costing me three hundred dollars.
In 1880 I got married. I was then 24 years old and my wife 21. We were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House, November 25, 1880. Some time before that I was ordained an Elder, it was in 1873 by John Rollins. My little farm was beginning to bear fruit before we were married. My wife and I were working hand in hand and were very happy. We had a little team of ponies that could take us where we wished to go and we were getting along very good. Sometimes I would have to leave home for a time to earn a little money, for that was scarce.
I want to mention a time when I was about eighteen years of age and was hauling corn from the field in the fall of the year. My father had a team of horses, which would run away at every opportunity. I had a wood rack on the wagon in which were some sharp stakes taken from the hayrack. I was standing on a plank that slipped as I drove down a small hill. One of the stakes went into my arm, I being on it, having lost my footing. I spoke gently to the horses and they stopped almost sitting down to hold the wagon on the hill, the lines being on the ground, I being entirely helpless. The horses stopped right on the hill while I extricated myself. And remember, they were runaway horses . Nothing but the power of God, it seems to me, was the factor that saved my life. Oh, how thankful I was. For once in the lives of those horses they did not run away.
Sometime after that I was working on a train. We were hauling railroad ties between Pleasant Grove and Juab. We stopped at Santaquin Station to let a train pass. I went out on the platform of the station while waiting. When we started again I jumped on. Five loaded cars were behind the one I boarded. When I stepped on the car everything looked all right, but I took hold of one of the end stakes holding the ties. I was about to give up when the conductor came running along and pulled me out. The train was then going at a good speed and it would have been impossible for me to hold on any longer. Just another time that my life was saved. By accident? No, the Lord came to
In the year 1898 I was working in the Bullion Beck Mine in Eureka, Juab So., Utah. A plank, which I was crossing over a shaft 100 feet deep, broke, but a side tunnel 35 feet down saved me, there being some planks laying across the shaft at that point on which I fell and rolled off to one side. I sustained some bad scalp wounds, hurt my back and a miner's candlestick which I held in my hand penetrated my thigh and the steel point of it broke off and was left in my thigh. Still with all these minor afflictions I felt greatly blessed, for my life was saved once again.
In 1894 I sold out in Lake View to L. John Nuttall, Sr. for fifteen hundred dollars and moved to Castle Valley, took up a homestead, staying in Ferron, Emery Co., Utah in winters, worked on canal all next spring and then moved out on the farm in the spring, the first settler on the Clawson Flat. We did not get the water on our land until about May. Our crops were not planted until in June, so the grain froze and was not fit for anything but feed. We had a great deal of trouble to hold the water in the canal as it kept breaking out. One winter we lived four miles from water and had to haul ice and water that distance for two cows. We took our horses down once a day to drink and brought ice back. We gradually did better year by year.
I stayed on the homestead until we proved up and than I went to Castle Gate Coal Mines and worked during winter months to get what money we had to have. One year we had prospects of a good crop. We had 22 acres of good grain when all at once a swarm of chinch bugs lighted on it and all we got out of it was 200 bushels, not fit for anything but bran. This was quite a set back as I had rented the seed grain, paying one peck on the bushel rent. In 1907 while working in a mine in Midway, Utah, I got hurt when the roof caved in on me. I spent three weeks at Provo Hospital trying to get able to leave and for years after I felt the effects of it.
Another accident which happened several years before this I have considered very remarkable, the way I was delivered. I was raking hay with a mare that had not been hitched up but once before. As I dumped the hay, the shafts broke where the bolts go through the frame. The rake tipped forward in such a way that I was pinned between the rake and the horse's heels. I spoke gently to her and she stood while I extracted myself. I have always thought of this as a miraculous escape and consider it an intervention of Providence.
After getting my homestead in good shape, fencing eighty acres, planting 1000 fruit trees and making other improvements, I sold to an individual who was reported to me as being honorable and honest for $2,500.00. He paid $1,000.00 down and I got swindled out of the remainder. I bought a place in Clawson Town and as I depended on the money for the sale of the old place to pay for the new one, it put me in bad shape so that I had to rustle again as there was a mortgage on the last purchase.
As I pondered over my bad luck I thought of the little bee. When robbed of it's honey it goes to work again and gathers more. The little ant when his mound is scattered does not despair but builds again. Why should we give up and mourn when we are blessed with health and intelligence? So I started to build again, my dear wife being the main factor in encouraging me. We have had the misfortune of losing three of our children by death up to this time, 1913. One little girl seven weeks old died in Lake View, one boy eighteen months old died in Castle Valley, but the greatest sorrow came to us when we lost a man 24 years old. He had a wife and child. He was a large, robust man, never sick in his life before. Typhoid Fever took him within ten days. Not long after this my second son's wife died leaving him with two children. So the trials of life overtake us and the only thing to do is to think that God does all things well. We try to be patient and trust our dear Lord in all things.
Another instance was worth writing here, just another time when I was saved from death by the hand of God. It was about 1873-74 that my father was moving out to Scipio, Utah, and I was driving a horse team with a load of furniture. I sat on a quilt which was laid on a board across the wagon box and as I crossed a ditch I and the seat fell down on the horses and sat straddle of the tongue. The horses started to run and I could see I was not safe there so dropped myself down to the ground. Just as I dropped the horses turned the wheel and struck my elbow and knee just a little. That was all I was hurt. My father thought sure I would be killed, but lo and behold I was scarcely scratched.
My wife died in January, 1923 of stomach trouble or bowel ailment, probably appendix inflammation. She is buried in Ferron, three miles from Clawson.
End of Journal.
His last child was married in July after the death of his wife and he lived alone until August 1925, when he married Sarah Busenback Shurtz, a widow. His second marriage proved happy and congenial. After they were married they left Clawson and settled in Castle Dale.
The President of the Stake called them to work three months in the Manti Temple and after they had fulfilled that mission they wanted to stay the remainder of their lives in Manti and work for the dead. They sold their place in Castle Dale and bought one in Manti where they are now living (April 1937). They have done much temple work for their dead kindred and friends and will continue as long as they are able to do this important work.
Alice K. Hatch
The above history is taken from the book, Our Pioneer Heritage, Autobiographies of Six Pioneer Men.
Obituary. Manti- Edward Jorgensen, 84, a Manti Temple worker, died at his home Wednesday.
He was born in Copenhagen, on March 25, 1856. Before making his residence in Manti about six years ago Mr. Jorgensen was a farmer in Clawson, Utah. He has done temple work since living here.
He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jorgensen: two sons, William of Clawson and Jesse of Sandy, Utah and three daughters: Mrs. Eva Kathrina Blackburn of Mesa, Arizona, Mrs. May Blackburn of Clawson, and Mrs. Clara Caudis of Oakland, Calif. One sister and two brothers, all from Provo, Utah.
Funeral Services will be conducted in Manti North Ward Chapel Sunday at 2 p.m. by Bishop Charles G. Braithwaite. Interment will be in the Manti Cemetery. Friends may call at the Jorgensen home Sunday prior to service time.
Son of Mads Jorgensen and Eva Sanderstrom
Married Eve Cathrine Hansen Zobell, 25 Nov 1880, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
Married Sarah Busenbark, 25 Aug 1925, Clawson, Emery, Utah
Married Josephine Helen Lee, 7 December 1937, Sanpete, Utah
History. I, Edward Joannes Jorgensen, was born on March 15, 1856, in Copenhagen, Denmark. When I was about three years of age my father, Mads Jorgensen, left his native land for Utah, he being a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My mother did not have sufficient faith in the doctrines of that church to follow him; hence she and I were left behind, I being her only child. After my father left it was a hard struggle for us to live in a large city without means of support, only by day's labor. We lived in a tenement house and she worked at all kinds of jobs until she obtained a position as nurse in a naval hospital in Copenhagen, during the war between Germany and Denmark, 1862-64. She stayed at the hospital and I was cared for by other families, she paying my board.
My mother being head nurse at the hospital, she would allow me to go and visit her. At times I would go to the harbor and see the dead and wounded come in, hauled in wagons like so many hogs, blood running from the wagons as they proceeded to the hospital and to the morgue.
I started to school when about six years old, the custom was that some could go in the forenoon and some in the afternoon, boys and girls were kept separate. About when ten years old I started to work. My first job was at a factory where mustard was prepared and bottled. It was not a very pleasant job. My part was to help label crocks and prepare paper which was used to stick over the top of jars and looked like bladder. It was made by heating on an iron plate with a gas jet under and rubbing wax on the paper, which made it look like bladder.
My mother, whose name was Eva Soderstrom Jorgensen, lived in a tenement house on the fifth story. I remember how I would walk up and down the street in the evening before I could muster courage enough to venture going up those dark stairs to my mother's room. So many ghost stories were told to children in that country that all children were afraid in the dark.
Many miraculous escapes from danger and death I have had, one, which I will here mention. I was down at the harbor with some of my schoolmates, where a schooner lay at anchor. I crawled out on the bowsprit of the boat and fell in the water and was about drowned when a sailor came along and rescued me. Another time I was walking along on top of a board fence, which surrounded a windmill like the old Dutch mills, which had four great wings. The fence had a railing on top just wide enough to walk on. I fell and was struck by one of the wings which rendered me unconscious. Nobody seemed to notice me. After a while I crawled out and escaped with a great scare, but nothing else except feeling very sick but dared not tell my mother what made me so. I had played truant from school and that is the pay I received. I thought very seriously of the affair for I only lacked about two inches of the great wings that could have caught my clothing and I could have been dashed in the air and then to pieces.
After a while I changed occupations and went to work for a bottle cork company where all kinds of corks for bottles were made, mostly by hand. When between twelve and fourteen years of age I went through a military drill which was part of the school education and we learned the drill so thoroughly that the old soldiers could not beat us. We had old army officers for our teachers. We drilled on a large prairie or pasture ground. The good old King Frederick the Seventh came to review us many times and how proud we did feel when he raised his hat in acknowledgment of our endeavors to become good soldiers.
All kinds of gymnastics we learned in school. When I was past twelve years old I got a job as errand boy for a bookbinder. There I stayed until I was about fourteen. My next job was at a chemical laboratory, the last place I worked before leaving for America. While at the bookbinders I learned enough of the trade to repair books for my schoolmates and earn a few cents off and on. It was not so easy for I had to walk every place I went, even if I had large racks of books on my back. No horses or any way of travel, except "shank ponies".
When I was fourteen years old I was confirmed a member of the Lutheran Church as was the custom in that country. When thirteen years of age I commenced to have faith in the religion as taught by the Latter-Day-Saints. I had attended some of their meetings and had compared that with the Lutheran religion. A missionary came to our home from Utah and brought word from my father and persuaded my mother to allow me to accompany him back to Utah. She had a desire to go too and he promised her that if she would allow me to go that I would have money enough to send for her next year. This promise I found later was a prophecy. The Elder was Peter Madsen of Provo, Utah, a brother-in-law of my father.
In June 1870, I left my mother and crossed the ocean on the ship Minnesota, arrived in Salt Lake City about the 24th of July. My father came there from Provo to meet me. We drove down to the lakeshore where he gathered a load of salt to take to Provo, his home, where we arrived two days later. Here my father had a family of three wives and six children.
After arriving here in Utah I found out that Elder Madsen did truly prophesy when he said my mother would be able to emigrate the next year. My father had borrowed the money to get me to Utah and had no means to send for my mother. I had never done a day's work in my life only such as mentioned above. How could I get over one hundred dollars to get my mother here? How could that elder promise this? I was but a small pale looking city boy, my weight only 95 pound when fifteen years old, but I have since grown to be a man over 175 pounds, the result of getting away from the impure air of a great city into the mountains with their fresh air and healthful surroundings.
The next year after I came to Utah a neighbor came and asked father if he would allow me to go with him to American Fork Canyon where a railroad was being built. He said I might get a job that I could do. My father consented. I went with the man and when we arrived, the boss said, "My boy, you look rather small for the work we have here," and asked me why I came away to work. I told him I had a mother in the Old Country and I wanted to earn money to send for her. He said he had nothing but pick and shovel work at present but if I could do that now, he thought he would have something better later. I started to work wages were $1.50 per day, board extra 50 cents per day. Working hours were then ten per day.
After working a week the superintendent called the men together and told us that wages would be $2.75 per day thereafter. The boss stood next to me and said, "My boy, you will be a man on the payroll- your wages will be $2.75 per day." After a while he allowed me to carry tools and get water for the men; he indeed was a kindhearted man. I soon became ill with Mountain Fever and had to stay in the cabin for three weeks and this man came to see me almost every day. When I finally grew able to get out of the cabin I found I was blind and had to find my way back on hands and knees. The boss told me to be sure and remain in the cabin until I was fully recovered that I would get full pay while I was sick. His name was McGinty, an Irishman.
I keep on working there for five months, had enough to send for my mother and to pay on my own emigration $50.00. I wrote to my mother telling her I now had the money and could send for her, but she had changed her mind, saying that as my father had another family that she would stay where she was. She said she was getting rather old to emigrate and hoped I would come and see her sometime, which never happened.
In August 1870, a railroad was being built in Bingham Canyon where I went to work for the summer; winter and spring I worked on my Father's farm, grubbing and doing chores. The next year I went and worked in Cottonwood Canyon on the railroad, helped Father clear land in spring and summer. I also worked at mining in Bingham Canyon and at Sheridan Hill, West Jordan, where I got leaded and was very sick. In the late seventies I bought a farm of thirty acres of wild land, broke it up, planted an orchard, enclosed it with a willow fence which looked quite ornamental in those days. My father gave me a pair of steers and I traded for a wagon which was rather light, so I bought one from my father which was $50.00 in lumber. I went to the canyon and got timber to make lumber and shingles for a house, made my own adobes, helped a neighbor build a house and in return he helped me build my house so the only cash expense was nails, windows and doors.
The way I paid for my farm was a little different than at present. It cost me ten dollars per acre, which I paid mostly in molasses from cane I raised on the farm. One hundred dollars per year for three years until paid, costing me three hundred dollars.
In 1880 I got married. I was then 24 years old and my wife 21. We were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House, November 25, 1880. Some time before that I was ordained an Elder, it was in 1873 by John Rollins. My little farm was beginning to bear fruit before we were married. My wife and I were working hand in hand and were very happy. We had a little team of ponies that could take us where we wished to go and we were getting along very good. Sometimes I would have to leave home for a time to earn a little money, for that was scarce.
I want to mention a time when I was about eighteen years of age and was hauling corn from the field in the fall of the year. My father had a team of horses, which would run away at every opportunity. I had a wood rack on the wagon in which were some sharp stakes taken from the hayrack. I was standing on a plank that slipped as I drove down a small hill. One of the stakes went into my arm, I being on it, having lost my footing. I spoke gently to the horses and they stopped almost sitting down to hold the wagon on the hill, the lines being on the ground, I being entirely helpless. The horses stopped right on the hill while I extricated myself. And remember, they were runaway horses . Nothing but the power of God, it seems to me, was the factor that saved my life. Oh, how thankful I was. For once in the lives of those horses they did not run away.
Sometime after that I was working on a train. We were hauling railroad ties between Pleasant Grove and Juab. We stopped at Santaquin Station to let a train pass. I went out on the platform of the station while waiting. When we started again I jumped on. Five loaded cars were behind the one I boarded. When I stepped on the car everything looked all right, but I took hold of one of the end stakes holding the ties. I was about to give up when the conductor came running along and pulled me out. The train was then going at a good speed and it would have been impossible for me to hold on any longer. Just another time that my life was saved. By accident? No, the Lord came to
In the year 1898 I was working in the Bullion Beck Mine in Eureka, Juab So., Utah. A plank, which I was crossing over a shaft 100 feet deep, broke, but a side tunnel 35 feet down saved me, there being some planks laying across the shaft at that point on which I fell and rolled off to one side. I sustained some bad scalp wounds, hurt my back and a miner's candlestick which I held in my hand penetrated my thigh and the steel point of it broke off and was left in my thigh. Still with all these minor afflictions I felt greatly blessed, for my life was saved once again.
In 1894 I sold out in Lake View to L. John Nuttall, Sr. for fifteen hundred dollars and moved to Castle Valley, took up a homestead, staying in Ferron, Emery Co., Utah in winters, worked on canal all next spring and then moved out on the farm in the spring, the first settler on the Clawson Flat. We did not get the water on our land until about May. Our crops were not planted until in June, so the grain froze and was not fit for anything but feed. We had a great deal of trouble to hold the water in the canal as it kept breaking out. One winter we lived four miles from water and had to haul ice and water that distance for two cows. We took our horses down once a day to drink and brought ice back. We gradually did better year by year.
I stayed on the homestead until we proved up and than I went to Castle Gate Coal Mines and worked during winter months to get what money we had to have. One year we had prospects of a good crop. We had 22 acres of good grain when all at once a swarm of chinch bugs lighted on it and all we got out of it was 200 bushels, not fit for anything but bran. This was quite a set back as I had rented the seed grain, paying one peck on the bushel rent. In 1907 while working in a mine in Midway, Utah, I got hurt when the roof caved in on me. I spent three weeks at Provo Hospital trying to get able to leave and for years after I felt the effects of it.
Another accident which happened several years before this I have considered very remarkable, the way I was delivered. I was raking hay with a mare that had not been hitched up but once before. As I dumped the hay, the shafts broke where the bolts go through the frame. The rake tipped forward in such a way that I was pinned between the rake and the horse's heels. I spoke gently to her and she stood while I extracted myself. I have always thought of this as a miraculous escape and consider it an intervention of Providence.
After getting my homestead in good shape, fencing eighty acres, planting 1000 fruit trees and making other improvements, I sold to an individual who was reported to me as being honorable and honest for $2,500.00. He paid $1,000.00 down and I got swindled out of the remainder. I bought a place in Clawson Town and as I depended on the money for the sale of the old place to pay for the new one, it put me in bad shape so that I had to rustle again as there was a mortgage on the last purchase.
As I pondered over my bad luck I thought of the little bee. When robbed of it's honey it goes to work again and gathers more. The little ant when his mound is scattered does not despair but builds again. Why should we give up and mourn when we are blessed with health and intelligence? So I started to build again, my dear wife being the main factor in encouraging me. We have had the misfortune of losing three of our children by death up to this time, 1913. One little girl seven weeks old died in Lake View, one boy eighteen months old died in Castle Valley, but the greatest sorrow came to us when we lost a man 24 years old. He had a wife and child. He was a large, robust man, never sick in his life before. Typhoid Fever took him within ten days. Not long after this my second son's wife died leaving him with two children. So the trials of life overtake us and the only thing to do is to think that God does all things well. We try to be patient and trust our dear Lord in all things.
Another instance was worth writing here, just another time when I was saved from death by the hand of God. It was about 1873-74 that my father was moving out to Scipio, Utah, and I was driving a horse team with a load of furniture. I sat on a quilt which was laid on a board across the wagon box and as I crossed a ditch I and the seat fell down on the horses and sat straddle of the tongue. The horses started to run and I could see I was not safe there so dropped myself down to the ground. Just as I dropped the horses turned the wheel and struck my elbow and knee just a little. That was all I was hurt. My father thought sure I would be killed, but lo and behold I was scarcely scratched.
My wife died in January, 1923 of stomach trouble or bowel ailment, probably appendix inflammation. She is buried in Ferron, three miles from Clawson.
End of Journal.
His last child was married in July after the death of his wife and he lived alone until August 1925, when he married Sarah Busenback Shurtz, a widow. His second marriage proved happy and congenial. After they were married they left Clawson and settled in Castle Dale.
The President of the Stake called them to work three months in the Manti Temple and after they had fulfilled that mission they wanted to stay the remainder of their lives in Manti and work for the dead. They sold their place in Castle Dale and bought one in Manti where they are now living (April 1937). They have done much temple work for their dead kindred and friends and will continue as long as they are able to do this important work.
Alice K. Hatch
The above history is taken from the book, Our Pioneer Heritage, Autobiographies of Six Pioneer Men.
Obituary. Manti- Edward Jorgensen, 84, a Manti Temple worker, died at his home Wednesday.
He was born in Copenhagen, on March 25, 1856. Before making his residence in Manti about six years ago Mr. Jorgensen was a farmer in Clawson, Utah. He has done temple work since living here.
He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jorgensen: two sons, William of Clawson and Jesse of Sandy, Utah and three daughters: Mrs. Eva Kathrina Blackburn of Mesa, Arizona, Mrs. May Blackburn of Clawson, and Mrs. Clara Caudis of Oakland, Calif. One sister and two brothers, all from Provo, Utah.
Funeral Services will be conducted in Manti North Ward Chapel Sunday at 2 p.m. by Bishop Charles G. Braithwaite. Interment will be in the Manti Cemetery. Friends may call at the Jorgensen home Sunday prior to service time.
Married Eve Cathrine Hansen Zobell, 25 Nov 1880, Salt Lake City, Salt Lake, Utah
Married Sarah Busenbark, 25 Aug 1925, Clawson, Emery, Utah
Married Josephine Helen Lee, 7 December 1937, Sanpete, Utah
History. I, Edward Joannes Jorgensen, was born on March 15, 1856, in Copenhagen, Denmark. When I was about three years of age my father, Mads Jorgensen, left his native land for Utah, he being a convert to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. My mother did not have sufficient faith in the doctrines of that church to follow him; hence she and I were left behind, I being her only child. After my father left it was a hard struggle for us to live in a large city without means of support, only by day's labor. We lived in a tenement house and she worked at all kinds of jobs until she obtained a position as nurse in a naval hospital in Copenhagen, during the war between Germany and Denmark, 1862-64. She stayed at the hospital and I was cared for by other families, she paying my board.
My mother being head nurse at the hospital, she would allow me to go and visit her. At times I would go to the harbor and see the dead and wounded come in, hauled in wagons like so many hogs, blood running from the wagons as they proceeded to the hospital and to the morgue.
I started to school when about six years old, the custom was that some could go in the forenoon and some in the afternoon, boys and girls were kept separate. About when ten years old I started to work. My first job was at a factory where mustard was prepared and bottled. It was not a very pleasant job. My part was to help label crocks and prepare paper which was used to stick over the top of jars and looked like bladder. It was made by heating on an iron plate with a gas jet under and rubbing wax on the paper, which made it look like bladder.
My mother, whose name was Eva Soderstrom Jorgensen, lived in a tenement house on the fifth story. I remember how I would walk up and down the street in the evening before I could muster courage enough to venture going up those dark stairs to my mother's room. So many ghost stories were told to children in that country that all children were afraid in the dark.
Many miraculous escapes from danger and death I have had, one, which I will here mention. I was down at the harbor with some of my schoolmates, where a schooner lay at anchor. I crawled out on the bowsprit of the boat and fell in the water and was about drowned when a sailor came along and rescued me. Another time I was walking along on top of a board fence, which surrounded a windmill like the old Dutch mills, which had four great wings. The fence had a railing on top just wide enough to walk on. I fell and was struck by one of the wings which rendered me unconscious. Nobody seemed to notice me. After a while I crawled out and escaped with a great scare, but nothing else except feeling very sick but dared not tell my mother what made me so. I had played truant from school and that is the pay I received. I thought very seriously of the affair for I only lacked about two inches of the great wings that could have caught my clothing and I could have been dashed in the air and then to pieces.
After a while I changed occupations and went to work for a bottle cork company where all kinds of corks for bottles were made, mostly by hand. When between twelve and fourteen years of age I went through a military drill which was part of the school education and we learned the drill so thoroughly that the old soldiers could not beat us. We had old army officers for our teachers. We drilled on a large prairie or pasture ground. The good old King Frederick the Seventh came to review us many times and how proud we did feel when he raised his hat in acknowledgment of our endeavors to become good soldiers.
All kinds of gymnastics we learned in school. When I was past twelve years old I got a job as errand boy for a bookbinder. There I stayed until I was about fourteen. My next job was at a chemical laboratory, the last place I worked before leaving for America. While at the bookbinders I learned enough of the trade to repair books for my schoolmates and earn a few cents off and on. It was not so easy for I had to walk every place I went, even if I had large racks of books on my back. No horses or any way of travel, except "shank ponies".
When I was fourteen years old I was confirmed a member of the Lutheran Church as was the custom in that country. When thirteen years of age I commenced to have faith in the religion as taught by the Latter-Day-Saints. I had attended some of their meetings and had compared that with the Lutheran religion. A missionary came to our home from Utah and brought word from my father and persuaded my mother to allow me to accompany him back to Utah. She had a desire to go too and he promised her that if she would allow me to go that I would have money enough to send for her next year. This promise I found later was a prophecy. The Elder was Peter Madsen of Provo, Utah, a brother-in-law of my father.
In June 1870, I left my mother and crossed the ocean on the ship Minnesota, arrived in Salt Lake City about the 24th of July. My father came there from Provo to meet me. We drove down to the lakeshore where he gathered a load of salt to take to Provo, his home, where we arrived two days later. Here my father had a family of three wives and six children.
After arriving here in Utah I found out that Elder Madsen did truly prophesy when he said my mother would be able to emigrate the next year. My father had borrowed the money to get me to Utah and had no means to send for my mother. I had never done a day's work in my life only such as mentioned above. How could I get over one hundred dollars to get my mother here? How could that elder promise this? I was but a small pale looking city boy, my weight only 95 pound when fifteen years old, but I have since grown to be a man over 175 pounds, the result of getting away from the impure air of a great city into the mountains with their fresh air and healthful surroundings.
The next year after I came to Utah a neighbor came and asked father if he would allow me to go with him to American Fork Canyon where a railroad was being built. He said I might get a job that I could do. My father consented. I went with the man and when we arrived, the boss said, "My boy, you look rather small for the work we have here," and asked me why I came away to work. I told him I had a mother in the Old Country and I wanted to earn money to send for her. He said he had nothing but pick and shovel work at present but if I could do that now, he thought he would have something better later. I started to work wages were $1.50 per day, board extra 50 cents per day. Working hours were then ten per day.
After working a week the superintendent called the men together and told us that wages would be $2.75 per day thereafter. The boss stood next to me and said, "My boy, you will be a man on the payroll- your wages will be $2.75 per day." After a while he allowed me to carry tools and get water for the men; he indeed was a kindhearted man. I soon became ill with Mountain Fever and had to stay in the cabin for three weeks and this man came to see me almost every day. When I finally grew able to get out of the cabin I found I was blind and had to find my way back on hands and knees. The boss told me to be sure and remain in the cabin until I was fully recovered that I would get full pay while I was sick. His name was McGinty, an Irishman.
I keep on working there for five months, had enough to send for my mother and to pay on my own emigration $50.00. I wrote to my mother telling her I now had the money and could send for her, but she had changed her mind, saying that as my father had another family that she would stay where she was. She said she was getting rather old to emigrate and hoped I would come and see her sometime, which never happened.
In August 1870, a railroad was being built in Bingham Canyon where I went to work for the summer; winter and spring I worked on my Father's farm, grubbing and doing chores. The next year I went and worked in Cottonwood Canyon on the railroad, helped Father clear land in spring and summer. I also worked at mining in Bingham Canyon and at Sheridan Hill, West Jordan, where I got leaded and was very sick. In the late seventies I bought a farm of thirty acres of wild land, broke it up, planted an orchard, enclosed it with a willow fence which looked quite ornamental in those days. My father gave me a pair of steers and I traded for a wagon which was rather light, so I bought one from my father which was $50.00 in lumber. I went to the canyon and got timber to make lumber and shingles for a house, made my own adobes, helped a neighbor build a house and in return he helped me build my house so the only cash expense was nails, windows and doors.
The way I paid for my farm was a little different than at present. It cost me ten dollars per acre, which I paid mostly in molasses from cane I raised on the farm. One hundred dollars per year for three years until paid, costing me three hundred dollars.
In 1880 I got married. I was then 24 years old and my wife 21. We were married in the Salt Lake Endowment House, November 25, 1880. Some time before that I was ordained an Elder, it was in 1873 by John Rollins. My little farm was beginning to bear fruit before we were married. My wife and I were working hand in hand and were very happy. We had a little team of ponies that could take us where we wished to go and we were getting along very good. Sometimes I would have to leave home for a time to earn a little money, for that was scarce.
I want to mention a time when I was about eighteen years of age and was hauling corn from the field in the fall of the year. My father had a team of horses, which would run away at every opportunity. I had a wood rack on the wagon in which were some sharp stakes taken from the hayrack. I was standing on a plank that slipped as I drove down a small hill. One of the stakes went into my arm, I being on it, having lost my footing. I spoke gently to the horses and they stopped almost sitting down to hold the wagon on the hill, the lines being on the ground, I being entirely helpless. The horses stopped right on the hill while I extricated myself. And remember, they were runaway horses . Nothing but the power of God, it seems to me, was the factor that saved my life. Oh, how thankful I was. For once in the lives of those horses they did not run away.
Sometime after that I was working on a train. We were hauling railroad ties between Pleasant Grove and Juab. We stopped at Santaquin Station to let a train pass. I went out on the platform of the station while waiting. When we started again I jumped on. Five loaded cars were behind the one I boarded. When I stepped on the car everything looked all right, but I took hold of one of the end stakes holding the ties. I was about to give up when the conductor came running along and pulled me out. The train was then going at a good speed and it would have been impossible for me to hold on any longer. Just another time that my life was saved. By accident? No, the Lord came to
In the year 1898 I was working in the Bullion Beck Mine in Eureka, Juab So., Utah. A plank, which I was crossing over a shaft 100 feet deep, broke, but a side tunnel 35 feet down saved me, there being some planks laying across the shaft at that point on which I fell and rolled off to one side. I sustained some bad scalp wounds, hurt my back and a miner's candlestick which I held in my hand penetrated my thigh and the steel point of it broke off and was left in my thigh. Still with all these minor afflictions I felt greatly blessed, for my life was saved once again.
In 1894 I sold out in Lake View to L. John Nuttall, Sr. for fifteen hundred dollars and moved to Castle Valley, took up a homestead, staying in Ferron, Emery Co., Utah in winters, worked on canal all next spring and then moved out on the farm in the spring, the first settler on the Clawson Flat. We did not get the water on our land until about May. Our crops were not planted until in June, so the grain froze and was not fit for anything but feed. We had a great deal of trouble to hold the water in the canal as it kept breaking out. One winter we lived four miles from water and had to haul ice and water that distance for two cows. We took our horses down once a day to drink and brought ice back. We gradually did better year by year.
I stayed on the homestead until we proved up and than I went to Castle Gate Coal Mines and worked during winter months to get what money we had to have. One year we had prospects of a good crop. We had 22 acres of good grain when all at once a swarm of chinch bugs lighted on it and all we got out of it was 200 bushels, not fit for anything but bran. This was quite a set back as I had rented the seed grain, paying one peck on the bushel rent. In 1907 while working in a mine in Midway, Utah, I got hurt when the roof caved in on me. I spent three weeks at Provo Hospital trying to get able to leave and for years after I felt the effects of it.
Another accident which happened several years before this I have considered very remarkable, the way I was delivered. I was raking hay with a mare that had not been hitched up but once before. As I dumped the hay, the shafts broke where the bolts go through the frame. The rake tipped forward in such a way that I was pinned between the rake and the horse's heels. I spoke gently to her and she stood while I extracted myself. I have always thought of this as a miraculous escape and consider it an intervention of Providence.
After getting my homestead in good shape, fencing eighty acres, planting 1000 fruit trees and making other improvements, I sold to an individual who was reported to me as being honorable and honest for $2,500.00. He paid $1,000.00 down and I got swindled out of the remainder. I bought a place in Clawson Town and as I depended on the money for the sale of the old place to pay for the new one, it put me in bad shape so that I had to rustle again as there was a mortgage on the last purchase.
As I pondered over my bad luck I thought of the little bee. When robbed of it's honey it goes to work again and gathers more. The little ant when his mound is scattered does not despair but builds again. Why should we give up and mourn when we are blessed with health and intelligence? So I started to build again, my dear wife being the main factor in encouraging me. We have had the misfortune of losing three of our children by death up to this time, 1913. One little girl seven weeks old died in Lake View, one boy eighteen months old died in Castle Valley, but the greatest sorrow came to us when we lost a man 24 years old. He had a wife and child. He was a large, robust man, never sick in his life before. Typhoid Fever took him within ten days. Not long after this my second son's wife died leaving him with two children. So the trials of life overtake us and the only thing to do is to think that God does all things well. We try to be patient and trust our dear Lord in all things.
Another instance was worth writing here, just another time when I was saved from death by the hand of God. It was about 1873-74 that my father was moving out to Scipio, Utah, and I was driving a horse team with a load of furniture. I sat on a quilt which was laid on a board across the wagon box and as I crossed a ditch I and the seat fell down on the horses and sat straddle of the tongue. The horses started to run and I could see I was not safe there so dropped myself down to the ground. Just as I dropped the horses turned the wheel and struck my elbow and knee just a little. That was all I was hurt. My father thought sure I would be killed, but lo and behold I was scarcely scratched.
My wife died in January, 1923 of stomach trouble or bowel ailment, probably appendix inflammation. She is buried in Ferron, three miles from Clawson.
End of Journal.
His last child was married in July after the death of his wife and he lived alone until August 1925, when he married Sarah Busenback Shurtz, a widow. His second marriage proved happy and congenial. After they were married they left Clawson and settled in Castle Dale.
The President of the Stake called them to work three months in the Manti Temple and after they had fulfilled that mission they wanted to stay the remainder of their lives in Manti and work for the dead. They sold their place in Castle Dale and bought one in Manti where they are now living (April 1937). They have done much temple work for their dead kindred and friends and will continue as long as they are able to do this important work.
Alice K. Hatch
The above history is taken from the book, Our Pioneer Heritage, Autobiographies of Six Pioneer Men.
Obituary. Manti- Edward Jorgensen, 84, a Manti Temple worker, died at his home Wednesday.
He was born in Copenhagen, on March 25, 1856. Before making his residence in Manti about six years ago Mr. Jorgensen was a farmer in Clawson, Utah. He has done temple work since living here.
He is survived by his wife, Josephine Jorgensen: two sons, William of Clawson and Jesse of Sandy, Utah and three daughters: Mrs. Eva Kathrina Blackburn of Mesa, Arizona, Mrs. May Blackburn of Clawson, and Mrs. Clara Caudis of Oakland, Calif. One sister and two brothers, all from Provo, Utah.
Funeral Services will be conducted in Manti North Ward Chapel Sunday at 2 p.m. by Bishop Charles G. Braithwaite. Interment will be in the Manti Cemetery. Friends may call at the Jorgensen home Sunday prior to service time.
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