Father: Hansen Larsen
Mother: Ane Marie Lund
Spouse: Maren Kirstine Nielsen, md 15 Nov 1867, Denmark
Sources: Headstone
Mogen Hans was born on January 21, 1840 until he was about six years old, he lived with his mother, Ane Marie Lund, and Hans Larsen. Mogen Hans recalled in later years that he thought their home was near a forest or park with many trees. He remembered his parents as quite poor as at times he would gather dry twigs and branches that blew from the tress so they could use them for fuel.1
About the age of six Mogen Hans was adopted by Frederick Ferdinand Thode and Karen Jensen. "Uncle Toe Door" as Mogen Hans fondly called his foster father, was a well-to-do man who lived on the "Char" Farm in Hjorring County on northern Jutland. Toe Door quietly concealed the facts of Mogen Hans origin. Lastly, Toe Door, after being asked many times, told Mogen Hans that his parents had probably died in an epidemic and that he should not ask about them or try to find them. Thode also raised another boy named Carl.
At the age of seventeen Mogen Hans joined the army or Royal Guard. Mogen Hans told stories of guarding the King's palace and one gift that he cherished was a pair of mittens which he wore and kept for a long time but were later destroyed. Mogen Hans did have some requisites for a member of the Royal
Guard. Mogen Hans was well over six feet tall, very well educated and came from an obviously well to do family.
Mogen Hans was in the Danish war against the Germans, (parts of Germany were Prussian), Austria and Prussia who fought for the freedom of Schleswig and Holstein and finally (lost) obtained it.
Mogen Hans had his choice of many young ladies as he had a pleasing personality and was tall and handsome. He met and courted an equally popular young lady, Maren Kirstine Nielsen. On one occasion this young lady's admirers plotted to beat up the new rival one night when he came to call. Maren was a little late getting her farm chores done this night and while doing them she overheard the plotting. Thus, as she was carrying the pan of leftover clabber milk that the geese had not eaten, she walked up the path toward the house in the dark. When she came to the place where the tormentors lay in wait, she simply gave one big heave and the contents of the clabber milk pan sprayed all over the waiting intruders and thus helped to discourage any more such mischievous acts of her former suitors. Maren got many a chuckle out of this incident.
At the age of twenty-seven, Mogen Hans married Maren Kirstine Nielsen on the 14th of November 1867 at Hormsted Sogne, Hjorring Amt, Denmark.
Maren had one sister, Johanne Christence Nielsen. Both girls had half interest in the farm of their parents. Mogen Hans bought Christence's part of the farm from her for $1,000 dollars given him by
Thode. Christence was undecided at first and thought she could get both the $1,000 and the farm. When she was undecided Mogen Hans nearly bought another farm which Christence and her husband, possibly
Erik Erikson, bought later. Christence had been trained to be an expert seamstress and her husband an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker. They should have been able to easily support themselves but lived far beyond their means and finally ended up in the poor house with her mother. Christence died shortly after being moved to the poor house. Her husband had previously hung himself. Karen Jensen, Christence's mother, lived on with Christence's children.
But the $1,000 wasn't all the money Mogen Hans and Maren paid for the farm. Mogen Hans says that Maren would sell everything she could get her hands on; calves, lambs, duck, geese, pigs, etc. until the debt was paid. He said he got tired of eating fish, fish, fish and longed for some of the other choice food. But Maren was glad that she had paid the debt while they were able to get a good price for their produce.2
The farm was a very fine one and graced with an abundance of farm animals and barnyard fowl. During harvest, the grain was cut by hand and hired men tied the grain into bundles with a handful of grain with the heads twisted together to make a longer length to fasten the bundle together. Then the grain was hauled from the fields, stored in the barn and threshed during the winter.
Maren lived through two famines in Denmark. It was the people that were wasteful that starved. Many would go around begging for food. Once Mogen Hans found five dead people on his backstep.3
There was a son born to Mogen Hans and Maren in 1868 which died six days after birth. A second child, a girl that might have been named Annie Marie, was born in 1869 that lived for only five days. The third child was born in the 7th of May 1870. Her name was Caroline Matilda Lund. The fourth was a boy by the name of Fredrick Ferdinandt Lund born on February 17, 1872. Karen Jensina Lund was born on the 3rd of June 1874.
Christence had a son, James Larsen, who was nicknamed Perki. Perki lived in Denmark with his wife and four children. Then one day he got a young girl in dutch (pregnant). If Perki hadn't left
Denmark he would have been put in jail. While in Denmark he had been converted to the LDS faith and thus he came to the Rocky Mountains. He brought with him this 16 year old girl named Trina. They settled in Mink Creek later in their lives. They got married in America and had several children.
Perki went back to Denmark after three or four years in America. In Denmark he stayed a whole winter with Mogen Hans and Maren. Perki told them exaggerated stories of the Mormon settlements in the western United States. He told of a beautiful country where everything was perfect. There were no crippled or sick and people lived together in harmony. He told them that their daughter, Matilda, would be healed to hear and speak as she had become deaf when she was four from scarlet fever. He also said that Fredrick would be healed and not be pigeon-toed.
Finally Mogen Hans decided to immigrate. They hoped for their young daughter to be healed. They sold their farm and livestock for a good price since they had been free of debt for some time. A man offered one hundred dollars for the gentle old horse but they decided not to sell it for fear others would be unkind to it. Reluctantly they laid her to rest on the old farm before leaving the gentle rolling hills of Denmark on the 24th of July 1875.
The party, consisting of Mogen Hans, his wife and three children, Perki, his oldest son and oldest daughter and Perki's first wife's sister and her child, came to America by steam ship. While at sea five year old Matilda showed her mother the key she had carried in her pocket, thinking they would go back home after the trip. They were on the ship for fourteen days.
While the group was waiting for a stage, probably in New York, Perki teased his first wife's sister and Maren that a certain stage was the one to go on. Maren knew that it was the wrong one but the sister believed Perki. Maren tried to stop her from going but the sister got on the wrong stage anyway. When the coach driver found her he put her off at the first stop which was a cold deserted shack. When Perki found that his wife's sister and child were gone he blamed it on Maren for letting the girl go. Perki followed her to the shack where he found her and the child half frozen. After this they continued on their way to Utah.
They arrived in Richmond on the 19th of August 1875, just 26 days after leaving their native country. The first thing that Mogen Hans and Maren saw when they got off the train at Richmond was two crippled people. This greatly disheartened them to find that what Perki had told them was not true.
Because of this neither Mogen Hans nor Maren ever joined the LDS church.
Mogen Hans bought twenty acres of land in Richmond. On the property was a blacksmith shop which they soon remodeled into a house. They raised grain and rye for their horses. Here on the 22nd of April 1876 another child they named, Charley Edward Lund was born to Mogen Hans and Maren.
Two years after arriving in Richmond they moved to Worm Creek. They sold the land in Richmond but tore the house down board by board and hauled it to Worm Creek with them. East of Worm Creek they homesteaded 80 acres of flat level ground and another 80 acres of hills and valleys with water springs on it. Maren wanted to homestead more land but they decided that the farm was already many times the size of the farm they owned in Denmark.
They used the boards from Richmond to build another house. They built a two room house with two windows and one door. The roof was not covered with dirt as many of the other settler's homes but was covered with wooden shingles. The boards were uneven in width (not like the planed boards of today), with adobe bricks and rocks forming a masonry wall on the inside of the house. In this first home the kitchen floor had sand placed on it. Animals were butchered in the kitchen and the sand would keep the floor clean. When they were to entertain people the sand would be swept off the varnished wood floor. It was real clean and shiny.1
While this house was being built the family lived in their covered wagon rather than in a dugout as many of the other less fortunate settlers. Three more children were born to Mogen Hans and Maren in Worm Creek. They were Annie Marie Lund born the first of January 1878, Joseph Lund born the 22nd of
February 1879 and Dagmar Lund born the 23rd of April 1882.
One of the first crops planted on the farm was rye that was planted on a four acre strip of land. At harvest time Mogen Hans would cut the grain by hand with a sickle and Maren would rake it into bundles. The children would help by tying the bundles with strands of the grain as they did in the old country.
Mogen Hans and his boys would hitch up the team and wagon and travel a few miles away to cut the native grass by hand. They would haul it back home and store it for winter feed for the livestock. Later Mogen Hans was one of the first settlers to buy a mechanical mowing machine that was used to cut hay.
The native grass was very plentiful and deep. Sometimes a child bringing in the cows from pasture would get on the wrong path and get lost out in the deep grass. Many times the small children would wander out in the sagebrush and tall grasses and get lost. Sometimes the family would hunt for long hours to find the little lost ones. When they were found all concerned would be very happy.
Once there was a peddler coming through the country and after leaving Franklin he got lost and arrived at the Lund home after dark. M.H. and Maren insisted that he stay overnight. Before he left the next morning Mogen Hans bought five pounds of alfalfa seed from him which cost a dollar a pound. They planted this alfalfa in a part of the north eighty acres and it is thought to have been one of the first patches of alfalfa grown in this area.
At one time sugar cane was grown on this farm. M.H. and the boys would cut it by hand with the sickle. Then they'd load it on the wagon and haul it a few miles to the Sorghum Mill where it was made into molasses. Among other uses it was used on the table to sweeten food. (Charley E. Lund also remembers the large stalks being used by his dad to whoop him.)
Before sugar beets were grown in the area a small quantity of sugar was available at the country store but it was a very expensive commodity. People only bought it in very small quantities. Later, when sugar beets were grown there was more sugar. Sometimes an early winter would catch them. Then M. H. and the boys would take a horse drawn ditcher and scrape the snow off the top of the beets. They'd dig out the beets, haul them to the barn and store them for feed for the live-stock. They had to be careful to cut them up into small pieces so the cattle would not get a large piece of beet in it's throat and choke to death as often happened.
Another type of sweetening for the food was obtained from the honey bees. At a set time the honey would be robbed from the bee hives but not without many stings which made it a very unpleasant job. M.H. had some hives in his orchard.
The first fences on the old homestead were made by weaving willows together. Once one of the Mogen Hans' grandchildren who was 2 or 3 years old, saw what he thought a bullwhip across one of these willow fences. He tried to tell his grandpa that he wanted to get it to play with but grandpa couldn't understand what he wanted. So he decided to go get it himself. He walked around the fence over toward the bullwhip. When he almost got it, M.H. finally realized what the boy wanted. M.H. just barely got the boy away in time, for the bullwhip happened to be a large coiled up rattlesnake.2
Another kind of fence was made by setting three poles together to form a teepee. There was one of these teepees every so far and longer logs were laid across the top of the teepees to form a fence. Sometime later, M. H. sold four cows to get enough money to buy some expensive metal barbed wire which he used to fence in the north eighty acres of level farm land.
When Mogen Hans had fenced off all his property the neighbors to the south still thought it was okay to water their cattle on the Lund's spring. The wife, who brought the cows to water, was furious to see the barbed fence. She then cut the fence and hurried her cows to water. This went on for some time. M.H. happened to see her cut the barb-wire once so he went down to talk with her. M.H. couldn't speak much English at this time. He shouted at her to get out, in Danish. She couldn't understand so he began to motion with his hands for her to take her stock and leave. The English lady got scared that he might strike her, backed away and fell over some sagebrush. This made her even more scared so she quickly got to her feet and ran to tell her husband. 3
It was decided to meet at the schoolhouse and have the bishop settle the matter. So, since Charley was to go with, Maren borrowed a nice suit from a neighbor lady to be worn to the trial even though he was still barefoot. At the appointed time Mogen Hans and Charley went to the schoolhouse and waited and waited and waited until it finally began to get dark. No one came so they went back home and nothing was ever heard of the incident again.
When Tildy and Sena would walk to town for groceries, Maren would always warn them not to accept a ride with anyone because they were so many immigrants traveling through town to Montana.
In the winter Charley and Annie would go to school at Whitney which was a couple of miles to the south.
Since they didn't have any shoes, the children would wrap burlap sacks around their feet and legs and trudge through the deep snow, uphill and downhill, to get to the school. When they got there they would be wet through to the skin. After school they would do the same thing again. Sometimes they would get a ride part of the way. The girls had more of a chance for schooling than the boys who were kept out of school in the spring and autumn to help with the farm work.
Mogen Hans Lund was "popular even with members of that energetic and aggressive (LDS) church and deserves his popularity for he is as energetic as any of them and as sincerely devoted to the development and improvement of the region in which he has cast his lot." 4
M.H. and Maren were very generous with what they had and always warmly welcomed people. They would feed one bunch, then another would come and they'd feed them. This happened quite often. It was like Open House all the time. M.H. and Maren almost ran a free hotel. Travelers would stay here overnight, then go on to their destinations. Then they'd stop overnight again on their way home.5 Whenever anyone came to call it was a must that they sit down at the table and partake of the refreshments available and there seemed to be an unending quantity of food to be eaten. At night there was never enough beds. Beds were made on the floor, sometimes so thick there wasn't enough space to step between them. There were small beds on rollers that the children would sleep on that were rolled under the other beds with only their heads sticking out from under the larger beds.
One winter a man stopped at the Lund's for a night's lodging. His team had been traveling so hard they were sweating. M.H. knew that on a cold night with the horses sweating they might get a cold or worse. So a room was cleaned out and bedded with straw and the horses were kept in the house. This didn't seem so bad to M.H. and Maren because in the old country some of the barns were connected to the houses and kept almost as clean as the house.
The first stove in the family home was a black cast iron twenty four inch square wood burning stove with four lids. Mogen Hans and the boys would hitch the horses up to the wagon or sleigh, go to the canyons and get the winter's supply of fuel. The first drinking water the family used was carried from a spring about a quarter of a mile away to the south of the house. During the day most of this water was used for household purposes. At night the water ran into a pond and was used to irrigate a small vegetable garden. The garden consisted of carrots, turnips, beets and a few hills of potatoes. In the orchard were paths that Mogen Hans raked every day. He either done it or one of the kids done it. The yard was kept up as everyone helped.
One day a man stopped for a drink of water and had to wait for it to be brought from the spring. He promised that on his return trip he would stop and show them where to dig a well. This he did by using a divining rod made from a certain kind of willow which was forked known as a “water witcher.” The largest end was free with the forks held one in each hand. He held the stick parallel to the ground. When it sensed water it would turn to the ground and could not be held parallel to it. Another way to tell where to dig was where a certain kind of foliage grew the best.
The well was dug about six feet square and braced with boards and poles. The dirt was taken out in a bucket on a rope to the depth of 75 feet. With time the well filled up with dirt and tree roots until it was only about half as deep when it was quit being used. This well tapped the underground water from the spring they originally used and the spring completely dried up.
Once Mogen Hans owned a team of oxen but they didn't last very long. He wanted to go to the canyon for wood so he bought a team of oxen and hired a man to drive them. At this time they were only yoked together and driven by "gee" and "haw" and a whip. Later, others put rings in the oxen noses and drove them with lines fastened to the nose rings. All went well until the roads got going uphill and the oxen got thirsty. They got so thirsty that when they smelled water they took off towards it and there was nothing the driver could do. Off the road they went, through trees and brush pulling the wagon and they didn't stop until they'd gotten a drink.
While still in Denmark Maren had a dream where she saw several teams of matched oxen pulling a train of wagons. The oxen had wooden yokes on their necks instead of the harnesses which was the Danish custom. In Denmark there were rarely matched teams, sometimes they would consist of a cow and a horse, a bull and horse or two cows but rarely of two steers. Then the teams would wear a harness much the same as the harnesses worn by the work horses. Maren spoke of her dream to several people and one man told her that she would surely come to America. This dream came true in every detail a few years after they had moved to the Idaho Territory. One day a man came to the door to see if he might buy some eggs and so Maren traded him some eggs for a bottle of ink that she used to write letters home to Denmark. Maren went with the man a short distance to where the man had stopped to water his oxen.
There in reality was her dream, there were several teams of matched oxen, red bally, black bally, speckled Holsteins and others hooked together with wooden yokes on their necks and hooked to the train of several wagons. This man was hauling freight to Montana and probably had the oxen shod with shoes much like horses were.
Maren was an exceptional Bible student and knew the Bible so well that not one person was able to stop her on it and she proved it many times in Bible discussions with everyone by reciting chapter and verse to prove her point. Sometimes these Bible discussions lasted all night long even after the lights were put out. M.H. wasn't so well versed in the Bible as his wife and in many instances he had to ask Maren's help to get him untangled. Maren said that the Lord takes his own tithing by not allowing all the life that is put on this earth to live, in either the plant or animal kingdom. She believed that the true church hadn't been established and so she never joined any church.
A large barn was built on the Lund farm, the lower part of the barn was built into the hillside with space for about fifteen milk cows. The other part was a stable for several teams of horses. The north side of the upper story was level with the ground. There was a large sliding door big enough to drive a wagon loaded with hay into the barn. There it was unloaded onto either side of the wagon into the large hay loft which almost held the winter's supply for the stock. There was a hole from the hay loft down to where the cattle were kept used to throw hay down to the cattle. Sometimes the horses that pulled the hay wagon got anxious and would stomp and frolic until one would fall down the hole into the manger below. 7
Soon the enlarged family made it imperative that the house needed to be larger and so it was done by the addition of several rooms and an attic where some of the boys probably slept. Later the old home was remodeled making several good sized rooms upstairs with dormer windows. At the front of the house there was an upstairs door with a balcony which was over the front porch. At the back or south side of the house was long covered porch with a cooling compartment for food. Then the outside of the house was covered with dark red bricks.
Mogen Hans was a true Danish man and liked his beer. One time he went so far with his friend Soren Petersen that he got drunk. They both hesitated to go home to their wives. They decided they should take a peace offering so they each bought their wives the nicest rocking chairs they could find in town.
Soon after the invention of the phonograph the Lund family traveled to Logan, Utah. While there they went to see the first phonograph machine they had ever seen. A man was telling people about it and for the fee of only five cents one could hear this wonderful invention of sound. The machine had earphones and Maren wasn't about to have the thing put on her ears so she listened to the music in the earphones from a distance.
Mogen Hans took great pains to keep his long beard looking it's best. One time while he and the boys were clearing some land with fire the sparks flew and caught M.H's beard on fire. The beard didn't look so good then and it took him a long time before he was again proud of his beard.
In 1883 or 1884 the Mormons practiced polygamy to such an extent that state and county governments had laws that no Mormon could hold public offices. There were only four men in Franklin that were not Mormons. They elected and voted for each other. Some Mormons tried the trick of getting the bishop to cut them from church so they could vote or get an office and then come back into the church but this wasn't allowed.
This was the time when Mogen Hans was Constable of this county. He never did jail anyone for polygamy or interfere in it at all. Maren said that polygamy was all right if it went the right way but
Mogen Hans never took sides. As Constable M.H would travel from Preston to Malad on business pertaining to the office. Sometimes he would go in his buggy. Other times he would go on horseback taking law-breakers to the county seat in Malad.
On one occasion Mogen Hans was to get a bad character. His friends persuaded M.H. to take a gun with him. Somehow there was an accident with the gun and M.H. shot himself in the hand. After getting the wound dressed he discarded the gun and went after the criminal bare-handed and succeeded in getting his man. M.H. never did carry a gun either before the accident or after it.
M.H. was a road overseer in the county as the following notation shows: C.T. Koons, clerk of the board of County Commissioners of the Oneida County, Idaho, appointed M.H. Lund road overseer for road district No. 10 at Preston, Oneida County, Idaho. Malad City, Idaho on April 18, 1891. It was also tradition that Mogen Hans was an election judge from time to time.
In the early fall one year there was a smallpox epidemic in Preston. Charley went to a dance in Whitney where he danced several dances with Mary Moser (cousin of Pete Moser) who was starting to break out with the pox but no one knew it at the time. After a while Charley began to feel sick and got pox on the soles of his feet and couldn't wear shoes.
On the 30th of July 1901 the town constables Smith and Jensen, came to put up a red flag to start quarantine for pox. Charley protested saying that he didn't have pox but wanted to show them the sores he had on his feet. As he advanced toward them they kept backing away to keep twenty feet between them. They finally put up a red flag anyway. The Lunds weren't allowed to walk on the road and had to stay on their own property. No one could go past their place for half a mile. Someone would bring food for them and take their eggs.
In a day or two Charley got more pox all over his body but had it lightly with about a dozen pox on his face. He never picked them so he had no pox marks to prove he had them. One by one the rest of the kids got the pox marks to prove he had them and even M.H. got them but Maren never did. Charley would still do his work when he had the pox. He would sit on the binder and drive horses to bind the grain. But Joe got too weak to put grain into shocks. He would put up one shock and sit on the shady side of it to rest. After a week or so Joe got better and worked as usual. When Joe was sick he would sleep at nights in the barn with no clothes on to keep cool. One night he went to the well to get a drink and was half way there before he remembered he didn't have any clothes on. He was so thirsty he went on anyway and got his drink.
Tilda would clap her hands and tease Charley because he had pox and she didn't. Then he would run after her and hug her while she tried to get away. Soon Tilda go the pox and she got them worst of all in the family. She got so weak that she couldn't dress herself. The other children would help her put on her shoes and dress her.
Mogen Hans also got the pox. He went to live in the granary where it was dark and cool, where the flies didn't bother him. They would bring his food to him and he stayed there until he got better.
After a time one of Charley's friends, Joe Jensen, got pox and his dad put him in the back of the buggy and took him to his sister, Sarah Alder. Sarah took care of Joe Jensen. Doc Cutler said that Joe had the pox worse than anyone else. Doc wouldn't get near Joe but looked through the window and gave prescription. He got so sick he had to be lifted around. Charley would bring Joe some of his mother's home made beer. One time Charley brought two bottles full of beer and gave them to Murtle Alder saying that it was medicine and Joe could only have a spoonful every 15 minutes. So Murtle told this to her mother and Joe didn't get any of this so called medicine than was prescribed. The joke was to tease
Murtle but when Charley came to visit with more beer Joe asked what kind of medicine it was that tasted like beer. Everyone laughed at the joke on Joe because he thought it was medicine.
One year the winter was very severe. There wasn't much feed for the stock and so most of the settlers decided to take the chance and take some of their livestock west of Preston to Bear River and let them try to find enough feed to finish the winter. Maren had seven young heifers and she refused to send them to the river bottom like the others. She took the chance and left them home feeding them a starvation diet of bran and straw. When spring came she still had all her heifers but those that were turned loose on the river bottoms died.
Mogen Hans and Charley went to Ogden to see a doctor in the later years of M.H.'s life. The doctor said it would cost $300 to remove cataracts from M.H.'s eyes. M.H. didn't want operation when he found that his hands would be tied behind his back so he couldn't scratch his eyes after the operation. M.H. and Charley decided to wait until M.H. went blind before getting the operation but he never did get it. M.H. also had chronic eczema and was very sick until he died.
Mogen Hans learned to speak English during his life in America but Maren never did. Her friends teased her so much when she first tried to learn it. She became discouraged and decided that Danish was good enough for her. Therefore, her children grew up having to learn both English and Danish, which they could speak equally well even though none of them had an accent.
Mogen Hans Lund passed away at the old home on the land he had homesteaded, on the 31st of May 1914. He was buried in the Lund family plot in the Preston City Cemetery on the third of June. Mr.
Skidmore was the mortician at his funeral. M.H. was driven to his grave in a white horse drawn hearse.
When they were going up the hill by Soren Peterson's house the pin came out of the double trees and the
hearse rolled back down the hill until the two riders blocked the wheels. 9
Mother: Ane Marie Lund
Spouse: Maren Kirstine Nielsen, md 15 Nov 1867, Denmark
Sources: Headstone
Mogen Hans was born on January 21, 1840 until he was about six years old, he lived with his mother, Ane Marie Lund, and Hans Larsen. Mogen Hans recalled in later years that he thought their home was near a forest or park with many trees. He remembered his parents as quite poor as at times he would gather dry twigs and branches that blew from the tress so they could use them for fuel.1
About the age of six Mogen Hans was adopted by Frederick Ferdinand Thode and Karen Jensen. "Uncle Toe Door" as Mogen Hans fondly called his foster father, was a well-to-do man who lived on the "Char" Farm in Hjorring County on northern Jutland. Toe Door quietly concealed the facts of Mogen Hans origin. Lastly, Toe Door, after being asked many times, told Mogen Hans that his parents had probably died in an epidemic and that he should not ask about them or try to find them. Thode also raised another boy named Carl.
At the age of seventeen Mogen Hans joined the army or Royal Guard. Mogen Hans told stories of guarding the King's palace and one gift that he cherished was a pair of mittens which he wore and kept for a long time but were later destroyed. Mogen Hans did have some requisites for a member of the Royal
Guard. Mogen Hans was well over six feet tall, very well educated and came from an obviously well to do family.
Mogen Hans was in the Danish war against the Germans, (parts of Germany were Prussian), Austria and Prussia who fought for the freedom of Schleswig and Holstein and finally (lost) obtained it.
Mogen Hans had his choice of many young ladies as he had a pleasing personality and was tall and handsome. He met and courted an equally popular young lady, Maren Kirstine Nielsen. On one occasion this young lady's admirers plotted to beat up the new rival one night when he came to call. Maren was a little late getting her farm chores done this night and while doing them she overheard the plotting. Thus, as she was carrying the pan of leftover clabber milk that the geese had not eaten, she walked up the path toward the house in the dark. When she came to the place where the tormentors lay in wait, she simply gave one big heave and the contents of the clabber milk pan sprayed all over the waiting intruders and thus helped to discourage any more such mischievous acts of her former suitors. Maren got many a chuckle out of this incident.
At the age of twenty-seven, Mogen Hans married Maren Kirstine Nielsen on the 14th of November 1867 at Hormsted Sogne, Hjorring Amt, Denmark.
Maren had one sister, Johanne Christence Nielsen. Both girls had half interest in the farm of their parents. Mogen Hans bought Christence's part of the farm from her for $1,000 dollars given him by
Thode. Christence was undecided at first and thought she could get both the $1,000 and the farm. When she was undecided Mogen Hans nearly bought another farm which Christence and her husband, possibly
Erik Erikson, bought later. Christence had been trained to be an expert seamstress and her husband an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker. They should have been able to easily support themselves but lived far beyond their means and finally ended up in the poor house with her mother. Christence died shortly after being moved to the poor house. Her husband had previously hung himself. Karen Jensen, Christence's mother, lived on with Christence's children.
But the $1,000 wasn't all the money Mogen Hans and Maren paid for the farm. Mogen Hans says that Maren would sell everything she could get her hands on; calves, lambs, duck, geese, pigs, etc. until the debt was paid. He said he got tired of eating fish, fish, fish and longed for some of the other choice food. But Maren was glad that she had paid the debt while they were able to get a good price for their produce.2
The farm was a very fine one and graced with an abundance of farm animals and barnyard fowl. During harvest, the grain was cut by hand and hired men tied the grain into bundles with a handful of grain with the heads twisted together to make a longer length to fasten the bundle together. Then the grain was hauled from the fields, stored in the barn and threshed during the winter.
Maren lived through two famines in Denmark. It was the people that were wasteful that starved. Many would go around begging for food. Once Mogen Hans found five dead people on his backstep.3
There was a son born to Mogen Hans and Maren in 1868 which died six days after birth. A second child, a girl that might have been named Annie Marie, was born in 1869 that lived for only five days. The third child was born in the 7th of May 1870. Her name was Caroline Matilda Lund. The fourth was a boy by the name of Fredrick Ferdinandt Lund born on February 17, 1872. Karen Jensina Lund was born on the 3rd of June 1874.
Christence had a son, James Larsen, who was nicknamed Perki. Perki lived in Denmark with his wife and four children. Then one day he got a young girl in dutch (pregnant). If Perki hadn't left
Denmark he would have been put in jail. While in Denmark he had been converted to the LDS faith and thus he came to the Rocky Mountains. He brought with him this 16 year old girl named Trina. They settled in Mink Creek later in their lives. They got married in America and had several children.
Perki went back to Denmark after three or four years in America. In Denmark he stayed a whole winter with Mogen Hans and Maren. Perki told them exaggerated stories of the Mormon settlements in the western United States. He told of a beautiful country where everything was perfect. There were no crippled or sick and people lived together in harmony. He told them that their daughter, Matilda, would be healed to hear and speak as she had become deaf when she was four from scarlet fever. He also said that Fredrick would be healed and not be pigeon-toed.
Finally Mogen Hans decided to immigrate. They hoped for their young daughter to be healed. They sold their farm and livestock for a good price since they had been free of debt for some time. A man offered one hundred dollars for the gentle old horse but they decided not to sell it for fear others would be unkind to it. Reluctantly they laid her to rest on the old farm before leaving the gentle rolling hills of Denmark on the 24th of July 1875.
The party, consisting of Mogen Hans, his wife and three children, Perki, his oldest son and oldest daughter and Perki's first wife's sister and her child, came to America by steam ship. While at sea five year old Matilda showed her mother the key she had carried in her pocket, thinking they would go back home after the trip. They were on the ship for fourteen days.
While the group was waiting for a stage, probably in New York, Perki teased his first wife's sister and Maren that a certain stage was the one to go on. Maren knew that it was the wrong one but the sister believed Perki. Maren tried to stop her from going but the sister got on the wrong stage anyway. When the coach driver found her he put her off at the first stop which was a cold deserted shack. When Perki found that his wife's sister and child were gone he blamed it on Maren for letting the girl go. Perki followed her to the shack where he found her and the child half frozen. After this they continued on their way to Utah.
They arrived in Richmond on the 19th of August 1875, just 26 days after leaving their native country. The first thing that Mogen Hans and Maren saw when they got off the train at Richmond was two crippled people. This greatly disheartened them to find that what Perki had told them was not true.
Because of this neither Mogen Hans nor Maren ever joined the LDS church.
Mogen Hans bought twenty acres of land in Richmond. On the property was a blacksmith shop which they soon remodeled into a house. They raised grain and rye for their horses. Here on the 22nd of April 1876 another child they named, Charley Edward Lund was born to Mogen Hans and Maren.
Two years after arriving in Richmond they moved to Worm Creek. They sold the land in Richmond but tore the house down board by board and hauled it to Worm Creek with them. East of Worm Creek they homesteaded 80 acres of flat level ground and another 80 acres of hills and valleys with water springs on it. Maren wanted to homestead more land but they decided that the farm was already many times the size of the farm they owned in Denmark.
They used the boards from Richmond to build another house. They built a two room house with two windows and one door. The roof was not covered with dirt as many of the other settler's homes but was covered with wooden shingles. The boards were uneven in width (not like the planed boards of today), with adobe bricks and rocks forming a masonry wall on the inside of the house. In this first home the kitchen floor had sand placed on it. Animals were butchered in the kitchen and the sand would keep the floor clean. When they were to entertain people the sand would be swept off the varnished wood floor. It was real clean and shiny.1
While this house was being built the family lived in their covered wagon rather than in a dugout as many of the other less fortunate settlers. Three more children were born to Mogen Hans and Maren in Worm Creek. They were Annie Marie Lund born the first of January 1878, Joseph Lund born the 22nd of
February 1879 and Dagmar Lund born the 23rd of April 1882.
One of the first crops planted on the farm was rye that was planted on a four acre strip of land. At harvest time Mogen Hans would cut the grain by hand with a sickle and Maren would rake it into bundles. The children would help by tying the bundles with strands of the grain as they did in the old country.
Mogen Hans and his boys would hitch up the team and wagon and travel a few miles away to cut the native grass by hand. They would haul it back home and store it for winter feed for the livestock. Later Mogen Hans was one of the first settlers to buy a mechanical mowing machine that was used to cut hay.
The native grass was very plentiful and deep. Sometimes a child bringing in the cows from pasture would get on the wrong path and get lost out in the deep grass. Many times the small children would wander out in the sagebrush and tall grasses and get lost. Sometimes the family would hunt for long hours to find the little lost ones. When they were found all concerned would be very happy.
Once there was a peddler coming through the country and after leaving Franklin he got lost and arrived at the Lund home after dark. M.H. and Maren insisted that he stay overnight. Before he left the next morning Mogen Hans bought five pounds of alfalfa seed from him which cost a dollar a pound. They planted this alfalfa in a part of the north eighty acres and it is thought to have been one of the first patches of alfalfa grown in this area.
At one time sugar cane was grown on this farm. M.H. and the boys would cut it by hand with the sickle. Then they'd load it on the wagon and haul it a few miles to the Sorghum Mill where it was made into molasses. Among other uses it was used on the table to sweeten food. (Charley E. Lund also remembers the large stalks being used by his dad to whoop him.)
Before sugar beets were grown in the area a small quantity of sugar was available at the country store but it was a very expensive commodity. People only bought it in very small quantities. Later, when sugar beets were grown there was more sugar. Sometimes an early winter would catch them. Then M. H. and the boys would take a horse drawn ditcher and scrape the snow off the top of the beets. They'd dig out the beets, haul them to the barn and store them for feed for the live-stock. They had to be careful to cut them up into small pieces so the cattle would not get a large piece of beet in it's throat and choke to death as often happened.
Another type of sweetening for the food was obtained from the honey bees. At a set time the honey would be robbed from the bee hives but not without many stings which made it a very unpleasant job. M.H. had some hives in his orchard.
The first fences on the old homestead were made by weaving willows together. Once one of the Mogen Hans' grandchildren who was 2 or 3 years old, saw what he thought a bullwhip across one of these willow fences. He tried to tell his grandpa that he wanted to get it to play with but grandpa couldn't understand what he wanted. So he decided to go get it himself. He walked around the fence over toward the bullwhip. When he almost got it, M.H. finally realized what the boy wanted. M.H. just barely got the boy away in time, for the bullwhip happened to be a large coiled up rattlesnake.2
Another kind of fence was made by setting three poles together to form a teepee. There was one of these teepees every so far and longer logs were laid across the top of the teepees to form a fence. Sometime later, M. H. sold four cows to get enough money to buy some expensive metal barbed wire which he used to fence in the north eighty acres of level farm land.
When Mogen Hans had fenced off all his property the neighbors to the south still thought it was okay to water their cattle on the Lund's spring. The wife, who brought the cows to water, was furious to see the barbed fence. She then cut the fence and hurried her cows to water. This went on for some time. M.H. happened to see her cut the barb-wire once so he went down to talk with her. M.H. couldn't speak much English at this time. He shouted at her to get out, in Danish. She couldn't understand so he began to motion with his hands for her to take her stock and leave. The English lady got scared that he might strike her, backed away and fell over some sagebrush. This made her even more scared so she quickly got to her feet and ran to tell her husband. 3
It was decided to meet at the schoolhouse and have the bishop settle the matter. So, since Charley was to go with, Maren borrowed a nice suit from a neighbor lady to be worn to the trial even though he was still barefoot. At the appointed time Mogen Hans and Charley went to the schoolhouse and waited and waited and waited until it finally began to get dark. No one came so they went back home and nothing was ever heard of the incident again.
When Tildy and Sena would walk to town for groceries, Maren would always warn them not to accept a ride with anyone because they were so many immigrants traveling through town to Montana.
In the winter Charley and Annie would go to school at Whitney which was a couple of miles to the south.
Since they didn't have any shoes, the children would wrap burlap sacks around their feet and legs and trudge through the deep snow, uphill and downhill, to get to the school. When they got there they would be wet through to the skin. After school they would do the same thing again. Sometimes they would get a ride part of the way. The girls had more of a chance for schooling than the boys who were kept out of school in the spring and autumn to help with the farm work.
Mogen Hans Lund was "popular even with members of that energetic and aggressive (LDS) church and deserves his popularity for he is as energetic as any of them and as sincerely devoted to the development and improvement of the region in which he has cast his lot." 4
M.H. and Maren were very generous with what they had and always warmly welcomed people. They would feed one bunch, then another would come and they'd feed them. This happened quite often. It was like Open House all the time. M.H. and Maren almost ran a free hotel. Travelers would stay here overnight, then go on to their destinations. Then they'd stop overnight again on their way home.5 Whenever anyone came to call it was a must that they sit down at the table and partake of the refreshments available and there seemed to be an unending quantity of food to be eaten. At night there was never enough beds. Beds were made on the floor, sometimes so thick there wasn't enough space to step between them. There were small beds on rollers that the children would sleep on that were rolled under the other beds with only their heads sticking out from under the larger beds.
One winter a man stopped at the Lund's for a night's lodging. His team had been traveling so hard they were sweating. M.H. knew that on a cold night with the horses sweating they might get a cold or worse. So a room was cleaned out and bedded with straw and the horses were kept in the house. This didn't seem so bad to M.H. and Maren because in the old country some of the barns were connected to the houses and kept almost as clean as the house.
The first stove in the family home was a black cast iron twenty four inch square wood burning stove with four lids. Mogen Hans and the boys would hitch the horses up to the wagon or sleigh, go to the canyons and get the winter's supply of fuel. The first drinking water the family used was carried from a spring about a quarter of a mile away to the south of the house. During the day most of this water was used for household purposes. At night the water ran into a pond and was used to irrigate a small vegetable garden. The garden consisted of carrots, turnips, beets and a few hills of potatoes. In the orchard were paths that Mogen Hans raked every day. He either done it or one of the kids done it. The yard was kept up as everyone helped.
One day a man stopped for a drink of water and had to wait for it to be brought from the spring. He promised that on his return trip he would stop and show them where to dig a well. This he did by using a divining rod made from a certain kind of willow which was forked known as a “water witcher.” The largest end was free with the forks held one in each hand. He held the stick parallel to the ground. When it sensed water it would turn to the ground and could not be held parallel to it. Another way to tell where to dig was where a certain kind of foliage grew the best.
The well was dug about six feet square and braced with boards and poles. The dirt was taken out in a bucket on a rope to the depth of 75 feet. With time the well filled up with dirt and tree roots until it was only about half as deep when it was quit being used. This well tapped the underground water from the spring they originally used and the spring completely dried up.
Once Mogen Hans owned a team of oxen but they didn't last very long. He wanted to go to the canyon for wood so he bought a team of oxen and hired a man to drive them. At this time they were only yoked together and driven by "gee" and "haw" and a whip. Later, others put rings in the oxen noses and drove them with lines fastened to the nose rings. All went well until the roads got going uphill and the oxen got thirsty. They got so thirsty that when they smelled water they took off towards it and there was nothing the driver could do. Off the road they went, through trees and brush pulling the wagon and they didn't stop until they'd gotten a drink.
While still in Denmark Maren had a dream where she saw several teams of matched oxen pulling a train of wagons. The oxen had wooden yokes on their necks instead of the harnesses which was the Danish custom. In Denmark there were rarely matched teams, sometimes they would consist of a cow and a horse, a bull and horse or two cows but rarely of two steers. Then the teams would wear a harness much the same as the harnesses worn by the work horses. Maren spoke of her dream to several people and one man told her that she would surely come to America. This dream came true in every detail a few years after they had moved to the Idaho Territory. One day a man came to the door to see if he might buy some eggs and so Maren traded him some eggs for a bottle of ink that she used to write letters home to Denmark. Maren went with the man a short distance to where the man had stopped to water his oxen.
There in reality was her dream, there were several teams of matched oxen, red bally, black bally, speckled Holsteins and others hooked together with wooden yokes on their necks and hooked to the train of several wagons. This man was hauling freight to Montana and probably had the oxen shod with shoes much like horses were.
Maren was an exceptional Bible student and knew the Bible so well that not one person was able to stop her on it and she proved it many times in Bible discussions with everyone by reciting chapter and verse to prove her point. Sometimes these Bible discussions lasted all night long even after the lights were put out. M.H. wasn't so well versed in the Bible as his wife and in many instances he had to ask Maren's help to get him untangled. Maren said that the Lord takes his own tithing by not allowing all the life that is put on this earth to live, in either the plant or animal kingdom. She believed that the true church hadn't been established and so she never joined any church.
A large barn was built on the Lund farm, the lower part of the barn was built into the hillside with space for about fifteen milk cows. The other part was a stable for several teams of horses. The north side of the upper story was level with the ground. There was a large sliding door big enough to drive a wagon loaded with hay into the barn. There it was unloaded onto either side of the wagon into the large hay loft which almost held the winter's supply for the stock. There was a hole from the hay loft down to where the cattle were kept used to throw hay down to the cattle. Sometimes the horses that pulled the hay wagon got anxious and would stomp and frolic until one would fall down the hole into the manger below. 7
Soon the enlarged family made it imperative that the house needed to be larger and so it was done by the addition of several rooms and an attic where some of the boys probably slept. Later the old home was remodeled making several good sized rooms upstairs with dormer windows. At the front of the house there was an upstairs door with a balcony which was over the front porch. At the back or south side of the house was long covered porch with a cooling compartment for food. Then the outside of the house was covered with dark red bricks.
Mogen Hans was a true Danish man and liked his beer. One time he went so far with his friend Soren Petersen that he got drunk. They both hesitated to go home to their wives. They decided they should take a peace offering so they each bought their wives the nicest rocking chairs they could find in town.
Soon after the invention of the phonograph the Lund family traveled to Logan, Utah. While there they went to see the first phonograph machine they had ever seen. A man was telling people about it and for the fee of only five cents one could hear this wonderful invention of sound. The machine had earphones and Maren wasn't about to have the thing put on her ears so she listened to the music in the earphones from a distance.
Mogen Hans took great pains to keep his long beard looking it's best. One time while he and the boys were clearing some land with fire the sparks flew and caught M.H's beard on fire. The beard didn't look so good then and it took him a long time before he was again proud of his beard.
In 1883 or 1884 the Mormons practiced polygamy to such an extent that state and county governments had laws that no Mormon could hold public offices. There were only four men in Franklin that were not Mormons. They elected and voted for each other. Some Mormons tried the trick of getting the bishop to cut them from church so they could vote or get an office and then come back into the church but this wasn't allowed.
This was the time when Mogen Hans was Constable of this county. He never did jail anyone for polygamy or interfere in it at all. Maren said that polygamy was all right if it went the right way but
Mogen Hans never took sides. As Constable M.H would travel from Preston to Malad on business pertaining to the office. Sometimes he would go in his buggy. Other times he would go on horseback taking law-breakers to the county seat in Malad.
On one occasion Mogen Hans was to get a bad character. His friends persuaded M.H. to take a gun with him. Somehow there was an accident with the gun and M.H. shot himself in the hand. After getting the wound dressed he discarded the gun and went after the criminal bare-handed and succeeded in getting his man. M.H. never did carry a gun either before the accident or after it.
M.H. was a road overseer in the county as the following notation shows: C.T. Koons, clerk of the board of County Commissioners of the Oneida County, Idaho, appointed M.H. Lund road overseer for road district No. 10 at Preston, Oneida County, Idaho. Malad City, Idaho on April 18, 1891. It was also tradition that Mogen Hans was an election judge from time to time.
In the early fall one year there was a smallpox epidemic in Preston. Charley went to a dance in Whitney where he danced several dances with Mary Moser (cousin of Pete Moser) who was starting to break out with the pox but no one knew it at the time. After a while Charley began to feel sick and got pox on the soles of his feet and couldn't wear shoes.
On the 30th of July 1901 the town constables Smith and Jensen, came to put up a red flag to start quarantine for pox. Charley protested saying that he didn't have pox but wanted to show them the sores he had on his feet. As he advanced toward them they kept backing away to keep twenty feet between them. They finally put up a red flag anyway. The Lunds weren't allowed to walk on the road and had to stay on their own property. No one could go past their place for half a mile. Someone would bring food for them and take their eggs.
In a day or two Charley got more pox all over his body but had it lightly with about a dozen pox on his face. He never picked them so he had no pox marks to prove he had them. One by one the rest of the kids got the pox marks to prove he had them and even M.H. got them but Maren never did. Charley would still do his work when he had the pox. He would sit on the binder and drive horses to bind the grain. But Joe got too weak to put grain into shocks. He would put up one shock and sit on the shady side of it to rest. After a week or so Joe got better and worked as usual. When Joe was sick he would sleep at nights in the barn with no clothes on to keep cool. One night he went to the well to get a drink and was half way there before he remembered he didn't have any clothes on. He was so thirsty he went on anyway and got his drink.
Tilda would clap her hands and tease Charley because he had pox and she didn't. Then he would run after her and hug her while she tried to get away. Soon Tilda go the pox and she got them worst of all in the family. She got so weak that she couldn't dress herself. The other children would help her put on her shoes and dress her.
Mogen Hans also got the pox. He went to live in the granary where it was dark and cool, where the flies didn't bother him. They would bring his food to him and he stayed there until he got better.
After a time one of Charley's friends, Joe Jensen, got pox and his dad put him in the back of the buggy and took him to his sister, Sarah Alder. Sarah took care of Joe Jensen. Doc Cutler said that Joe had the pox worse than anyone else. Doc wouldn't get near Joe but looked through the window and gave prescription. He got so sick he had to be lifted around. Charley would bring Joe some of his mother's home made beer. One time Charley brought two bottles full of beer and gave them to Murtle Alder saying that it was medicine and Joe could only have a spoonful every 15 minutes. So Murtle told this to her mother and Joe didn't get any of this so called medicine than was prescribed. The joke was to tease
Murtle but when Charley came to visit with more beer Joe asked what kind of medicine it was that tasted like beer. Everyone laughed at the joke on Joe because he thought it was medicine.
One year the winter was very severe. There wasn't much feed for the stock and so most of the settlers decided to take the chance and take some of their livestock west of Preston to Bear River and let them try to find enough feed to finish the winter. Maren had seven young heifers and she refused to send them to the river bottom like the others. She took the chance and left them home feeding them a starvation diet of bran and straw. When spring came she still had all her heifers but those that were turned loose on the river bottoms died.
Mogen Hans and Charley went to Ogden to see a doctor in the later years of M.H.'s life. The doctor said it would cost $300 to remove cataracts from M.H.'s eyes. M.H. didn't want operation when he found that his hands would be tied behind his back so he couldn't scratch his eyes after the operation. M.H. and Charley decided to wait until M.H. went blind before getting the operation but he never did get it. M.H. also had chronic eczema and was very sick until he died.
Mogen Hans learned to speak English during his life in America but Maren never did. Her friends teased her so much when she first tried to learn it. She became discouraged and decided that Danish was good enough for her. Therefore, her children grew up having to learn both English and Danish, which they could speak equally well even though none of them had an accent.
Mogen Hans Lund passed away at the old home on the land he had homesteaded, on the 31st of May 1914. He was buried in the Lund family plot in the Preston City Cemetery on the third of June. Mr.
Skidmore was the mortician at his funeral. M.H. was driven to his grave in a white horse drawn hearse.
When they were going up the hill by Soren Peterson's house the pin came out of the double trees and the
hearse rolled back down the hill until the two riders blocked the wheels. 9
Father: Hansen Larsen
Mother: Ane Marie Lund
Spouse: Maren Kirstine Nielsen, md 15 Nov 1867, Denmark
Sources: Headstone
Mogen Hans was born on January 21, 1840 until he was about six years old, he lived with his mother, Ane Marie Lund, and Hans Larsen. Mogen Hans recalled in later years that he thought their home was near a forest or park with many trees. He remembered his parents as quite poor as at times he would gather dry twigs and branches that blew from the tress so they could use them for fuel.1
About the age of six Mogen Hans was adopted by Frederick Ferdinand Thode and Karen Jensen. "Uncle Toe Door" as Mogen Hans fondly called his foster father, was a well-to-do man who lived on the "Char" Farm in Hjorring County on northern Jutland. Toe Door quietly concealed the facts of Mogen Hans origin. Lastly, Toe Door, after being asked many times, told Mogen Hans that his parents had probably died in an epidemic and that he should not ask about them or try to find them. Thode also raised another boy named Carl.
At the age of seventeen Mogen Hans joined the army or Royal Guard. Mogen Hans told stories of guarding the King's palace and one gift that he cherished was a pair of mittens which he wore and kept for a long time but were later destroyed. Mogen Hans did have some requisites for a member of the Royal
Guard. Mogen Hans was well over six feet tall, very well educated and came from an obviously well to do family.
Mogen Hans was in the Danish war against the Germans, (parts of Germany were Prussian), Austria and Prussia who fought for the freedom of Schleswig and Holstein and finally (lost) obtained it.
Mogen Hans had his choice of many young ladies as he had a pleasing personality and was tall and handsome. He met and courted an equally popular young lady, Maren Kirstine Nielsen. On one occasion this young lady's admirers plotted to beat up the new rival one night when he came to call. Maren was a little late getting her farm chores done this night and while doing them she overheard the plotting. Thus, as she was carrying the pan of leftover clabber milk that the geese had not eaten, she walked up the path toward the house in the dark. When she came to the place where the tormentors lay in wait, she simply gave one big heave and the contents of the clabber milk pan sprayed all over the waiting intruders and thus helped to discourage any more such mischievous acts of her former suitors. Maren got many a chuckle out of this incident.
At the age of twenty-seven, Mogen Hans married Maren Kirstine Nielsen on the 14th of November 1867 at Hormsted Sogne, Hjorring Amt, Denmark.
Maren had one sister, Johanne Christence Nielsen. Both girls had half interest in the farm of their parents. Mogen Hans bought Christence's part of the farm from her for $1,000 dollars given him by
Thode. Christence was undecided at first and thought she could get both the $1,000 and the farm. When she was undecided Mogen Hans nearly bought another farm which Christence and her husband, possibly
Erik Erikson, bought later. Christence had been trained to be an expert seamstress and her husband an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker. They should have been able to easily support themselves but lived far beyond their means and finally ended up in the poor house with her mother. Christence died shortly after being moved to the poor house. Her husband had previously hung himself. Karen Jensen, Christence's mother, lived on with Christence's children.
But the $1,000 wasn't all the money Mogen Hans and Maren paid for the farm. Mogen Hans says that Maren would sell everything she could get her hands on; calves, lambs, duck, geese, pigs, etc. until the debt was paid. He said he got tired of eating fish, fish, fish and longed for some of the other choice food. But Maren was glad that she had paid the debt while they were able to get a good price for their produce.2
The farm was a very fine one and graced with an abundance of farm animals and barnyard fowl. During harvest, the grain was cut by hand and hired men tied the grain into bundles with a handful of grain with the heads twisted together to make a longer length to fasten the bundle together. Then the grain was hauled from the fields, stored in the barn and threshed during the winter.
Maren lived through two famines in Denmark. It was the people that were wasteful that starved. Many would go around begging for food. Once Mogen Hans found five dead people on his backstep.3
There was a son born to Mogen Hans and Maren in 1868 which died six days after birth. A second child, a girl that might have been named Annie Marie, was born in 1869 that lived for only five days. The third child was born in the 7th of May 1870. Her name was Caroline Matilda Lund. The fourth was a boy by the name of Fredrick Ferdinandt Lund born on February 17, 1872. Karen Jensina Lund was born on the 3rd of June 1874.
Christence had a son, James Larsen, who was nicknamed Perki. Perki lived in Denmark with his wife and four children. Then one day he got a young girl in dutch (pregnant). If Perki hadn't left
Denmark he would have been put in jail. While in Denmark he had been converted to the LDS faith and thus he came to the Rocky Mountains. He brought with him this 16 year old girl named Trina. They settled in Mink Creek later in their lives. They got married in America and had several children.
Perki went back to Denmark after three or four years in America. In Denmark he stayed a whole winter with Mogen Hans and Maren. Perki told them exaggerated stories of the Mormon settlements in the western United States. He told of a beautiful country where everything was perfect. There were no crippled or sick and people lived together in harmony. He told them that their daughter, Matilda, would be healed to hear and speak as she had become deaf when she was four from scarlet fever. He also said that Fredrick would be healed and not be pigeon-toed.
Finally Mogen Hans decided to immigrate. They hoped for their young daughter to be healed. They sold their farm and livestock for a good price since they had been free of debt for some time. A man offered one hundred dollars for the gentle old horse but they decided not to sell it for fear others would be unkind to it. Reluctantly they laid her to rest on the old farm before leaving the gentle rolling hills of Denmark on the 24th of July 1875.
The party, consisting of Mogen Hans, his wife and three children, Perki, his oldest son and oldest daughter and Perki's first wife's sister and her child, came to America by steam ship. While at sea five year old Matilda showed her mother the key she had carried in her pocket, thinking they would go back home after the trip. They were on the ship for fourteen days.
While the group was waiting for a stage, probably in New York, Perki teased his first wife's sister and Maren that a certain stage was the one to go on. Maren knew that it was the wrong one but the sister believed Perki. Maren tried to stop her from going but the sister got on the wrong stage anyway. When the coach driver found her he put her off at the first stop which was a cold deserted shack. When Perki found that his wife's sister and child were gone he blamed it on Maren for letting the girl go. Perki followed her to the shack where he found her and the child half frozen. After this they continued on their way to Utah.
They arrived in Richmond on the 19th of August 1875, just 26 days after leaving their native country. The first thing that Mogen Hans and Maren saw when they got off the train at Richmond was two crippled people. This greatly disheartened them to find that what Perki had told them was not true.
Because of this neither Mogen Hans nor Maren ever joined the LDS church.
Mogen Hans bought twenty acres of land in Richmond. On the property was a blacksmith shop which they soon remodeled into a house. They raised grain and rye for their horses. Here on the 22nd of April 1876 another child they named, Charley Edward Lund was born to Mogen Hans and Maren.
Two years after arriving in Richmond they moved to Worm Creek. They sold the land in Richmond but tore the house down board by board and hauled it to Worm Creek with them. East of Worm Creek they homesteaded 80 acres of flat level ground and another 80 acres of hills and valleys with water springs on it. Maren wanted to homestead more land but they decided that the farm was already many times the size of the farm they owned in Denmark.
They used the boards from Richmond to build another house. They built a two room house with two windows and one door. The roof was not covered with dirt as many of the other settler's homes but was covered with wooden shingles. The boards were uneven in width (not like the planed boards of today), with adobe bricks and rocks forming a masonry wall on the inside of the house. In this first home the kitchen floor had sand placed on it. Animals were butchered in the kitchen and the sand would keep the floor clean. When they were to entertain people the sand would be swept off the varnished wood floor. It was real clean and shiny.1
While this house was being built the family lived in their covered wagon rather than in a dugout as many of the other less fortunate settlers. Three more children were born to Mogen Hans and Maren in Worm Creek. They were Annie Marie Lund born the first of January 1878, Joseph Lund born the 22nd of
February 1879 and Dagmar Lund born the 23rd of April 1882.
One of the first crops planted on the farm was rye that was planted on a four acre strip of land. At harvest time Mogen Hans would cut the grain by hand with a sickle and Maren would rake it into bundles. The children would help by tying the bundles with strands of the grain as they did in the old country.
Mogen Hans and his boys would hitch up the team and wagon and travel a few miles away to cut the native grass by hand. They would haul it back home and store it for winter feed for the livestock. Later Mogen Hans was one of the first settlers to buy a mechanical mowing machine that was used to cut hay.
The native grass was very plentiful and deep. Sometimes a child bringing in the cows from pasture would get on the wrong path and get lost out in the deep grass. Many times the small children would wander out in the sagebrush and tall grasses and get lost. Sometimes the family would hunt for long hours to find the little lost ones. When they were found all concerned would be very happy.
Once there was a peddler coming through the country and after leaving Franklin he got lost and arrived at the Lund home after dark. M.H. and Maren insisted that he stay overnight. Before he left the next morning Mogen Hans bought five pounds of alfalfa seed from him which cost a dollar a pound. They planted this alfalfa in a part of the north eighty acres and it is thought to have been one of the first patches of alfalfa grown in this area.
At one time sugar cane was grown on this farm. M.H. and the boys would cut it by hand with the sickle. Then they'd load it on the wagon and haul it a few miles to the Sorghum Mill where it was made into molasses. Among other uses it was used on the table to sweeten food. (Charley E. Lund also remembers the large stalks being used by his dad to whoop him.)
Before sugar beets were grown in the area a small quantity of sugar was available at the country store but it was a very expensive commodity. People only bought it in very small quantities. Later, when sugar beets were grown there was more sugar. Sometimes an early winter would catch them. Then M. H. and the boys would take a horse drawn ditcher and scrape the snow off the top of the beets. They'd dig out the beets, haul them to the barn and store them for feed for the live-stock. They had to be careful to cut them up into small pieces so the cattle would not get a large piece of beet in it's throat and choke to death as often happened.
Another type of sweetening for the food was obtained from the honey bees. At a set time the honey would be robbed from the bee hives but not without many stings which made it a very unpleasant job. M.H. had some hives in his orchard.
The first fences on the old homestead were made by weaving willows together. Once one of the Mogen Hans' grandchildren who was 2 or 3 years old, saw what he thought a bullwhip across one of these willow fences. He tried to tell his grandpa that he wanted to get it to play with but grandpa couldn't understand what he wanted. So he decided to go get it himself. He walked around the fence over toward the bullwhip. When he almost got it, M.H. finally realized what the boy wanted. M.H. just barely got the boy away in time, for the bullwhip happened to be a large coiled up rattlesnake.2
Another kind of fence was made by setting three poles together to form a teepee. There was one of these teepees every so far and longer logs were laid across the top of the teepees to form a fence. Sometime later, M. H. sold four cows to get enough money to buy some expensive metal barbed wire which he used to fence in the north eighty acres of level farm land.
When Mogen Hans had fenced off all his property the neighbors to the south still thought it was okay to water their cattle on the Lund's spring. The wife, who brought the cows to water, was furious to see the barbed fence. She then cut the fence and hurried her cows to water. This went on for some time. M.H. happened to see her cut the barb-wire once so he went down to talk with her. M.H. couldn't speak much English at this time. He shouted at her to get out, in Danish. She couldn't understand so he began to motion with his hands for her to take her stock and leave. The English lady got scared that he might strike her, backed away and fell over some sagebrush. This made her even more scared so she quickly got to her feet and ran to tell her husband. 3
It was decided to meet at the schoolhouse and have the bishop settle the matter. So, since Charley was to go with, Maren borrowed a nice suit from a neighbor lady to be worn to the trial even though he was still barefoot. At the appointed time Mogen Hans and Charley went to the schoolhouse and waited and waited and waited until it finally began to get dark. No one came so they went back home and nothing was ever heard of the incident again.
When Tildy and Sena would walk to town for groceries, Maren would always warn them not to accept a ride with anyone because they were so many immigrants traveling through town to Montana.
In the winter Charley and Annie would go to school at Whitney which was a couple of miles to the south.
Since they didn't have any shoes, the children would wrap burlap sacks around their feet and legs and trudge through the deep snow, uphill and downhill, to get to the school. When they got there they would be wet through to the skin. After school they would do the same thing again. Sometimes they would get a ride part of the way. The girls had more of a chance for schooling than the boys who were kept out of school in the spring and autumn to help with the farm work.
Mogen Hans Lund was "popular even with members of that energetic and aggressive (LDS) church and deserves his popularity for he is as energetic as any of them and as sincerely devoted to the development and improvement of the region in which he has cast his lot." 4
M.H. and Maren were very generous with what they had and always warmly welcomed people. They would feed one bunch, then another would come and they'd feed them. This happened quite often. It was like Open House all the time. M.H. and Maren almost ran a free hotel. Travelers would stay here overnight, then go on to their destinations. Then they'd stop overnight again on their way home.5 Whenever anyone came to call it was a must that they sit down at the table and partake of the refreshments available and there seemed to be an unending quantity of food to be eaten. At night there was never enough beds. Beds were made on the floor, sometimes so thick there wasn't enough space to step between them. There were small beds on rollers that the children would sleep on that were rolled under the other beds with only their heads sticking out from under the larger beds.
One winter a man stopped at the Lund's for a night's lodging. His team had been traveling so hard they were sweating. M.H. knew that on a cold night with the horses sweating they might get a cold or worse. So a room was cleaned out and bedded with straw and the horses were kept in the house. This didn't seem so bad to M.H. and Maren because in the old country some of the barns were connected to the houses and kept almost as clean as the house.
The first stove in the family home was a black cast iron twenty four inch square wood burning stove with four lids. Mogen Hans and the boys would hitch the horses up to the wagon or sleigh, go to the canyons and get the winter's supply of fuel. The first drinking water the family used was carried from a spring about a quarter of a mile away to the south of the house. During the day most of this water was used for household purposes. At night the water ran into a pond and was used to irrigate a small vegetable garden. The garden consisted of carrots, turnips, beets and a few hills of potatoes. In the orchard were paths that Mogen Hans raked every day. He either done it or one of the kids done it. The yard was kept up as everyone helped.
One day a man stopped for a drink of water and had to wait for it to be brought from the spring. He promised that on his return trip he would stop and show them where to dig a well. This he did by using a divining rod made from a certain kind of willow which was forked known as a “water witcher.” The largest end was free with the forks held one in each hand. He held the stick parallel to the ground. When it sensed water it would turn to the ground and could not be held parallel to it. Another way to tell where to dig was where a certain kind of foliage grew the best.
The well was dug about six feet square and braced with boards and poles. The dirt was taken out in a bucket on a rope to the depth of 75 feet. With time the well filled up with dirt and tree roots until it was only about half as deep when it was quit being used. This well tapped the underground water from the spring they originally used and the spring completely dried up.
Once Mogen Hans owned a team of oxen but they didn't last very long. He wanted to go to the canyon for wood so he bought a team of oxen and hired a man to drive them. At this time they were only yoked together and driven by "gee" and "haw" and a whip. Later, others put rings in the oxen noses and drove them with lines fastened to the nose rings. All went well until the roads got going uphill and the oxen got thirsty. They got so thirsty that when they smelled water they took off towards it and there was nothing the driver could do. Off the road they went, through trees and brush pulling the wagon and they didn't stop until they'd gotten a drink.
While still in Denmark Maren had a dream where she saw several teams of matched oxen pulling a train of wagons. The oxen had wooden yokes on their necks instead of the harnesses which was the Danish custom. In Denmark there were rarely matched teams, sometimes they would consist of a cow and a horse, a bull and horse or two cows but rarely of two steers. Then the teams would wear a harness much the same as the harnesses worn by the work horses. Maren spoke of her dream to several people and one man told her that she would surely come to America. This dream came true in every detail a few years after they had moved to the Idaho Territory. One day a man came to the door to see if he might buy some eggs and so Maren traded him some eggs for a bottle of ink that she used to write letters home to Denmark. Maren went with the man a short distance to where the man had stopped to water his oxen.
There in reality was her dream, there were several teams of matched oxen, red bally, black bally, speckled Holsteins and others hooked together with wooden yokes on their necks and hooked to the train of several wagons. This man was hauling freight to Montana and probably had the oxen shod with shoes much like horses were.
Maren was an exceptional Bible student and knew the Bible so well that not one person was able to stop her on it and she proved it many times in Bible discussions with everyone by reciting chapter and verse to prove her point. Sometimes these Bible discussions lasted all night long even after the lights were put out. M.H. wasn't so well versed in the Bible as his wife and in many instances he had to ask Maren's help to get him untangled. Maren said that the Lord takes his own tithing by not allowing all the life that is put on this earth to live, in either the plant or animal kingdom. She believed that the true church hadn't been established and so she never joined any church.
A large barn was built on the Lund farm, the lower part of the barn was built into the hillside with space for about fifteen milk cows. The other part was a stable for several teams of horses. The north side of the upper story was level with the ground. There was a large sliding door big enough to drive a wagon loaded with hay into the barn. There it was unloaded onto either side of the wagon into the large hay loft which almost held the winter's supply for the stock. There was a hole from the hay loft down to where the cattle were kept used to throw hay down to the cattle. Sometimes the horses that pulled the hay wagon got anxious and would stomp and frolic until one would fall down the hole into the manger below. 7
Soon the enlarged family made it imperative that the house needed to be larger and so it was done by the addition of several rooms and an attic where some of the boys probably slept. Later the old home was remodeled making several good sized rooms upstairs with dormer windows. At the front of the house there was an upstairs door with a balcony which was over the front porch. At the back or south side of the house was long covered porch with a cooling compartment for food. Then the outside of the house was covered with dark red bricks.
Mogen Hans was a true Danish man and liked his beer. One time he went so far with his friend Soren Petersen that he got drunk. They both hesitated to go home to their wives. They decided they should take a peace offering so they each bought their wives the nicest rocking chairs they could find in town.
Soon after the invention of the phonograph the Lund family traveled to Logan, Utah. While there they went to see the first phonograph machine they had ever seen. A man was telling people about it and for the fee of only five cents one could hear this wonderful invention of sound. The machine had earphones and Maren wasn't about to have the thing put on her ears so she listened to the music in the earphones from a distance.
Mogen Hans took great pains to keep his long beard looking it's best. One time while he and the boys were clearing some land with fire the sparks flew and caught M.H's beard on fire. The beard didn't look so good then and it took him a long time before he was again proud of his beard.
In 1883 or 1884 the Mormons practiced polygamy to such an extent that state and county governments had laws that no Mormon could hold public offices. There were only four men in Franklin that were not Mormons. They elected and voted for each other. Some Mormons tried the trick of getting the bishop to cut them from church so they could vote or get an office and then come back into the church but this wasn't allowed.
This was the time when Mogen Hans was Constable of this county. He never did jail anyone for polygamy or interfere in it at all. Maren said that polygamy was all right if it went the right way but
Mogen Hans never took sides. As Constable M.H would travel from Preston to Malad on business pertaining to the office. Sometimes he would go in his buggy. Other times he would go on horseback taking law-breakers to the county seat in Malad.
On one occasion Mogen Hans was to get a bad character. His friends persuaded M.H. to take a gun with him. Somehow there was an accident with the gun and M.H. shot himself in the hand. After getting the wound dressed he discarded the gun and went after the criminal bare-handed and succeeded in getting his man. M.H. never did carry a gun either before the accident or after it.
M.H. was a road overseer in the county as the following notation shows: C.T. Koons, clerk of the board of County Commissioners of the Oneida County, Idaho, appointed M.H. Lund road overseer for road district No. 10 at Preston, Oneida County, Idaho. Malad City, Idaho on April 18, 1891. It was also tradition that Mogen Hans was an election judge from time to time.
In the early fall one year there was a smallpox epidemic in Preston. Charley went to a dance in Whitney where he danced several dances with Mary Moser (cousin of Pete Moser) who was starting to break out with the pox but no one knew it at the time. After a while Charley began to feel sick and got pox on the soles of his feet and couldn't wear shoes.
On the 30th of July 1901 the town constables Smith and Jensen, came to put up a red flag to start quarantine for pox. Charley protested saying that he didn't have pox but wanted to show them the sores he had on his feet. As he advanced toward them they kept backing away to keep twenty feet between them. They finally put up a red flag anyway. The Lunds weren't allowed to walk on the road and had to stay on their own property. No one could go past their place for half a mile. Someone would bring food for them and take their eggs.
In a day or two Charley got more pox all over his body but had it lightly with about a dozen pox on his face. He never picked them so he had no pox marks to prove he had them. One by one the rest of the kids got the pox marks to prove he had them and even M.H. got them but Maren never did. Charley would still do his work when he had the pox. He would sit on the binder and drive horses to bind the grain. But Joe got too weak to put grain into shocks. He would put up one shock and sit on the shady side of it to rest. After a week or so Joe got better and worked as usual. When Joe was sick he would sleep at nights in the barn with no clothes on to keep cool. One night he went to the well to get a drink and was half way there before he remembered he didn't have any clothes on. He was so thirsty he went on anyway and got his drink.
Tilda would clap her hands and tease Charley because he had pox and she didn't. Then he would run after her and hug her while she tried to get away. Soon Tilda go the pox and she got them worst of all in the family. She got so weak that she couldn't dress herself. The other children would help her put on her shoes and dress her.
Mogen Hans also got the pox. He went to live in the granary where it was dark and cool, where the flies didn't bother him. They would bring his food to him and he stayed there until he got better.
After a time one of Charley's friends, Joe Jensen, got pox and his dad put him in the back of the buggy and took him to his sister, Sarah Alder. Sarah took care of Joe Jensen. Doc Cutler said that Joe had the pox worse than anyone else. Doc wouldn't get near Joe but looked through the window and gave prescription. He got so sick he had to be lifted around. Charley would bring Joe some of his mother's home made beer. One time Charley brought two bottles full of beer and gave them to Murtle Alder saying that it was medicine and Joe could only have a spoonful every 15 minutes. So Murtle told this to her mother and Joe didn't get any of this so called medicine than was prescribed. The joke was to tease
Murtle but when Charley came to visit with more beer Joe asked what kind of medicine it was that tasted like beer. Everyone laughed at the joke on Joe because he thought it was medicine.
One year the winter was very severe. There wasn't much feed for the stock and so most of the settlers decided to take the chance and take some of their livestock west of Preston to Bear River and let them try to find enough feed to finish the winter. Maren had seven young heifers and she refused to send them to the river bottom like the others. She took the chance and left them home feeding them a starvation diet of bran and straw. When spring came she still had all her heifers but those that were turned loose on the river bottoms died.
Mogen Hans and Charley went to Ogden to see a doctor in the later years of M.H.'s life. The doctor said it would cost $300 to remove cataracts from M.H.'s eyes. M.H. didn't want operation when he found that his hands would be tied behind his back so he couldn't scratch his eyes after the operation. M.H. and Charley decided to wait until M.H. went blind before getting the operation but he never did get it. M.H. also had chronic eczema and was very sick until he died.
Mogen Hans learned to speak English during his life in America but Maren never did. Her friends teased her so much when she first tried to learn it. She became discouraged and decided that Danish was good enough for her. Therefore, her children grew up having to learn both English and Danish, which they could speak equally well even though none of them had an accent.
Mogen Hans Lund passed away at the old home on the land he had homesteaded, on the 31st of May 1914. He was buried in the Lund family plot in the Preston City Cemetery on the third of June. Mr.
Skidmore was the mortician at his funeral. M.H. was driven to his grave in a white horse drawn hearse.
When they were going up the hill by Soren Peterson's house the pin came out of the double trees and the
hearse rolled back down the hill until the two riders blocked the wheels. 9
Mother: Ane Marie Lund
Spouse: Maren Kirstine Nielsen, md 15 Nov 1867, Denmark
Sources: Headstone
Mogen Hans was born on January 21, 1840 until he was about six years old, he lived with his mother, Ane Marie Lund, and Hans Larsen. Mogen Hans recalled in later years that he thought their home was near a forest or park with many trees. He remembered his parents as quite poor as at times he would gather dry twigs and branches that blew from the tress so they could use them for fuel.1
About the age of six Mogen Hans was adopted by Frederick Ferdinand Thode and Karen Jensen. "Uncle Toe Door" as Mogen Hans fondly called his foster father, was a well-to-do man who lived on the "Char" Farm in Hjorring County on northern Jutland. Toe Door quietly concealed the facts of Mogen Hans origin. Lastly, Toe Door, after being asked many times, told Mogen Hans that his parents had probably died in an epidemic and that he should not ask about them or try to find them. Thode also raised another boy named Carl.
At the age of seventeen Mogen Hans joined the army or Royal Guard. Mogen Hans told stories of guarding the King's palace and one gift that he cherished was a pair of mittens which he wore and kept for a long time but were later destroyed. Mogen Hans did have some requisites for a member of the Royal
Guard. Mogen Hans was well over six feet tall, very well educated and came from an obviously well to do family.
Mogen Hans was in the Danish war against the Germans, (parts of Germany were Prussian), Austria and Prussia who fought for the freedom of Schleswig and Holstein and finally (lost) obtained it.
Mogen Hans had his choice of many young ladies as he had a pleasing personality and was tall and handsome. He met and courted an equally popular young lady, Maren Kirstine Nielsen. On one occasion this young lady's admirers plotted to beat up the new rival one night when he came to call. Maren was a little late getting her farm chores done this night and while doing them she overheard the plotting. Thus, as she was carrying the pan of leftover clabber milk that the geese had not eaten, she walked up the path toward the house in the dark. When she came to the place where the tormentors lay in wait, she simply gave one big heave and the contents of the clabber milk pan sprayed all over the waiting intruders and thus helped to discourage any more such mischievous acts of her former suitors. Maren got many a chuckle out of this incident.
At the age of twenty-seven, Mogen Hans married Maren Kirstine Nielsen on the 14th of November 1867 at Hormsted Sogne, Hjorring Amt, Denmark.
Maren had one sister, Johanne Christence Nielsen. Both girls had half interest in the farm of their parents. Mogen Hans bought Christence's part of the farm from her for $1,000 dollars given him by
Thode. Christence was undecided at first and thought she could get both the $1,000 and the farm. When she was undecided Mogen Hans nearly bought another farm which Christence and her husband, possibly
Erik Erikson, bought later. Christence had been trained to be an expert seamstress and her husband an expert carpenter and cabinetmaker. They should have been able to easily support themselves but lived far beyond their means and finally ended up in the poor house with her mother. Christence died shortly after being moved to the poor house. Her husband had previously hung himself. Karen Jensen, Christence's mother, lived on with Christence's children.
But the $1,000 wasn't all the money Mogen Hans and Maren paid for the farm. Mogen Hans says that Maren would sell everything she could get her hands on; calves, lambs, duck, geese, pigs, etc. until the debt was paid. He said he got tired of eating fish, fish, fish and longed for some of the other choice food. But Maren was glad that she had paid the debt while they were able to get a good price for their produce.2
The farm was a very fine one and graced with an abundance of farm animals and barnyard fowl. During harvest, the grain was cut by hand and hired men tied the grain into bundles with a handful of grain with the heads twisted together to make a longer length to fasten the bundle together. Then the grain was hauled from the fields, stored in the barn and threshed during the winter.
Maren lived through two famines in Denmark. It was the people that were wasteful that starved. Many would go around begging for food. Once Mogen Hans found five dead people on his backstep.3
There was a son born to Mogen Hans and Maren in 1868 which died six days after birth. A second child, a girl that might have been named Annie Marie, was born in 1869 that lived for only five days. The third child was born in the 7th of May 1870. Her name was Caroline Matilda Lund. The fourth was a boy by the name of Fredrick Ferdinandt Lund born on February 17, 1872. Karen Jensina Lund was born on the 3rd of June 1874.
Christence had a son, James Larsen, who was nicknamed Perki. Perki lived in Denmark with his wife and four children. Then one day he got a young girl in dutch (pregnant). If Perki hadn't left
Denmark he would have been put in jail. While in Denmark he had been converted to the LDS faith and thus he came to the Rocky Mountains. He brought with him this 16 year old girl named Trina. They settled in Mink Creek later in their lives. They got married in America and had several children.
Perki went back to Denmark after three or four years in America. In Denmark he stayed a whole winter with Mogen Hans and Maren. Perki told them exaggerated stories of the Mormon settlements in the western United States. He told of a beautiful country where everything was perfect. There were no crippled or sick and people lived together in harmony. He told them that their daughter, Matilda, would be healed to hear and speak as she had become deaf when she was four from scarlet fever. He also said that Fredrick would be healed and not be pigeon-toed.
Finally Mogen Hans decided to immigrate. They hoped for their young daughter to be healed. They sold their farm and livestock for a good price since they had been free of debt for some time. A man offered one hundred dollars for the gentle old horse but they decided not to sell it for fear others would be unkind to it. Reluctantly they laid her to rest on the old farm before leaving the gentle rolling hills of Denmark on the 24th of July 1875.
The party, consisting of Mogen Hans, his wife and three children, Perki, his oldest son and oldest daughter and Perki's first wife's sister and her child, came to America by steam ship. While at sea five year old Matilda showed her mother the key she had carried in her pocket, thinking they would go back home after the trip. They were on the ship for fourteen days.
While the group was waiting for a stage, probably in New York, Perki teased his first wife's sister and Maren that a certain stage was the one to go on. Maren knew that it was the wrong one but the sister believed Perki. Maren tried to stop her from going but the sister got on the wrong stage anyway. When the coach driver found her he put her off at the first stop which was a cold deserted shack. When Perki found that his wife's sister and child were gone he blamed it on Maren for letting the girl go. Perki followed her to the shack where he found her and the child half frozen. After this they continued on their way to Utah.
They arrived in Richmond on the 19th of August 1875, just 26 days after leaving their native country. The first thing that Mogen Hans and Maren saw when they got off the train at Richmond was two crippled people. This greatly disheartened them to find that what Perki had told them was not true.
Because of this neither Mogen Hans nor Maren ever joined the LDS church.
Mogen Hans bought twenty acres of land in Richmond. On the property was a blacksmith shop which they soon remodeled into a house. They raised grain and rye for their horses. Here on the 22nd of April 1876 another child they named, Charley Edward Lund was born to Mogen Hans and Maren.
Two years after arriving in Richmond they moved to Worm Creek. They sold the land in Richmond but tore the house down board by board and hauled it to Worm Creek with them. East of Worm Creek they homesteaded 80 acres of flat level ground and another 80 acres of hills and valleys with water springs on it. Maren wanted to homestead more land but they decided that the farm was already many times the size of the farm they owned in Denmark.
They used the boards from Richmond to build another house. They built a two room house with two windows and one door. The roof was not covered with dirt as many of the other settler's homes but was covered with wooden shingles. The boards were uneven in width (not like the planed boards of today), with adobe bricks and rocks forming a masonry wall on the inside of the house. In this first home the kitchen floor had sand placed on it. Animals were butchered in the kitchen and the sand would keep the floor clean. When they were to entertain people the sand would be swept off the varnished wood floor. It was real clean and shiny.1
While this house was being built the family lived in their covered wagon rather than in a dugout as many of the other less fortunate settlers. Three more children were born to Mogen Hans and Maren in Worm Creek. They were Annie Marie Lund born the first of January 1878, Joseph Lund born the 22nd of
February 1879 and Dagmar Lund born the 23rd of April 1882.
One of the first crops planted on the farm was rye that was planted on a four acre strip of land. At harvest time Mogen Hans would cut the grain by hand with a sickle and Maren would rake it into bundles. The children would help by tying the bundles with strands of the grain as they did in the old country.
Mogen Hans and his boys would hitch up the team and wagon and travel a few miles away to cut the native grass by hand. They would haul it back home and store it for winter feed for the livestock. Later Mogen Hans was one of the first settlers to buy a mechanical mowing machine that was used to cut hay.
The native grass was very plentiful and deep. Sometimes a child bringing in the cows from pasture would get on the wrong path and get lost out in the deep grass. Many times the small children would wander out in the sagebrush and tall grasses and get lost. Sometimes the family would hunt for long hours to find the little lost ones. When they were found all concerned would be very happy.
Once there was a peddler coming through the country and after leaving Franklin he got lost and arrived at the Lund home after dark. M.H. and Maren insisted that he stay overnight. Before he left the next morning Mogen Hans bought five pounds of alfalfa seed from him which cost a dollar a pound. They planted this alfalfa in a part of the north eighty acres and it is thought to have been one of the first patches of alfalfa grown in this area.
At one time sugar cane was grown on this farm. M.H. and the boys would cut it by hand with the sickle. Then they'd load it on the wagon and haul it a few miles to the Sorghum Mill where it was made into molasses. Among other uses it was used on the table to sweeten food. (Charley E. Lund also remembers the large stalks being used by his dad to whoop him.)
Before sugar beets were grown in the area a small quantity of sugar was available at the country store but it was a very expensive commodity. People only bought it in very small quantities. Later, when sugar beets were grown there was more sugar. Sometimes an early winter would catch them. Then M. H. and the boys would take a horse drawn ditcher and scrape the snow off the top of the beets. They'd dig out the beets, haul them to the barn and store them for feed for the live-stock. They had to be careful to cut them up into small pieces so the cattle would not get a large piece of beet in it's throat and choke to death as often happened.
Another type of sweetening for the food was obtained from the honey bees. At a set time the honey would be robbed from the bee hives but not without many stings which made it a very unpleasant job. M.H. had some hives in his orchard.
The first fences on the old homestead were made by weaving willows together. Once one of the Mogen Hans' grandchildren who was 2 or 3 years old, saw what he thought a bullwhip across one of these willow fences. He tried to tell his grandpa that he wanted to get it to play with but grandpa couldn't understand what he wanted. So he decided to go get it himself. He walked around the fence over toward the bullwhip. When he almost got it, M.H. finally realized what the boy wanted. M.H. just barely got the boy away in time, for the bullwhip happened to be a large coiled up rattlesnake.2
Another kind of fence was made by setting three poles together to form a teepee. There was one of these teepees every so far and longer logs were laid across the top of the teepees to form a fence. Sometime later, M. H. sold four cows to get enough money to buy some expensive metal barbed wire which he used to fence in the north eighty acres of level farm land.
When Mogen Hans had fenced off all his property the neighbors to the south still thought it was okay to water their cattle on the Lund's spring. The wife, who brought the cows to water, was furious to see the barbed fence. She then cut the fence and hurried her cows to water. This went on for some time. M.H. happened to see her cut the barb-wire once so he went down to talk with her. M.H. couldn't speak much English at this time. He shouted at her to get out, in Danish. She couldn't understand so he began to motion with his hands for her to take her stock and leave. The English lady got scared that he might strike her, backed away and fell over some sagebrush. This made her even more scared so she quickly got to her feet and ran to tell her husband. 3
It was decided to meet at the schoolhouse and have the bishop settle the matter. So, since Charley was to go with, Maren borrowed a nice suit from a neighbor lady to be worn to the trial even though he was still barefoot. At the appointed time Mogen Hans and Charley went to the schoolhouse and waited and waited and waited until it finally began to get dark. No one came so they went back home and nothing was ever heard of the incident again.
When Tildy and Sena would walk to town for groceries, Maren would always warn them not to accept a ride with anyone because they were so many immigrants traveling through town to Montana.
In the winter Charley and Annie would go to school at Whitney which was a couple of miles to the south.
Since they didn't have any shoes, the children would wrap burlap sacks around their feet and legs and trudge through the deep snow, uphill and downhill, to get to the school. When they got there they would be wet through to the skin. After school they would do the same thing again. Sometimes they would get a ride part of the way. The girls had more of a chance for schooling than the boys who were kept out of school in the spring and autumn to help with the farm work.
Mogen Hans Lund was "popular even with members of that energetic and aggressive (LDS) church and deserves his popularity for he is as energetic as any of them and as sincerely devoted to the development and improvement of the region in which he has cast his lot." 4
M.H. and Maren were very generous with what they had and always warmly welcomed people. They would feed one bunch, then another would come and they'd feed them. This happened quite often. It was like Open House all the time. M.H. and Maren almost ran a free hotel. Travelers would stay here overnight, then go on to their destinations. Then they'd stop overnight again on their way home.5 Whenever anyone came to call it was a must that they sit down at the table and partake of the refreshments available and there seemed to be an unending quantity of food to be eaten. At night there was never enough beds. Beds were made on the floor, sometimes so thick there wasn't enough space to step between them. There were small beds on rollers that the children would sleep on that were rolled under the other beds with only their heads sticking out from under the larger beds.
One winter a man stopped at the Lund's for a night's lodging. His team had been traveling so hard they were sweating. M.H. knew that on a cold night with the horses sweating they might get a cold or worse. So a room was cleaned out and bedded with straw and the horses were kept in the house. This didn't seem so bad to M.H. and Maren because in the old country some of the barns were connected to the houses and kept almost as clean as the house.
The first stove in the family home was a black cast iron twenty four inch square wood burning stove with four lids. Mogen Hans and the boys would hitch the horses up to the wagon or sleigh, go to the canyons and get the winter's supply of fuel. The first drinking water the family used was carried from a spring about a quarter of a mile away to the south of the house. During the day most of this water was used for household purposes. At night the water ran into a pond and was used to irrigate a small vegetable garden. The garden consisted of carrots, turnips, beets and a few hills of potatoes. In the orchard were paths that Mogen Hans raked every day. He either done it or one of the kids done it. The yard was kept up as everyone helped.
One day a man stopped for a drink of water and had to wait for it to be brought from the spring. He promised that on his return trip he would stop and show them where to dig a well. This he did by using a divining rod made from a certain kind of willow which was forked known as a “water witcher.” The largest end was free with the forks held one in each hand. He held the stick parallel to the ground. When it sensed water it would turn to the ground and could not be held parallel to it. Another way to tell where to dig was where a certain kind of foliage grew the best.
The well was dug about six feet square and braced with boards and poles. The dirt was taken out in a bucket on a rope to the depth of 75 feet. With time the well filled up with dirt and tree roots until it was only about half as deep when it was quit being used. This well tapped the underground water from the spring they originally used and the spring completely dried up.
Once Mogen Hans owned a team of oxen but they didn't last very long. He wanted to go to the canyon for wood so he bought a team of oxen and hired a man to drive them. At this time they were only yoked together and driven by "gee" and "haw" and a whip. Later, others put rings in the oxen noses and drove them with lines fastened to the nose rings. All went well until the roads got going uphill and the oxen got thirsty. They got so thirsty that when they smelled water they took off towards it and there was nothing the driver could do. Off the road they went, through trees and brush pulling the wagon and they didn't stop until they'd gotten a drink.
While still in Denmark Maren had a dream where she saw several teams of matched oxen pulling a train of wagons. The oxen had wooden yokes on their necks instead of the harnesses which was the Danish custom. In Denmark there were rarely matched teams, sometimes they would consist of a cow and a horse, a bull and horse or two cows but rarely of two steers. Then the teams would wear a harness much the same as the harnesses worn by the work horses. Maren spoke of her dream to several people and one man told her that she would surely come to America. This dream came true in every detail a few years after they had moved to the Idaho Territory. One day a man came to the door to see if he might buy some eggs and so Maren traded him some eggs for a bottle of ink that she used to write letters home to Denmark. Maren went with the man a short distance to where the man had stopped to water his oxen.
There in reality was her dream, there were several teams of matched oxen, red bally, black bally, speckled Holsteins and others hooked together with wooden yokes on their necks and hooked to the train of several wagons. This man was hauling freight to Montana and probably had the oxen shod with shoes much like horses were.
Maren was an exceptional Bible student and knew the Bible so well that not one person was able to stop her on it and she proved it many times in Bible discussions with everyone by reciting chapter and verse to prove her point. Sometimes these Bible discussions lasted all night long even after the lights were put out. M.H. wasn't so well versed in the Bible as his wife and in many instances he had to ask Maren's help to get him untangled. Maren said that the Lord takes his own tithing by not allowing all the life that is put on this earth to live, in either the plant or animal kingdom. She believed that the true church hadn't been established and so she never joined any church.
A large barn was built on the Lund farm, the lower part of the barn was built into the hillside with space for about fifteen milk cows. The other part was a stable for several teams of horses. The north side of the upper story was level with the ground. There was a large sliding door big enough to drive a wagon loaded with hay into the barn. There it was unloaded onto either side of the wagon into the large hay loft which almost held the winter's supply for the stock. There was a hole from the hay loft down to where the cattle were kept used to throw hay down to the cattle. Sometimes the horses that pulled the hay wagon got anxious and would stomp and frolic until one would fall down the hole into the manger below. 7
Soon the enlarged family made it imperative that the house needed to be larger and so it was done by the addition of several rooms and an attic where some of the boys probably slept. Later the old home was remodeled making several good sized rooms upstairs with dormer windows. At the front of the house there was an upstairs door with a balcony which was over the front porch. At the back or south side of the house was long covered porch with a cooling compartment for food. Then the outside of the house was covered with dark red bricks.
Mogen Hans was a true Danish man and liked his beer. One time he went so far with his friend Soren Petersen that he got drunk. They both hesitated to go home to their wives. They decided they should take a peace offering so they each bought their wives the nicest rocking chairs they could find in town.
Soon after the invention of the phonograph the Lund family traveled to Logan, Utah. While there they went to see the first phonograph machine they had ever seen. A man was telling people about it and for the fee of only five cents one could hear this wonderful invention of sound. The machine had earphones and Maren wasn't about to have the thing put on her ears so she listened to the music in the earphones from a distance.
Mogen Hans took great pains to keep his long beard looking it's best. One time while he and the boys were clearing some land with fire the sparks flew and caught M.H's beard on fire. The beard didn't look so good then and it took him a long time before he was again proud of his beard.
In 1883 or 1884 the Mormons practiced polygamy to such an extent that state and county governments had laws that no Mormon could hold public offices. There were only four men in Franklin that were not Mormons. They elected and voted for each other. Some Mormons tried the trick of getting the bishop to cut them from church so they could vote or get an office and then come back into the church but this wasn't allowed.
This was the time when Mogen Hans was Constable of this county. He never did jail anyone for polygamy or interfere in it at all. Maren said that polygamy was all right if it went the right way but
Mogen Hans never took sides. As Constable M.H would travel from Preston to Malad on business pertaining to the office. Sometimes he would go in his buggy. Other times he would go on horseback taking law-breakers to the county seat in Malad.
On one occasion Mogen Hans was to get a bad character. His friends persuaded M.H. to take a gun with him. Somehow there was an accident with the gun and M.H. shot himself in the hand. After getting the wound dressed he discarded the gun and went after the criminal bare-handed and succeeded in getting his man. M.H. never did carry a gun either before the accident or after it.
M.H. was a road overseer in the county as the following notation shows: C.T. Koons, clerk of the board of County Commissioners of the Oneida County, Idaho, appointed M.H. Lund road overseer for road district No. 10 at Preston, Oneida County, Idaho. Malad City, Idaho on April 18, 1891. It was also tradition that Mogen Hans was an election judge from time to time.
In the early fall one year there was a smallpox epidemic in Preston. Charley went to a dance in Whitney where he danced several dances with Mary Moser (cousin of Pete Moser) who was starting to break out with the pox but no one knew it at the time. After a while Charley began to feel sick and got pox on the soles of his feet and couldn't wear shoes.
On the 30th of July 1901 the town constables Smith and Jensen, came to put up a red flag to start quarantine for pox. Charley protested saying that he didn't have pox but wanted to show them the sores he had on his feet. As he advanced toward them they kept backing away to keep twenty feet between them. They finally put up a red flag anyway. The Lunds weren't allowed to walk on the road and had to stay on their own property. No one could go past their place for half a mile. Someone would bring food for them and take their eggs.
In a day or two Charley got more pox all over his body but had it lightly with about a dozen pox on his face. He never picked them so he had no pox marks to prove he had them. One by one the rest of the kids got the pox marks to prove he had them and even M.H. got them but Maren never did. Charley would still do his work when he had the pox. He would sit on the binder and drive horses to bind the grain. But Joe got too weak to put grain into shocks. He would put up one shock and sit on the shady side of it to rest. After a week or so Joe got better and worked as usual. When Joe was sick he would sleep at nights in the barn with no clothes on to keep cool. One night he went to the well to get a drink and was half way there before he remembered he didn't have any clothes on. He was so thirsty he went on anyway and got his drink.
Tilda would clap her hands and tease Charley because he had pox and she didn't. Then he would run after her and hug her while she tried to get away. Soon Tilda go the pox and she got them worst of all in the family. She got so weak that she couldn't dress herself. The other children would help her put on her shoes and dress her.
Mogen Hans also got the pox. He went to live in the granary where it was dark and cool, where the flies didn't bother him. They would bring his food to him and he stayed there until he got better.
After a time one of Charley's friends, Joe Jensen, got pox and his dad put him in the back of the buggy and took him to his sister, Sarah Alder. Sarah took care of Joe Jensen. Doc Cutler said that Joe had the pox worse than anyone else. Doc wouldn't get near Joe but looked through the window and gave prescription. He got so sick he had to be lifted around. Charley would bring Joe some of his mother's home made beer. One time Charley brought two bottles full of beer and gave them to Murtle Alder saying that it was medicine and Joe could only have a spoonful every 15 minutes. So Murtle told this to her mother and Joe didn't get any of this so called medicine than was prescribed. The joke was to tease
Murtle but when Charley came to visit with more beer Joe asked what kind of medicine it was that tasted like beer. Everyone laughed at the joke on Joe because he thought it was medicine.
One year the winter was very severe. There wasn't much feed for the stock and so most of the settlers decided to take the chance and take some of their livestock west of Preston to Bear River and let them try to find enough feed to finish the winter. Maren had seven young heifers and she refused to send them to the river bottom like the others. She took the chance and left them home feeding them a starvation diet of bran and straw. When spring came she still had all her heifers but those that were turned loose on the river bottoms died.
Mogen Hans and Charley went to Ogden to see a doctor in the later years of M.H.'s life. The doctor said it would cost $300 to remove cataracts from M.H.'s eyes. M.H. didn't want operation when he found that his hands would be tied behind his back so he couldn't scratch his eyes after the operation. M.H. and Charley decided to wait until M.H. went blind before getting the operation but he never did get it. M.H. also had chronic eczema and was very sick until he died.
Mogen Hans learned to speak English during his life in America but Maren never did. Her friends teased her so much when she first tried to learn it. She became discouraged and decided that Danish was good enough for her. Therefore, her children grew up having to learn both English and Danish, which they could speak equally well even though none of them had an accent.
Mogen Hans Lund passed away at the old home on the land he had homesteaded, on the 31st of May 1914. He was buried in the Lund family plot in the Preston City Cemetery on the third of June. Mr.
Skidmore was the mortician at his funeral. M.H. was driven to his grave in a white horse drawn hearse.
When they were going up the hill by Soren Peterson's house the pin came out of the double trees and the
hearse rolled back down the hill until the two riders blocked the wheels. 9
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