 Reenactment: Pioneers crossing the Platte River, from PBS documentary Sweetwater Rescue. CC BY-SA 3.0. Finding out I have pioneer ancestry As mentioned in the “About” section of this website, I spent many decades unaware that I have pioneer ancestry. Only recently, as I worked on finishing this map during 2014, did I learn that I have dozens of Mormon pioneer ancestors. In 1973 I had become familiar with the Route of the Mormon Pioneers from Nauvoo to Great Salt Lake wall map, when my father Merrill, an artist, created a similar map using pencil and water color, basically copying the original. His artwork was only partially finished, but still caused me to look at the 1899 map closely for the first time when I was comparing his artwork to the original. Dad and I were both interested in the map for artistic and historical reasons, although I still had no idea that we were pioneer descendants, and I don’t think Dad knew either. The only Nielsen history that he had ever told me was that his grandfather, my Great-Grandfather Rasmus Nielsen, was from Denmark and that he had died in 1892 in Vernal, Utah of a bee sting at the age of 43 when my Grandpa Frank was twelve years old. That was it, the whole story. I was never told that his mother’s grandparents and families were all pioneers, and I was never told that my mom’s father was George Josiah Marsh, Jr, the son of a pioneer. Now I know that I had 29 or more Mormon pioneer ancestors! I am pleased, amazed, and thrilled, yet I wonder why I never knew this before 2014.  Samuel Gadd, born in 1815 and from Cambridgeshire, England. Pioneer ancestors I learned that my Great-Great Grandfather Samuel Gadd and family traveled and suffered with the ill-fated Willie Handcart Company in 1856. He died at age 42 along the Platt River, just west of what is now Casper, Wyoming on October 9th, 1856. His death came just before the company “nooned,” in warm weather, more than a week before the company was stranded by the infamous blizzard. He apparently died of pneumonia and was never well since the journey had begun. Two of Samuel Gadd’s seven children died in the severe blizzard. I discovered that my Great-Great Grandfather George Josiah Marsh left Nauvoo in 1846, and traveled across the plains in 1852 at 22 years of age. George fondly remembered that the Prophet Joseph Smith spent the night in the Marsh home when George was 13 years old. George also worked closely with Brigham Young, and was chosen as one of seven who laid the cornerstone of the Salt Lake Temple. He was also president of the 59th Quorum of the Seventy.  Magdalene Rasmussen Nielsen, born April 17th 1822, in Tirsted, Maribo Ampt, Lolland, Denmark. The Nielsen pioneers As I finally awoke to what I believe to be the call of my ancestors in 2014, I found a lot of information about my Nielsen lineage as well. The Nielsen pioneers are also amongst those honored by the 1899 Route of the Mormon Pioneers wall map. The story of my Great-Great Grandfather Peder Christian Nielsen is that he and his family became members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Denmark, in 1855, and the family immigrated to Salt Lake City, Utah in 1866. After having been baptized into the LDS Church, the Nielsens were persecuted in Denmark. They waited eleven years to receive funds to immigrate to Salt Lake City, but when the Church's Perpetual Emigration Fund bought them their fare, only five out of seven in the family could go. My Great Grandfather Rasmus Nielsen, age 14, was left behind but came to Utah three years later on the newly completed train line. Rasmus’ brother Niels, a sailor at age 22, was also left behind and died at sea four years later. Sadly, my two-times-great grandparents never saw their first born son Niels again. To get to Zion, five members of the Nielsen family sailed across the Atlantic Ocean by ship, then up the Hudson River and across the Erie Canal to Buffalo, New York, and then on another boat across Lake Erie to what is now Cleveland, Ohio. Then they took a train to St. Joseph, Missouri, took a riverboat to Wyoming, Nebraska, and finally walked 1,100 miles on the Mormon Trail to Salt Lake City with an oxen wagon train. A disaster struck their company the day they started, and 54 out of 300 pioneers in their company died of cholera. That company of pioneers infamously became known as "The Cholera Train". The Nielsens were the only family in the company that did not lose someone to the illness. My Great-Great Grandmother Magdalena Nielsen was smitten by cholera too, although she recovered and then took in and mothered two families of children, who were orphaned by the disease, for the rest of the journey. She asserted that the reason she recovered, and the rest of the family was not smitten, was that she had brought a bottle of brandy from Denmark, which was sipped nightly by all in the family as medicine. When they arrived in Salt Lake City, Utah on October 19th, 1866, it was 21 weeks after they had left Denmark, and although they had community and Church assistance, they had to start from scratch and build a new life and home in a new world. I understand that my Great-Great Grandmother made friends with other Danes, but never really learned English very well by the time she passed away in 1903.  My new version of the Route of the Mormon Pioneers from Nauvoo to Great Salt Lake wall map. The Route of the Mormon Pioneers wall map honors all pioneers
The lovely 1899 wall map truly honors my great-great grandparents and their families, as well as all other families of Mormon pioneers between 1846 and 1869, whatever their difficult story. For more about this remarkable wall map and my efforts to restore and enhance it digitally, and make it available to all, see the link at the top of this page. - Frank M. Nielsen, great-great grandson of Mormon pioneers
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