Life Story of Christian H. Christensen and Bena Marie Frogner Christensen, Part 1

Here's another life story that I had with my family history stuff. It's really long, so I'll be breaking it up into several posts. Here's the first part.

Life Story of Christian H. and Bena Marie Frogner Christensen

(Information from their children)

Christian Christensen was born November 17, 1869, in Hyrum, Cache County, Utah, the oldest son of Niles Christian Christensen of Stabrand, Randers, Denmark, and Caroline or “Karen” Marie Hanson Sorensen of Bromme, Soro, Denmark. His parents met after they had both come to America and had settled in Hyrum. Because of another man by the same name, Christian added the initial H. to his name and was known as Christian H. or C. H. Christensen thereafter.

Niels would walk several miles out of Hyrum to the Church farm to work and take a lunch. At noon, he would wash his face and hands, spread out his lunch, ask the blessing, and then eat.

As Christian grew up, he had many chores and much work to do. He received all of his schooling in Hyrum, which consisted of about seven years of training. He received much more education from living and working in his everyday life. While he grew up, he loved to play ball and played many games at the park or the “Hyrum Square,” as it was called. When he was about 13, he had to quit school and go to work to help the family. He helped his father milk cows, and then they would sell the milk and get the supplies they needed from the stores.

When he got older, he loved to dance and went to many dances at the old dance hall. The dances were community events. He also had an opportunity to earn more money when he acquired a team and wagon and went with Oluf Frogner and some other young men as far as Laramie, Wyoming, grading track and cutting ties for the railroad. During the winter out there, he would spend the time working on a cattle ranch. They had themselves a fine blizzard one time for three days, and it was cold, so cold that the cowboys sat in a log house for three days and didn't get out. They kept warm, and at the end of the three days, they went out to these other log barns where they had the saddle horses, then went to hunt the cattle they were supposed to be feeding and taking care of. The cattle had moved along with the storm or blizzard and had gone through this fence and that fence and another fence until they came to the river bluff, and the cattle had gone over that ledge—hundreds of them, from all over that cattle country, so they had a pileup of dead cattle down below. The loss was pretty severe. During some winters, he and Oluf would go up Blacksmith Fork Canyon and cut trees. A couple of summers, they had the opportunity to go to the Bruneau River area in Idaho and work. They really liked this because there was such good fishing. There were so many trout that they could just net them. Sometimes sturgeon would come up the river, and they would catch them on a hook and a quarter-inch line. They would be so large that they would completely fill up a wagon.

Bena (Beana) Marie Frogner was born April 2, 1872, in Hyrum, Utah, the daughter of Hans Nielson Frogner from Aker, Norway, and Britta Mattesson from Spettsingen, Fryksorde, Varmland, Sweden. Bena’s mother’s name was recorded as Bertha Mattson on the sheet from the Endowment House.

Bena and her brother James had typhoid when she was five years old, and James was left deaf. Bena didn’t go to school much and had a hearing problem.

Bena’s father was raised on a farm. He married and had one boy, Charles, and worked in a nail factory in Oslo, Norway, counting nails. When he heard the gospel, he came to Hyrum, Utah, with the boy. He homesteaded 160 acres and was counseled to divide it with three other men, he keeping 40 acres on Blacksmith’s Fork River. This he cleared in the winter with an ax and worked in Blacksmith’s Fork Canyon in the summers at the sawmill twenty miles up the canyon. Sometimes he would cut some logs in winter and slide them down the mountain on the snow to be sawed into lumber at the mill later. He married grandma (Britta), of course, and took a grub box to the canyon for a week and came home on weekends. He claimed no knowledge about horses, as he had little experience. He wouldn’t let anybody do for him what he could do for himself. He built a warm cabin in the canyon where he worked and boarded up the doors when he wasn’t there, so bears couldn’t get in.

Bena and her brothers and sisters tended the corn, potatoes, cows, pigs, and chickens under Britta’s guidance. As a girl, Bena and a lot of girls from Hyrum went up in the canyon and worked for a dairy and cheese man. She milked 20 or 30 cows, morning and night, and then made cheese. One of the girls quit after a bull threw her over a fence.

Christian was the oldest in a family of 11 children, so he helped the family as much as possible and didn’t marry until he was about 26 years old. He had fallen in love with tall and slender Bena Marie, whom he had known all his life. While he was out in Wyoming, doing railroad and cowboy work, the tobacco habit and liquor problem entered the picture, so he was not ready for a recommend. They were married April 30, 1895, in Hyrum. On their marriage certificate, the witnesses were Emma, Christian’s sister, and Oluf Frogner, Bena’s brother, who had married the previous year.

After their marriage, Christian and Bena continued to live in Hyrum, close to their parents, until after their first son, Henry Leroy, was born April 16, 1896.

During this time, Christian was constable for the City of Logan. His brother Willard told Irven one time that Christian had the longest reach and hardest punch of any man in Logan. That qualified him for the job of constable. He was six feet tall and weighed 180 pounds. He was strong, and he could work. Evidently, in those days, a dance or party wasn’t a dance or party unless you had a brawl, and that was typical all over the country.

Christian and Bena had been talking about moving to Idaho, but Bena thought that Idaho seemed so far away, and they hadn’t gone to the Temple yet, so they started to get ready to go. There was another couple from Hyrum that was going with them. The morning they had chosen to go, there was a terrible blizzard, but they got the sleigh ready and bundled up Henry, who was about 11 months old, and then all went to the Logan Temple. They received their endowments and were sealed and had Henry sealed to them. It was a beautiful day, even though the weather was terrible. This day, February 12, 1897, was a special time in their lives.

When spring came, they were nearly ready for the trip to Idaho. They had to take all their belongings, because they knew there wouldn’t be a return trip very soon. They were still limited for space, so they took their team and wagon, a cow, chickens, bed and bedding, dresser, cupboard, stove, a bin for flour, hay and grain for the animals, a few potatoes, water, and what other food and clothing there was room for. They started on their journey, and it took them several weeks or a month to go from Hyrum, Utah, to Goshen, Idaho. It seemed like a long way, and it was very difficult to travel with a baby. One of the old bay team of mares had a stiff front leg. She would swing her stiff leg in the wheel track in the sand in order to get along. They had quite a time getting through that sand up in Fort Hall.

Their trip to Idaho was a result of many other relatives—Hansen, Neilson, and Anderson—and a lot of the good Scandinavian people from Hyrum had gone up there a year or two before, rather than being a Church assignment to move.

They settled on a sandy 60-acre farm covered with sage brush, one mile west of Goshen. They built a small log house on the farm and cleared as much sage brush as possible and planted crops. They raised hay, grain, pigs, chickens, and also some horses. Bena made butter and sold eggs for what they needed at the store. There was a school, store, and a church at Goshen, and they were very grateful to be close to a church. Christian built ditches and fences to build up his farm.

While they lived on this farm, they were blessed with four more children. Irven was born June 21, 1899, Carrie Beatrice was born November 18, 1900, J Mat October 2, 1902, and Lyma Kathleen May 15, 1904. Once they were short milk for one of the children, so since they had a mare that had a colt, Ma milked the mare and put the milk in a bottle for the baby. Both baby and colt did well.   

(Click here to continue to Part 2.)