Fern Vilate Brown Hyer: A Narrative Genealogy - Part 5

With David and Cynthia Brown and their family in Grass Valley, to complete our understanding of my mother's ancestry, we need to add some additional places and Saints, as Nauvoo was not the only place where important events for our story were occurring.

Peter Rasmussen, along with his parents Rasmus and Katrina Petersen Rasmussen, were baptized in Denmark on March 19, 1852, and in December of that year left Denmark for America, eventually arriving in the Salt Lake Valley in September 1853. Peter was sent to Spring City, Utah, arriving in October in the midst of what was known as the “Walker War” with some Ute Indians. Peter was about 18 years old at the time. He settled in Spring City with other Scandinavian saints and married Annie Margaret Sorensen in 1855.[1]

Meanwhile, back in Denmark the Lord’s missionary work continued. A young Danish girl, named Ane Helena Andersen, heard the Mormon missionaries and became interested in their message. She began to attend meetings as often as it was possible to do so, much to the displeasure of her stepfather, who was strongly opposed to this new religion. She gained a testimony of this gospel and desired to be baptized. While she obtained her mother’s consent, her stepfather strongly objected and told her that if she joined this church she was “never to darken their door again.” Nevertheless, upon reaching the age of 18 years she sought baptism. On November 21, 1860, without the consent or knowledge of her mother or stepfather, she was baptized at night due to the persecutions. She and others later spoke of seeing dark objects all around her as she went into the water, which she and others understood to be evil spirits trying to keep them from baptism. She joined a group of Saints going to America and in April 1861. Leaving her family and all that was near and dear to her in Denmark, Ane set sail for America. She would never see her family again or receive any correspondence from any of them. Her mother would be forbidden to write to her. 

The group arrived in the United States, where incidentally the Civil War had just started, in New York City on May 22, 1861. They then traveled by rail to St. Joseph, Missouri, and by steamship to Florence, Nebraska. She crossed the plains in the John Murdock Company, an ox team wagon company, arriving in the Salt Lake Valley on September 12, 1861. She continued on to Sanpete County where she was welcomed by the group of Scandinavian Saints who had previously settled there and taken in by the Peter Rasmussen family in Spring City.

It would seem a dangerous and perilous act for a young single girl, alone and without any resources and protection, to embark on a trip across the ocean to a foreign land where she didn’t even speak the language in order to join a group of strangers in the desert of the American West. There would, of course, be the hazards of a voyage across the Atlantic, the risks of sickness and accident, and the perils of the overland journey across the plains. There would also be the dangers from the unscrupulous preying on the naïve and vulnerable immigrants, and surely Ane would have been an easy mark. However, and without diminishing the perils of the journey, it was in fact a relatively safe and secure trip for Ane. At that time traveling as part of a Mormon immigrant company was likely the most secure and safest way for anyone to travel to the America and the American West.

Ane was not alone on the ship, but was part of group of fellow Danish saints, Christians committed to looking out for each other, and lead by caring and experienced missionary leaders. Mormon ship companies were famous for their orderliness and mutual support. Upon arrival in New York they were met by church agents, experienced people they could trust. Unlike other agents, these church agents were not interested in their money or taking advantage of them for their own profit, but were fellow Saints on a mission to serve their God by guiding them safely to Zion. They would assist them on the trains and steamboats to Florence, Nebraska, where the wagon trek across the plains began. 

The church had used different ways over the years to bring Saints to the Salt Lake Valley, learning from experience and always looking for the best strategy for the times. At the time of Ane’s crossing, the church was using “down and back” trips where church wagon trains would leave early in the Spring, loaded with goods and livestock to sell in the East and caching supplies along the way for the return trip. Arriving in Florence in mid summer, they would sell the goods and livestock and purchase goods and equipment unavailable in Salt Lake and then take those supplies and the immigrants back up to the Salt Lake Valley, arriving in the early Fall.[2]

Being young and healthy, Ane would likely have walked the entire distance to Utah, as the wagons would have been loaded with immigrants less able to walk that distance and needed supplies for Utah. They would again be lead by fellow saints and disciples whom they could trust. Not only were the company leaders and teamsters with them trustworthy and faithful Saints, they also were among the most experienced and trail savvy frontiersmen in the West. For example, John Murdock, the captain of the Ane’s company, while only 34 years old at the time, had been part of the Mormon Battalion march across the West to California and then traveled back through Northern California and Idaho to Salt Lake Valley in 1847, was among the rescuers sent to aid the Martin and Willey handcart companies in the winter of 1856, and captained “down and back” companies across the plains in 1861, 1862, 1863, 1864 and 1868.[3] Once in the valley, Ane was not left on her own to find her way in this new and strange environment, but welcomed by fellow Scandinavians and taken into their homes, where she would learn the new skills needed to make her way in the desert West, including English, and learn to be a Mormon and an American. This is how the Mormons did immigration. It is how the Lord gathered his Saints to Zion in the 19^th century.

Ane worked in the Rasmussen house and eventually became Peter’s plural wife. They were married in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. She had eight children, including Anna Helena Rasmussen, born on June 17, 1867, in Spring City, Utah.[4]  In 1874 Peter Rasmussen was called to settle in Grass Valley. That is how it came to be that Peter Rasmussen and his family, including his daughter Anna Helena Rasmussen, were living in Grass Valley in 1883 when David and Cynthia Brown and their family arrived and needed someone to help around the house.

At the time the Brown family moved to Grass Valley Cynthia was having a difficult pregnancy. They hired a young 18-year-old Danish girl, named Ana Helena Rasmussen, to help with the household chores and the children. She was known as “Lena,” and the daughter of Peter and Ane Rasmussen. In June 1883 a baby boy was born, but Cynthia died a few days later. The baby was taken in and cared for by Cynthia’s older sister, but with five small children to care for and a farm to run Lena stayed on to help with the children and the house. The arrangement seemed to have worked out well. In February 1885 David and Lena were married in the Logan Temple. George was born on September 4, 1886, the first child of David and Lena.

The family moved to Sanford in the San Luis Valley of Colorado, where the Peter Rasmussen family, Lena’s family, had moved. Not finding much success and not liking the colder winters, the family worked their way down the Rio Grande into New Mexico, stopping in Deming where they ran livery stable and sort of a guest house for travelers. It became something of a “half way” house for those living in the Mormon colonies in Mexico. Church leaders would often stay there on their visits to and from those colonies. In 1894 the family moved south to Mexico, first in Colonia Diaz, then Colonia Juarez and finally in Colonia Chuichupa, a small, and the most remote, Mormon settlement high in the Sierras Madre Mountains of northern Mexico.[5] That would be their home. “Chupie,” as it was called, was where George would grow up as a ranch boy in this small, close-knit, Mormon community in the mountains. 

That is also how it came to be that George was in the right place at the right time to meet, court and marry Ruby and have a daughter named Fern Vilate.

---

[1] Mary Elizabeth Rasmussen Christensen, “A Short History of Peter Rasmussen,”(Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H); “Bishop Peter Rasmussen St. – History compiled for a YMYW Trek for the Manassas, Colorado Stake” (Undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Peder Rasmussen KV5W-Z6H);

[2] Arrington, 206-207. See Allen and Leonard, 281-286, for a general overview of the immigration system.

[3] Mormon Pioneer Overland Travel 1947-1868, “John Riggs Murdock,” https://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/pioneers/43282/john-riggs-murdock.

[4] A.H. Rasmussen, “All born in Svenborg Amt.” 1916 (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4); Clara Johnson, “A Sketch of the Life of My Grandmother Ane Helena Andersen Rasmussen,” (undated) (available at familysearch.com in the documents section for Ane Helena Andersen KWJ8-5S4)

[5] Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “David Brigham Brown,” Our Pioneer Heritage, Vol 4, P 227 (available at Family Search. Org in stories page of David Brigham Brown (KWCH-B3B); Ruby Spilsbury Brown, “I Am Just So Wearied – the Story of Anna Helena Rasmussen Brown,” (unpublished manuscript 1936), 2.