Let me quote from my mother [ Julia Hansen Hall ] – “My father, Nelson Hansen, having left the Mormon Church, went to California, taking my bother Andrew Jackson with him, which nearly broke my mother’s heart. She heard from him again until he was a grown man, father having put him with a good family and gave himself up to fighting the Indians and was never heard of after.

“When A. J. was a young man, he became anxious to find out what had become of mother, so he wrote to some people in Iowa, our former home to find out if they knew where she was. It so happened that they did. They at once wrote to mother enclosing A. J.’s letter. I will never forget how overjoyed she was to hear from her long lost boy. It was just like a message from the dead. He still remained in California, however, where he finished his college education and received his degree as a minister in the Methodist Church.”

HISTORIAN’S NOTE: Perhaps it would be interesting to the descendants of Nils Hansen to read the little incident from the writings of our Uncle, the Rev. Andrew Jackson Hansen written in 1936 and his version of the separation and what he has to say of his mother, Marilla, and a little description of his father.

“Of my father, it should be said that he was a sturdy, hard-working and progressive farmer, who on two quarter sections of fine prairie land and woods, hastened away from the ‘cradle’ and ‘flail’ to the most improved farming machinery to which his attention was called from time to time. As to education etectra he had never attended school, could neither read nor write, but evermore insisted that his children should have an education, whatever might be the cost. While honest in human relationships, he was utterly irreligious, had little or no respect for preachers or churches.

“My mother, of Canadian descent, was tall and nervous, born of a sturdy, long lived family, the Terry’s, was ardently devoted to the faith of the Latter-day Saints. Her father, mother and four brothers had migrated to Utah from Carthage, Missouri, under the guidance of Brigham Young, after the death of Joseph Smith.

“These brothers of hers were assigned duty as missionaries to the Gentiles, as all the rest of the United States people were called, and were frequently visitors in our Iowa home. That fact, taken with many letters from her parents and friends in Utah, led mother to an ever-deepening dissatisfaction with her lot and an earnest wish to join them in the Kingdom of the Saints. The situation became so tense at last that father agreed to provide a complete outfit of wagon, team provisions, stectea for the journey to Utah. It was left to me to decide (I was only ten and a half years old) as to which I would go with, mother and the children, or father, who had decided to come to California.

“And that is how I happen to be on the Pacific Coast now, and under a very different regime than if I had made the contrary decision. So it came about that early in April, 1861, mother and the other children, in care of an older son by her former husband, a splendid fellow, (William Crawford) some ten years older than myself, set out from Florence, Nebraska. “The Saint’s rallying place on the west bank of the Missouri River, for the long trek of twelve hundred miles to Salt Lake and a week later, father and I, with some acquaintances, set out for the ‘land of gold’, California.

“It was nearly twenty years before I saw my mother again, and by that time I had reached my majority, been married and following my allotted calling for several years, (Minister of the Methodist Episcople Church). Deep was her disappointment that I did not at length cast in my lot with the Latter-day Saints. In my opinion, she was a real Saint, as our gracious Lord measures human aims and beliefs, and I’m holding the modest hope that I’ll soon meet her and other loving mothers in the Home Over There.”

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Quoting from my mother – “He came to visit mother and the rest of us in Rockville in the year 1880. He was very anxious to take me to California with him where he would give me a good education, but I declined as I thought too much of my mother and my religion.”

The family traveled across the plains in the David H. Cannon Company, settling in Draper with her folks.

It was a great sorrow for grandmother when she was called upon to bury her little eight year old son a year after they came to Draper. She was happy, however, when her son William was converted and baptized a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints by his uncle, Joshua Terry and persuaded to stay with his mother rather than go to California.

When the call came from President Young to the Terry folks, along with others to go south to the Dixie Cotton, grandma and Uncle William came right along with the rest. We have heard much of this long tiresome journey they made in the fall of 1863 and how they finally arrived at Adventure, a little settlement just east of Grafton. How William and his wise mother thought the higher ground a little farther up the river would be more suitable for a home. We know that Marilla Hansen and family, along with the John Langston family have always had the distinction of being the first settlers of Rockville. Let me quote again the exact words of my mother[Julia Hansen Hall] —“We remained in Draper one year and were then called by President Brigham Young to come south and help settle where Rockville now stands, with nothing but rocks, sagebrush and high mountains surrounding them.

“But their faith in their leaders and the gospel they loved so well kept their courage up. So they went to work, women as well as men, to subdue all obstacles and wrestle a living from their uninviting surroundings. They made their first home of rough rocks with mud mortar between them to hold them in place. The roof was made of logs hewn out and placed for rafters with cedar bark and a quantity of dirt over that, which, when it rained would leak mud all over everything in the house. Our house, however was a place of refuge to quite a number of our neighbors who congregated at our house to escape some of the downpour. There being a dry place in the corner where the bed stood, we children were piled into that while the other people sat up and kept a fire all night to keep warm.

“At another time I learned a lesson that I never forgot. I had been sent to the extreme end of town to Sister Hirschi’s on an errand; she gave me something, I don’t remember now what it was, but I ran home tickled all over to show mother, who looked at it a moment then said, ‘Did you thank her for it?’ I immediately dropped my head for I had forgotten to thank her. Mother took me all the way back and requested that I thank her, which I did, but it taught me a lesson that I never forgot.”

I have heard mother say how faithful grandmother was in living every principle of the gospel to the very best of her knowledge and taught her children to do likewise.

Recently I made a very special trip to Rockville and Springdale to talk to my cousins, Dave Terry and Johnnie Crawford about grandma. They enjoyed remembering many things about her. Johnnie said she was his first school teacher and that he loved her very much. He also spoke of the two long rows of black currant bushes up in her lot, that along with the other grandchildren, he used to enjoy picking. After his father moved to Oak Creek the family used to visit frequently with grandmother and assist her all they could.

I was deeply interested in a small oval wooden box that grandmother used to keep her valuable papers in. Johnnie is the proud possessor of this. It no doubt was given to grandma by his father. He also has a wall motto- “Home Sweet Home” – which was grandma’s made by Aunt Amy Draper, her daughter.

Dave said he always thought so much of his Aunt Marilla, she was a wonderful woman, very intelligent to talk to. To my inquiry if she did much work in the church organizations, he said – no, not as he knew of, she was to old for that when he knew her. But he had heard of her teaching school in the early days. I was pleased to have him describe her home, which was situated in about the center of town on the upper side of the street. She lived alone in her comfortable, one-roomed house, her wants were few and she was looked after by her family. In her declining years it was Julia and Alfred Hall who were especially mindful of her, as Julia was the only one of her children who lived in Rockville. However, she was very independent and would allow no help with anything she could do for herself.

Dave said that he took care of her lot for years. He raised mostly lucern on it. He mentioned the fruit trees on the lot, she had peaches, apples and apricots. Phebe, his wife, remembers drying fruit on shares from those trees. I also learned that grandma was rather superstitious. She never called ‘come in’ to a knock at the door. She said, “You might be admitting the devil.”

After that little chat with my cousins, I found that grandma was very plain spoken.

May I close this review of the earthly sojourn of this good woman by saying she passed peacefully away at her home in Rockville on the 19th of October, 1894, at the age of 72 years, a wonderful woman gone to her great reward. She was survived by two sons and four daughters and had 46 grandchildren altogether, some dying in infancy.

Marilla Terry