I, Anna Jorgena Christina Madsen, was born the 18th day of May 1864, in the town of Veilby, Aarhus, Denmark. My parents were Christian Madsen and Rasmine Rasmussen Hoisgaard Madsen. My father was a miller by profession, and also a carpenter. My early childhood days were spent with my parents at a mill, in the town of Marstal, Denmark.
My parents had a large pond of water back of the mill, where there were always many ducks. Father being a miller, they always kept lots of ducks and chickens. One day my brother and I were standing b the edge of the pond watching the ducks play and swim about over the water, when suddenly, in some way I fell into the water. The screams and cries of my brother brought my mother and father there in time to save me, with enough life in me so that I was saved from death.
When I was a little girl between four and five years old, I went on a journey with my mother to visit my father’s people. We sailed in a ship. A storm arose at sea, and they stopped the ship for the night at a place called Korsor, Denmark. I remember we had a room at a hotel. The streets were paved with rock, and the traffic was very noisy, so we could not sleep at all that night. However, we went on our way in due time when the storm cleared and arrived at my grandfather, Mads Andersen’s place. While we were visiting there, my mother and her sister-in-law were walking in the orchard. I was playing around not far away, when I found some boards piled up, and I thought it great fun to run back and forth across the boards because they would tip and rap-clap when I stepped off and on them. Then, the first thing that happed I dropped or fell into a hole or space between the boards, when my mother looked and ran to me. When she got there, she found that I was hanging there over a deep well, and she turned white and sick with fear and almost fainted. She rescued me with greatest thanks to her God again for my safety. My guardian angel was surely watching over me that day, also!
I don’t remember for sure what Church or denomination my parents belonged to, but I believe it was the Lutheran faith. Some time after the events I have already related, my parents bought a little place in another town where we lived for about two years. My father made a living by working as a carpenter, and also cabinetmaking. It was while we were living there that mother heard the message of the “Mormon” missionaries and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
In the early part of 1870, my parents moved to Venge (or Veng) Denmark, where my father rented a flour mill and continued in the milling business which was always his choice occupation. In this little town of Veng we lived for about three years. It was while we lived here that my father, slow to accept the Gospel, was converted, and when he did accept it, his conversion was deep. He was baptized at Veng, Denmark. My brother, Marius, and I were both baptized on the same day June 23, 1873, by a Mormon missionary named Christian Fischer Schade, and then it seemed my parents could not rest until they joined the other Saints in Zion, that is, emigrate to America, to Utah and dwell among the Saints there. We emigrated in 1873. Father was a man of great integrity, faithful to the end of his long life. He died June 1, 1904, at Huntsville, Utah. Mother was just as faithful, right by father’s side, and faithful to her death, on December 27, 1925.
The voyage over the great Atlantic Ocean with a large company of other Saints, was a pleasant one, and after reaching the shores of America, we were taken by train to Utah, arriving in Ogden in the evening of July 23, 1873. From there my parents chose to go with some acquaintances (who were waiting there in Ogden when our company arrived) from Huntsville, and where the Madsen family finally settled.
Our first summer in Huntsville, my mother and I lived with some good Saints, Brother and Sister Isaac McKay and family. My brother, Marius, had a chance to stay with and work for some people for his board. My father was able to get little jobs here and there among the town’s people. After about three years had passed, my father built us a new little home, a five room dwelling. I remember how I had to help his a great deal in carrying the adobes and mud. This was very hard for a young girl of eleven and twelve years, but I did the best I could and tried not to complain.
Very little schooling was available at this time and what was given consisted more of the practical things of life such as home-making and learning how to earn a livelihood. However, I did have the privilege of receiving some elementary school training. During the school months I attended the schools of Huntsville. They were not so much in those days. All the children met in a one-room schoolhouse, size about 28 x 50 feet, with a raised part of one end about 8 feet wide.
I went to Salt Lake City in the summer of 1877, worked there for a year and then went back to Ogden to work for a lady who had only one child. Her husband did not eat dinner at home. She was a lady of leisure, and insisted that we all sleep late every morning until eight or later, so she might get her undisturbed rest. I was not too happy with this routine I wanted to be up and doing thing, learning how to work out plans and accomplish something. I did not stay there very long, however, as life was too uneventful and lazy for me.
As I related before, I had very little formal schooling. But my mother was a seamstress of some note throughout the state, and she taught me much. I became very efficient in sewing and also learned to create beautiful handwork of laces and linens. I learned to wash and clean wool from the freshly shorn sheep, than spend many hours of each day carding the wool and making it into bats, and at the spinning wheel, I could smile with pride at my work for the yarn was later knitted or woven into socks and clothing for the men folks reserving enough to be sold. Also wherever it was possible to gather cast-off clothing, linens or rags -- it fell to my lot to help wash and clean them, tear them into strips, sew them together wind them into large balls and then weave them into carpets. These things I learned well enough that I carried it into my own home after I was married and had my own family.
Courtship, like hardship, came early in those first days; it was very commonplace for a girl to be married in her early teens. It was while I was working in one of the town’s homes as a housemaid, that I met a very amiable young man by the name of John William Heder, who was home for the holidays, from his job as a foreman on a large ranch in Montana. He was eight years older than I was, and he was ready to settle down and raise a family, and build his own home, so we were married on May 22, 1879, in Salt Lake City, when I was but fifteen years of age. Nevertheless, my parents were happy with the marriage in spite of my tender years.
By marrying John I knew I would be doing more pioneering in a rough country, but was used to it by now, so it did not bother me. But John was a very industrious and hardworking man, and through his careful management and thrift, soon he provided a neat and comfortable little home for us. We joined with the young people in all their church and social activities, enjoying every moment of them together.
Time slipped by into years. It was four years before our first child was born to us. It was a beautiful little daughter whom we named Minnie May. She was born July 18, 1883, in Ogden City, Utah. John had been offered a job in Ogden, and had worked hard and built a comfortable little home there, and we were living there when our baby was born. However soon after her birth, we moved back to Huntsville, as John’s father was not well and needed our help.
Two years later a second little girl was born to us whom we named Anna Christina. She was born October 19, 1885, at Huntsville. Two more girls and two boys were born to us while we lived here in Huntsville. The third child, another daughter whom we named Maude Elizabeth, was born just a week before Christmas on December 18, 1887.
John’s mother, whom the children called “Mooma”, lived with us part of the time, and part of the time with his sister, Sophia Schade. The children liked to watch “Mooma” card wool and spin it into yarn on a spinning wheel. The one she had, had a treadle to thread up and down like a sewing machine so she could it down while spinning. The wheel was small, set in a horizontal position, on which the yarn would wind as it was spun.
When the children were old enough, John began to teach them the alphabet in the evenings after supper. They were expected to know this when they started school. The two older girls were taught about the same time, and both May and Anna learned to know them well.
Before they started to go to school, we would move the family up into the mountains in the spring to take care of and mild a herd of cows that belonged to a friend of ours, Weber Stake President A.F. Shurtliff of Ogden. We made butter and sold it in Ogden. One morning in the summer after Maude was born, I was out in the milk house caring for the mil,. I had the children with me, and John had gone on a trip to the valley. May happen to open the door and cried out to me that the house was on fire! I ran to try to save something, but as I opened the door it let in air, which sent the flames all over the room. The cat ran out and that was the only thing that was saved from the flames. We lost all the furniture, beds, clothing and bedding we had. My sewing machine, stove, our cupboards -- everything! John had some guns and ammunition, which started shooting off when the flames came to them.
In the spring of 1890, another little girl was born on April 21st. She was named Rhoda Sophia. She was such a tiny baby that my mother-in-law cried because she didn’t think she would live.
One summer while we were in the mountains, little May was swinging, and she slipped off the board and if she hadn’t hung on with all her might, she may have been killed. When we were able to get the swing stopped and took her off, her wrists were strained and were weak for years after that.
Our first two boys were born here in Huntsville, too. John Earl, was born January 31, 1892, and Walter Oliver was born March 30, 1894.
In the winter of 1895, John went on a trip to the LDS colonies in Mexico. He came home all enthused about moving to Mexico. In June 1896, we moved, taking all our possessions, which could be moved, including a sawmill and all equipment in chartered railroad cars. We finally settled in the little colony of Chuichupa. However, we stayed a few days in Colonia Juarez to get supplies and food and then went on to the mountains. We traveled up very steep and rough dugways. The roads were very rough. In placed we had to stop and work on them before we could go on. We traveled several days, and finally arrived in Chuichupa on the 15th of June 1896.
We had been in Mexico a year or two when our next baby was born on July 29, 1897 and we named her Lillian Juanita. Our two youngest boys, too, were born in Mexico. George Roland, was born on February 7, 1900, and Stanley Marius was born February 12, 1908.
In 1902 we moved again, this time down to the valley colony of Dublan where we lived until the rebels drove us out in 1912.
From Mexico, in 1912, we moved back to the United States and settled for a short time in Tucson, Arizona. From there we went to Gilbert, Arizona, in 1914, and on to Mesa that fall. In 1919, late in the fall, we went back to Gilbert, remaining there for about five years, when we returned to Mesa for our last big move. We lived in several places in Mesa, finally moving into a small home near our son Roland and his family. We were living in this little home when John died, after a number of years of much pain and rheumatism in his body, on November 6, 1940.
Editor’s note: Anna Jorgena Christina (Madsen) Heder died on June 9, 1955 in Mesa, Arizona at the age of 91.