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.