Heber Jethro McKay

History of Eleanor Jespersen McKay

Eleanor Jespersen McKay September 18, 1852 - June 11, 1916 By: Elnora Comfort McKay Stevenson - Daughter With additions from her own autobiography which she tells in third person. Eleanor Jespersen was christened Hellena, after her father’s mother, but after coming to Utah her name was changed to Eleanor. She was born September 18, 1852 at Dronninglund, Overdhal, Hjorring, Denmark, the only child of Anders Peter and Mary Anderson Jespersen. When she was eight she was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and soon afterward she and her parents left Denmark for Utah. In her autobiography Eleanor writes, “In the middle of the winter on January 15, 1861, Larse Nelsen, a humble Elder of the Church of Jesus Christ took her down to the water’s edge and after cutting the ice, baptized her and confirmed her a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After she was baptized, she walked about two miles when the temperature was below zero without receiving any bad effects.” Later that year Eleanor and her family came to America to be with the saints in Utah. Eleanor’s father had plenty of money which he shared with other Saints. Council Bluffs was a rough, dirty place filled with oxen and mule traders, and Eleanor was too frightened to move far from her mother’s side. At Council Bluffs they loaded their wagon so full that all of them walked most of the way across the plains. To these people raised in luxury, it was a great trial. They traveled in a perpetual cloud of dust. At sunrise and sunset a short service and prayers were said. It was the faith and trust in God that kept them going. Every time a band of Indians came yelling around the wagon train, little Eleanor frantically crawled beneath a feather bed. Sometimes at night she peeked out to watch the grown folks dance and sing around the fire. When they reached the mouth of Emigration Canyon a horseman was sent on ahead to notify the church authorities, so when the wagons drove into the Tithing Office block, grandmother Helene Kjaer, who had arrived in 1859 was there to meet them, and took them to her one room log home. This was the fall of 1861. That first winter little Eleanor went to school in a tiny log room, benches were half a log, flat side up raised to proper height by wooden pegs driven into the ground floor. No backs and no desks, and not more than one or two books. Eleanor (Hellena) hated school. The other children cruelly made fun of her Danish speech and her name. They called her, “Hell” short for Hellena and “All fat and no lean.” She cried so much that her parents changed her name to Eleanor. In 1862 President Young called Eleanor’s parents to go to Weber Valley (Morgan) to settle. They were given a plough and some seeds and were to farm. Unlike the majority of pioneers, Peter had lived an easy life, having always hired a man to do the hard work. Pioneering was a terrific task for him. Also Eleanor’s mother was upset. She was a seamstress by trade, and these almost destitute pioneers had nothing to sew. Peter had trouble at once. The ground was dry and rocky, and before he had ploughed an acre the plough-share broke. It was impossible to buy or borrow a plough, so Peter and Mary took the box off the wagon, stored their belongings in it, and ask their little daughter to guard it and drove away. They rode away on the running-gear seemingly without a worry. They were really not unkind people and it is difficult to understand how they could leave little nine year old Eleanor all alone in a desolate wild country, in the mountains, in nothing but a wagon box. She went to bed in total darkness alone in the mountains, where there were not only Indians, but all kinds of wild animals. “I suppose,” said Eleanor, my mother, in telling me about it, “that they did not expect to be gone so long. But I was alone three endless months. The last two months there was no...