The Land of My Ancestors

On our third day of visiting Denmark, we drove to the island south of Copenhagen called Lolland where my Hansen ancestors lived in the mid-19th century. It took a couple of hours to drive there but there's a good bridge so no ferry was required.

Peter Hansen joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints with his wife Ane. After experiencing persecution including from his own father, they decided to emigrate to Utah with their four little boys and had a very arduous and long journey from start to finish with Ane and the three youngest boys dying from cholera somewhere on the Great Plains. He remarried in Utah some years later to a woman named Maren Madsen from the same island in Denmark that he was from. They were both buried in Provo Cemetery.

Peter and Maren had six children with the youngest two being twin boys. I am descended from one of those boys, named Ephraim Hansen, my great-grandfather.

Peter Hansen Kaae (he dropped Kaae when he came to the USA) was born in a small area called Havlokke, Denmark, which has several houses and lots of fields. It is very rural and we saw very few people. It was also quite rainy much of the morning.

I thought this roof was fascinating. It appears to be some kind of thatch and may have been made of some kind of dried seaweed. These roofs apparently last a long time.

We went to the church for Ostofte parish where Peter was christened but it looks like it is now a private residence.

Then we went to the church where Maren was christened in a place called Branderslev which was about a 20-minute drive. It looks like it is still used as a church.

We got out to use the convenient church bathroom but stayed in the car the rest of the time.

After visiting Lolland, we decided to drive to Sweden. We got there from Copenhagen on a pricey toll bridge--$75 each way! We decided to visit Lund where my 3rd great-grandmother on my mother's side was born. Elna Olsson Malmstrom was the mother of Emma Larson, the 5th wife of Jesse N. Smith.

She is pictured with her children:

Lund has a university which Scott visited in 1992 to do some atomic spectroscopy research while he was a graduate student. This time, we decided to visit the Botanical Gardens.

After the Botanical Gardens we went into town and had a somewhat greasy hamburger and fries. Then we headed to the airport to catch our late flight to Riga.