Anthonette Marie Olsen
Anthonette Marie Olsen was born at three o’clock in the morning on January 16, 1845 in Christiana, now Oslo, Norway, to Christian Olsen and Christine Nielsen.
Before little Nettie was five years old she learned to read, which made her schooling all the easier. She was described as being alert, quick and willing.
Nettie’s father was a stone-mason by trade. He received his wages every Saturday night. Too frequently he spent part of his earnings on drinking ale and wine with his jolly companions, which made life difficult for Christine and the children at home.
One day in the Lutheran school where Nettie was enrolled, her teacher Andreas Budge, warned the children that Mormon missionaries were making plans to come to Norway with a message concerning an American prophet, Joseph Smith. Said the teacher, “you must keep away from those missionaries as they are false teachers,” which Nettie reported to her parents. Young as she was, Nettie made up her mind to find out for herself what the doctrine was the Mormons were sent to teach.
As a young child, Nettie prayed for work and earnings to help her family subsist. In Norway it was work or go hungry. So little Nettie was accepted as a helper in a textile factory at the tender age of ten. Her job was to hand threads to the girl who threaded the harness in the loom. She was in the factory at 6:00 AM each morning and stayed until 9:00 PM each night—child labor laws were unheard of then.
The Mormon missionaries arrived in Norway, finding the Olsen family, and taught them the Gospel of Jesus Christ in their own home. Nettie’s father had to give up his drinking and smoking, which, with faith and prayer, he was able to do. Nettie, as well as her parents, were baptized when she was sixteen.
The moment Nettie’s friends in the factory heard that she had joined the Mormon Church, they turned against her and became her enemies. She left them as soon as she could, finding work in another textile factory, where she worked until her 20th birthday.
Nettie’s home was much happier now. Her family was very active in their new Church and so the thought of immigrating to be with the main body of the Church in the Rocky Mountains, Zion as they called it, was ever on their minds.
Nettie was the first member of her family to join an immigration company. As a gift, her father bought her a new traveling bag. In it she placed a few pieces of underwear and one dresses. She only had one pair of shoes, which she wore. Neither Nettie nor her parents understood the nature of the journey she was going to undertake.
After Nettie had crossed the North Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, she went aboard a train in Boston and rode with other Saints to a point near Florence, Nebraska. From Florence, Nettie walked with a company of immigrants to Salt Lake City. Before she had walked three hundred miles, her Norwegian shoes wore off her feet and were un-repairable. Nettie offered a certain fellow-traveler her other dress for a pair of shoes. The woman to whom she had made this appeal had two pairs of shoes in her possession, her sister having died on the way. But she refused, saying she would need the shoes later on.
So Nettie walked all the rest of the way to Zion, some 700 miles, in her stocking feet. Nettie later said “this wasn’t so bad through the deep sand, for miles and miles, but oh, the cactus patches!”
Nettie suffered privations in other ways. Her food ration was a pint of flour a day. Each night she mixed the flour with water and set her tin cup in the warm ashes of her tiny campfire. In the morning she baked a big biscuit in the hot coals. This single biscuit was her food for three meals. It had to be enough, as there was no more. During the six week trek across the plains, the Saints were given a strip of bacon a few times. Twice when she was desperately hungry she miraculously found a few crackers on the ground, which seemed like manna from heaven—and she gave thanks to God for his blessing.
Each night after mending her stockings, using a piece of men’s pants someone gave her, Nettie lay down upon the sand with her bag under her head. She had a shawl to keep her warm, but no quilt.
One day there was a cattle stampede. A young girl walking beside Nettie was instantly killed. It hurt her unspeakably to hear of a death in camp. Several of the young men also died along the way, which greatly affected her. One morning on the prairie one of the women lagged behind the others. An Indian on a horse came out from the bushes. He lassoed the woman onto his pony and rode away. Her husband ran in pursuit, but a couple of arrows shot into his legs by a second Indian soon stopped him. The woman was never heard of again.
She was asked if the pioneers danced by the light of the fire along the way. Nettie said “indeed we did not dance, we were too tired.”
On November 8, 1865, Nettie arrived “afoot and alone” in Salt Lake City. Although she was with the company of pioneers, as a single foreign girl, she was still very much alone. That first night she went to bed supperless. Early the following morning a good woman, who no-doubt heeded Brigham Young’s admonition to be kind to the newcomers, came to her with a cup of hot gruel, which she greatly appreciated.
Nettie knew a few English words, such as chair, table, cup and book, but she couldn’t connect a group of words into a sentence. She was at a loss to express herself, but there were others who spoke the Scandanavian languages, and she gravitated toward them.
In a short time Nettie found work in the home of Bishop Hunter. It wasn’t long until a Mr. Bonelius, a weaver, taught Nettie how to use a hand-operated loom for weaving cloth. This was quite new to her as the looms she was used to in Norway were run by water or steam power.
The ensuing winter Nettie moved to North Ogden. Here she wove hundreds of yards of flannel and linsey. She also learned how to card and spin. Her services in the community were appreciated and she rejoiced at being needed.
Nettie’s “Sunday best dress” was the workmanship of her own hands, every thread of it. She carded the fiber, spun the thread, wove the fabric and sewed it with needle and threat, as sewing machines weren’t available then. It was a gray linsey dress. With it she wore a white laundered collar and a pretty ribbon bow.
Nettie became acquainted with Christian Frederick Bernhard Lybbert, an immigrant from Denmark, who was already married but proposed marriage to her, as he was called to live the higher law. Nettie became Christian’s second wife on March 10, 1866, in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City. Nettie later said, “we accepted the principle of plural marriage with clean hands and pure hearts, each of us worked for the best interest of all three.”
Nettie’s early homes in Utah were in North Ogden, Brigham City, Spring City and Levan. Her husband didn’t feel settled until he moved to Ashley Valley, Uintah County. Here, around Vernal, they raised their family of six boys and five girls. Nettie was 22 when her first child was born and 45 when her last child came.
Each Sabbath day Nettie attended her meetings, taking her baby with her, as she always seemed to have a baby at home. Usually during church mothers would nurse their babies from breast, as this was a common practice. The family walked about three quarters of a mile to church during the hot summers and cold winters. Their houses had one or two rooms, usually made of rough logs, with a dirt roof and floor.
Nettie was a well-informed reader of the four standard works of the Church. She kept up with the “Juvenile Instructor” and other Church materials. Every Sunday evening she would read Church materials for enjoyment, but early on Monday morning she put the accent on the other part of the commandment, “six days thou shalt labor and do all they work.” She was a tireless worker, making her own cloth, soap and cheese.
During the last years of her long life, Nettie would say, “Wait until I get to the other side, then I’ll study art and music and dancing.” Her idea of heaven was eternal progression. She lived according to the words of that wise man of old, “be up and doing and the Lord be with you.” Nettie died on May 25, 1832, in Vernal, Uintah County, Utah, at the age of 87, having been a widow for nine years..
(Nettie was the mother of Mary Sophia Elizabeth Lybbert, who was the mother of Irene Merrell, who was the mother of DeMar Gale.)