My great grandmother, Margrethe Hansen was about 17 when she was forced to leave her home of Bornholm, Denmark.
A convert to Mormonism, she faced ostracism by her family and persecution from her Lutheran neighbors.
Becoming an indentured servant, she got the money needed to immigrate to America. It was in the 1870s and a long way to go for a young woman traveling alone.
In Utah she met Nils Evensen, a handsome young convert to the church from Ringsaker, Norway. They evenutally married and moved to Colorado.
It is a long way from the green island in the Baltic ocean to the Red Mesa of Kline, Colorado. I've often admired my great grandmother for her courage. My father said Margrethe loved visits from her grand-children and would encourage them to stay, plying them with cookies and saying, in her broken, heavily accented, English, "Plenty time! Plenty time!"
