So many European immigrants had given all they had to come here, to this frontier of plains and mountains still scarcely charted. The Garffs, comfortable enough to employ a nurse for Marie’s impending delivery, had been duped by an agent who was supposed to have secured the means to travel across the plains. They arrived at prairie’s edge learning he had absconded with their advance payment. They were able to go in with another family to get a wagon and team for their westward trip. We know now that Niels was ill. Marie, who had given birth during the ocean voyage would then lose husband and daughter in the frontier as well as this wagon. We can imagine Marie’s suffering the poverty of many woman in that era and those circumstances: poverty of supportive relations, of marital status, of home security.
I have not learned anything of Gudmund Gudmundsen’s role in these dual immigrant companies under the supervision of Christen Christensen and Mathias Cowley. The missionary who had brought the family into this fold seems at least to have been a confidant of Niels. In agreeing to care for Garff’s family as the dying friend asked, did he know what his skills could provide in this new place, among these new people? Gudmund had apprenticed in goldsmithing. My understanding of other skilled craftsmen coming to Utah is that they went without profit, trying to feed families and "build Zion" for some time before gaining a measure of independent success.
The older Garff sons might have recalled the life of plenty in Denmark. Peter was about 15 years old at that time, already assuming heavy responsibilities when his mother and brothers were put out of the wagon they had managed to share when that partner turned back along the trail. Christian was 10, Lauritz, 5; they were moving further into a dramatic historical period with each step, now as handcart pioneers.
At the very time that the Christensen hand cart company was finally coming into Great Salt Lake City in August 1857, the city had been preparing for the invasion of Johnston's army. This force had been sent by the president of the United States to put down the Mormon rebellion. Preparations that we have learned included putting defence works up in the canyons feeding immigrants into the valley, evacuating the citizens and filling buildings with straw to burn rather than yield to a mob, even if that mob was in uniform and marching at the government’s behest.
Marie Garff married Gudmund Gudmundsen in 1858 in Spanish Fork. In their first winter they lived in a dugout shelter, as many immigrants did. Discouraged and perhaps perceiving little support from established Utahans, something came about that effected the commitment they felt toward their neighbors and church leaders. Gudmund took his new family to Cedar Fort and Fairfield where he found income from smithing for the army as it settled in at Camp St George (later to be renamed Camp Floyd).
A new voice in the community had begun to foretell things great and miraculous, stirring the feelings of hurt, mistrust, isolation and perhaps hope. Joseph Morris seems to have been appealing as well as persuasive to Marie and Gudmund. They took up with his group, following the Morrisites as they moved about the area. Eventually they assumed roles of importance: Gudmund as one of the apostles of this man proclaiming he was the rightful heir to the Mormon church’s Joseph Smith and Marie as a seamstress for the ornate outfits Joseph Morris required for himself and his mounts as he paraded before his congregation. A communal group, the Morrisites gave all their property to the cause or simply abandoned it; the end was coming, they were heaven bound. The group eventually arrived on the Weber River south of Ogden. They set themselves up at Kingston’s Fort, either by right or by squatting.
The leaders tried to keep their ranks from defecting and at this later point held two members in a livestock hutch turned prison, so that the men’s families called on the authorities to help free them. Morris did not give in, arming his group for defense of Kingston’s Fort and preaching heartily against the deputation outside the walls. A cannon was brought from Farmington to support the law's demands. Citizens from Ogden rode out to watch this spectacle from the Uinta bluffs above the Weber River. The outcome was that in a last flurry of gunfire Morris was killed and the group disbanded after its leaders were arrested, fined and turned out. Gudmund Gudmundsen was among these. Finding themselves without means, distrusted by and distrusting of their neighbors, some Morrisites chose to leave the area, following the army as it deserted Camp Floyd and Utah due to civil war breaking out in the United States.
Marie and Gudmund moved to Sacramento, California, where reports of possible medical help for their son had come to them and where there might be work in Gudmund's trade. By this time there were two additional sons in the family, though Peter did not join his mother and stepfather in this move. Deacon, the Atlantic-born son had health problems which required medical treatment, even surgery I learn from my grandfather’s notes. He puts this at 1868.
After some time in California their circumstances had not developed for the better. Obviously it had been a time of contemplation on their previous actions and their current beliefs. One day the sons, playing among derelict buildings in the neighborhood discovered a cache of money and gold. Marie and Gudmund sought legal advice on dealing with this trove and were told they had as much right to it as anyone.
It seems they considered that this may be a response to needs which they could not have resolved themselves, and perhaps of some more etherial hand. Medical debts were settled and they soon after rejoined the church community in Utah and endeavored to meet with Brigham Young to restore standing that had been lost. A home was built in Lehi, Utah, where Gudmund opened a jewelry business, the first in that community.
I know of no journal or diary which will give us exact accounts of feelings or discussions, and I hope my own self contemplation has not taken theirs too far afield. I have wondered about these ancestors and have tried to understand their lives more deeply but I remain a distant (five generations away) grandchild, in a different century. My hope here is to honor more than to analyze them.
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