The Peder and Lena Mortensen family joined the Church in Denmark in 1855. “As soon as my father and mother heard the gospel they were not very long in accepting it,” their daughter Mette recalled. Soon after joining the Church, the Mortensens decided to sell their substantial home and farm and gather to Zion. With seven children ages 5 to 24, they left what Mette called their “happy little home” and sailed to England (the oldest son stayed in Denmark to serve a mission and emigrated later). In Liverpool they boarded the Thornton to sail to America. Mette turned 11 on the day her family boarded the ship.
After reaching America, the Mortensens went to Iowa City, intending to get outfitted with a wagon and team to continue the journey. The family had the means to do so, but Church leaders made a proposal and promise that steered their course in an unexpected direction. They asked Peder if he would use his means to help pay the way of other needy Saints and promised that if his family would “join the handcart company, not one member of his family should be lost.” The Mortensens decided to forgo their comfort for the greater good of others. This was a doubly difficult decision because Peder and his oldest daughter were crippled, he severely and she with an arthritic knee. They were promised they could ride in a supply wagon.
Now very limited in what they could bring, the Mortensens left much of their clothing and bedding behind. The months ahead required great additional sacrifice, as well as suffering from hunger and cold. “How well I remember when the food supply began to get short,” Mette later wrote. “We had always had plenty of good food at home and this was hard for me to understand.”
The journey was especially trying and even frightening one day when Mette’s brothers pulled out of the line of handcarts and said they couldn’t go a step farther. “We children stood by crying, thinking of the terrors in store for us,” Mette remembered. When their mother gave the boys a little crust of bread and something to drink, it lifted their spirits. With her encouragement, they got their cart back onto the trail and continued forward.
After the long day’s journey over Rocky Ridge, Mette’s brothers helped dig the grave where 13 members of the company were buried. In an act of tenderness, Mette’s mother laid one of her hand-woven linen sheets on the bodies before they were covered with earth.
As promised, Peder and Lena Mortensen and their children arrived safely in Zion. They settled in Parowan, Utah. Mette was married several years later and raised nine children.