Anthonette Marie Olsen, Christiansen

Biography

From “Stories of Our Scandinavian Ancestors and Some of Their Close Friends Who Traveled from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark to Zion in 1865”:
“Anthonette (Nettie) Marie Olsen was born at three o’clock in the morning on 16 January 1845 in Christiana, now Oslo, Norway. She attended a Lutheran school. One day her teacher told his pupils, “The Mormon missionaries are in England. They are also intending to come to Norway. You must not go to hear them speak.” Nettie was only a child of eight years old at the time, but later wrote, ‘With my whole heart I resented it and said in my soul, I will go to hear them.’ I was hungering after righteousness and the spirit was my guide.” In Norway in those days, they had to be baptized secretly. At the age of 16, Nettie was baptized in the ocean in the middle of the night. It was wintertime and while hurrying home, her clothes froze to her! From the time she was ten years old she worked in textile factories from 6am to 9pm. At the age of 20 she was the first in her family to emigrate to America, leaving the rest of her family behind to come later.”

This account also says that she took the Miner G. Atwood Wagon Train across the plains, while a different account from her life sketch on her FamilySearch profile details that “Anthonette along with other Mormon saints traveled by steamship named Powersteamer Excellensen Toll sailed to Copenhagen than unto ship Nevada to North America, The ship Nevada arrived to Massachusetts, in the United States, The company of Mormon saints than gathered and left Boston, Massachusetts by railroad train to Florence, Nebraska.” Writing about her trip across the plains, Nettie wrote “I walked from a point near Florence, Nebraska to Salt Lake City. I walked every step of the entire journey except one forenoon when I was very sick with a fearful pain in my leg. Before I had walked three hundred miles, my shoes were entirely gone… From then on I walked in my stockings. Each night I mended them.” So she walked the rest of the way, around 700 miles, in her stockings alone. Nettie later said “this wasn’t so bad through the deep sand, for miles and miles, but oh, the cactus patches!”
When Nettie did get to Utah with the wagon train in November 1865, she wrote “I arrived afoot in Salt Lake City and went to bed without any supper. Next morning several persons came to our camp with food. A woman gave me a cup of hot gruel. A man took me to Bishop Hunter's place. They needed me to help them do their work.” Marie and Christian Lybbert were a married couple on the same wagon train as Nettie, and apparently Marie had taken a “liking to Nettie during their trek.” She then encouraged her husband to take Nettie as his second wife (according to the history cited above). Anthonette and Marie were sealed to Christian separately on the same day (19 March 1866 in the Endowment House in Salt Lake). About the marriage, Nettie wrote “We accepted the principle of plural marriage with clean hands and pure hearts. Each of us worked for the best interest of all three.” her husband Christian went by CFB and was the ward clerk of the Naples Ward for a time.
Nettie birthed 11 children; six boys and five girls. She raised her children with Christian and Marie in Vernal, Utah. Her husband Christian died in 1923 and then Nettie’s daughter invited her to stay with them. According to this daughter Nettie refused, and instead “spent about fifteen or sixteen years of continuous work in the temple at Logan. She did temple work for thousands (3000 endowments).” She passed away in her sleep May 25, 1932, and was buried three days later on May 28.