Wilhelmina Ahlstrom

Biography

Wilhelmina (Minnie) Ahlstrom was born in Sweden on October 29, 1844 in Malmö, Sweden to Ingeborg Månsdotter and Ole Nilsson Ahlström. She was the eighth of thirteen children. In 1854, her family joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The next year, in 1855, when Minnie was only eleven years old, they left Sweden to join the other Saints in Utah.
She and her family traveled from Copenhagen to Kiel, Germany on the steamship Lyona in October 1855. Then, they took another steamship from Germany to England and a train to Liverpool, where they boarded the John J. Boyd. They left Liverpool on December 12 and didn't arrive in New York until February 15, 1856. On the journey, their ship experienced storms, a fire, and a collision with another ship, but Minnie, her parents, and her siblings made the trip safely.
Once in the United States, they took the train to Burlington, Iowa, where they crossed the frozen Mississippi River on foot. However, they couldn't travel farther without more money, so the family stopped there while Minnie's father worked felling trees and the rest of the family did what work they could find to save money. Ole was killed in a logging accident on June 13, 1856, before Minnie was even twelve. Due to her father's death, Minnie and her family stayed in Iowa for more than three years. During this period, Minnie's mother Ingeborg remarried another member of the Church in the area. In 1860, Minnie and her living family (except her oldest brother, who had already made the journey) finally made the journey to Utah with the Warren Walling wagon company. They journeyed from Florence, Nebraska to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they arrived on August 9, 1860.
Minnie settled with her mother in Tooele, Utah. Three years after they arrived in Utah, when Minnie was nineteen years old, she married William Nellis Bracken, another Tooele resident from New York. They had ten children, seven sons and three daughters, together. Less than two years after the birth of her youngest daughter, Minnie got sick with pneumonia. She passed away in Tooele on July 24, 1888 at the age of 43. She was buried in the Tooele City Cemetery.