Comments on: Advent: An Old Fashioned Christmas

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:40:00 +0000

Ouch, Rachelle. The heartbreak of that has lasted so long — I feel for your grandmother Johanna. I hope someday you are able to trace Nils and “bring him home” in a sense.

By: Rachelle

Rachelle — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 16:14:42 +0000

I wish my Family history had that happy ending. Jacob is my 3rd great-grandfather and I still look for Nils, in censuses or other sources:
One day in 1884, Nils Johan Nielson, then sixteen, was helping his father, Jacob load hay. He was up on the wagon doing as well as he thought he could, when Jacob got angry and threw him off the wagon. Nils was angry and said he was going to run away. He ran as far as his older brother, C.T.’s house in town and told his sister-in-law, Anna Maria that he was going to California with a Salina man. Anna Maria begged him to wait until C. T. returned from the farm to ask his advice. But Nils was terribly hurt by his father’s actions and said he was going to leave and never come back. That is what he did. They never saw him again. C. T. searched for years, following clues he would get from people who thought they saw him in California, but nothing more was ever heard of him. His mother, Johanna looked for him until she died in 1911. She would go out and look for Nils and say that Nils could come tonight . . . but he never did.

By: Jeff Johnson

Jeff Johnson — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:50:37 +0000

This was written by the wife of important Mormon/Utah artist, LeConte Stewart. I love her name and am sad I did not have a daughter to name her that.

By: Ardis E. Parshall

Ardis E. Parshall — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:22:53 +0000

There are great clues in there to how people really lived, aren’t there?

By: mahana

mahana — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 23:14:06 +0000

I liked the description of the chairs used for the family to eat their Christmas dinner on – fancy ones from the ‘first bedroom’, the wash bench with a quilt, velvet backed ones…