My Sewing Machine and Me

My Grandmother Hansen

When I was a tiny toddler, I tried to use my mother’s sewing machine and drove a needle through my finger. Just as when Sleeping Beauty pricked her finger on the spinning wheel and fell asleep, I think that incident made me love to sew.

When I was 12 years old, I went to visit my paternal grandmother in Southern Utah for a few weeks. She allowed me to pick her raspberries, showed me how to make pea soup, and taught me to do genealogy and family history. But most of all she taught me to sew.

Grandmother Hansen had been a dressmaker in her youth, and was an accomplished seamstress. Her history tells how her husband sold one of his horses to buy her a treadle sewing machine, so that she could continue her dressmaking business.

I remember that first sewing project that we did together—we made a green chartreuse Vogue-patterned blouse. How thrilled I was to make it, and long after my visit to my grandmother, I continued to sew! I took sewing in 4-H (who except us old people even know what 4-H is). I took every sewing class I could in school. As my mother’s health failed when I was in high school, I sewed dresses for her.

When I first married, I insisted on getting a sewing machine--how could I live without one. I saw an ad in the newspaper for new White sewing machines, and I bought one. It lasted for over 20 years. I once had to replace a foot pedal that had frayed through. It should have been an easy fix, except we were living in Northern Italy at the time, and I carried that foot pedal to all the open air markets trying to find a replacement and I finally succeeded. I remember trying to explain in my poor Italian what a foot pedal was before I gave up and brought it along with me.

After my sturdy mechanical White sewing machine died, I bought an electronic Brothers sewing machine and loved it!!!!! Years later when it died and couldn’t be repaired, I splurged and bought a new Viking sewing machine, but I never really liked it. I eventually gave it to my daughter and bought another Brothers’ sewing machine which I love.

Years after my grandmother died, I was able to purchase Grandmother Hansen’s old treadle sewing

Grandmother's old Minnesota treadle sewing machine

machine. The aunt whom my grandmother had lived with when she died, died herself, so I was able to purchase the sewing machine from my cousin. I felt like it had come home to me because I was the only one Grandmother Hansen had personally taught to sew.

But I continued to sew quilts, to make my grandchildren clothes and coats, and to make costumes for my youngest son and my grandchildren. 

When we moved to the big island of Hawaii in 1978, we had to stay in a hotel until our household goods were brought by ship to the island. I recall that after a couple of weeks in the hotel, with my older children in school and an eight-month-old-baby my only company, I rented a sewing machine and went to town.

That incident convinced me that I couldn’t live without a sewing machine for extended periods of time so in 2010 when my husband and I moved to Los Angeles for ten months (so that he could receive a lung transplant) we brought only what we could get in our car. But I found room for my sewing machine. Stuck in a tiny studio apartment there awaiting his transplant, and afterwards waiting for him to heal, I had a great time sewing. Some lovely fabric stores were close by, and it was fun experimenting with their fashionable fabric.

In 1990 my husband who was retired from the US Army and I moved to Centerville, Utah with our family, but I worked full time. I recall that although I didn’t have time to sew as much as I would have liked, I ordered a set of sewing cards/patterns, getting one a month. As I would look through the cards with their wonderful sewing ideas, I dreamed that when I retired, I would make all the items in them.

My newest sewing machine

One evening after work I was sewing, and the sewing machine needle broke off in the palm of my hand. I couldn’t see the broken needle, but I could feel it. However, I was too busy to go to the doctor that night; instead I went to one of my granddaughter’s Young Women activities with her. After a sleepless night because of the pain, I went to the Emergency Room at 6:00 a.m., thinking they could easily pull the needle out and I would get to work on time. However, it was too deep to easily dig out, and the point was pressing on the nerve of my thumb, so they called a hand surgeon, who knocked me out and finally got the broken needle out. It didn’t change my love of sewing, though.

When I retired from work in 2009, I enjoyed sewing again, but not as much as I had expected to. I was enjoying doing all the crafts, reading, writing, and genealogy activities I hadn’t had time for during the previous 19 years! But I then began teaching my granddaughters to sew, which ignited my love of sewing.

Last year we remodeled our basement, and I made a home for my sewing machine and projects—a

My sewing & crafts room

sewing and craft room, which I previously had only dreamed of having. This past Christmas, my daughters, granddaughters and I made baby quilts for Project Linus, and other sewing projects to give away.

Of my two daughters, but only one of them enjoys sewing and making quilts as I do. However, I have taught two of my granddaughters to sew and one of my granddaughters who doesn’t live in our area is learning to sew.

Is the love of sewing inherited? No, but I think it is contagious, and some of my granddaughters have definitely caught the bug. Fortunately, they didn’t have to drive a sewing machine through their finger to catch the bug.  

Computers are Miraculous!

I love computers! I think they are the most outstanding invention of our century. But then I am an

Howdy Doody 

early adopter of technology! My father had one of the earlier televisions in the Wasatch Front, back in 1950 when there was only one station---KSL channel 5. I remember watching Howdy Dowdy on it when I was only six years old. Maybe that was why I love technology!

My Trusty Apple II-E

I worked with the first “computer” in 1982 when I took a basic programming class from Enterprise State Jr. College. It was very basic, but I remember making stick people who waved as well as mathematical computations and other things. It was not made for personal computers, mind you, but for main-frame computers, which were the only thing available at the time.

In 1984 we moved to Vicenza, Italy and it was there we purchased the first “personal computer”—an Apple II-E. I loved it even though it didn’t have a hard drive, but had to boot up with large 5 ½ inch floppies, and then run from other floppies. I used it mainly for word processing and kept my journal on it and many other writings, including letters from 1985 on. All my letters to my oldest son, Marlowe while he was on his mission to the Rome, Italy Mission were written on it. And my journal entries from 1985 to 1990.

Computers can also do things you are too cowardly to do. It was on that Apple II-E, I wrote to my father telling him I was pregnant with my fifth child, when I was in my 40s. I called my sisters and my Aunt Ruth (my mother’s sister) to tell them about my newest addition to my family, but I didn’t dare tell my Dad. Why?

My Father who I notified by computer about
about my late-life baby and My Deceased Mother
whose example I followed

My Dad had always thought it was because Mother had her seventh child, my youngest sister Ann, after having breast cancer, which weakened her so she had her second bout of breast cancer when Ann was a baby. Mother died of metastatic cancer when she was 48. I had had breast cancer six years before I became pregnant with my “40s baby,” and I could imagine Dad yelling at me at telling me I was killing myself having a baby at my age if I called him; so I copped out and sent him a letter written on my trusty Apple II-E and he had time to adjust before he wrote me back. And I am still alive to tell the story.

My children used it for games. I recall that my oldest, Marlowe, bought a computer game based on the book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. However, he’d left his book in storage in Alabama, so when he played the game, he couldn’t remember the answers. So Marlowe did the logical thing--he hacked into the program and discovered the answers, popped back out and put the answer in. (I think that’s called using a “cheat sheet” long before there were “cheat sheets.”)

We brought back the Apple II-E we moved back to the Chicago in 1987 and used it even when we lived in Sacramento, California. But when we moved to Centerville, Utah in 1990, and the Personal Computer was becoming ubiquitous, the Apple II-E wasn’t good enough, I had to have a PC. Luckily I had a step-brother who helped me convert all my Apple files into Windows files so I didn’t lose any of my precious files.

It was then I started using WordPerfect for word processing when I started working soon after we moved here. I loved WordPerfect, and I subscribed to a magazine that helped me learn all the tips and tricks of WordPerfect and later Word--or word processing, another love.

In 1993, I started working for the editorial offices of the Liahona magazine. It was an international magazine published in 40+ languages and I worked as liaison between the editorial and production/design departments. All of the people in our office used MacIntosh (Apple) computers, but I also communicated and converted files from all the translation offices throughout the world and they all used PCs; so I was using both PCs and MacIntoshes!!! I loved them both.

Liahona Magazine where I worked
with both PCs and MACs

I was always trying to learn new technology and I even learned Databases; I created a program to track all correspondence that came into the office, through all the processes, until it was rejected, answered or purchased for publication. Those purchased would then be tracked through the publication process. If anyone had any problems with their computer, I loved to solve their problems.

In 2000, My husband was working for the Davis School District as a School Technology Specialist (teaching teachers how to use technology) when a new opening came for another STS. He and my middle-school son Bryan convinced me I wanted to work for the school district so I’d have the same working schedule (including school vacation) as they did. I applied and got the job.

Working as an STS was fascinating because it was two jobs in one—I was a computer trouble-shooter; if a computer had problems, I had to fix it. Often I was intrigued by the puzzle and loved to figure out what was going on and why. Then I figured out how to solve it. I was much more comfortable with software problems than hardware problems. My husband loved to get into the computer hardware and dissect it. I was trained to do that, but it intimidated me. I much preferred de-coding the software to find the problem.

The second part of my job (and the most important) was teaching the teachers how to use the many types of technology that is now available for them to use!
 

I loved learning how to use everything that was available from projectors in each classroom, to interactive computer games to teach children, and everything in between. I loved learning all the software as well as tablets, phones, laptops, podcasts, electronic storytelling, Photoshop Elements, etc. I could go on forever. All of these items just made teaching fun!!!!!

I have always loved using computers for writing; it simplifies and makes writing faster and easier. Whenever I think of writing with my crippled arthritic hands, I bless my computer. Whenever I remember the ubiquitous, “wonderful” (then) but obsolete typewriters, I want to kiss my computer and my laptop. You can erase and redo and rewrite at the speed of light with computers.

But my favorite thing to do with a computer is something I’ve been

The page in the parish record showing my great-great-great
grandmother's christening in Denmark

doing for over sixty years—genealogy research and family history. To be able to research original parish records in Danish on the internet with a computer is like flying to that country in a second. To look through the original ancient parish records is to see your ancestors’ lives come alive in front of you. No microfilm, or microfiche to tediously scroll through hoping not to get dizzy; because with the computer, the records are indexed.

The same grandmother's grave and headstone in
St. Joseph's Cemetery, Logandale, Clark
County, Nevada in the Great Muddy

You want to know about your great-great-great grandmother Ingeborg Christina Jespersdatter born in Vester-Marie, on the Island of Bornholm, Denmark in 1802, you put her name in the search box, and within minutes you are looking at the record of her birth, baptism, confirmation, vaccination, engagement and marriage in the parish record. It shows when her first husband died and she married again, was baptized into the Mormon Church and immigrated to Utah and died in Nevada. It is truly like going back in time and meeting your ancestors.

My dad used a computer until he died—even if it was just playing Solitaire. I guess I will be playing with technology (but NOT solitaire) until I am too old to use my hands—but by then it will be voice-activated software like “Dragon” software that decodes your voice and translates it into type. But technology makes life fun. At least it will keep my mind active and I can keep up with my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren. 

Everyone Has a Role In Family History

My Grandmother Hansen infected me with “genealogy fever” when I was 12-years-old and was visiting her home in Monroe, Utah for a week. She showed me all the genealogy she had worked on, and showed me how to make my own large genealogy chart, telling me their stories as we worked. She gave me copies of their histories, on mimeographed paper.

When I went home, I kept my histories and my large genealogy chart and my life-long love affair with family history had begun. When my grandmother’s health began to fail, she moved in with my Aunt only a few blocks from our house. I now had two “collaborators” to assist me with my genealogy. I went with them to family reunions where I got more information, met more relatives and learned more about genealogy and family history. My Grandmother Hansen died when I was 15-years-old, but I never recovered from “genealogy fever.”

When we finally retired to Centerville in 1990, I worked full time for 19 years so I didn’t have much time to do anything about my family histories. However I kept collecting information. My cousin and I went to Monroe, Utah to get some histories from my great-aunt Agnes, where I was able to take a photo of a picture one of my ancestors had painted. My cousin and I shared what information we had and I kept going to my Grandmother Hansen’s Millers’ family reunion.

After I finally retired from work, I joined the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (DUP), and I decided to write the biographies of some of my ancestors. I was grateful for all the histories I had collected throughout the years—even the mimeographed pages that were now so old that they were hard to read. I checked with DUP to see which of my ancestors did not have biographies in the DUP archives. I found one—my great- grandfather, Peter Hansen. I combined the information I had collected, being careful to cite where I got the information (I had obtained five biographies, including a short autobiography he’d written). 

Then I went to http://history.lds.org/overlandtravels/. You can put in an ancestor’s first and last name, birth and death year and it will pull up which ship and wagon train they came across in if they came between 1847 and 1868. I discovered Peter Hansen, his sister, mother, and stepfather had come to Utah in one of the first groups of Scandinavians 1853. It also had journal accounts of others in the same wagon train so you could read what happened along the way. I was touched when I read the death of Peter Hansen’s stepfather in the journal of another pioneer: “Sunday, July 24. A quarter of a mile’s travel brought us to plenty of water. This morning Hans Andersen Pill passed away.”

 This same ancestor served in the Utah Blackhawk War so I was able to go to the Utah State Archives and get copies of his service in that war—when he enlisted, when he left and where he served. I discovered the letters he wrote in the 1900s trying to get a pension for his service in that war; however he couldn’t prove he was the same person who enlisted as Peter Allen (he was using his second stepfather’s last name) but was released as Peter Hansen (his real name). Even though he received a medal for serving in the war, he couldn’t get the Federal Government to acknowledge he’d served in the war. 

I was touched in researching another ancestor, my Grandmother Hansen’s mother’s father Henry Bucholdt Christensen. Grandmother’s mother had died bearing her 10^th child and her father had married two other times. He had three children with his third wife, but none of Grandmother’s family knew much of his second family and almost nothing about Grandfather Christensen. However my great-aunt Agnes wrote, “I’ve never heard very much about my great-grandfather. .  and wanted to know more about this grandfather . . . [I] called grandfather’s daughter Katherine . . .  and will now proceed to write his history as I understand it.”  It was this history, by Agnes, that was the most complete history of him that I found. I know without it, we wouldn’t have known nearly as much about him.

My saving all those biographies throughout the years--including those old mimeographed ones I got from my grandmother—were the basis for my biographies. I couldn’t have written the biographies without them. 

I turned in my history of Niels Peter Hansen to the DUP last year. I was touched recently when I saw it on Family Search submitted by someone I didn’t know. I was ashamed to think I hadn’t even thought to put it on Family Search. So I put my recently completed Henry Bocholtz Christensen’s biography on Family Search so others could learn about him.

There are many ways you can help in Family History: You can collect biographies and information (like I did for over 60 years); you can actually interview and write the histories (like my great-aunt Agnes), you can share histories; you can help others learn how to research and write histories; you can collaborate with others, whether it is family, DUP and or at reunions. You can encourage children, youth and the younger generation as my grandmother did. Everyone can share what they have in Family Search. Everyone has a role in family history.

Sharing My Love of Genealogy

Grandmother Hansen

When I was 13 years old, I went to Monroe, Utah to spend a couple of weeks in the summer with my paternal grandmother Hansen. As far as I know, I was the only one of her grandchildren to be chosen for such a visit, but I’ve always been so grateful for the opportunity that I had.

I remember getting up early in the morning to pick raspberries from her abundant raspberry patch; we worked in her flower garden with peonies and roses; we walked downtown; she taught me to sew and made me a chartreus green blouse with a Vogue pattern; but most importantly she taught me to love genealogy.

I can remember making me own large genealogy chart and grandmother telling me about each generation and the people. I imagined that the British ancestors were pirates; that the Danish ancestors were Vikings, or maybe they lived in the two castles that our family lived near—Elsinor Castle (Hamlet’s Castle), and Fredericksburg Castle. Years later when my older brother went to Denmark on his mission, he wrote back if our ancestors were ever at the castles, they were the servants—we had no connection to royalty. And, we had no connection to English pirates—our ancestors were hard-working Manchester weavers, dyers, and other peons of the textile manufacturers.

My Grandmother Hansen began my love affair with genealogy. I have always loved history and have been fascinated with the people behind the stories. With genealogy, I get to discover the people behind the names and facts. Each detail that I located in the dry documents fleshed out the stories of these people that I grew to love. When I viewed the marriage ban of Joseph Heaton and Maria Consterdine in Oldham, Lancashire, England in 1838, it shows that neither of them could sign their own name—but had an “X” and the comment, “his/her mark.” Yet, records of my Danish ancestor, Hans Peter Hansen Miller, a contemporary of Heaton, read Danish fluently as well as English and was the translator for their ship coming to America. I was confused by this, until while researching Bornholm, Denmark, the small island Miller came from, it said that Bornholm had the best educational system in all of Denmark, and put a great emphasis on educating every student—from 1400 onward. It is from my Miller ancestor that I read about the history of Danish/Swedish wars in a way that I’ll never forget.

My English ancestors all lived in a small area of townships in a six mile radius— Ashton-Under Lyne, Blackley, Chadderton, Newton Heath, Oldham, and the chapels they were baptized, married, and buried in were ), St. Michael’s (Ashton-Under Lyne), St. Peter’s (Blackley),  St. Matthew’s (Chadderton), All Saints (Newton Heath), St. Mary’s (Oldham).  If they weren’t found in those towns (usually one family would stay in that one township) I could be pretty sure they were not my family. 

The small townships near Manchester where my ancestors lived

My sister Ann and I share our love for genealogy, and we’ve worked together to do our work. Years ago I went down to Monroe to get a box full of Grandmother Hansen’s records from a Great Aunt, organized them, and when I was working full time and couldn’t do the work on them, I passed on the papers to Ann, who verified, researched and worked on them for years. Now Ann is working, and I’m working on the genealogy and sharing my discoveries with Ann. She documented all the farms on Bornholm where our ancestors lived, and put other things together. Now I work with Ancestry.com and online records (all the Danish parish records are on line), since I have better access than she does.

 

Bornholm, the tiny island where two separate families of my ancestral lines are from is a unique place. Although it is Danish, it is East of Sweden. It is now a summer resort. During the cold war, when Denmark was a NATO country, no NATO forces could be on Bornholm, because it was too close to Eastern Europe and Poland. Certain rights are given to Bornholm citizens that are not given to other Danish citizens. During the 1700, 1800, 1900s, all Danish males had to be on a draft list, and tracked wherever they lived so they could be conscripted into the army if necessary. This is a treasure for genealogists because they can locate males because of these army rolls, even if the men were not called up for war. However, Bornholm men were exempt from this rule. So if you are researching in Bornholm, you have a handicap. Because it is in the middle of the Baltic and has more visitors from other parts of Europe, it is more cosmopolitan than other parts of Denmark. 

Bornholm Island

Facebook Family History Groups

 One fun way to share pictures and histories is through FACEBOOK  groups. You can make a Family History group (see left side of FACEBOOK), share it with cousins, etc., then post pictures, histories, and encourage them to do the same and you can get lots more stories and pictures from everyone else.

Though my grandmother has been dead for 53 years, the love for genealogy that she sparked in me has only grown through the years! I hope I can share that love with my own children. 

I like to make family histories of my ancestors

I love to collect the family histories of my ancestors and try to make them available to other members of my family also. Where I once loved to imagine their lives, I now am obsessed with accuracy; I want to make sure every fact of their histories is correct! I think I learned this from the seven years I worked for the editorial offices of the Liahona magazine. Every fact was checked and rechecked. Even though the family histories are not to be published, I want them to be just as accurate.