Bernard Niels Christensen

Bernard Niels Christensen, our grandfather, is another of those people that “I have loved long since, and lost a while”.

Maud’s Life History will be more meaningful if we share a bit of Bernard’s beginnings.

Bernard’s mother died in 1894 when he was 17. As the oldest son in a family of seven--with three children younger than 12--he felt a large responsibility. He worked summers at Saltair--something of an “amusement park” in its day.

Two years later more sadness came. His Danish grandmother, Ellen Poulsdatter Christensen, died.

“By the time his grandmother had died, Bernard had grown to be six feet in height. He told his father that he was going to get a job at the sugar factory in Lehi. Niels said, ‘Oh you can’t get a job, they are not even hiring married men.’ Bernard was a man of no small determination. For the next seventeen days, he was at the factory twice each day. On the morning of the seventeenth day, someone was ill and Bernard was hired.

For more on Bernard, click here.