On Sunday, August 2, 1959, the obituary column of the Idaho Sunday Journal in Pocatello opened with John Christian Andersen, whom it called a "pioneer settler of Arbon Valley." The 82-year-old had died in the early hours of the previous day, Saturday, August 1, while staying with a daughter in Clifton, Franklin County. The Logan Herald Journal, printed in the Cache Valley where he was born, carried its own notice the same day. With the family's own account, the two papers outline a life that ran from a homestead at the head of Bannock Creek to a retirement in Pocatello.
From Mendon to Bannock Creek
John was born at Mendon, Utah, on May 22, 1877, a son of Andrew and Sophia Larsen Andersen. The Pocatello paper printed the year as 1874, but the Logan papers of 1956 and 1959 give 1877, and his marriage licence of 1906 gave his age as 29. Both obituaries give his age at homesteading as 16. The family's account on this site tells it more fully: he came with his father and his older brother Otto in 1892, came back in 1893, and helped Otto with his homestead before he was old enough to file for himself. The brothers settled on either side of the creek near its head. His own homestead entry dates from 1901.
On March 7, 1906, he married DeSena Sorensen of Smithfield in the Logan temple. They began in a tent and then a one-room log cabin, and raised their family on the farm. They had seven children. One of them, Alane, died at six in August 1921 after an operation for appendicitis.
The ward, the schools and the roads
The Pocatello obituary adds something the family page does not record: his public service. By its account he once led the Arbon Ward Sunday School as superintendent, and he also took a turn on a school board and on the board of a highway district. It gives no years and does not say which school district or which highway district. The Logan paper speaks only in general terms of his part in church and civic life. No other paper read for this post names him in those offices, so this obituary is the only record of them found so far.
The Logan obituary adds that he spent his winters in American Falls from 1935 to 1942. The site's research notes say this was so the younger children could attend high school. John and DeSena gave up farming and moved to Pocatello in 1946, the year a 1956 Logan notice gives and the one the Pocatello obituary points to when it counts thirteen years since his retirement. The Logan obituary, as its text reads, gives 1940 instead. According to the family page, their son Mark took over the farm.
The last years
For Saturday, March 10, 1956, the couple planned an open house to mark their golden wedding, in the Pocatello Ninth Ward chapel at Hawthorne and Quinn. The Logan notice placed him among Arbon's earliest settlers and said he had done well at dry farming and ranching. It said six of their seven children were living, with 22 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren, and that the couple asked for no gifts.
DeSena died on Friday, April 24, 1959, at 75, at the home of a daughter in Clifton. John went to live there and died a little over three months later. The daughter was almost certainly Ada, Mrs. Charles Bailey, the only daughter either obituary places at Clifton. He was buried in the Mendon cemetery, where DeSena had been laid to rest that spring.
The two August notices differ on a few points. The Pocatello paper set the funeral for Wednesday, August 5, and the Logan paper for Tuesday, August 4; both put it at 11 a.m. with Bishop Verl G. King in charge. The Pocatello paper counted three surviving brothers and a sister. The Logan paper named two brothers, Otto of Poplar, Montana, and George L. of Los Angeles, and a sister, Annie Pett of Parma, Idaho.
On this site: John C. and DeSena Andersen, the family's own account of their homestead years; Andrew "Otto" Andersen; the Andersen family overview; Hazel and Glenn Andersen in the war years; Sophia Andersen of Mendon, his mother; and the valley tragedies, which include the loss of Alane in 1921.
The story as reported
Idaho Sunday Journal, August 2, 1959, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
Arbon Valley lost one of its earliest homesteaders on Saturday, August 1, 1959, when John Christian Andersen died at 82. It happened early that morning in Clifton, at the home of the daughter he had moved in with after his wife died in April.
The notice gave as much space to his service as to his farming. In his Arbon years the ward had put him in charge of its Sunday School, and outside the church he took a turn on a school board and on the board of a highway district, though the paper identified neither one. At the end he was a high priest, enrolled in the quorum of the West Pocatello Stake.
The paper's account of his early life began in Mendon, Utah, with his parents given only as Mr. and Mrs. Andrew Anderson and his birth date printed as May 22, 1874. By its reckoning he was already an Arbon Valley homesteader at 16, and he stayed on as a dry farmer until retiring some 13 years before the notice ran. March 7, 1906, was the day De Sena Sorensen became his wife, in a ceremony at the LDS temple in Logan.
Of his children, six were still living: four sons, Willard J. of Pocatello, Andrew Mark of Arimo, Glenn C. of Smithfield, Utah, and Norman D. of Oakland, California, and two daughters, Mrs. Charles Bailey of Clifton and Mrs. Rex Terry of Las Vegas, Nevada. The paper counted 28 grandchildren and 17 great-grandchildren, along with three brothers and a sister.
The Wednesday funeral was called for 11 a.m. at the chapel of Pocatello's Ninth and Eighteenth LDS wards, under the direction of Bishop Verl G. King. On Monday evening, from 7 to 9, the family would be at the Weiser & Son Mortuary to greet friends. He was to be buried at Mendon.
The paper spelled the family name Anderson in the text and Andersen in the headline, and printed Andrew Mark's middle name as Mack.