This unusual photograph of a feminine ritual shows Anna Christenson combing her sister Hannah's hair. Courtesy of Alice Avis.
Childhood in Gunnison, Utah BY W I L L I A M G. H A R T L E Y
I N 1863 IN MORMON U T A H , J O H N CHRISTENSON married a second wife. He was thirty-five, his first wife, Christena, twenty-seven, and his second wife, J o h a n n a , twenty-three. T h e three were LDS convert-immigrants from Sweden. In 1865 they moved to Gunnison, Utah, a Mormon village fifteen miles southwest of Manti, where they lived the rest of their lives and raised eight children — three were Christena's and five Johanna's. By grouping together the growing-up experiences of the eight children, the resulting group Mr. Hartley is research historian, Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History, Brigham Young University. A version of this paper was read at the May 1982 meeting of the Mormon History Association and represents an adaptation of four chapters of the author's Kindred Saints: The Mormon Immigrant Heritage of Alvin and Kathryne Christenson, published in 1982.
