Family history, Jensen-Aaen

Christen Jensen-Aaen and Karen Marie Nielsen Jensen-Aaen biography

[as told by Evelyn Olga Phippen May to Alice Mary Moreland May, 1994;

submitted to and accepted by the Danish Immigrant Museum in Elk Horn, Iowa]

            Karen Marie Nielsen and Christen Jensen were united in marriage on November 7, 1878, in Aalborg, Denmark.

            Five of their children -- James, Nels, Johanne, Marius and Dagmar -- were born in Denmark. Christen didn’t want his sons to have to go into the compulsory army of Denmark, so he thought the best place for all was in America.

            The family arrived in America after two weeks on the Atlantic Ocean, traveling on a freighter in conditions worse than modern people would provide for cattle. They took the name Jensen-Aaen to distinguish themselves from all the other Jensens that were coming into this country at that time.

            On June 5, 1890, they reached Shelby County. They joined Karen’s brother, Peter Christian Nelsen (perhaps Nielsen?), who had moved to America in 1882, living in Avoca and Council Bluffs, working as a railroad section hand. (When his wife died in 1918, he moved to Exira. He was known as “Uncle” to everyone in Exira -- this is even on his tombstone.)

            The Jensen-Aaen family settled for four years in this Shelby County area. Lena and Otto were born at this location.

            But in about 1895, they moved to Texas, where Valborg (“Betty”) was born. They settled in a tiny town called Bonny (near Dayton), which has since disappeared and is now part of Houston. They had a very hard life there, hungry and coping with heat and humidity, living in an insect- and snake-infested shack.

            Christen hunted alligators with his gun. Everyone in the family who could helped pick cotton. After suffering enough hardships and worrying about the danger of malaria, in 1899 they moved back to Shelby County, where Olga was born. After a move to the Exira area in Audubon County, Louise was born.

            When Louise was about 4 years old -- in 1907 -- the family moved to Withee, Wisconsin (about 45 miles east of Chippewa Falls, in Clark County).

            Two children born there died in infancy. The family bought 40 acres a half mile west and a half mile south of Withee. They kept Holstein dairy cattle and Karen churned butter for people in Withee. Karen also had sewing customers and spun wool into yarn.

            About 1913, Christen, being a rover, spent a week or two in Williamsburg, Virginia, to look things over with the idea of moving there. He loved horses and thought that Virginia was horse country. But he received no moral support from the family, so he gave up the idea.

            In 1918, the Jensen-Aaens moved back to Exira. Karen loved the Bible and, in the last 20 or so years of her life, began systematically studying it in order to share her found truths.

            Karen died in 1930 and Christen in 1936 (after being cared for a number of years by his daughter, Dagmar Phippen).