Jens Michael Nielsen

Jens Michael Nielsen is the last of seven children born to Jens Michael Nielsen and Maria Larsdotter or Anderson. After the Nielsen family immigrated from Denmark to America, they traveled to Nebraska and joined the Isaac A. Canfield Company to journey to the Salt Lake Valley. With other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the company left Florence, Nebraska on July 27, 1864.

Exhaustive travel conditions, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. A week into their travels, 2-year-old Jens Michael passed away from cholera (a bacterial disease caused from contaminated water). He is buried in Nebraska on the Mormon Trail.