Karen Jensen

Karen Jensen immigrated to America aboard the ship “Emerald Isle.” (There were no records of her parents or where she immigrated from.) Once in America, joined the Fred C. Anderson Company with a desire to trek to the Great Salt Lake Valley with other members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Exhausting travel, disease, injury, lack of food and medicine, prematurity, and extreme weather were some of the greatest threats to pioneers. According to Fred C. Anderson Company records: “Since leaving Chicago, three deaths have occurred, namely: Karen Jensen, between Laramie and Benton, on the 13th inst., at which last named place she was buried.”

Karen may have been in the company of another young girl near the same age, by the name of Margaret Jensen, who died four days before Karen did. She was laid to rest somewhere along the railroad in Wyoming.