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Show 83rd Birthday of One of Ml. Pleasant's First Pioneers Being Observed on 23rd Friends and relatives from Mt. Pleasant and Spring City will gather ga-ther tomorrow at the home cf Mrs. Mary Beck to honor her on her 83rd birthday anniversary. Mrs. Beck is one of this city's few re maining early Pioneers. She was born in Jylland, Denmark, Den-mark, June 23, 1851, the daughter of Nieh and Kirsten Marie Peterson Peter-son Olsen. At the age of six, she and three brothers were brought by their mother to America as newly new-ly converted members of the Latter Lat-ter Day Saints church. In making the trek across the Plains Mary suffered a broken leg when she fell from a wagon and wa-, forced to continue the Journey from Omaha to Utah lying in a rough wagon box bed. Two brothers, Peter and Joseph, were buried at Omaha while the caravan was resting there. After living briefly in Spanish Fork and Ephraim, the mother and her two remaining children settled set-tled at Ft. Hamilton (Mt. Pleasant) with the original Pioneers of '59. The worncut mother died at 35 and was the first adult person to be buried In the local cemetery. Mary and her brother were separated, separat-ed, never to see each other again for 31 years. In 1866, when a girl of only 16, Mary became the bride of Hans C. H. Beck, in the Salt Lake Endowment En-dowment house. Mr. Beck built the first house in Mt. Plea:ant outside the fort, a building made of adobes hem ade himself. In 1872 they moved to Chester, where he erected the first house ol that community. He died there April 12, 1899. After his death, sht returned to Mt. Pleasant, where she has ra ided subsequently. T. day. the mother of eight children, chil-dren, grandmother of thirty-seven, and great grandmother of twenty-seven, twenty-seven, Mrs. Beck's memory Is becoming be-coming dimmer, but she has net forgotten the days when as a little girl with a rag doll for a companion compan-ion she herded cows on "Hoodoo Hill" south of town and was warned warn-ed by friendly Indian squaws to hurry home so the Indian "bad men" would not molest her. She lives with her daughter, Mis. Cecile Bittle. Also surviving are these sons and daughters: C. H. Beck, Blackfoot, Ida.; Mrs. Irene Jordan and Mrs. Olivia Rinehart of Enterprise, Ore.; Herman Beck and Mrs. L. W. Aldrich, Mt. Pleasant, |
