Excerpts from the autobiography of Eva Ipsen Davis, their granddaughter

My mother was born on Jan. 31, 1875 in Plain City, Utah to Christopher Olsen Folkman and Maximiliana Maria Olivia Lingvall.  She was the fourth daughter born into a family of 7 children; six girls and one boy:  Elea Maria, Caroline Emelia, Christiana Catharine, Elizabeth Maximiliana, Joseph Maximilian, Lewis Olsen and Louisa Frederica.  Joseph and Lewis were twins, but Lewis died the same day he was born and Louisa Frederica died when she was 9 years old.

Mother often described her mother and talked about her skills and abilities.  She described her mother as a beautiful, tall, well-built woman of striking appearance, with blue eyes, dark brown hair and very fair skin.  She was about 5' 6" tall.  Her Swedish tongue was fluent, but she talked with a broken English accent.  She was very refined, having worked in the homes of royalty in Sweden, thus acquiring a taste for the fine and beautiful.

She was born the 5th of Dec., 1842 in Gotland, Sweden, the daughter of Lars Fredrick Christianson Lindvall and Annie Gertrud Kulin.  (Mother always called it Lingvall, but most of the genealogical records have it as Lindvall.)  She was converted and baptized a member of the L.D.S. Church the 11th of June, 1864, in Gotland, Sweden.  She was then 22 years old.  Her parents did not embrace the gospel and they died not long after she left for Utah, so they never saw one another again.  She sailed to America on the ship "John Bright" with other Scandinavian converts.  She walked across the plains and baked bread for the company of saints to pay for her food.

When she arrived in Plain City she had no place to go, not relatives or friends, so Brother and Sister Folkman invited her to come and live with them.  She went there the 24th of August, 1868 and 8 months later she was married in polygamy to Christopher Olsen Folkman in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.  She wanted to be married into polygamy even though Christopher was nearly twice her age.

Mother described her as an immaculate housekeeper, an excellent cook and a good mother.  She loved her children and taught them the gospel.  She was a stern disciplinarian, but no sacrifice for her children or the gospel was too great for her to make.  As she lived in polygamy, it was necessary for her to labor for the support of her children.  Food necessities were provided from her garden, strawberry patch and fruit trees.  Farm animals provided meat, milk and eggs.  Most women worked hard in those days.  Although she had a busy life, she never neglected the beautiful.  Her hobby was her flower garden and I have been told that it was something to remember.  At one time she had over a thousand varieties.  Some of those bulbs she brought with her from Sweden.

My Grandmother Folkman died on Dec. 24, 1899 of peritonitis.  She was 57 years old…I never knew…grandmother, but I remember Grandfather.  I was about six years old when Mother took me to see him in Far West.  He was in his 80's and very well preserved.  He sat in a rocking chair by the window reading a book.  The sunlight fell across his hair.  It looked a light sandy color.  Of course that could be the effect of the sun and the grey, but he wasn't bald.  His hair was not entirely grey and his eyes were very good.  He was a short man, just over 5' 5", I believe, but he had massive shoulders and gave no impression of smallness.  His face had the look of sternness about it, because of the life of hardship that he had lived, but also, a look of great tenderness.

Grandfather Folkman spent 12 years serving in the Scandinavian Mission.  He and his brothers founded Plain City.  There never was a time when he was not active in the Church in some leadership capacity.  He was among the first to accept the gospel in Bornholm, Denmark along with many of his family and relatives.  Consequently, they endured a great deal of violence and sorrow from their persecutors.  Mother said that he only missed one General Conference in Salt Lake and that was the one when President Brigham Young called him on his second Scandinavian mission.

He was born Christopher Olsen Folkmann on the 8th of Feb., 1827, in Bornholm, Denmark, a son of Jorgen Christofferson and Gjertrud Kristine Folkmann.  He was the 5th of 7 children.  His parents were members of the Lutheran Church, were God-fearing people and gave their children good religious training and showed them a good Christian example.  In his childhood Christopher was, by nature, religiously inclined and read the Bible with great interest.  He also received a good common education in the public schools of Bornholm, even though the schools were in a primitive state of development.  He learned well his father's blacksmith trade and when he went to Utah he made the first flat iron in Weber County in his blacksmith shop.

…Mother tells of Eliza R. Snow coming to Plain City to organize the Primary Association.  She asked all of the children to promise never to taste tea or coffee.  That was when Mother was 6 years old.  She kept that promise to the end of her life.  When she told her father about this he took the great coffee pot that always simmered on the back of the stove and threw it out.  That was the last time they ever had coffee in their home.

The cobbler would come once a year and live in their home until he had finished making a supply of shoes for the family for the year.  Each girl got one linsey-woolsey dress each fall.  They were worn on Sundays and special occasions, with cotton dresses for every other day.  The linsey-woolsey dresses were hand made from the sheep to the stitching, but the cotton material was purchased by the bolt from Ogden.  There were linsey petticoats too, and her mother would sew strips of white cloth on the bottom of the petticoats so only white would show if they turned too fast.  She would polish the shoes and wash the white, homemade woolen stockings which they wore over their colored stockings on Sunday.  Many times she was up most of Saturday night getting everything ready for a serene and worshipful Sunday.

Mother remembers, when she was 8 years old, that her father was arrested for practicing polygamy.  She went to court with her mother.  Her father had to pay a $200 fine.  Soon after that, he left for his 3rd Scandinavian mission.  While the father was gone their brother Orson did the farming and the younger children did the janitor work at the school to pay for their tuition.