Tora Nielsen

Biography

Tora Nielsen Jacobsen Starkie's family joined the church in Denmark when she was just a toddler. They were persecuted and her siblings were bullied at school. Her father worked in flax, made baskets, and was a carpenter but couldn’t sell his goods because the family was shunned by the Lutheran community. When immigrating to the US to join Zion, the family had to choose which of their children to leave behind because they didn’t have enough money to take everyone. She immigrated to the US with her family in 1866, when she was four years old. Her family moved around Utah when they immigrated, often living in dugouts.

On January 12 1882 (when she was 19) she married Christian Jacobsen (a Norwegian immigrant). They had two children, but he died of typhoid in 1885. She married Edward J. Starkie (an English immigrant) in 1886. He died in 1933 of cancer. In the autobiography of her second husband, he writes that they were both in similar situations, being widowed and desolate. He writes that before he met Tora he was in the darkest time of his life, but “the Lord opened the way for [him] again” when he met her. They married and moved to the Ashley Valley. He writes that they “pioneered their way” there, as there wasn’t a road to get to where they were going. When they got there they “found a hard job on our hands with nothing… no money in the country.” He worked on the canal and they camped and “lived very poor.” Their ponies lived on another farm “on what could be scrapped together”They lived in a dugout for two years together before their log house was ready. Tragedy continually struck her but she stayed strong in her faith. In a single week in 1893 her family lost a 17 year old daughter who had just married, a 3-week old baby and a little boy.

All in all she had 12 children. From newspapers you can see she was highly respected in her community as she was often honored in her old age as the last living pioneer. However she could often not make those commemorations because she was bedridden.