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Show and put in a room without windows and with only a straw tick on the floor for a bed. The matron in charge was ill-tempered, but one day she allowed two missionaries to see Wilhelmina. They had known her family and told her true story to the police. When being released to their care she was overjoyed to have her own clothes and her hymn book restored to her. During all of that delay Marie had been compelled to leave without her ward. However, the elders knew the Lars Madsen family was preparing to go to the United States so they placed the little girl in their charge- to be taken to her parents. Lars was sixty-one years of age at the time, and Bodil, his wife, was forty-eight. Their youngest son, eight-year- old Christian, was with them. Mads, the oldest son, remained in Denmark to complete the sale of the farm. Their five other children had gone ahead the previous year (1855) and would await their parents and young brother in Salt Lake (told in preceding account of Niels Peter Madsen). Wilhelmina and her guardians sailed from Liverpool on 4 May 1856, soon after she became nine years of age. There was much illness among the emigrants and there were several deaths, births, and marriages during the voyage. Almost six weeks later, the ship Thornton arrived in New York (14 June 1856). The Madsens and Wilhelmina were taken in a tugboat to Castle Gardens. Three days later the weary travelers left New York by rail for Dunkirk, New York, then went on in a cattle car to Iowa City, Iowa, via Chicago. They remained in 15 |