Description
This is the Spot of Ground
Eric Gautesson Midtboen Hogan was born in Norway in 1802. In 1829, he married Helga. One day, Eric overheard some men in his village talking about the wonders and opportunities of America: abundant land to farm, religious freedom, etc.
Eric was greatly impressed with these tales and made up his mind that he would go to America as soon as he could dispose of his property and make ready. He was eager to tell his wife and thought she would approve of the change. But to the contrary. Helga was not at all pleased with the thought and did not take him seriously. Eric was determined to go. Helga and her people were determined that he shouldn’t. Finally, Eric said:
“Well, I’m going. We will separate. I will take two of the children, you may take two, and we will cast lots for the fifth one.”
Well, that proposal was too much for Helga and her reply was: “Where you go, I will go too.”
After much sorrow and difficulty, they arrived in America and eventually they settled in Illinois, until they could save money. Then they moved on to Lee County, Iowa, which is just ten miles west of Nauvoo. It was here that Helga and Eric first heard of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
They didn’t come to America for the gospel. They came to America for the land of opportunity. They were converted, and in 1848, along with the Saints, Eric and Helga set out for the Rocky Mountains.
Well, somewhere in that journey, Helga became very ill. The doctor declared she wasn’t going to live until daybreak. Somewhere, in the stupor of illness, Helga heard that. It made her very sorrowful to think of leaving her large family.
Later, during that same night, Helga experienced a very vivid dream. She saw three boys standing by her bedside. She saw a valley and a road running by some springs, and also a tract of land that she wasn’t familiar with. The next morning, Helga was very much improved, and she said to those around her:
“Last night, one of you said I should not live to see this day, but I shall go to the valley in the mountains, and I will yet have three more sons.”
She recovered. Later on the journey, while camped on the Sweetwater river in Wyoming, one of Eric’s oxen took sick and died. That’s a dangerous situation for the pioneers. They depended on those animals to move them along. Eric and Helga’s load was too heavy for the remaining oxen to pull.
As Eric pondered on the matter, a lone cow wandered into camp. There was no owner, nobody knew the animal. So, Eric yoked her up and she pulled the load the rest of the way into the Salt Lake Valley. Shortly after they arrived, they found the owner. She was owned by one Levi Steward who had come along before them and had lost her out on the trail. He’d had to move on without her. Eric returned the cow to her owner.
They arrived at the mouth of Emigration Canyon on September 22, 1848. On beholding the Salt Lake valley, Helga said: “This is the valley I saw in my dream.”
The next morning, Eric rode north, out of Salt Lake into what is known today as South Bountiful or Woods Cross. He found a spot that had a spring that he really liked. He went back to Helga, loaded her up, and came up the road. As they drove along, Helga recognized the road and the springs as the very ones she had seen in her dream.
Upon arriving at the location of their would-be farm, without any designation that this was it by her husband, Helga exclaimed: “This is the spot of ground I saw in my dream”.
By 1852, all of those sons promised to Eric and Helga had joined the family. The dream in every particular stood fulfilled.
Eric and Helga Hogan would live out their days in South Bountiful as faithful farmers. Eric died in South Bountiful, Woods Cross, June 22, 1876, at the age of 74. And 8 years later, at the age of 75, Helga joined him.
Something Eric said back in Norway stands out to me. When others opposed him about the idea of going to America, he had said: “if it does me no good at all,[to go to America] it will be better for my children.”
There’s no way Eric could have known then how much better it would be for him and his numerable posterity now in the faith.
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