001-002-Parents.mp3

My father was John Malmstrom son of Jacob Malmstrom and my mother was Annie C. Johnson. She was a convert from Sweden. She immigrated here in 1882. My father came across the plains in 1859 and arrived in Salt Lake with his father. My father was only 6 years old when he came across the plains with his father, Jacob Malmstrom and they arrived in Salt Lake City on September 15, 1859. After they arrived in Salt Lake they went out to Murray about where the Murray laundry stands at the present time. Well, just south across the creek from the laundry there was a dobey hill or clay hill that is on what is now on State street. In those days there was no lumber, no brick or any thing else. They just had to make a dug-out temporarily and the creek there furnished them with culinary water and water for the livestock. There was grass growing along the creek so the oxen could get feed and later on they moved over on to Midvale on North Main on the west side of the street . There were clay banks there they could use for dugouts and there was a spring, natural spring, where they could get their culinary water and livestock could feed down on the bottoms along the river. So, they could get milk from their cows and make butter and they could exist there up where Midvale now is. All there was, was sagebrush. There was no water.

Well, I should say there were three families, three Scandinavian families that settled down there on the east of John Malmstrom’s. 

There was the Hogason family and on the southwest from there was Alec Dahle, Scandinavian families. They were the early settlers of Midvale. The wives of all three of these men were Swedish. So it made it pretty good. They could talk to each other. By the way, this Hogason, he was Norwegian and Alexander Dahle was Norwegian and of course my grandfather Jacob Malmstrom was from Sweden. It made it better where there were three Scandinavian ladies, at least, that could be company and they could understand each other.

So, that is where they first settled. Then of course later on, my grandfather was a blacksmith from the old country, and he was reckoned as well to do at that time and had quite a number of men working for him. He was what they called “soockinsmade”. that would be like a county black smith. He had the money when he came so he could buy his own oxen and wagons and come across the plains. But as time went on they built plows and used the oxen and they plowed ditches from the Little Cottonwood Creek and brought water into Midvale.

In 1873 the railroad went from going from where Midvale now is to Bingham and they built one going over to Wasatch. 7800 south followed along the Railroad, so it isn’t on a section line as it should be. That accounts for the angle being out of line with the sections which were later surveyed. After they got this irrigation water brought down, then they could clear the ground of sagebrush and start building homes. My grandfather, he bought land about a block west of State Street extending down well, ( I wish I could give the numbers telling how far it would go) and probably a forty acre piece there he had. Later on, the Southern Utah Railroad was built and it cut through his property and my father John Malmstrom bought 11 acres from his father and that is where he built the home over on what is now 7800 south or where the Safeway store is now located.