Untitled Document

Away back in 1848, Mr. and Mrs. Pollock, of New York , made the acquaintance of some of the leaders in the Swedish Church that was founded by " Prophet " Eric Jansen,from which came the Bishop Hill Colony.Pollock and wife were refined and educated people and had been accustomed to the comforts andsocial life of what may be termed the well-to-do people ple of New York . Mrs. Pollock was, it seems, of a strong religious turn of mind, and she listened to the new faith, shed tears over the persecution of Jansen and Olsen in Sweden ; and the cruel story made her a believer, and not only aroused her deep sympathy for the cause, but awoke within her a religious enthusiasm that was strong and unconquerable.

She induced her husband to come West, and they located among the Swedes of Bishop Hill Colony. Mr. Pollock was a man of fine accomplishments and he opened a school for the Colony, and taught school and suffered and died. Mrs. Pollock then took up the work where her husband had stopped and for some time was the school teacher of the Swedes. She married one of the wealthiest men and leaders in the Colony, named Gabrielson. This man had brought a considerable fortune to this country, and had purchased vast bodies of the Colonists' lands and had in many ways advanced about all his fortune in behalf of his poorer Church friends.

Gabrielson died in a few years after his marriage and the Church leaders wound up the estate, and the widow and child in some way came out of the ordeal penniless. But her devotion to her Church and its members remained unshaken. In a few years she was married to Eric Jansen, the " Prophet " and head of the Church, and here were new fields of usefulness opened to her to minister to the Church and the Colonists.

In 1850" Prophet " Jansen was murdered in the town of Cambridge, and again this good woman of Christian charity was a widow and penniless. Old age and infirmities were coming swiftly upon her ; her heroic struggles grew more and more feeble and for the past six or eight years she has been an inmate of the county poor-house.

This simple and brief statement is one of the most pathetic stories we remember ever to have met in real, everyday Christian life. When she cast her fortunes, her life, her everything with the Church and Colony, the people were in poverty, ignorance, squalor and want. Her money, life, work and suffering with these people, instructing them, guiding them and more than dividing with them, her presence among them was truly that of a ministering angel. These good, Christian people are now rich in this world's goods; their broad and fertile acres smile their blessings upon them and theirs, and they may well and fervently thank God for his loving beneficence through this devoted and self-sacrificing woman.

** Anna Sofia died in 1888 and is buried beside her husband Eric Janson at Bishop Hill.

Illinois Ancestors