[In Sweden, there is an umlaut over the first A making the name sound like HOE-Kahn. When he came to America everyone pronounced it like Hogan so it gradually became the accepted sound and spelling.]
Hakan was born in Tarstad Tirup,Sweden in1826. He was the first child of his parents and their home was an 8’ X 10’ hut with a thatched roof and a dirt floor. When Hakan was just 8 years old and there were 4 children, his father told him he would have to go out to work and take care of himself because there were too many children to feed and they were very poor. The family had a total of 7 children: 3 boys, 4 girls.
He was small for his age and had brown eyes and black hair. When he went looking for work people would look at him and say he was too small and too young to be able to do anything. He finally came to the door of an old couple who listened to his story and then said he could live with them and herd their geese. He wore wooden shoes in the winter and went barefoot in the summer. His food consisted of coarse rye bread and clabber milk, some potatoes and sometimes some fish. He got no schooling.
When he was about 15 years old, he went with an uncle to learn the miller trade, making grains into flour. After 15 years he finally got a diploma as a miller. He worked very hard and carried the heavy sacks on his back until his back became bent and was that way the rest of his life.
One night his cousin, Anders Beckstrom, came and asked him to go to a meeting with him. He was sure the men giving the meeting were Mormons and there had been so much said against them that Anders wanted to know what kind of people they were. So Hakan and Anders went to the meeting and the young men kept going to the meetings and they were baptized into the church September 17, 1857. When their families found out they had become Mormons, they were very hurt and upset and disowned the men and told them to leave and not come back. So they left and never saw their families again.
Neither one of them could keep a job now because as soon as their employers found out they were
The arrived in Florence on the 25th of May then began the journey from Florence on June 9, 1859, traveling by handcart in the George Rowley company to the Salt Lake Valley arriving on September 4th of 1859 when Hakan was 33 years old.
He found work as a miller in Farmington then later moved to Mt. Pleasant where he could make more money. His cousin, Anders was a blacksmith so he set up a blacksmith shop in Mt. Pleasant and lived there the rest of his life. In Mt. Pleasant, Hakan was asked to help survey the town into city lots and was given a lot of his choice for pay.
In 1862, the Church asked for volunteers to go back to Nebraska and help bring back immigrants. He was still single so he volunteered to go. His Bishop gave him a blessing and promised him he’d return with 2 women—he was now a 37 yr. old bachelor. When he got to Florence, he was assigned to assist 2 young women from Sweden and an older sister who would be their chaperone. On the trip, he heard the 2 girls talking about how they had no friends or family in Salt Lake so they didn’t know where to go and what to do. Hakan invited them to go to Mt. Pleasant and they agreed as both had fallen in love with him.
After arriving in Mt. Pleasant, Hakan asked Hannah Nelson to marry him which she did. But only 3 weeks later she died. Hakan was very lonely now so he went to Cecelia Swenson and asked her to marry him, which she did. Hakan was 37 and Cecelia was 22. They were married by Bishop Seeley, the 2nd of Novermber, 1863 in Mt. Pleasant. Then on 12 March 1864 they were sealed in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City.Their first 7 children were born in Mt. Pleasant and the other 5 were born in Hyrum, Utah where they went for better land for farming. Later the family moved to the Snake River Valley area to Salem outside of Rexburg. They worked hard to dig a canal and build a dam to water the land. They had to fight off big mosquitoes and had to keep blankets on their horses to protect them from the mosquitoes so the horses wouldn’t run away.
Haken only lived in the Salem area 6 years before he died from lung trouble caused by the dust created from the milling of the grain. He died 30 October 1892 at the age of 66 and is buried in the Rexburg City Cemetery.One of his sons was called on a mission to Sweden and he found Hakan’s family. None of the family would listen to him preach the Gospel because they were still angry and hurt about the Church taking Hakan away from them.
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