Sorensen family

Frederick Isaac Sorensen was born February 24, 1840 in Soro, Denmark. Isaac and his brother Peter arrived in Mendon, Utah in 1859, two years prior to the arrival of the entire Sorensen family, and began settlement of the region. He married Mary Kristine Jacobsen (Poulsen) in 1869 with whom he had eleven children. Isaac was later called to serve in the LDS church Scandinavian mission in 1879. Isaac wrote poetry and many songs as well as his most prominent work, History of Mendon: A Pioneer Chronicle of a Mormon Settlement. Isaac died November 7, 1922.

Alma N. Sorensen, the fifth son of Isaac Sorensen was born March 3, 1879 in Mendon, Utah. A.N. was one of the first three students from Mendon to earn an eighth grade diploma, and belonged to the Mendon band and the Mandolin and Guitar Club. He entered the Brigham Young College in Logan in 1897 but left after one year and spent two years laboring on the farm and railroad. From 1901 to 1904 he served an LDS mission in the southern United States. He returned to school in 1904 and obtained his Bachelors degree in 1909 from the Brigham Young College. He attended Harvard from 1910-11 and again in 1915-1916, graduating with a Masters Degree in English. He married Lavinia Hughes in 1917 and had one child, Wendell, before Lavinia’s death in 1920. He married Mary Carlisle in 1924 with whom he had six children: Mary Jean, Robert N., David C., Philip E., John Mark, and Anne. Their son David died tragically on October 15, 1944, at the age of 15 of an undiagnosed heart condition. A.N. joined the Utah Agricultural College (hereafter known as Utah State University) staff in 1926 after serving as head of the English department at Brigham Young College for fifteen years. A.N. was a professor of English at Utah State University for twenty-three years. He served as chairman of the Utah State College Athletic Council and president of both the Rocky Mountain Conference and the Big Seven Circuit. He died December 11, 1958.

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