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Sunday, July 30, 2017

Juliana Hoke

Juliana Hoke was born in 1798 in Germany. She was the oldest child of the family, having four brothers and four sisters. She came with her family to the United States when she was six years of age. 

When she was 17 years old she married George Gotleib Zimmerman and settled in Garden Grove, Iowa. Her mother, Christeria, was not in good health, so Juliana cared for her and the family. Christeria died just two years after Juliana's marriage. Her father, Lorentz Hoke, was a devoted man of the scriptures. One day he called her to his deathbed and told that in answer to prayer it had been made known to him that the true gospel had long been lost to the world, but would soon be restored. He told her that he would not live to hear it preached, but that she would, and that when she heard it she would know it to be true and would embrace it. Many years later she learned of the Gospel of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was convinced of its truth and in January, 1843 they cut a hole in the ice and she was baptized. Juliana was 45 years of age at the time of her baptism.
At this time persecution was running high, so Juliana and her family made the decision to cross the plains to Utah in the Harry Walton company. Her husband was 70 years old and she was 53 years old. Her family's outfit consisted of one wagon heavily loaded with supplies of flour, meal, beans, dry bread and sugar, two yoke of oxen, two yoke of cows, a horse, and her family, made up of her husband and herself, six daughters, and a two year old granddaughter. She walked from Iowa to the Salt Lake Valley, a distance of some thirteen hundred miles and arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1851. From there, she and her family went to Lehi where she made her home until the time of her death. She was valiant in teaching her family and all with whom she became acquainted. She was widely known for her hospitality, and especially adapted to nursing the sick and helping those in need of sympathy.
She became the mother of twelve children and reared seven of them to maturity, all of whom had large families and all members of the Latter-day Saints Church.

She died in 1864 at the age of 66 and was buried in Lehi, Utah.