An Englishwoman in Utah. Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse
XXIV. THE ORIGIN OF “THE REFORMATION:”—EXTRAORDINARY DOINGS OF THE SAINTS.
CHAPTER XXV. THE “REIGN OF TERROR” IN UTAH:—THE REFORMATION OF THE SAINTS.
CHAPTER XXVI. THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE:—“I WILL REPAY, SAITH THE LORD.”
CHAPTER XXVII. WHAT WOMEN SUFFER IN POLYGAMY:—THE STORY OF MARY BURTON.
CHAPTER XXVIII. HOW MARRIAGES ARE MADE IN UTAH—A NEW WIFE FOUND FOR MY HUSBAND.
CHAPTER XXIX. TAKING A SECOND WIFE:—THE EXPERIENCE OF THE FIRST.
CHAPTER XXX. TRIALS—THE SECOND WIFE CHOSEN—SHADOWS OF LIFE.
CHAPTER XXXI. MARRIAGE FOR THE DEAD—ENTERING INTO POLYGAMY—THE NEW WIFE.
CHAPTER XXXII. DOMESTIC ARRANGEMENTS OF THE SAINTS:—POLYGAMY FROM A WOMAN’S STANDPOINT.
CHAPTER XXXIII. LIGHTS AND SHADOWS OF POLYGAMY—MARRIAGE AND BAPTISM FOR THE DEAD.
CHAPTER XXXIV. MY DAUGHTER BECOMES THE FOURTH WIFE OF BRIGHAM YOUNG’S SON—THE SECOND ENDOWMENTS.
CHAPTER XXXV. REALITIES OF POLYGAMIC LIFE—ORSON PRATT: THE STORY OF HIS YOUNG ENGLISH WIFE.
CHAPTER XXXVI. “OUR” HUSBAND’S FIANCÉE—A SECOND WIFE’S SORROWS—STEPS TOWARDS APOSTASY.
CHAPTER XXXVII. SOME CURIOUS COURTSHIPS—BRIGHAM RUINS OUR FORTUNES—BELINDA DIVORCES “OUR” HUSBAND.
CHAPTER XXXVIII. MARY BURTON—LIFE’S JOURNEY ENDED: REST AT LAST.
CHAPTER XXXIX. MY HUSBAND DISFELLOWSHIPPED—WE APOSTATIZE—BRUTAL OUTRAGE UPON MY HUSBAND AND MYSELF.
CHAPTER XL. AMUSING TROUBLES OF MY TALKATIVE FRIEND—CHARLOTTE WITH THE GOLDEN HAIR!
CHAPTER XLIV. MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE—COMPLETE CONFESSION OF BISHOP JOHN D. LEE.
PREFACE
BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.
In these pages, a woman, a wife and mother, speaks the sorrows and oppressions of which she has been the witness and the victim.
It is because her sorrows and her oppressions are those of thousands, who, suffering like her, cannot or dare not speak for themselves, that she thus gives this history to the public.
It is no sensational story, but a plain, unvarnished tale of truth, stranger and sadder than fiction.
Our day has seen a glorious breaking of fetters. The slave-pens of the South have become a nightmare of the past; the auction-block and whipping-post have given place to the church and school-house; and the songs of emancipated millions are heard through our land.
May we not then hope that the hour is come to loose the bonds of a cruel slavery whose chains have cut into the very hearts of thousands of our sisters—a slavery which debases and degrades womanhood, motherhood, and the family?
Let every happy wife and mother who reads these lines give her their sympathy, prayers, and aid to free her sisters from this degrading bondage. Let all the womanhood of the country stand united for them. There is a power in combined enlightened sentiment and sympathy before which every form of injustice and cruelty must finally go down.
May He who came to break every yoke hasten this deliverance!
Harriet Beecher Stowe.
PREFACE.
In the fall of the year 1869, a few earnest, thinking men, members of the Mormon Church, and living in Salt Lake City, inaugurated what was regarded at the time as a grand schism. Those who had watched with anxiety the progress of Mormonism, hailed the “New Movement” as the harbinger of the work of disintegration so long anticipated by the thoughtful-minded Saints, and believed that the opposition to Theocracy, then begun, would continue until the extraordinary assumptions of the Mormon priesthood were exploded, and Mormonism itself should lose its political status and find its place only among the singular sects of the day.
It was freely predicted that Woman, in her turn, would accept her part in the work of reformation, take up the marriage question among the Saints, and make an end of Polygamy.
Little did I imagine, at that period, that any such mission as that which I have since realized as mine, was in the Providence of Time awaiting me, or that I should ever have the boldness, either with tongue or pen, to plead the cause of the Women of Utah. But, impelled by those unseen influences which shape our destinies, I took my stand with the “heretics;” and, as it happened, my own was the first woman’s name enrolled in their cause.
The circumstances which wrought a change in my own life produced a corresponding revolution in the life of my husband.
In withdrawing from the Mormon Church, we laid ourselves, our associations, and the labours of over twenty years, upon the altar, and took up the burden of life anew. We had sacrificed everything in obedience to the “counsel” of Brigham Young; and my husband, to give a new direction to his mind, and also to form some plan for our future life, thought it advisable that he should visit New York. He did so; and shortly after employed himself in writing a history of the “Rocky Mountain Saints,” which has since been published.
In course of time, the burden of providing for a large family, and the anxiety and care of conducting successfully a business among a people who make it a religious