An Englishwoman in Utah. Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse
faith, exhausted my physical and mental strength. Considering, therefore, that change might be beneficial to me, and my own personal affairs urgently calling me to New York City, I followed my husband thither.
On my way East I met a highly-valued friend of my family, who, in the course of our journey together over the Pacific Railroad, enthusiastically urged me to tell the story of my past life, and to give to the world what I knew about Polygamy. I had been repeatedly advised to do so by friends at home, but up to that time no plan had been arranged for carrying out the suggestion.
I had hardly arrived in New York before the electric messenger announced that a severe snow-storm was raging on the vast plains between the Rocky Mountains and the Missouri River, and for several weeks all traffic over the Union Pacific Railroad was interrupted, and I could not return to my home in the distant West.
That unlooked-for snow-blockade became seriously annoying; for not only was I most anxious to return to my children, but also, never having known an idle hour, I could not live without something to do. At that moment of unsettled feeling, a lady-friend, with whom I was visiting, suggested again “the book;” and she would not permit me to leave her house until she had exacted from me a promise that it should be written.
Next morning I began my task in earnest. I faithfully kept my room and laboured unremittingly; and in three weeks the manuscript of my little work on “Polygamy in Utah” was completed. It was very kindly welcomed by the press—both secular and religious—and for this I was sincerely grateful. I had not, up to that time, thought of much else than its effect upon the people of Utah; but the voluminous notices which that little book received showed the deep interest which the people of the United States had taken in “the Mormon question,” and how ardently they desired to see the extinction of the polygamic institution among the Saints.
In Salt Lake City I was so situated that I was daily—I might almost say hourly—brought in contact with visitors to the Modern Zion; for, during the summer, thousands of travellers pass over the Pacific Railroad. Not a few of these called to see me; and I received from ladies and gentlemen—whose kind interest in my welfare I felt very deeply—many personal attentions, many words of sympathy and encouragement, and many intelligent and useful suggestions in respect to my future life. Indeed, I saw myself quite unexpectedly, and, I may truthfully say, without my own desire, become an object of interest.
By the earnest suggestions of friends and strangers, and by the widely published opinions of the press, I was made to feel that I had only begun my work—that I had but partly drawn aside the veil that covered the worst oppression and degradation of woman ever known in a civilized country. Nearly all who spoke to me expressed their surprise that intelligent men and women should be found in communion with the Mormon Church, in which it was so clearly evident that the teachings of Christianity had been supplanted by an attempt to imitate the barbarism of Oriental nations in a long past age, and the sweet influences of the religion of Jesus were superseded by the most objectionable practices of the ancient Jews. How persons of education and refinement could ever have embraced a faith that prostrated them at the feet of the Mormon Prophet, and his successor Brigham Young, was to the inquiring mind a perfect mystery.
The numerous questions which I had to answer, and the explanations which I had to give, showed me that my little book had only whetted the appetite of the intelligent investigator, and that there was a general call for a woman’s book on Mormonism—a book that should reveal the inner life of the Saints—exhibit the influences which had contributed to draw Christian people away from Christian Churches to the standard of the American Prophet, Joseph Smith, and subject them to the power of that organization which has, since his death, subjugated the mass of the Mormon people in Utah to the will and wickedness of the Priesthood under the leadership of Brigham Young.
A few months after the publication of my first book, I was invited to lecture upon “Polygamy in Utah;” and wherever I spoke I observed the same spirit of inquiry, and met with a renewed demand for more of circumstance and narrative—which I had, from a sense of personal delicacy, withheld in my former work.
I saw no way of satisfying myself and others than by accepting the rather spiteful invitation of a certain Mormon paper to “Tell it all;” and this, in a narrative of my own personal experience, which I now present to the reader, I have endeavoured to do. Not being in any sense a literary woman, or making any pretensions as a writer, I hope to escape severe criticism from the public and the press. I had a simple story to tell—the story of my life and of the wrongs of women in Utah. Startling and terrible facts have fallen under my observation. These also I have related; but my constant effort has been to tell my story in the plainest, simplest way, and, while avoiding exaggeration, never to shrink from a straightforward statement of facts. I have disguised nothing, and palliated nothing; and I feel assured that those who from their actual and intimate acquaintance with Mormonism in Utah as it really is, are capable of passing a just and impartial judgment upon my story, will declare without hesitation that I have told “the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”
Fanny Stenhouse.
Salt Lake City, Utah.
AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN UTAH.
CHAPTER I.
MY EARLY LIFE.
The story which I propose to tell in these pages is a plain, unexaggerated record of facts which have come immediately under my own notice, or which I have myself personally experienced.
Much that to the reader may seem altogether incredible, would to a Mormon mind appear simply a matter of ordinary every-day occurrence with which every one in Utah is supposed to be perfectly familiar. The reader must please remember that I am not telling—as so many writers have told in newspaper correspondence and sensational stories—the hasty and incorrect statements and opinions gleaned during a short visit to Salt Lake City; but my own experience—the story of a faith, strange, wild, and terrible it may be, but which was once so intimately enwoven with all my associations that it became a part of my very existence itself; and facts, the too true reality of which there are living witnesses by hundreds, and even thousands, who could attest if only they would.
With the reader’s permission I shall briefly sketch my experience from the very beginning.
I was born in the year 1829, in St. Heliers, Jersey—one of the islands of the English Channel.
From my earliest recollection I was favourably disposed to religious influences, and when only fourteen years of age I became a member of the Baptist Church, of which my father and mother were also members. With the simplicity and enthusiasm of youth I was devoted to the religious faith of the denomination to which I had attached myself, and sought to live in a manner which should be acceptable to God.
My childhood passed away without the occurrence of any events which would be worthy of mention, although, of course, my mind was even then receiving that religious bias which afterwards led me to adopt the faith of the Latter-day Saints. Like most girls in their teens I had a natural love of dress—a weakness, if such it be, of the sex generally. I was not extravagant, for that I could not be; but thirty years ago members of dissenting churches were more staid in their dress and demeanour and were less of the world, I think, than they are to-day. In plainness of dress the Methodists and Baptists much resembled the Quakers. My girlish weakness caused me to be the subject of many a reprimand from older church-members who were rather strict in their views. I well remember one smooth-faced, pious, corpulent brother, who was old enough to be my father, saying to me one day: “My dear young sister, were it not for your love of dress, I have seriously thought that I would some day make you my wife.” I wickedly resolved