One of the most important stories of women in the West is Western migration of women, and specifically Mormon women from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. So we'll look at that as an example of this westward migration, and then also a specific Mormon woman of the time who gives us an amazing picture of the various challenges and opportunities for... white women in the West.
So without going over a huge amount of church history, we can talk about the Mormon migration on the Mormon Trail. And I'll use that word Mormon throughout this lecture because it's from the time period to indicate the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And so this is a fast-growing faith. It is established, developed first in the United States, right? It's a native U.S. church, you could say, native with a small n.
And it's initially quite successful. It grows rapidly. But there's significant resistance to... the church as a whole, as well as to its president, Joseph Smith, its first president. And without going into the details of church history, eventually the church centers itself in the city that it builds in Illinois called Nauvoo in the early 1800s, becomes quite a powerful and successful city.
As a result, the church faces a huge increase in mob hostility and physical violence from people surrounding them who disagree with what they perceive as church beliefs and practices. And so facing this violence and with... a spiritual revelation that the leader, the second leader, Brigham Young, after Joseph Smith is murdered by a mob, Brigham Young gets a revelation and brings the church west to what is now Salt Lake City, the Salt Lake Valley. And this is, it's important to remember that not only is this a huge distance, they traveled. Wagon trains up to 1,300 miles, right?
But this is also going outside of the bounds of the United States. When they first make this journey in 1846, what is now Utah is still Mexico. It's still part of Mexican territory. So they're so... escaping this violence and this opposition is so important to them that they even leave the country, right?
So anyway, they travel to Salt Lake. It's anywhere from 60,000 to 70,000 people eventually make this journey. And this is unique among all the many migrations west over the many different trails, the Oregon Trail, for example, the California Trail, in that A huge number of women and children made this journey. So it's very typical that the whole family is going, right?
Whereas, for example, with the Oregon Trail, you might have a man going by himself or a group of men. And then either they find a woman to marry when they get there or they go back or they send for their families later. But in this case, with the Mormon migration, women are crucial. to this effort.
And they're doing the work that they have always done at home, but now they're doing it in a wagon train in the wilderness, essentially, right? So they're gathering fuel, they're preparing food, they're caring for children, caring for the sick, cleaning, cooking, you know, all of this stuff. And we have these wonderful records of this because women would keep diaries. Men as well, too. But the women's diaries are fascinating because they give us this picture of their experiences as women.
And so this excerpt from Eliza Snow's journal from July 1847 is talking about they have to gather timber to repair in case they have to repair their wagons, since not everywhere had forest where they were traveling, so they had to gather that when they could. And speaking of that, she records that they didn't have any wood to cook. on, but they discover that they can use dried chips of buffalo dung to burn for their fires. And so, you know, this is part of their lives of gathering this fuel and using it.
She mentions being annoyed by Indians, right? And there are quite a few records in these trail journals of not just annoyance, but violent conflict with Native people who are resisting this intrusion into their territory. And then at the end of this particular excerpt, she talks about, you know, it's raining, there's no time to cook supper, she's quite sick and glad to crawl into bed, you know, and you can imagine the hardship of these women being sick themselves, no less caring for sick family members, and that they had traveled 12 miles that day, which is...
pretty small number. So we get these wonderful, rich images of the difficulty of this effort that so many women and families made. So let's talk about a specific example of a woman who made this journey and then her life in what became Utah. So Maddie Hughes, Martha Hughes. was actually originally from Wales, and her family joins the church, converts to the Mormon church, and migrates to Utah a little bit later in 1861. And there's, you know, hardship there.
Her baby sister dies during this trail, this trail journey, and her father dies shortly after they arrive, right? But nevertheless, Maddie... eventually prospers. She gets a job as a typesetter with the Deseret News newspaper, which is a highly skilled job, right? So here's a picture of a woman working outside the home, right?
She, not only that, she's able to achieve a degree in chemistry from the University of Deseret. So she's getting higher education. And then that continues when she's able to go to medical school.
at the University of Michigan. And this is one of the few medical schools that allowed women students. So she becomes a doctor, she studies medicine and pharmacy, and comes back to Utah, she's only 25 years old, and she's a doctor at the New Deseret Hospital, which had been opened up by the church women's organization, the Relief Society.
And so this is an example of women starting a hospital, just like we've talked about with the efforts on the East Coast around the Civil War of women opening hospitals, right? So this is also occurring farther outside of the main conflict of the Civil War period. So Maddie is able to become a physician, and we have this delightful picture just as a kind of a fun image from a a bit later from 1893, but this is from the University of Michigan where Maddie went. And it gives us a picture of men and a significant number of women in a surgery and anatomy class, right?
So this is a growing opportunity for women at the time that Maddie is an example of. Maddie is also a really interesting example of some of the challenges of marriage and family, not just for women in general, but for Mormon women. She meets a member of the board of the hospital, Angus Cannon, and becomes his fourth wife, plural marriage wife, right?
So this is polygamy, not the fourth and the other three are dead or divorced. He has four wives all at once. And this is practiced by some members of the LDS church at this time.
And it had to be a secret because it is illegal. Plural marriage is illegal in the United States. So Maddie and Angus are married in secret. But nevertheless, the authorities become aware of their marriage and they are trying to use her as an example to help prosecute other polygamists because she's aware of many of them because she has delivered their babies. right?
So she ends up having to flee to England to avoid this in 1886, to avoid being arrested. And her husband does serve a prison sentence for polygamy at this time. And she returns and has another child and opens a nursing school, right? So another example of women opening up opportunities for higher education and medicine as well. And they end up having to flee multiple times, fleeing this prosecution for plural marriage.
And this debate about plural marriage, this issue, is tied with women's suffrage in Utah and the nation as a whole. Some members of the U.S. Congress were thinking about suffrage as a way to end polygamy because they thought giving women the right to vote in Utah would end it.
But by contrast, church members... in Utah thought that giving women the right to vote would show that these women are not oppressed and that they might use their votes to support polygamy. And in fact, many women in Utah were quite supportive of polygamy, whether they participated or not. But ultimately, polygamy is a felony as of 1882, a federal felony. And Congress passes the Edmunds-Tucker Act in 1887, which really doubles down on this prohibition against polygamy by making it punishable by up to five years in prison, a huge monetary fine, and allowing for church property to be confiscated.
And it also took away women's right to vote in Utah. So it's a huge, a huge effort by the federal government to end polygamy, right? And women in Utah had a variety of opinions about polygamy, but most supported it as well as supporting women's suffrage.
And we have this delightful example of the woman's exponent, the newspaper. that was started in 1872 and eventually edited by Emmeline Wells, who's a prominent suffragist. And the newspaper runs lots of articles supporting both polygamy and suffrage. Utah has a women's suffrage association that is affiliated with the National American Women's Suffrage Association. So they're very active in this suffrage movement.
And then right around this time, the church renounces polygamy. The church leaders have another divine revelation that God no longer wants them to practice plural marriage. And so they renounce this.
This also helps pave the way for statehood for Utah. Since that, you know, that would have been. politically expedient to not support polygamy overtly with the church being so prominent in Utah politics at this point.
Utah does reinstate women's suffrage as well in its 1896 constitution becoming a state. So in a sense we can see this as somewhat of a progressive state in a real sense in terms of at least suffrage, as well as women's opportunities, right? So why was there such opposition to polygamy?
Critics thought it was harmful and oppressive to women. The Republican Party in 1856 had a platform dedicated to ending polygamy and slavery, which they linked together as, quote unquote, twin relics of barbarism, right? And you can see this image of a satirical cartoon with, you know, it says the elders happy home, and it shows a man kind of hiding at the top there while his many wives are fighting in this enormous bed. And then there's a cradle filled with, you know, a dozen babies, all crying and upset.
So it's this image of familial strife and lack of harmony. But what did the plural wives think of it? So we know there are many opinions. Emmeline Wells, for example, the suffragist, is quoted as saying polygamy gives women more time for thought, for mental culture, more freedom of action, a broader field of labor, in addition to bringing them closer to God. Right.
And so this is seen as a benefit that women can choose whether to enter into a plural marriage. Utah, by the way, also had no fault divorce. So women had that power as well. And it provided a community of women to share work, in particular, child care, right?
So it's the opposite of this satirical cartoon for most women, right? And then they understood it as spiritually justified from within the church belief system. Now, there are women like Maddie Hughes Cannon who did struggle with this, right?
So she's facing this persecution, repeated persecution. and prosecution, right? Having to leave the country or leave the state, her husband being imprisoned and she being under threat of imprisonment.
So it was a challenge, right? Even if it was voluntary. And we know that tremendous numbers of men were prosecuted. This is an image from 1889, around that time, from the Utah Penitentiary of men imprisoned for plural marriage, right?
So it's an ongoing issue. But at the same time, you had women struggling with this, promoting this, but also being deeply involved in suffrage. And we can see this in this wonderful image of women at the Rocky Mountain Women's Suffrage Convention in 1895. And Dr. Martha Hughes Cannon is there at the far left, as well as Susan B. Anthony sitting in the center there.
So a beautiful image of an example of Maddie Hughes Cannon and her involvement in all of this. She went on to not only be a doctor and a suffragist, but also a politician. She ran for the Utah Senate in 1896 against her own husband, as well as against Emmeline Wells, right? And she won, along with two other women. And you can see a picture here, this photo of the three women, as well as the men in the legislature.
And she worked on many issues, particularly, though, helping women have She rests while on breaks at work, right, requiring employers to give them rests and establishing a state board of health. So she's she's active with women's issues. She was considering running for the U.S. Senate when she became pregnant and had her third child. And this really ended her political career.
Her husband is arrested again under polygamy laws. And she decides to step away from politics and just work with the Utah Board of Health. But she did go to Washington, D.C.
for the Seneca Falls 50th anniversary celebration and spoke about women's rights there. So she's continuing to be active in these issues through the rest of her life. And she is commemorated with a beautiful statue.
at the Utah State Capitol as an important woman in Utah history, right? So just to sum up, Maddie Hughes Cannon as an individual gives us insight into broad topics of late 19th century history. The huge topic of Western migration, right?
She's participating in that, but also as a woman in medicine and in higher education. these nationwide debates about polygamy, right? And also women's suffrage and women in politics in general. And then it's important to note that she's an example of how women in the West, broadly, the Western US, made political gains decades before women as a whole in the United States did. So earlier, being able to be involved in politics and achieving the right to vote.
quote