Main Page: A Brief History of Women in the LDS Church
The LDS Church and Women in the Nineteenth Century
March 26, 1830 - The Book of Mormon, an ancient compilation ostensibly translated by Joseph Smith, is released to the world. It only mentions six women by name - Sariah, Isabel, Abish, Eve, Sarah, and Mary - half of whom are from the Bible. It states, however, that God "inviteth them all to come unto him and partake of his goodness; and he denieth none that come unto him, black and white, bond and free, male and female; and he remembereth the heathen; and all are alike unto God, both Jew and Gentile." (2 Nephi 26:33)
July 1830 - A revelation given through Joseph Smith to his wife, Emma, later Section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants, calls her "an elect lady". It exhorts her to comfort her husband, fill in as his scribe when necessary, and compile hymns for the first Latter-day Saint hymnbook.
Early 1833 - Joseph Smith secretly marries Fanny Alger, probably his first plural wife.
Spring 1842 - Women desiring to help the men working on the Nauvoo Temple come together to organize a benevolent society like those popular in the United States at the time. Sarah Granger Kimball later recalls, "The neighboring sisters met in my parlor and decided to organize. I was delegated to call on Sister Eliza R. Snow and ask her to write for us a Constitution and By-laws, and submit them to President Joseph Smith prior to our next Thursday’s meeting."
According to her, Joseph Smith looks them over and says, "This is not what you want. Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and he has something better for them than a written Constitution.... I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood.... The Church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized."
March 17, 1842 - Joseph Smith formally organizes the Female Relief Society with his wife Emma as its first president and Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah M Cleveland as her counselors. Willard Richards reports, "The meeting was addressed by President Joseph Smith, to illustrate the object of the Society - that the Society of Sisters might provoke the brethren to good works in looking to the wants of the poor - searching after objects of charity, and in administering to their wants - to assist by correcting the morals and strengthening the virtues of the community."
April 28, 1842 - According to Eliza R. Snow, Joseph Smith tells the Relief Society in a discourse, "Action must be brough[t] to light - iniquity must be purged out - then the vail will be rent and the blessings of heaven will flow down - they will roll down like the Mississippi river. This Society shall have power to command Queens in their midst - I now deliver it as a prophecy that before ten years shall roll round, the queens of the earth shall come and pay their respects to this Society - they shall come with their millions and shall contribute of their abundance for the relief of the poor - If you will be pure, nothing can hinder....
"This Society is to get instruction thro' the order which God has established - thro' the medium of those appointed to lead - and I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time - this is the beginning of better days, to this Society[.]"
1843 - Joseph Smith starts initiating women into the endowment ceremony.
July 12, 1843 - By this time, Joseph Smith has taken at least twenty-five plural wives and taught both the principles of eternal marriage sealings and plural marriage to a few people. At his brother Hyrum's request, he dictates a revelation on plural marriage to appease his wife, Emma, who rejects the practice. He dictates the revelation to his scribe William Clayton over the course of three hours. Reflecting the cultural and legal status of women at the time, it speaks of them being given to and taken from their husbands. Emma burns it, but Joseph has already made a copy which later becomes Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
June 27, 1844 - At the time of Joseph Smith's murder, he has been sealed to anywhere from 27 to 49 women besides Emma. Some of these sealings are for time and eternity and may have included physical relations; others are for eternity only, to take effect in the next life. He has not fathered any known children with any woman besides Emma.
December 1844 - William W. Phelps unveils a hymn composed for the dedication of a new Seventies hall, entitled "A Voice from the Prophet: Come to Me". It reads in part:
"Come to me, here are Adam and Eve at the head
Of a multitude quicken'd and rais'd from the dead:
Here’s the knowledge that was, or that is, or will be -
In the gen'ral assembly of worlds: Come to me.
"Come to me; here’s the myst'ry that man hath not seen;
Here's our Father in heaven, and Mother, the Queen,
Here are worlds that have been, and the worlds yet to be,
Here’s eternity, - endless; amen: Come to me.
March 9, 1845 - The Relief Society is on hiatus, allegedly due to Emma Smith using her position as president to oppose plural marriage. Brigham Young says, "When I want Sisters or the Wives of the members of the church to get up Relief Society I will summon them to my aid, but until that time let them stay at home if you see Females huddling together, veto the concern, and if they say Joseph started it all tell them it is a damned lie for I know he never encouraged it."
October 1845 - In a poem entitled "My Father in Heaven" and later "Invocation, or The Eternal Father and Mother", Eliza R. Snow writes,
"In the heavens are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare.
Truth is reason: truth eternal
tells me I've a mother there.
"When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
in your royal courts on high?"
She explains, "I got my inspiration from the Prophet’s teaching. All that I was required to do was use my Poetical gift and give that Eternal principal in Poetry." President Joseph F. Smith later opines, "God revealed that principle that we have a mother as well as a father in heaven to Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith revealed it to Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a poet, to put it into verse." It will be set to music and included in future hymnals under the title "O My Father".
June 15, 1862 - President Brigham Young teaches, "If a woman can rule a man and he not know it, praise to that woman. They are few who know well the office of a woman from that of a man.... When the servants of God in any age have consented to follow a woman for a leader, either in a public or a family capacity, they have sunk beneath the standard their organization has fitted them for; when a people of God submit to that, their Priesthood is taken from them, and they become as any other people.
"I shall humor the wife as far as I can consistently; and if you have any crying, to do, wife, you can do that along with the children, for I have none of that kind of business to do. Let our wives be the weaker vessels, and the men be men, and show the women by their superior ability that God gives husbands wisdom and ability to lead their wives into his presence. I want the brethren and sisters to kindly manage their affairs in-doors and out, taking good care of that which belongs to them, and being contented in their lots and stations."
December 1866 - After a 22-year hiatus, President Brigham Young reinstates the Relief Society with Eliza R. Snow as its second president.
July 18, 1869 - President Brigham Young says, "As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation."
February 12, 1870 - Utah becomes the second US state or territory (after Wyoming) to give women aged twenty-one and older the right to vote.
February 14, 1870 - In the Salt Lake City municipal election, Seraph Cedenia Young Ford is the first known woman to legally vote in the United States.
March 1877 - Edward W. Tullidge publishes The Women of Mormondom. He writes in a preface, "Long enough, O women of America, have your Mormon sisters been blasphemed!
"From the day that they, in the name and fear of the Lord their God, undertook to 'build up Zion,' they have been persecuted for righteousness sake: 'A people scattered and peeled from the beginning.'
"The record of their lives is now sent unto you, that you may have an opportunity to judge them in the spirit of righteousness. So shall you be judged by Him whom they have honored, whose glory they have sought, and whose name they have magnified."
March 3, 1878 - Elder Erastus Snow preaches, "If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself, and anything pertaining to the creation and organization of man upon the earth, I must believe that deity consists of man and woman... there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way."
1879 - Shortly before her death, Emma Smith Bidamon tells interviewers, "There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. There were some rumors of something of the sort, of which I asked my husband. He assured me that all there was of it was, that, in a chat about plural wives, he had said, 'Well, such a system might possibly be, if everybody was agreed to it, and would behave as they should; but they would not; and besides, it was contrary to the will of heaven.' No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of.... He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have."
September 9, 1881 - Relief Society general president Eliza R. Snow tells the Weber Stake Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, "Remember, you have to work out your own salvation: neither father, brother, or husband can do it for you. Your eternal existence depends on how you spend your life."
September 12, 1884 - In a Women's Exponent article entitled "To the Branches of the Relief Society", general president Eliza R. Snow answers questions she has received, including: 'Should members of the Relief Society go to the Bishops for counsel?'
"The Relief Society is designed to be a self-governing organization: to relieve the Bishops as well as to relieve the poor, to deal with its members, correct abuses, etc. If difficulties arise between members of a branch which they cannot settle between the members themselves, aided by the teachers, instead of troubling the Bishop, the matter should be referred to their president and her counselors. If the branch board cannot decide satisfactorily, an appeal to the stake board is next in order; if that fails to settle the question, the next step brings it before the general board, from which the only resort is to the Priesthood; but, if possible, we should relieve the Bishops instead of adding to their multitudinous labors.
'Is it necessary for sisters to be set apart to officiate in the sacred ordinances of washing anointing, and laying on of hands in administering to the sick?'
"It certainly is not. Any and all sisters who honor their holy endowments, not only have the right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon to administer to our sisters in these ordinances, which God has graciously committed to His daughters as well as to His sons; and we testify that when administered and received in faith and humility they are accompanied with all mighty power."
March 3, 1887 - With the Edmunds-Tucker Act, aimed at prosecuting polygamy, the US federal government removes Utah women's right to vote.
September 24, 1890 - President Wilford Woodruff issues the Manifesto, stating, "We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice... Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hearby [sic] declare my intention to submit to those laws, to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.... And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." From then on, only a few plural marriages are solemnized in secret. Due to ambiguity in the wording, some Latter-day Saints believe that the practice is still permitted in Canada and Mexico. Some who refuse to accept the Manifesto leave and start their own "fundamentalist" groups.
October 7, 1894 - President George Q. Cannon says, "There is one thing that I am told is practiced to some extent among us, and I say to you that where it is practiced and not thoroughly repented of the curse of God will follow it. I refer to the practice of preventing the birth of children. I want to lift my voice in solemn warning against this, and I say to you that the woman who practices such devilish arts, or the man who consents to them, will be cursed of God. Such persons will be cursed in their bodies, cursed in their minds, cursed in their property, cursed in their offspring. God will wipe them out from the midst of this people and nation. Remember it. Mothers, teach this to your daughters, for I tell you it is true."
January 4, 1896 - Utah becomes a state, with a provision in its constitution that reads, "Both male and female citizens of the State shall enjoy equally all civil, political, and religious rights and privileges."
November 3, 1896 - Martha Hughes Cannon (Democrat) defeats her own husband Angus M. Cannon (Republican) to become the first female state senator in the United States.
April 1, 1898 - Inez Knight and Lucy Jane "Jennie" Brimhall are the first single women to be set apart as full-time proselytizing missionaries.
Next: The LDS Church and Women in the Twentieth Century
July 1830 - A revelation given through Joseph Smith to his wife, Emma, later Section 25 of the Doctrine and Covenants, calls her "an elect lady". It exhorts her to comfort her husband, fill in as his scribe when necessary, and compile hymns for the first Latter-day Saint hymnbook.
Early 1833 - Joseph Smith secretly marries Fanny Alger, probably his first plural wife.
Spring 1842 - Women desiring to help the men working on the Nauvoo Temple come together to organize a benevolent society like those popular in the United States at the time. Sarah Granger Kimball later recalls, "The neighboring sisters met in my parlor and decided to organize. I was delegated to call on Sister Eliza R. Snow and ask her to write for us a Constitution and By-laws, and submit them to President Joseph Smith prior to our next Thursday’s meeting."
According to her, Joseph Smith looks them over and says, "This is not what you want. Tell the sisters their offering is accepted of the Lord, and he has something better for them than a written Constitution.... I will organize the women under the priesthood after the pattern of the priesthood.... The Church was never perfectly organized until the women were thus organized."
March 17, 1842 - Joseph Smith formally organizes the Female Relief Society with his wife Emma as its first president and Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah M Cleveland as her counselors. Willard Richards reports, "The meeting was addressed by President Joseph Smith, to illustrate the object of the Society - that the Society of Sisters might provoke the brethren to good works in looking to the wants of the poor - searching after objects of charity, and in administering to their wants - to assist by correcting the morals and strengthening the virtues of the community."
April 28, 1842 - According to Eliza R. Snow, Joseph Smith tells the Relief Society in a discourse, "Action must be brough[t] to light - iniquity must be purged out - then the vail will be rent and the blessings of heaven will flow down - they will roll down like the Mississippi river. This Society shall have power to command Queens in their midst - I now deliver it as a prophecy that before ten years shall roll round, the queens of the earth shall come and pay their respects to this Society - they shall come with their millions and shall contribute of their abundance for the relief of the poor - If you will be pure, nothing can hinder....
"This Society is to get instruction thro' the order which God has established - thro' the medium of those appointed to lead - and I now turn the key to you in the name of God and this Society shall rejoice and knowledge and intelligence shall flow down from this time - this is the beginning of better days, to this Society[.]"
1843 - Joseph Smith starts initiating women into the endowment ceremony.
July 12, 1843 - By this time, Joseph Smith has taken at least twenty-five plural wives and taught both the principles of eternal marriage sealings and plural marriage to a few people. At his brother Hyrum's request, he dictates a revelation on plural marriage to appease his wife, Emma, who rejects the practice. He dictates the revelation to his scribe William Clayton over the course of three hours. Reflecting the cultural and legal status of women at the time, it speaks of them being given to and taken from their husbands. Emma burns it, but Joseph has already made a copy which later becomes Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
June 27, 1844 - At the time of Joseph Smith's murder, he has been sealed to anywhere from 27 to 49 women besides Emma. Some of these sealings are for time and eternity and may have included physical relations; others are for eternity only, to take effect in the next life. He has not fathered any known children with any woman besides Emma.
December 1844 - William W. Phelps unveils a hymn composed for the dedication of a new Seventies hall, entitled "A Voice from the Prophet: Come to Me". It reads in part:
"Come to me, here are Adam and Eve at the head
Of a multitude quicken'd and rais'd from the dead:
Here’s the knowledge that was, or that is, or will be -
In the gen'ral assembly of worlds: Come to me.
"Come to me; here’s the myst'ry that man hath not seen;
Here's our Father in heaven, and Mother, the Queen,
Here are worlds that have been, and the worlds yet to be,
Here’s eternity, - endless; amen: Come to me.
March 9, 1845 - The Relief Society is on hiatus, allegedly due to Emma Smith using her position as president to oppose plural marriage. Brigham Young says, "When I want Sisters or the Wives of the members of the church to get up Relief Society I will summon them to my aid, but until that time let them stay at home if you see Females huddling together, veto the concern, and if they say Joseph started it all tell them it is a damned lie for I know he never encouraged it."
October 1845 - In a poem entitled "My Father in Heaven" and later "Invocation, or The Eternal Father and Mother", Eliza R. Snow writes,
"In the heavens are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare.
Truth is reason: truth eternal
tells me I've a mother there.
"When I leave this frail existence,
When I lay this mortal by,
Father, Mother, may I meet you
in your royal courts on high?"
She explains, "I got my inspiration from the Prophet’s teaching. All that I was required to do was use my Poetical gift and give that Eternal principal in Poetry." President Joseph F. Smith later opines, "God revealed that principle that we have a mother as well as a father in heaven to Joseph Smith; Joseph Smith revealed it to Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a poet, to put it into verse." It will be set to music and included in future hymnals under the title "O My Father".
June 15, 1862 - President Brigham Young teaches, "If a woman can rule a man and he not know it, praise to that woman. They are few who know well the office of a woman from that of a man.... When the servants of God in any age have consented to follow a woman for a leader, either in a public or a family capacity, they have sunk beneath the standard their organization has fitted them for; when a people of God submit to that, their Priesthood is taken from them, and they become as any other people.
"I shall humor the wife as far as I can consistently; and if you have any crying, to do, wife, you can do that along with the children, for I have none of that kind of business to do. Let our wives be the weaker vessels, and the men be men, and show the women by their superior ability that God gives husbands wisdom and ability to lead their wives into his presence. I want the brethren and sisters to kindly manage their affairs in-doors and out, taking good care of that which belongs to them, and being contented in their lots and stations."
December 1866 - After a 22-year hiatus, President Brigham Young reinstates the Relief Society with Eliza R. Snow as its second president.
July 18, 1869 - President Brigham Young says, "As I have often told my sisters in the Female Relief societies, we have sisters here who, if they had the privilege of studying, would make just as good mathematicians or accountants as any man; and we think they ought to have the privilege to study these branches of knowledge that they may develop the powers with which they are endowed. We believe that women are useful, not only to sweep houses, wash dishes, make beds, and raise babies, but that they should stand behind the counter, study law or physic [medicine], or become good book-keepers and be able to do the business in any counting house, and all this to enlarge their sphere of usefulness for the benefit of society at large. In following these things they but answer the design of their creation."
February 12, 1870 - Utah becomes the second US state or territory (after Wyoming) to give women aged twenty-one and older the right to vote.
February 14, 1870 - In the Salt Lake City municipal election, Seraph Cedenia Young Ford is the first known woman to legally vote in the United States.
March 1877 - Edward W. Tullidge publishes The Women of Mormondom. He writes in a preface, "Long enough, O women of America, have your Mormon sisters been blasphemed!
"From the day that they, in the name and fear of the Lord their God, undertook to 'build up Zion,' they have been persecuted for righteousness sake: 'A people scattered and peeled from the beginning.'
"The record of their lives is now sent unto you, that you may have an opportunity to judge them in the spirit of righteousness. So shall you be judged by Him whom they have honored, whose glory they have sought, and whose name they have magnified."
March 3, 1878 - Elder Erastus Snow preaches, "If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself, and anything pertaining to the creation and organization of man upon the earth, I must believe that deity consists of man and woman... there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way."
1879 - Shortly before her death, Emma Smith Bidamon tells interviewers, "There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. There were some rumors of something of the sort, of which I asked my husband. He assured me that all there was of it was, that, in a chat about plural wives, he had said, 'Well, such a system might possibly be, if everybody was agreed to it, and would behave as they should; but they would not; and besides, it was contrary to the will of heaven.' No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of.... He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have."
September 9, 1881 - Relief Society general president Eliza R. Snow tells the Weber Stake Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, "Remember, you have to work out your own salvation: neither father, brother, or husband can do it for you. Your eternal existence depends on how you spend your life."
September 12, 1884 - In a Women's Exponent article entitled "To the Branches of the Relief Society", general president Eliza R. Snow answers questions she has received, including: 'Should members of the Relief Society go to the Bishops for counsel?'
"The Relief Society is designed to be a self-governing organization: to relieve the Bishops as well as to relieve the poor, to deal with its members, correct abuses, etc. If difficulties arise between members of a branch which they cannot settle between the members themselves, aided by the teachers, instead of troubling the Bishop, the matter should be referred to their president and her counselors. If the branch board cannot decide satisfactorily, an appeal to the stake board is next in order; if that fails to settle the question, the next step brings it before the general board, from which the only resort is to the Priesthood; but, if possible, we should relieve the Bishops instead of adding to their multitudinous labors.
'Is it necessary for sisters to be set apart to officiate in the sacred ordinances of washing anointing, and laying on of hands in administering to the sick?'
"It certainly is not. Any and all sisters who honor their holy endowments, not only have the right, but should feel it a duty, whenever called upon to administer to our sisters in these ordinances, which God has graciously committed to His daughters as well as to His sons; and we testify that when administered and received in faith and humility they are accompanied with all mighty power."
March 3, 1887 - With the Edmunds-Tucker Act, aimed at prosecuting polygamy, the US federal government removes Utah women's right to vote.
September 24, 1890 - President Wilford Woodruff issues the Manifesto, stating, "We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice... Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hearby [sic] declare my intention to submit to those laws, to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.... And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land." From then on, only a few plural marriages are solemnized in secret. Due to ambiguity in the wording, some Latter-day Saints believe that the practice is still permitted in Canada and Mexico. Some who refuse to accept the Manifesto leave and start their own "fundamentalist" groups.
October 7, 1894 - President George Q. Cannon says, "There is one thing that I am told is practiced to some extent among us, and I say to you that where it is practiced and not thoroughly repented of the curse of God will follow it. I refer to the practice of preventing the birth of children. I want to lift my voice in solemn warning against this, and I say to you that the woman who practices such devilish arts, or the man who consents to them, will be cursed of God. Such persons will be cursed in their bodies, cursed in their minds, cursed in their property, cursed in their offspring. God will wipe them out from the midst of this people and nation. Remember it. Mothers, teach this to your daughters, for I tell you it is true."
January 4, 1896 - Utah becomes a state, with a provision in its constitution that reads, "Both male and female citizens of the State shall enjoy equally all civil, political, and religious rights and privileges."
November 3, 1896 - Martha Hughes Cannon (Democrat) defeats her own husband Angus M. Cannon (Republican) to become the first female state senator in the United States.
April 1, 1898 - Inez Knight and Lucy Jane "Jennie" Brimhall are the first single women to be set apart as full-time proselytizing missionaries.
Next: The LDS Church and Women in the Twentieth Century