Contents
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
Editor's Note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xiii
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 181
More than a hundred years ago a book was published in New York City titled Twelve Mormon Homes Visited in Succession on a Journey through Utah To Arizona. It was a first-hand inside look at Mormon polygamy, at that time a national issue.
The author was an astute young Philadelphia matron, Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane, the wife of Major General Thomas L. Kane, a Pennsylvania hero of the Civil War and benefactor of the Mormons in the mid-1800s.
Mrs. Kane was a keen observer. Her journal recorded her experiences during her family's twenve-day trip from Salt Lake City to St. George, Utah, as guests of Mormon church President Brigham Young. While enroute the party stayed with twelve Mormon families who Elizabeth Kane described in her journal. The Kane family was visiting Utah because Thomas Kane had been ill and his long-time good friend, Brigham Young, invited the Kanes (father, mother, and two sons) to spend the winter with him in Utah's Dixie in the hope of improving his health.
Mrs. Kane mailed her journal entries home to her father, William Wood, a prominent New York City banker and long-time Board of Education leader, who published them. "My grandmother wrote to her father every week of her life while he lived," remembered Sybil Kent Kane, Kane family historian.1
Either Mrs. Kane or her father, in order to provide anonymity to the Mormon families visited by the Kanes, used fictitious names in the book possibly to protect the families from federal polygamy charges. The 1873 book became a collector's item in Mormon and Western history, thanks to Mrs. Kane's remarkable writing and recording abilities.
In 1974 her journal was republished by the Tanner Trust Fund and the University of Utah Library, with editorial notes by Everett L. Cooley, whose research uncovered the true identities of the Mormon families described by Mrs. Kane.
In this latest edition Dr. Cooley noted "Unfortunately Mrs. Kane left no description of her two months stay in St. George," and until now this was the generally accepted belief. However, during her two months in St. George in 1872-73, Mrs. Kane did continue her lifelong habit of writing at length in her journal.
Many individuals and organizations make this book possible. The greatest debt of gratitude goes to Elizabeth Kane's grandson, the late E. Kent Kane, Kane family historian until his death in 1978, who included Elizabeth's journal among some family papers he collected and preserved.2 A successful Pennsylvania lawyer and legislator, he could converse brilliantly—and often did—on any historical subject. Kent Kane recognized the historical value of Elizabeth Kane's journal, and he told his family and associates of his desire to have the Kane family papers which he had collected placed in the custody of the Mormon church for historical purposes. Sybil Kane, his daughter and executrix of his estate, made possible the transfer of the Kane family papers to the Archives of the Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. Library Archivist Dennis Rowley and his assistant LeGrand Baker, cataloged and inventoried the papers, after assisting in the purchase. Dr. Rowley provided continuing assistance to the editor with frequent suggestions and by making needed papers from the Kane Collection available.
Donna J. Bowen, while assisting in Kane family research, found and read the journal of Mrs. Kane and urged her husband and her daughter, Mary Karen Bowen Solomon, to prepare it for publication.
Sybil Kent Kane, Kane family historian, frequently assisted in checking the accuracy of family information. [Sybil Kane died December 18, 1994, two years after the editor of this publication.] She is one of the few remaining family members who personally knew her grandmother Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood Kane. Other granddaughters, Mrs. Virginia Kane Africa of Warren, Pennsylvania; the late Mrs. Virginia Kane Engstrom of Lake Worth, Florida; and the late Mrs. Florence Kane Johnson of Kushequa, Pennsylvania, and family members too numerous to name also assisted with family remembrances.
James Allen of the Brigham Young University History Department encouraged this project in its early stages, as did his colleague Thomas Alexander. And, of course, Everett L. Cooley, whom the editor has long admired for his knowledge of western history, made it all possible, with the expert assistance of editor Margery W. Ward.
Marcia Peterson, secretary of E. Kent Kane, typed the original copy of the St. George diary from Mrs. Kane's handwritten entries. Kim K. Maughan and Dynette Reynolds also typed a copy of the manuscript.
The staff of the Utah State Historical Society provided help, both editorially and photographically. So also did the Historical Department of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints provide information and encouragement—in particular the late Thomas G. Truitt, Anna Mae Robison, researchers; Donald T. Schmidt, archives director; and Leonard J. Arrington, church historian.
These individuals and institutions the editor sincerely thanks, as well as Obert C. Tanner, who funded this series on Utah, the Mormons, and the West in memory of his mother Annie Clark Tanner.
Notes:
1. Conversion with the editor in 1983.
2. Working with the editor, then president of the Mormon church's mission in the area, E. Kent Kane helped establish the Thomas L. Kane Memorial Chapel in Kane, Pennsylvania. Thomas is buried between the twin front steps of the chapel which he built in 1878. It has been restored by the Mormon church and placed on the national historical registry.
Profile of Elizabeth Kane
Elizabeth Kane as a writer was insightful, witty, occasionally acerbic, and independent of mind. Cultured and well-educated, she had ample opportunity to demonstrate her talent for acute observation of places and people when accompanying her husband Thomas L. Kane on his travels. Kane's friendship with Brigham Young brought them across the continent to spend the winter of 1872-73 in the pioneer Mormon settlement of St. George, Utah. Mrs. Kane's journal recording her experiences provides a clear picture of these people and of the problems, including polygamy, they faced in recently settled St. George.
Elizabeth and her husband were accompanied by their two young sons, Evan O'Neil and William Wood (who, after his father's death changed his name to Thomas Leiper Kane, Jr.). Their black servant, John, also came with the family. Two older children, Harriet and Elisha Kent, remained in the East at preparatory schools.
Other journals of Mrs. Kane, written after her St. George visit, perused for the first time, provide insights into her busy, active, and successful life.
Elizabeth Kane's attitude toward the Mormons was friendly, though sometimes disapproving, and her judgments were objective, critical, and insightful. The pioneer in Elizabeth appreciated the Mormons' achievements and sympathized with their past suffering and present trials. The loving wife realized Brigham Young's friendship with her husband over the years was important to both. Thomas Kane had become Brigham Young's principal advisor concerning government problems in Washington, D. C. This friendship between her husband and Brigham Young was the reason for Elizabeth's involvement with the Mormons. However, she observed cultural conditions with a sharp eye. Relationships between men and women, particularly husbands and wives, exemplified in Utah in the unusual and, in her viewpoint, unnatural condition of polygamy, were of lifelong interest and concern to Elizabeth Kane.
Elizabeth was a talented woman who developed her abilities in many areas throughout her life. She was a student, a photographer, a physician, a pioneer in northwestern Pennsylvania, and the revered "mother" of General Kane's battalion as well as of her own four children. A faithful and fervent Christian, Elizabeth was always clear about, and sure of, her values. Her relationships with her god and her husband were of prime importance to her; improving the opportunities and status of women was also of great concern to Elizabeth. She felt she had a calling to improve conditions for women. Though neither an apologist nor a suffragette, Elizabeth believed women should hold positions equal with men and be allowed the same political, social, and educational opportunities.
Elizabeth Dennistoun Wood was born in Bottle, a suburb of Liverpool, England, on May 12, 1836. At the early age of six, she began a lifelong enchantment with her cousin, Thomas Leiper Kane, when he visited her family home as a young man of twenty. Returning from abroad, he gave her a French doll which she forever treasured. Two years later, her family moved to New York, drawing the ties closer with her intriguing cousin. When Elizabeth was ten, her mother died; at twelve, she remarked to her sister that she intended to marry cousin Thomas Kane, and in 1853, when Elizabeth was sixteen, she did.
After their marriage, Elizabeth and Thomas lived in Philadelphia where Judge John K. Kane, Thomas's father, was a prominent United States District Court judge, influential in national politics. Thomas soon held two promising positions—as federal court clerk to his father and as an up-and-coming attorney. His future and material prospects seemed bright indeed. However, Thomas's convictions and conscience outweighed his material ambitions. Within the first three years of his marriage, he first sacrificed his career as an attorney because of his indignation over the fugitive slave law; then in 1857 he resigned his court clerkship at the onset of the Utah War to go to the rescue of his friends, the Mormons. A clash between Mormon and federal government forces seemed imminent due to many factors, prominent among which was a misunderstanding of conditions in Utah. The immediate past history of persecution in Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois fostered Mormon distrust of the federal government, heightening the tension. The Mormons were committed to defending themselves despite any odds. Thomas believed he had the trust of both parties and he could mediate the difficulties to avert open warfare.
Although the Kane records and letters show that President James Buchanan strongly though unofficially encouraged Thomas to go to Salt Lake City, Kane's position was ambiguous. Government commission and remuneration for his efforts were vaguely promised. However, concerned by threatening hostilities between the Mormons and federal troops sent to put down the "Mormon Rebellion," Kane did not wait for an official commission but left for Utah immediately with only a presidential letter of introduction. He left his twenty-year-old wife, their toddler daughter Harriet, and new baby son, Elisha Kent, dependent upon his parents.
Though Elizabeth encouraged her husband to go, she worried about him for several reasons. A journal entry for November 18, 1870, reveals her concerns over his 1857 trip "13 years ago today I thought my heart was broken." She missed her husband; she worried about his delicate health and predisposition to pneumonia as well as his dangerous journey. These fears were intensified by the fact she received few letters or messages from him; she could only rely on God for Thomas's safety and health.
But her faith was strong although it was a source of unrest. Strong in her Presbyterian religion, she fervently wanted Thomas's beliefs to agree with hers. Her hopes for religious unity were high before Thomas left. Elizabeth wrote in her journal on the twenty-sixth of December 1857 that "God has mercifully brought out of them [recent trials] one great blessing already, in uniting Tom and me in the bonds of a common faith."
However, her fears for this fragile, newfound unity multiplied during the time Thomas was gone. And she found her fears were justified. After her first reunion with her husband after his return from Utah, she wrote on June 20, 1858, "I was so happy and so unhappy. . . . Tom told me the first moment we were alone, like my dear honest darling, that the hope that had dawned upon him of being a Christian was gone." If she knew the reasons, she did not record them. However, Elizabeth seemed inherently suspicious of Mormon influence upon her husband, especially upon his religious attitudes. At this time, she considered the Mormons unchristian polygamists; it is possible that his sympathy for them caused Elizabeth to think he had lost his Christianity. At least it is certain she felt Thomas showed an entirely didproportionate interest in the Mormon religion when he was weak in their own "Christianity."
A third, more worldly concern during the months Thomas was gone was the financial position of herself and her children who were left dependent upon her husband's family. Her chafing for independence, as well as her attitude toward the Mormons, is illustrated in her January 28, 1858, entry, made soon after Thomas's departure. After asking the Judge, Thomas's father, for advice on an "occupation" to increase her independence, she was disheartened when he suggested studying mathematics. Wryly, she noted that her feelings about mathematics compared to her attitude toward the West and the Mormons—the more she studied them, the less she liked them. Added to these worries were the difficulties of not being in her own home and the pressure and tedium of the disliked household tasks which further burdened and depressed her spirits throughout these difficult months.
Elizabeth, even at twenty, was strong character; she determined to use the time apart from Thomas to overcome her "imperfections." Her character and idealism show in the plan she developed for using this lonely time constructively. She records the following goals in her journal: 1) to spend as much time as possible intelligently with the children; 2) to try to be cheerful and strong, a comfort to the family instead of a burden upon them; 3) to try to cultivate her mind—but, as a warning note to herself, avoiding extremes and lack of balance; 4) to perform unhesitatingly all duties due to Thomas's parents and family; 5) to ensure the duties due to society; and 6) to spend as much time as possible with Tom's sister, Bess, who was undergoing some personal trials.
Elizabeth intended to keep her inquiring mind in check while reaching her third goal and not "overdo" her study. However, she listed thiry-one books read in Thomas's absence, among which were Charles Kingsley's The Saints Tragedy—the true story of Elizabeth of Hungary; Willam H. Prescott's first and second volumes of The History of the Reign of Philip II; Arthur P. Stanley's Sinai and Palestine; Bewick Bridge's Algebra; Thomas Macaulay's History of England; Merg's Diseases of Children, and Mormonism by Orson Hyde.
Her journal recorded a strong-minded though imperfect attempt to adhere to her rules as well as to improve her photography, her favorite hobby, and to perform dutifully all the disliked household tasks. Conscientiously keeping the journal as a record of her thoughts and actions because she and Thomas decided to keep journals for each other during their separation, though Elizabeth was far more conscientious in doing so, Elizabeth notes even dreaded and forbidden thoughts, such as the possibility of Thomas losing his faith.
On Easter Sunday, 1858, she wrote to him, "My darling, people call you a Mormon, as in the old time they called our Master a Publican and Sinner." After learning on his return that Thomas no longer considered himself the same in their religion, she expressed faith that her prayers for thier unity, both physical and spiritual, would be answered, but admitted how greatly distressed she was that he had been traveling "without his staff."
On July 11, soon after Thomas's long-awaited return, she wrote movingly of the power of faith and of Thomas's own belief in the Mormons' seemingly miraculous powers. Evidently, he had seen invalids restored to health and strength instilled through Mormon priesthood blessings. In St. George she carefully recorded several instances of these happenings in her diary.
Elizabeth loved her husband devotedly; this is obvious from her writings. She chafed at beliefs sometimes voiced among his family and friends that Thomas was "eccentric, unpractical and so forth, though a genius" (20 May 1870). She felt these perceptions of her husband were based upon some unfinished youthful projects and "passions" of his; also that Thomas's family, perhaps unconsciously, compared him unfavorably with Elisha Kent Kane, his older brother and noted Arctic explorer, who died a national hero soon after their marriage. Elizabeth felt Thomas's ambition to prove himself Elisha's equal consumed his energy and weakened his health. It was difficult to compete successfully with a dead hero, whom Thomas himself adored.
Elizabeth noted on February 20, 1868, that she was jealous of Thomas's "poring over books on the Arctic Regions, fearing that he desires to go there, to prove the truth of all Elisha had discovered, and by a great sacrifice of his own life, to atone to Elisha's memory for having been forced to sorrow over him instead of being truly proud of him."
Thomas's desire to prove himself seems to have been more than an occasional cause of discord. Elizabeth recorded on August 16, 1868, "Sometimes he [Thomas] urges me to let him go away for two years, sure he would come back well off. I cannot bear to think of that—the children would be weaned from him—we ourselves would be older and independent of the misery of having him away." After Thomas's admission in 1868 that he was considering trying to gain an appointment as governor of Utah, she wrote,
Tom is not made to be happy but to dwell on cold and naked cliffs. He would make a Xavier or Loyola or Pascal, and I am utterly commonplace. . . . I told Tom he must rely on his own judment [sic] and not on my feelings to decide his action. I will not have to endure seeing him die of discontent because I have chained him to my side here.
She immediately telegraphed her consent, keeping to herself her reservations:
Success crowns our efforts, summer comes to smile on our lovely place, the house finished to my entire satisfaction, and, to my idea, a life's work of happy usefulness before us—and then sound drums and off we go, leaving it all to go to destruction. I have only one [intimation] that he might go, and that is that we always get a little gleam of sunshine in our troubles before it comes on to storm very heavily.
She occasionally recorded similar worries, feelings that she reduced Thomas's efforts to succeed by "domesticating" him. After reading a biography of Aaron Burr, she noted resemblances to Thomas in Burr's proud, ambitious nature, then reflected on the wisdom of her influence:
Finished Parton's Life of Aaron Burr, "not without tears." So much like Tom in so many things, I could not help thinking he might say, "Tom Kane, but for the grace of God." I keep Tom penned up here, when perhaps he ought to be distinguishing himself. But God knows, God will direct his steps. . . . There is some of the same blood in our veins as flowed in Aaron Burr's.
Thomas L. Kane returned from his Utah mission hard-pressed financially and without employment, yet he refused the late and reluctant offer of remuneration from the government. Instead, he and Elizabeth took their two small children, Harriet, four, and Elisha Kent, two, to the wild McKean and Elk counties of remote northwestern Pennsylvania. Two-thirds of their lives were spent in these woods subduing nature, and one-third in Philadelphia pursuing the necessary paperwork to induce railroads and other industry to develop this mountain area.
Their efforts, however, were interrupted by the Civil War. Thomas was the first Pennsylvanian to enlist and was given a commission by President Abraham Lincoln to form a regiment from the northwestern Pennsylvania mountain community. He left his family with his aunt, Ann Gray, in Philadelphia, where a third baby, Evan was born. After serving courageously during which he received wounds and suffered intermittently with poor health, he was honorably discharged after a heroic performance at Gettysburg.
Released from the service, Major General Kane resumed his interest in the McKean and Elk [counties] Land and Improvement Company in northwestern Pennsylvania. The Kanes began a settlement later named Kane by the Pennsylvania Railroad in McKean County. Their first fall and winter at Kane, the family lived in their stable while building a house. It was at this time Elizabeth first practiced her textbook-learned medicine on her children and her husband. She was also both secretary and accountant to the land business, finally using the mathematics her father-in-law had urged her to study.
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Thomas L. Kane.
L. D. S. Church photograph. |
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During this increasingly active and busy time of her life, preoccupied with family, home, and business, Elizabeth nevertheless spent much time and energy developing and systematizing her ideas about women—their responsibilities to themselves as well as their husbands, relationships between men and women, and women's natural, i. e., Christian, place in Society. Her journal of 1870 shows much thought on this subject, which was finally crystallized into an essay explicating her "Theory." Some main tenets of her theory included her belief that women's current sexual feelings and sex life reflected a fallen state, influenced and corrupted by men's more polygamous, less chaste desires. She felt that typical relationships nurtured by society become perverted from their natural state, which is monogamous and spontaneously loyal and "Christian," by society's unnatural constrictions on men and, even more, women. She commented, "The whole state of our humanity is now abnormal. Men and women grow up stimulated by the whole tone of the unconscious education they receive from their elders to look upon their intercourse simply from a sexual point of view."
Related to this criticism was her abhorrence of the useless, unnatural positions women all too commonly filled. "The lives of our upper-class women are so denuded of occupation that they would go mad for want of something to do if they had any methodical habits. On the contrary, they are studiously taught 'to waste time slowly.'" She contrasted the useless frustration and waste of such women with the achievement of the exceptional women, who, by choice or by circumstance, ignore society's strictures and work to provide necessities for their families or themselves. She characterized them as "blessed with real work . . . [and] a little method."
Elizabeth's life, coping with the difficulties of poverty and bad health, illustrated her "theory." She learned, gained, and increased her abilities with every obstacle she confronted.
With Thomas exhaused and in even worse health than usual from an unsuccessful congressional campaign in 1872, the Kanes responded to the letters and entreaties of Brigham Young and other Mormon church authorities in Salt Lake City to travel west and accompany President Young on his annual St. George sojourn. It was hoped Utah's sunny Dixie would help Kane regain his strength. The time spent in St. George is the period covered by Elizabeth's journal herein published.
Returning from Utah to Kane, Pennsylvania, Elizabeth and Thomas discovered that someone had forged a check for $1,000 on their account, completely bankrupting them. They suspected a renegade relative. Elizabeth sold their silver to meet the new debts created by the forgery. Poverty-stricken again, the Kanes struggled with their land company until the late 1880s, when an influx of settlers who came with the Erie Railroad helped restore them to relative prosperity.
In 1881, at age forty-five, Elizabeth fulfilled her ambition to study medicine. She and her daughter Harriet both graduated from the Women's Medical College in Philadelphia in 1883. Her two younger sons, Evan and Willie (later Thomas L., Jr.), the young boys who accompanied Elizabeth and Thomas to southern Utah, later studied medicine as well, completing courses at Jefferson Medical College and becoming physicians. All these medical skills were needed at home; various illnesses were widespread in Kane.
General Thomas Kane died from pneumonia and old Civil War wounds on December 26, 1883, the same year Elizabeth graduated from medical school. After Thomas's death Elizabeth relinquished none of her interests or responsibilities as physician and "mother' of the town of Kane. She taught in the Presbyterian Sunday school and became politically active, struggling to protect Kane from saloons by participating in the unending licensing battles associated with their establishment. She was elected president of the local county unions of the Women's Christian Temperance Union and attended as a delegate both state and national conventions. Elizabeth was active in medicine as well as in politics; she and her children practiced at Kane's Woodside Hospital, established by her son Evan in memory of his father's constant struggle with illness.
Elizabeth remained productive and healthy until the last five years of her life. Even when she began failing physically, she retained her love of learning. She was studying Spanish the winter before she died at age seventy-three, on May 25, 1909.
In Twelve Mormon Homes Elizabeth Kane's sharpness of insight, eye for telling detail, and quick appreciation of humor are illustrated constantly throughout her description of the two-week trip from Salt Lake City to St. George. She has left perceptive and engaging portraits of the early-day Mormons in their homes and villages in the 1870s. The continuation of her journal, describing her two-and-a-half month visit in the newly settled St. George, reveals an even greater breadth of interest and understanding on her part. She was an interested and sensitive observer and inquirer. Perhaps this explains her evolving compassion for the Mormons she met and an increasingly sympathetic interest in their religion, despite its many differences with her own personal beliefs.
Elizabeth was interested in everything and everyone she found in St. George, but her particular interests were the geography and geology, and, of course, Mormons and Mormonism, especially the lives and roles of women. Their stories—conversions, miracles, trials, and loves—all fascinated her, and she retold them in vivid detail and subtle nuance.
The Indians often present on the streets of St. George interested Elizabeth Kane as well. The Mormon Indian policy espoused if not always practiced by Brigham Young, was "to feed them, not fight them." Consequently, she had an unusual social laboratory at hand, abetted by the keen interest of her husband and children in the Indians. She studied their different cultures—their tribal practices and characteristics—ranging from the Navajo to the Piute or Piede. She recorded in detail their complaints and trials under Mormon justice, as well as the many accounts of Indian adventures related by the St. George pioneers.
Elizabeth's attitude toward Mormonism itself shows marked changes since she recorded her early fears and anxieties concerning the religion. A more mature and understanding attitude is reflected in the journal of this time than can be found in her journals even as late as 1870, when she noted, "Ages of sinful indulgence on [man's] part increased his polygamous propensities, until the unnatural condition of the present man has been reached." She then was sharply critical of what she perceived as men's polygamous nature: "Since Christ taught, it has become general among Christians to consider monogamy right, without ceasing to act as they did when polygamy had become the rule."
Before her visit to St. George, Elizabeth was defensively fearful and disapproving of the religion her husband showed such interest in, referring to the Mormons as misguided, lost, barbarous and unchristian. In St. George she listened curiously and carefully to Brigham Young and others. She sympathetically recounted Young's stories of Joseph Smith, the founding prophet of the Mormon church, of conversions, and of life-changing miracles. Even her outrage over polygamy dimmed. She seemed to enjoy manifesting confusion over which polygamous Sister Snow invited her to dinner, and she occasionally showed condescension as she considered the lot of multiple wives compared to her status as an only, cherished wife. Nevertheless, by the end of her visit, she exhibited a deeper understanding of the rewards, loves, and satisfactions Mormon women found in their marriages, whether polygamous or monogamous. Her journal is well worth reading for its illustration of this unique woman's changing thoughts and convictions as well as for her impressions of St. George society in the 1870s.
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Elizabeth Kane's Journal.
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(Elizabeth Kane's Journal)
Monday January 15.
K. took the boys on a long horseback ride, as far as the point where the Virgen finds its outlet from the low hills that shut in the St George plain. They returned with their pockets filled with broken peices of the old Moquis pottery which is so profusely strewn about the tops of the hills. The Piedes who were loitering in the street when they dismounted caught sight of the bits protruding from Willie's breast pocket, and seemed highly and contemptuously amused, just as we were by the decoration of empty tomato cans worn by an Indian.
While they were gone I spent the long morning with my friend—I will call her Louisa, though that is not her name. I think her face is one of the loveliest I have ever seen.70
She is the daughter of rich parents residing in Salt Lake City; that is they are rich now, though they shared in the hardships of the emigration, and Louisa herself was born in a wagon during the earliest hurried flight of the Mormons, that from Far West I think.71 She married "in the faith," when she grew up, one of those men who are always unfortunate in their own business affairs, while they are everywhere in demand to lend a helping hand to others. Nothing is amiss in their moral being except that the necessary leaven of selfishness is wanting which will enable them to concentrate their energies first upon their own business as most important to themselves no matter how valuable their help may be to others at the time. Such men as Louisa's husband are universally beloved in the community in which they live, but they are rather trying masters of a household which has to depend upon their daily labours. That Mr. Johns team has been loaned to Brother Smith to bring his family down from Salt Lake City, would irritate most women, who knew that a moment's thought would have recalled to Mr. John's memory the fact that the supply of firewood was exhausted and more had to be hauled from the cañon. True, Johns is very sorry, and will go round to a neighbour's with a wheelbarrow and bring back enough for the day, but Louisa knows that he thereby misses the pay for a day's labour at a time they can ill afford to go without it.
The same thing occurs in more important matters, and Johns is always a poor man, though always within an ace of being a rich one. He never takes the tide in the affairs of men at the turn, but finds himself stranded by the ebb. He is an earnest Mormon, and always ready to go on a mission, starting off willingly without purse or scrip,72 and leaving Louisa with very little cash in hers. Yet, as she said to me, his "beautiful faith is always justified, for they have never really lacked bread in his absence, nor been obliged to apply to the brethren for help." How she loves him, and respects his unselfishness, his kindness in the family, his unfailing patience, his readiness to help others, his gentleness as a nurse in sickness! "Poor soul, he's had enough training in that with me on his hands!" she said, this morning with shining eyes looking out from her beautiful though worn face, as she spoke of his character. She has indeed given him training in nursing her. I think she has borne him eleven children, of whom some died in infancy—I know they were little more than a year apart—and she is labouring under a severe form of internal disease, the result of leaving her bed and going to work too soon after the birth of one of her first children. Before the birth of her last she was herself paralysed on the left side for four months, and the baby when born was for several months unable to lift its head, or even turn it on the pillow. Louisa spoke of the time when she was paralysed as one of sweet peace of mind and body. She had been unable to move about, and had therefore felt free to lean back in her chair, and sew (she could use her right hand, and though she could not lift her fingers could hold the end of her seam when placed between them.) She had been able to do up all the sewing for the summer while her heart had been free to commune with her God, as she had rarely had time to do in her busy life when cares would intervene, even in the moments spent upon her knees. Her dear eldest daughter, a girl of sixteen had done all the work with what help the younger ones could give. Now, she and Mr. Johns feel it wrong to keep the dear girl from the education she has a right to receive, and so they have sent her to the College at Salt Lake City. The parting is for five years—three to be spent at college, two in teaching in return for her education, and Mary is very homesick, "but not more than I am for her" the mother said, with bright tear drops falling on the baby's neck as she dandled him, but still with a cheerful face.
The next girl does all she could to help her mother, but the next has the terrible sore-eyes of Southern Utah, and something ails her spine and her poor little fingers are crippled with felons,73 so that she requires help, instead of being able to give it. And the next—a merry bright eyed little scamperer, "what an amount of running she can do for Mamma!, I exclaimed. Louisa laughingly shook her head, "Not much help is to be obtained from Lulu," she said, " her Aunt Annie has only two children and invited Lulu to spend six months with her, and she has been so petted that now she does not want to be useful at home." "Her Aunt Annie. A sister of yours I suppose? What a comfort it must be to have her near you!" I said. "She is only a Sister in the Lord, Mr. Johns' first wife" replied Louisa, "but she is very kind to Lulu, and has clothed her from head to foot."
While Louisa talked with me she continued her household work. The room in which we sat contained [a] cooking stove and dining table as well as rocking-chair and cradle. Everything was spotlessly clean, but everything showed the marks of poverty. The rag-carpet had large holes in it, but then the edges of each hole were carefully bound with wide braid. "I can't afford time yet to make a new one" she said, "but now that it's past darning I can still keep it from looking slovenly."
With great self denial, her husband and she saved enough to put up a saw-mill in one of the timbered canyons about a hundred miles from the settlement. There they spent the summer last year, living in tents and wagon boxes i.e. the box part of a wagon dismounted from the wheels but retaining its arched white canvas cover. She and her daughter cooked for the seven men Mr. Johns employed, as well as taking care of the children. The summer was intensely hot, and father, mother and children were all exhausted when they returned home, but they looked forward to large profits when sales began. Lumber is very scarce in Utah, and the mill was also near the great mining region of Pioche in Nevada, where the price was something marvellous.74
At one of the Meetings in the Tabernacle addresses were delivered regarding the difficulties of finishing it or beginning the new Temple they wanted to erect. The brethren had given time and labour and the tithing fund had been stretched as far as it would go, but sufficient building material could not be obtained. "Pioche" offered higher prices, and "Zion" lacked. An appeal was made from the preachers' stand to brethren who owned lumber or other building material not to sell it to the Gentiles at their rate, but to put it into Zion's work at less than half. Elder Johns grotesque looking face (he had, as he used to say, "been mashed considerable" in various accidents) had been twitching for some time, and when the address was over, he jumped up, and laid his stock at the disposal of the Church!
And when I asked Louisa today how she felt about his offer, she said, "How thankful she was that grace had been given Johns to make an offering in which she could share, as her labour had helped to make the lumber.
Faithful husband, faithful spouse, faithful pair!
I was surprised to learn today, that the kind Sister Annie whom Louisa was going to eulogise was Mr. John's first and oldest wife. Her devotion to her husband, the number of their children and their poverty had made me suppose Louisa an only wife.
The number of Louisa's children ought to remind me to observe that the Mormon theory in this matter is not consistently sustained by Mormon practice. The advocates of polygamy urge in its favor [the] theory that it is better for the physical health of mothers and infants. Taking the females of the lower animals as examples of what should be the healthy state of life for the human female they say that during pregnancy and lactation she should live apart from her husband, and that as he has proved incapable in a state of monogamy of the requisite self denial, polygamy was wisely fore-ordained for the proper regulation of the family.
Theory has failed, if one may judge from the relative ages of the children in most Mormon families. All the wives who have any children at all have quantities of them. They are deemed a woman's crown of glory, and she is proud of their number and what is more to the purpose her husband is proud too.
I was one day so strongly wrought upon by the thought of Louisa that I determined to tackle old Mrs. Lange on the subject, and to ask her why, when the Saints preached so directly to the point in their sermons, and counselled with each other on the respective size of the motes and beams in either's eye;75 why some one had not counselled with Brother Johns for Louisa's benefit. Mrs. Lange is a spectacled woman of sixty or so; stout, shrewd and hard-headed as Susan Anthony herself. I often wondered how in the world she came to be a convert to Mormonism It seemed as if no delusion of the senses or the imagination could have come over her. I called, Mrs. Lange opened the door for me, but it was not the Mrs. Lange I meant to visit. My Mrs. Lange was in the sitting room, and this wife had come to her house to look over their joint husband's clothes, and to put them in order before he went on a mission. They were engaged at the moment in mending his great-coat, an occupation in which they continued with grave simplicity. I could not summon courage to introduce my question and instead, we talked of their husband's coming departure. This man had had a fine education, had taken honours at college, spoke and wrote well in several modern languages, and was the son of a rich gentleman-farmer in Massachusetts. He had lost about twenty thousand dollars through becoming a Mormon, and I must say I respected him for that patched great coat. He knew enough of the old "Gentile" society in which he had moved, to feel how much caste he lost by wearing it. Yet he went tranquilly off to London, and I daresay thought affectionately of Mary's patch, and Julia's darn, when he was far away!
After K. and the boys had rested a little, we went to dine at Mrs. Artemisia Snow's. This was the lady to whom I had paid my visit declining to dine there, when she had not given the invitation. It was her turn now. We found several of the leading people of the place assembled to meet us. The dinner; well cooked and well served; had nothing remarkable about it, except that the second wife, who had come over from her own house, helped the widowed daughter of the first to wait upon us. Fancy a first wifes' tranquilly permitting a second to rummage her closets and inspect her housekeeping; and a second wifes' being willing to stand behind the first wife's chair; here, too in Utah, where the husband's wife, and sometimes, wives! sit next to him! To see the affectionate anxiety as to the dinner comforts of their lord manifested by two rival wives is something comical! There was nothing of that shown here; the second wife behaving to the elder precisely as a married daughter would have done.
The widowed daughter [TK: of Mrs. no. 1] by the bye, owns a pretty white villa, standing in neatly kept grounds which are surrounded by a low wall of volcanic tufa coped with red sandstone. The substantial barn and stable standing in one corner of the lot, look as if the owner took good care of her property. Since her husband was killed some years ago on the Mojave by the Indians, she has successfully carried on his business with the aid of her little boys. I believe he brought goods through with his teams from Salt Lake to St George and the other southern settlements of Utah. His widow now either sends out the teams with trustworthy drivers, or accompanies the train herself with her young sons. She is a slender, dark complexioned woman, lithe and graceful in her movements and youthful enough to be quite a belle in the homely society here.
After dinner most of the female guests withdrew, to the kitchen I suppose, for I could see them flitting in to the dining room now and then to put away pieces of the dinner service. Mrs. Artemisia Snow and I were accompanied to the parlour by the gentlemen. The lamp on the mantlepiece shed but a faint light compared to the vivid changeful glow of the blazing pine logs on the hearth, and some allusion to the solidity with which the fireplace was built, led to the remark that it was under the hearth at the Beman farm [in New York State] that the [Golden] "Plates" of the Book of Mormon were hidden.76 Mrs. Snow was a daughter of Mr. Beman, a wealthy farmer of Livingston Livonia County, New York. She was only a girl when the plates were brought there, but remembered perfectly the anxiety they all felt after the plates were buried, and a fire kindled on the hearth above them, round which the family sat as usual. I asked "Who were searching for the plates?"
She answered "The people of the neighborhood. They did not know what Joseph Smith had found, but that it was treasure, and they wanted to get it away. This was long before there was any dream of religious persecution."
Mrs. Snow sate knitting a stocking as she talked, like any other homely elderly woman. She certainly seemed to think she had actually gone through the scene she narrated. I know so little of the history of the Mormons that the stories that now followed by the flickering firelight were full of interest to me. I shall write down as much as I can remember, though there must be gaps where allusions were made to things I had never heard of and did not understand enough to remember accurately. The most curious thing was the air of perfect sincerity of all the speakers. I cannot feel doubtful that they believed what they said.
A blue eyed Pennsylvanian with rosy cheeks and snow white hair, a man who has a thoroughly good benevolent face, Bishop Sheetz,77 of Montgomery County, said, speaking of his first interview with Joseph Smith78—they often speak of him as "Joseph" or "Brother Joseph" "I thought him the image of everything prepossessing and noble. I felt to be thankful that I had lived to a wonderful day when God was again communicating with man."
Brigham Young described his first visit to him [Joseph]. "I had received the testimony before," he said, " but I wanted to see him. I felt I would know him to be the man. I went with my brother Phineas and Heber C. Kimball to old man Smith's [Joseph Smith Sr.'s] and found neither of the sons at home, but he said the boys were in the woods. Accordingly we went about a quarter of a mile to where Jos. & Hyrum were, following the tracks of their woodsled through a light snow that was melting. They had just felled a tree, and Joseph greeted us pleasantly, and asked us if we could handle an axe. We then took hold one after another, and got the branches off and the tree cut up into logs very soon, and work being over for the day he invited us home to talk. We attended a meeting in the evening too, and I was fully satisfied."
A simple picture of no ordinary scene, the first meeting of two men whose influence sways so absolutely a people [space left for a figure to add to three zeros] of men women and children; far more disciples than Mahomet was followed by in as many years.
I forget what came next, but after Mrs. Snow had been mentioned as being Beaman's daughter, I asked some question respecting the original discovery of the plates which was answered as nearly as I can remember.
A man named Walters son of a rich man living on the Hudson [River] South of Albany, received a scientific education, was even sent to Paris. After he came home he lived like a misanthrope, he had come back an infidel, believing neither in man nor God. He used to dress in fine broadcloth overcoat, but no other coat nor vest, his trousers all slitted up and patched, and sunburnt boots—filthy! He was a sort of fortune teller, though he never stirred off the old place. For instance, a man I knew rode up, and before he spoke, the fortune teller said, "You needn't get off your horse, I know what you want. Your mare ain't stolen."
Says the man "How do you know what I want?"
Says he, "I'll give you a sign. You've got a respectable wife, and so many children. At this minute your wife has just drawn a bucket of water at the well to wash her dishes. Look at your watch and find out if it ain't so when you get home. As to your mare, she's not a dozen miles from home. She strayed into such neighborhood, and as they didn't know whose she was they put her up till she should be claimed. My fee's a dollar. Be off!"
This man was sent for three times to go to the hill Cumorah to dig for treasure. People knew there was treasure there. Beman was one of those who sent for him. He came. Each time he said there was treasure there, but that he couldn't get it; though there was one that could. The last time he came he pointed out Joseph Smith, who was sitting quietly among a group of men in the tavern, and said There was the young man that could find it, and cursed and swore about him in a scientific manner: awful!"
I asked where Cumorah was. "In Manchester Township Ontario County New York." I think this is near Rochester. I have heard Porter Rockwell,79 a bronzed seafaring looking man, with long hair tucked behind his ears, in which he wears little gold rings, tell of Joseph Smith's failures and final success in finding the plates. Rockwell was a schoolmate and friend of Smith's, and in spite of his intimate knowledge of the humble Yankee settler's life, the log-house, lit up at night by pine chips because they were too poor to burn candles, the daily trudge to the rude schoolhouse and the association with him when they were "hired men" together, evidently believes in his Prophet and hero, falsifying the proverb about "No man being a hero to his valet de chambre." His story about the discovery of the plates sounded like the German legends of the demons of the Harz Mountains, but his description of the life of his neighborhood made me understand what Brigham Young meant by saying the people knew there was treasure in the Hill Cumorah. It seems that the time was one of great mental disturbance in that region. There was much religious excitement; chiefly among the Methodists. People felf free to do very queer things in the new country, which the lapse of a single generation has made us consider Old New England. It is not so many years since the father of the founder of my own sober Presbyterian church in Phila. Whitefield went about preaching in the highways & byways clad in a rough loose garment belted in at the waist and with long hair flowing in imitation of John Baptist.
Not only was there religious excitement, but the phantom treasures of Captain Kidd were sought for far and near, and even in places like Cumorah where the primeval forest still grew undisturbed the gold finder sought for treasure without any traditionary rumor even to guide them. Rockwell said his mother and Mrs. Smith used to spend their Saturday evenings together telling their dreams, and that he was always glad to spend his afternoon holiday gathering pine knots for the evening blaze on the chance that his mother would forget to send him to bed, and that he might listen unnoticed to their talk. The most sober settlers of the district he said were "gropers" though they were ashamed to own [up to] it; and stole out to dig of moonlight nights, carefully effacing the traces of their ineffectual work before creeping home to bed. He often heard his mother and Mrs. Smith comparing notes, and telling how Such an one's dream, and Such another's pointed to the same lucky spot: how the spades often struck the iron sides of the treasure chest, and how it was charmed away, now six inches this side, now four feet deepter, and again completely out of reach. Joseph Smith was no gold seeker by trade; he only did openly what all were doing privately; but he was considered to be "lucky".
How he found the plates, saw them plainly, and lost sight of them again, I have read in some Mormon book since I came here. Brigham Young said that the night Joseph found the plates "there was a wonderful light in the heavens. I was about 70 miles from there and stood for hours watching it. There were lances darting and the sound of cannon and armies just at hand, and flashes of light, though there were no clouds. Joseph's discovery was in the papers directly, and everywhere people remarked the coincidence, because for hundreds of miles they had been out watching like myself."
I asked where the plates were now, and saw in a moment from the expression of the countenances around that I had blundered. But I was answered that they were in a cave; that Oliver Cowdery80 though now an apostate would not deny that he had seen them. He had been to the cave, I did not understand exactly whether Oliver Cowdery was there three times, or whether he accompanied Joseph the third time he went there, and Brigham Young's tome was so solemn that I listened bewildered like a child to the evening witch stories of its nurse. Nor do I understand whether the plates were all transcribed by this time or not. The plates are thin leaves of gold shaped like thin sections of a cow-bell, to speak profanely, and threaded on golden rings which the Mormons believe Joseph to have found in the hill in Cumorah. The curious characters inscribed upon them he was enabled to translate by means of magic, or hallowed, pair of immense eye-glasses, to speak profanely again of what the Mormons reverence, called the Urim & Thummim found in the same small chest in which the plates were. This translation is the Book of Mormon.
Brigham Young said that when Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith were in the cave this third time, they could see its contents more distinctly than before, just as your eyes get used to the light of a dim candle, and objects in the room become plain to you. It was about fifteen feet high and round its sides were ranged boxes of treasure. In the centre was a large stone table empty before, but now piled with similar gold plates, some of which also lay scattered on the floor beneath. Formerly the sword of Laban81 hung on the walls sheathed, but it was now unsheathed and lying across the plates on the table; and One that was with them said it was never to be sheathed until the reign of Righteousness upon the earth." [A note by Elizabeth Kane appears at the bottom of this journal page.]82
I would have liked to hear more, half expecting the apparition of some Frederick Barbarossa,83 but Brigham Young ceased speaking and Bishop Snow related a long dream which had recently been vouchsafed to him. By this time my poor little boys were so tired after their long ride that they were nodding as they stood beside my chair. I whispered to them to go and sit down to rest, but Willie whispered back in a despairing way "Oh, I can't bend, I'm so stiff!" So we prepared to take leave; the household as usual assembling first for prayers. The supplications for the continuance of the improvement in K's health were very earnest. Afterwards, the wrappings were brought in and as we shawled ourselves Brigham Young noticed that K. wore thin dress shoes, and asked where his overshoes were. When he admitted that he did not intend wearing any, and could not be persuaded to borrow a pair, B.Y. quaintly remarked "For a man to neglect ordinary precautions regarding his health that he cand perfectly well take himself, and then to ask the Lord to take care of him is an insult to the Lord's common sense!" After that of course K. submitted, and when we left the house, we found that the ground was exceedingly damp. The Mormons say the ground always is damp at night "owing to the mineral."
Overhead I never beheld such a sky. K. said that it was because I was unused to the glory of a Southern night, that I was so fascinated by it. The moon and the stars did not look like flat objects pasted on a solid background, as they generally seem to me, but were visibly independent orbs riding in the pure blue depths. Venus shone above the black basalt hill with an intensity that made me wish her worshipper old Sister G. could see her. Round the horizon was a pale light, and on either side the moon, but at a great distance, a strange semi-circular sweep of light, unlike one of the ordinary halos. There was not a cloud in the sky and the air was as soft as May.
While I was putting the boys to bed, K. went to the acequia [irrigation trench] to get some cold drinking water for the night, and did not return for so long that I was beginning to be alarmed. When he did come back however he told me that my wish had been granted. Every light in the village was extinguished, but Sister G. late as it was, was prowling about in the moonlight lost in admiration of the stars, and had obliged him to give her a lesson in astronomy then and there. A curious fancy in a woman nearer seventy than sixty! She told K. that all the celestial splendours were a celebration got up for his benefit and gave a certain token that he would be restored to health.
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Elizabeth Kane.
L. D. S. Church photograph. |
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Notes:
70. Several sentences, crossed out in ink, were eliminated from the journal at this point. The sentences were disjointed and were irrelevant to the description of "Louisa."
71. The Saints fled their Missouri settlements, including Far West, in 1839, and resettled in Nauvoo, Illinois, which they left in 1846 for the Great Basin. Earlier, they left Kirkland, Ohio, their first gathering place, for Independence, Missouri, in 1831.
72. A reference to the practice of Mormon missionaries to travel and preach without funds. They relied on the generosity of the people they met to feed and house them.
73. Ophthalmia, an eye inflamation, afflicted a number of Dixie residents. Felons are a deep, usually suppurative, inflammation of the finger or toe especially near or around the nail.
74. Pioche was at the peak of its prosperity at this time. In 1872 ore production totaled $5,462,000 and the population reached 7,500. It began to decline in 1875. Cooley, Twelve Mormon Homes, 20, n16.
75. Matthew 7:3.
76. Joseph Smith said he translated the Book of Mormon from golden plates given to him by the Angel Moroni. They were the record of ancient inhabitants of the Americas. Between translation sessions, the plates were hidden for safe keeping. The translation process is described in Richard Van Wagoner, "Joseph Smith: The Gift of Seeing," Dialogue Magazine 15 (Summer 1982): 49-68.
77. Elijah F. Sheets, for fifty years a Mormon bishop and close business associate of Brigham Young, was a member of the Kane party traveling south from Salt Lake City to St. George. Cooley, Twelve Mormon Homes, 1.
78. Joseph Smith, the founding prophet and first president of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints organized in 1830, died at the hands of a mob in Carthage, Illinois, June 27, 1844.
79. A trusted associate of Brigham Young, Orrin Porter Rockwell served as bodyguard, scout, and pathfinder for the church leader. Rockwell was a relative of Joseph Smith and also served as his bodyguard before his death. Rockwell was well-known for his shoulder-length hair, which he had worn long since Nauvoo days when Joseph Smith prophesied "Cut not thy hair and no bullet or blade can harm thee." For a biography on Rockwell see Harold Schindler, Orrin Porter Rockwell, Man of God, Son of Thunder (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1966).
80. Oliver Cowdery, a young school teacher who acted as scribe to Joseph Smith in translating the Book of Mormon, was born October 3, 1806. In 1829 he began assisting Joseph Smith and was baptized into the Mormon church. He is listed as one of the "Three Witnesses" in the Book of Mormon. Although Cowdery was excommunicated in 1838, he never denounced the Book of Mormon. In 1848 he was rebaptized into the church and determined to move to Utah. While visiting relatives in Missouri on his journey to Utah, Cowdery died March 3, 1850. He had been dead over twenty years when Elizabeth Kane wrote her journal.
81. According to the Book of Mormon, Laban lived in Jerusalem about 600 B.C. He was slain with his own sword by Nephi who gained the record of his people to take with him to the New World. A similar account of the unsheathed sword of Laban related here by Elizabeth Kane, was told by Brigham Young at the organization of the Davis Stake of the church, June 17, 1877. Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses (Liverpool, England: William Budge, 1878, reprinted 1966), 38.
82. Elizabeth Kane's footnote reads: "I found a long account of the "sword of Laban" in a copy of the Book of Mormon on the table this morning in the 1st Chapter of the Book of Nephi."
83. Frederick I was the Holy Roman emperor from 1152-90 A.D.
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