"Feeling and understanding these changes as I do, and knowing that fifty years hence the early struggles of the pioneers of Utah will have almost passed from memory, I have tried to record some of them as connected with my own experience."

At times she is rather sketchy on exact details, but admits: "So far, I have drawn from memory to the best of my ability, and if the record is imperfect my readers must bear in mind that I had a long way to go back, with no written data to refer to."

The editors make good use of footnotes to flesh out the historical aspects of her account, to make corrections where necessary. Spelling and grammar have been left as she wrote it. In the letters this is a slight distraction, as Mary Jane seems to have had a healthy disregard for periods and paragraphs. But the form doesn't hamper the insight of the content.

She wrote her account for her children, thinking it to be "the best record I can make of a life which will prove of no interrest to any beyond my own family." In that respect, she was very wrong.

Mary Jane was born in 1837. In 1841, her parents joined the Mormon Church, and she moved with them to Nauvoo. She recalled some of the early persecution there, and the death of Joseph Smith.

She remembered their making preparations to leave the city, selling their belongings for very little. And she remembers the start of their journey:

"I think I shall never forget that long lonely day; waiting on that vast undulating prarie that stretched as far as the eye could reach, covered with grass and flowers. It must have been a lovely scene that bright spring morning, but I hardly think it was properly appreciated by the little band who were so bravely leaving home, friends, country and kindred to take their toilsome march across the rocky mountains. The oxen were detached from the waggons and feeding lazily among the green grass, knowing nothing of the future that lay before them...My childish heart knew as little as they of the hardship that lay before us."

Mary Jane was 10 when they arrived in the barren Salt Lake Valley in the fall of 1847.

The first real home for the family was a crude cabin Joseph Mount built in the canyon, where he was also building a sawmill.

They eked out a sparse living, fighting off crickets and harsh weather, for two years. When news of the gold discovery in California reached Salt Lake, Joseph determined to seek his fortune.

He left his family in the care of his partner, agreeing to send the partner half of what he made in the gold fields. He did do reasonably well there, but this move cost his family much suffering both while he was gone and from the later consequences of the move.

"We had a sack of flour which we had kept very carefully and would not use it as long as we could get it other ways; for my mother had learned to look out for emergencies. She had smelled something unusual, and, as she was not accustomed to foul odors about the house, set to work to learn the cause. Finaly she traced it to the flour sack where she found a dead mouse. The smell had impregnated the flour and rendered it unfit for use.

"To those who have plenty, and never knew the wretchedness of hunger and privation, this may seem a little thing; but to us it meant bread which is the staff of life and we scarcely knew how to replace it."

In 1851 Joseph sent for his family to come to California, but they did not feel they should leave the valley. When Joseph heard this he became very angry, and thus began a little drama that changed the lives of the Mount family. Joseph demanded a divorce. Elizabeth, feeling abandoned and at a loss to know how to care for her family, obtained a divorce and soon after became the second wife of a Stillman Pond. By the time Joseph calmed down and came to make peace with the family, it was too late.

Joseph also married again, and for a time Mary Jane lived with him, but felt a great sense of aloneness, not quite fitting in with either family. Eventually her father moved back to California, a bitter man. Her mother didn't find happiness, either, leaving Stillman Pond a few years later, and marrying a third time, to Timothy Foote.

In 1856 Mary Jane married Myron Tanner, a young Mormon from San Bernardino whom she met on one of his trips to Salt Lake City. They were going back to California, but on the counsel of Brigham Young, decided to stay in Utah. They lived in Payson for a time, then moved to Provo, where they spent the rest of their lives.

Myron and Mary Jane were the parents of nine children, three of whom died in infancy.

Ten years after he married Mary Jane, Myron took a second wife, Ann Crosby.

"Of this I will say but little. It is a heart history which pen and ink can never trace. It was a great trial, but I believed it to be a true principle, and summoned all my fortitude to bear it bravely."

A cordial relationship existed between the two families for a time, but it eventually deteriorated into discord and bitterness because, said Mary Jane, of the interference of Ann's family. In later letters, however, she always defended the practice. And the insight she offers into the realities of polygamy is fascinating.

Throughout her life, Mary Jane suffered from poor health. In 1842, after the birth of one of her children she became very sick from "childbed fever." It was then, and during the lengthy convalescence which followed, that she decided to become a writer.

"God had given me a taste and a tallent for writing...and I determined then that if God gave me health I would not prize His gift so lightly, but would do all in my power to cultivate my 'tallent' and not 'lay it away in a napkin.'...As soon as my strength and time permitted I gathered and arranged my little poems and coppied them in a book."

Her "Fugitive Poems" volume was published in 1880. She also contributed numerous pieces to Church publications and women's journals of the time. She made no great mark in the literary world, but did become known as the "Utah County Poetess."

Her devotion to the Church never wavered. Myron served as bishop of the Provo Third Ward for a great many years; at the time she completed her autobiography, Mary Jane had served as president of the Relief Society for 15 years.

She died on Jan. 8, 1890, "ending a useful and honorable career," as the newspaper account read. "She left a large family and a wide circle of friends to mourn her departure."

And in her writings, particularly the fragments so choicely and skillfully presented in this book, she left a precious legacy, a fascinating view of Mormon life as it was a hundred years ago, seen through the eyes of a devout and caring woman.

Utah Historical Quarterly, Eugene E. Campbell
The Autobiography of Mary Jane Mount Tanner is a worthy addition to the excellent books published in the Utah, the Mormons, and the West Series. It is an exceptionally well written account of a Mormon girl crossing the plains at the age of ten and enduring unusual difficulties and hardships because of the tragic separation of her parents. Frustrated in her ambition for recognition of her literary talents, Mary Jane poured her soul into her autobiography, giving a detailed, introspective account of life in early Utah that must rank with the journal of Martha Spence Heywood as a source for understanding an intelligent and sensitive women's role in pioneer Utah.

Mrs. Tanner's account is augmented and clarified by detailed explanatory footnotes and a twenty-page introduction by editor Margery W. Ward in cooperation with George S. Tanner, as well as a collection of letters, a nineteen-page epilogue, and an adequate index and map.

George S. Tanner's research for his recently published book on the John Tanner family led to the acquisition of Mary Jane Mount's journals and letters by the University of Utah Library, and his oft-expressed admiration for her writing was an important factor in the production of this valuable book.

Two thirds of the "Memoirs," as Mary Jane entitled her autobiography, describes her life prior to her marriage at age nineteen, and is in many ways the story of her parents and their tragic marriage. It also provided a clear window for viewing the journey to Utah, the primitive living condition of the early years, and the tangled lives of the early Mormons as they suffered loss of parents and marriage partners through death, desertion, and plural marriage.

Mary Jane's account contains numerous inaccuracies, which are corrected by the editor, and many of the prejudices shared by her fellow Mormons. She often became philosophical and expressed her innermost feelings in beautiful prose. Writing of their move from Mill Creek Canyon to Salt Lake City, she described it as a desolate spot, "but for us who had been eight months shut in by the high mountains, it seems a beautiful place; for here the walls of our prison enlarged, and here was human companionship; acquaintances made in adversity, and friends cemented by common suffering." The editor realized that Mary Jane was writing for posterity and so was circumspect about some things in her life, especially concerning her attitude toward plural marriage, but by referring the reader to letters in which Mary Jane expressed herself more freely, the editor made a more balanced point of view available.

The last part of the "Memoirs" is devoted to Mary Jane's life with her husband Myron Tanner as they joined the early settlers of Payson, Utah, in 1836. Her detailed description of her cabin home was written "for the interest of my children that they may see how little is really necessary for happiness....I think I passed some of the happiest hours of my life in that old log cabin." Part of the reason for her happy memories may have been the fact that she did not have to share her husband with another wife at that time. However, in 1866 her husband married Ann Crosby, an English girl. This marriage proved to be a disaster, resulting in Ann's heavy drinking and Mary Jane's additional responsibility for taking care of Ann's children. In her autobiography she wrote "Of this I will say but little. It is a heart history which pen and ink can never trace. It was great trial but I believed it to be a true principle...." However, in her letters she was much more explicit about the problems of plural marriage in general and her own experience in particular.

Students of Utah and Mormon history are indebted to Margery Ward and George S. Tanner for producing this excellent work and to the Tanner Trust Fund and the University of Utah Library for continuing to publish such valuable source materials.