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Everyone who is thankful to no longer be living in polygamy owes a debt of gratitude to this amazing woman, who we have never heard of. Jennie Anderson Froiseth should be remembered among Utah’s greatest women. Brew up some Blue Tea, and join me for this fascinating discussion.
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon Polygamy, where we explore the scriptural and theological case for plural marriage. I do always recommend listening to these episodes in order so you can know the more basic things we’ve covered before we get into these more specific topics. My name is Michelle Stone, and this is episode 34, where I hope to do my part to recognize and honor one of Utah’s. greatest and most influential women who you’ve never heard of. Jenny Anderson Frey. I love this amazing lady, and I think you will too. Thank you for joining me as we take a deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon polygamy. In all of my reading to prepare for part two of the testimonies of of women, which is the episode I had planned to do next, I came across this remarkable woman, and I was immediately intrigued by her. The more I read, the more I was amazed. It took quite a bit of searching and deep discovery to find out who she actually was, and The central role she played in early Utah. So even though this episode is a departure from, you know, what I had intended and maybe our normal topic, we haven’t, I don’t think done an episode dedicated to just one person before, uh, other than the Bible stories of Jacob and Abraham, and we’ve done a lot of those, but this was a little bit of a departure, but I’m really hoping that you’ll, um, be interested and want to listen so that. I, I think that this woman needs to be better remembered. I think that part of the reason that she’s not known at all is because it’s not really in anybody’s interest to remember her. She doesn’t fit easily into the narratives that people are motivated to promote. And so I just think though that she is amazing and I think that any Any LDS person or Uta who is glad that we no longer live in polygamy owes her a giant debt of gratitude. So I think that she is worth talking about. So, as I sip my blue tea. I’ll explain later. We are going to sit back and talk about Jenny Anderson Frey and her efforts to improve lives of Utah women. Her efforts, efforts included the blue tea, the um Ladies Literary Club, the Anti-polygamy Society, her newspaper, the Anti-polygamy Standard, her book, The Women of Mormonism, can you see this probably backward, or the subtitle, The Story of Polygamy as told by the Victims themselves and the high ideals that inspired everything that she did. So we’re going to start at the beginning. Jenny Anderson was born in Ireland but emigrated with her family to New York before she was 3 years old. Her father was a successful merchant and her older brother was a renowned reporter who traveled internationally for his work. When she was in her teens, her brother was on assignment in in London as he was on assignment as London’s news correspondent, and Jenny and her mother traveled with him. So she grew up during those years in Europe, where she attended the best schools in Paris, or at least good schools in Paris, Paris, Florence, and Berlin. And their London home was a hub of intellectual and political discussion. They had regular visits from some of the most elite intellectuals and writers of the time. It was there that Jenny met brilliant figures such as Robert Robert Browning, William Thackeray, and Charles Dickens. So that was the kind of company and exposure and discussion that she grew up being accustomed to. In 1870 when she was 20, so that was her teen years and then she came back to New York,
[00:03:55] where they lived in Brooklyn. In 1870, her brother accepted an assignment to the Western United States and Jenny again accompanied him. She ran his house and, and really they were a good team. But while in Utah on his western assignment, she met Colonel Bernard Frey, a civil engineer who became a colonel in the Civil War and after the war was assigned as the first surveyor General in Utah. He made the first maps of Utah. Isn’t it cool to just learn these things? So both as a territory and as a state, he was the one who made the first maps. Um, he was, it, it was cool to me that Wasn’t George Washington also a surveyor and a mapmaker? So that, that’s a fun connection. That’s what it made me think of. Anyway, he, he also was an immigrant. He born, he was born in Norway, but immigrated with his family to Minnesota when he was 3. And so that following summer of 1871, they traveled back to New York to be married, and then they established their home in Salt Lake City, where he continued his military assignment. But even after that was done, they remained, and this is where they raised their five children. So it was understandably difficult for this well educated, well traveled and well cultured woman who was used to socializing with intellectual elites to adjust to life in frontier Mormon Utah. She felt lonely, isolated, and socially and intellectually stunted. Um, when she would visit back east to her family and her friends, she would attend the women’s clubs there and organizations and interact with the riots, poets, social leaders that she was used to, and she lamented having nothing similar in Utah until one day. Finally, inspired by her friends out there, she, she started her own, her own um intellectual society. Thus, the blue tea was born. Her first in um women’s society was called the Blue tea. So now I have to say this was really fun for me. I discovered the light isn’t shining in it, so you can’t see how beautifully vibrant blue this actually is. This is actually blue herbal tea. It’s Butterfly pea flowers that make herbal tea that’s apparently very good for you. I looked it up and was happy to be able to find blue tea, but that’s not what Jenny’s, um, what Jenny’s Society was really about. A blue stocking was a name for a highly educated and intellectual woman. So when several of them gathered for discussion and tea, blue. She seemed a fitting name. So, um, let, I’ll, I’ll tell you this story. It’s fun. So Julie, Julia Ward Howe was a New York author, poet, and suffrage leader. Jenny was talking to her about her life in Utah, and this is quoting from a paper written in Utah Historical Quarterly about her. It was written by Patricia Lynn Scott, which was one of Of my many sources, but I was very thankful for this paper. This is what she said. Mrs. Howe empathized with her, and after one of their conversations, advised her to not be discouraged and dissatisfied. All life has great possibilities.
[00:07:01] You women must make conditions for yourself. Gather the friends together who think as you do and form a literary society, even though it be only a small reading club. Later, Howe provided a name for the proposed group at a tea she hosted for some of America’s leading literary figures. Poet Oliver Wendell Holmes glanced at the guests, noted that there were few men in attendance, and remarked, Well, Julia, you have a regular blue. Stocking gathering. Julia quickly responded, No, Oliver, it is a blue tea. She then urged Jenny to organize a literary club in Salt Lake. She continued, Now, even before its birth, I will christen it for you and name it the Blue tea. So that was Jenny’s first intellectual society for women. So it began, um, it was in 1875 that they had their first meeting. The club was limited to 25 women ostensibly so they could meet in her home. Jenny was elected president and um the members included wives of businessmen, government leaders, judges, attorneys, doctors, army officers, um, tradesmen, entrepreneurs, mining, um, what are they called, the men who ran the mines and um and attorneys, and it even included some of um Utah’s first. Businesswomen and professional women, including one of Utah’s first two lawyers, Georgia Snow, who was accepted by the bar association a few years before this. So it was a really cool, cool group of women. It was made up mostly of young mothers from all religions, the vast majority of the women were under 40, a few of them were under 20, and they did have a few older women as well. So, um, the only thing was no Mormon women were invited to participate. They said that polygamy was just too much of a barrier. And likely the Mormon women didn’t feel the same need because the relief society and the church helped fill those needs for them to, to feel. Like they had society and could better themselves to whatever extent. So, um, the blue tea was a seriously it was seriously academically rigorous as you read through their notes and their plans, it was not merely a social hook up and they didn’t even have many. Programs or performances or recitals. It was serious study so they met, I think it was on Thursdays for 3 hours. Thursdays at 2 o’clock is what I’m remembering. I didn’t write it down and they met for 3 hours and they had um they assigned readings, they assigned people to present on the readings and then to have discussions and they studied all kinds of things, um. Architecture, engineering, like, like it, it was really an academic group. So that’s what they wanted to do. And, um, after a few years, so the, the club grew and it started to have an extensive waiting list cause it was limited to 25. And so after a few years, some of the women wanted the club to grow and they wanted to be able to admit more women and have more activities. But, um, Jenny and her some of her original founders were dedicated to the idea of 25, so there was a split. And some of those women split off and formed the ladies literary Club, which had a much more democratic and inclusive vision, which I have to admit I like. They, they wanted to bring education to
[00:10:22] to the to a broad number of women, not just an elite few. And so, um, so that the literary club, which still was a break off from Jenny’s original club. So even though she didn’t directly form it, it was she very much was the inspiration behind the behind it. And um they were able to build a clubhouse, which I guess they needed to accommodate the greater numbers of women. They would sometimes have hundreds of women, 1 or 200 women. And so um they were able to build a clubhouse which was a beautiful center that came to be known as the Grand Dame of South Temple, which still stands today. The club, the ladies’ Literary Club lasted for well over 100 years, and I think it was in 2013. That um the members that were still attending that club donated the clubhouse to the Utah Heritage Foundation and um I think it’s in other hands now, but in any case, it’s been continually renovated and is open for recitals and weddings and events like that. So it’s a neat story to know um where that came from. I’ve never been to that building. Now I’m curious to go see it. So, um, the Blue tea, which Jenny was started by Jenny and expanded into the ladies literary Club, was actually critically important. It brought organization, community, culture, and intellectual pursuits to the to the non-Mormon women of Utah in really important ways. Um. It served a similar purpose as the relief Society, maybe I already said that did for the LDS women this did for the non-Mormon women. And so I want to put this into context. So the great indignation meeting that we covered, I think to last episode maybe two episodes ago, no, just last episode that was um in January of 1870, just, just months before Jenny arrived in Utah in um the spring summer of 1870. And then the Blue Tea was founded 5 years later, and then 2 years after that, it’s split into both the Blue tea and the um ladies literary Club. So um Let’s see. Oh yeah, and, and so remember I, I should have left, not, not left out that the relief Society was only founded less than a year before the great indignation, right? Well, well, reestablished after a 23 year ban. It it was in existence for less than 3 years and then banned for 23 years and then was started just in time to step up for the great Indignation meeting. And interestingly, similar things happened with the Blue tea and the ladies literary Club, more specifically with the blue tea. So, um, They were formed and organized so that they were perfectly ready to jump into action when when the need arose. So at first they were not at all, well, the blue tea was never a political or socially engaged um organization. It was only Strictly for the intellectual betterment of the members, but the women who were in it jumped easily to other causes as well. So, it was just a few years after it was organized. It was organized in 1875 and in 1878. Something happened that made them jump into, jump into the fray on the topic of polygamy. It’s known as the Carry Owen case, and you can read a lot about the Kerry Owen case,
[00:13:48] but it was hard to find the details of the case, but I was able to find them and hold on to your socks. So here’s the story. John Horn Miles and Caroline Owen, Carrie Owen, were born in the same neighborhood in England. They fell in love and became engaged in their teens, and although her family disapproved, they were still informally engaged. But first he went to see. He and a friend entered a 3 year apprenticeship which. Kind of was indentured servitude, right? They entered that apprenticeship with a sea captain and um after his first year, he, he ended up hating the sea, and after his first year, he begged his father to buy out his indentures, but his father refused because he hadn’t approved of him going in the. First place, so he was stuck. But it was during his 3rd year at sea that they sailed to Australia where he met the Mormon missionaries and was baptized. He had signed up for the apprenticeship with one of his friends and his friend ended up being baptized just a few years later in Australia. They had sailed together that whole time. So from Australia, they sailed to Japan and then to a small island near Washington state, and the boys only had a few months left in their um indentures, so they begged to be let out a few months early so they could make their way from Washington to Utah instead of sailing back to England. So. So that’s what they did. The captain agreed and they made their way from Washington to Utah. When they arrived in Utah, Brigham Young was very excited to have two sailors, and he immediately sent them to Saint George, where he said their expertise with canvas was needed for the roof of the Saint George Temple. And so um there was another sailor in Saint George, and I should remember his name, who was leading with the work on the temple, so they went down to help him. They gained local fame when they use their expertise with ropes and pulleys to help lift the 9 ton baptismal font and fit it perfectly into place. So reading about the baptismal font of the Saint George Temple was also really interesting. So if anyone’s interested in that, it’s fascinating to see how Like, like, remember with the big, the 12 oxen, it was, it was really a big deal. So, um, while they were in Saint George, they lived with a widow named Emily Spencer, who had two teenage daughters, Emily and Julia, so. You go ahead and make your predictions and guesses of where I’m going. So, um, while they were there, John wrote to his ever patient fiancee Caroline telling her that he was officially proposing. So he, he wrote to her after his 3 years at sea and then going to Utah instead of back to England, he wrote her a letter officially proposing. But he also apparently gained the affection of both Emily and Julia, who he also proposed to. So, yeah, he proposed to both of them. He proposed to all three of them. I’m thinking that he must have been much better looking than his friend, who was also living there for both of the girls to fall for him. So that was the situation. He didn’t hear back from Julia very soon, and in the next spring, spring of 1875, this is over 5 years after leaving England and around 2 years after arriving in Utah, he was called on a mission back to his homeland in England. And so he went there and interesting stories. I guess that his, his parents hadn’t had a happy marriage and his mother had left, and his father was dying and on his deathbed, admitted that he had a mistress with 4 children and John went and found them and
[00:17:28] taught them the gospel, baptized all of them and used his inheritance to bring them back to Utah. And he also baptized his fiancee Caroline. And she planned to come back to Utah with him in the process of being baptized and planning to marry John and leave, she was completely disowned by her family, so she made some some pretty hefty sacrifices after already waiting for him for 5 years. So now there are different accounts and different sources. Some sources say that John told Caroline of his other engagements to Julia and Emily, but promised to cut them off. Some sources say that he did not tell Caroline at all. One source explained that the first wife was the mistress, and subsequent wives were basically her servants, and the source claimed that John promised to make Caroline first wife, but then went back on his word when he learned. that church policy was that the oldest wife should be the first wife and Emily was older than Caroline. So that that source says Caroline pled her case personally to, to President John Taylor, informing him how much longer she had been engaged to John, but she did not prevail. So I don’t know how to find out exactly which of those sources is true. I’ve read so many newspaper accounts and personal accounts and family histories, and that’s the best I can do or the varying sources. In any case, I’m not liking John so um. And the situation was Caroline found herself penniless in Utah with no family or friends or connections to rely on. She was there alone, helpless, with only John, who had completely betrayed her. So I guess not knowing what else to do, she married John soon after they were married October 24th, 1878. So she married him that afternoon only to learn within a few hours that he had married Emily earlier that day and then had invited Emily, his first wife, to what Caroline expected to be her own wedding reception. So she had gotten married. She’s at her wedding reception, and in comes the man. I mean, the woman her husband had married just before he married her. Like, can you even imagine? So, um, apparently the younger sister Julia had decided not to get married yet, so it was just the two girls at this point. So Caroline was understandably. Utterly devastated and hopeless and desperate. Just a few hours after her wedding. So it sounds like she, when it happened, she left the wedding reception. She fled and somehow found some non-Mormon women and begged for help. I, I couldn’t find information on how this happened, on what the story was. In my mind, I imagine her like running out of her wedding and going and just knocking on doors. In Salt Lake, in my mind, it was probably pouring rain. It was the end of October, you know, just the most dismal, heart-wrenching story I can even imagine that this poor girl was just knocking on strangers’ doors, trying to find someone who could help her. So that was, that was the story. And so whoever she found and, and I guess because she went to try to find help, the non-Mormon women. Got a firsthand seat for a a front row seat for this story, right? I assume that whoever she found,
[00:21:03] if it wasn’t Jenny herself, brought got Jenny involved pretty um quickly since she was the leader, the president of this women’s organization, and so they immediately put things into action and the next morning. Um, the next, the next morning John was arrested for bigamy, so they went to action and, and we’re gonna handle this. So it went through the court system, the um Salt Lake court, I think it was convicted, even though there were complications like um his first wife, Emily was hidden in a hay cart and taken to Saint George where she could be in hiding, so that no one could question her about anything. Also, no wife was allowed to testify without her husband’s permission. Also, marriage records were such that they couldn’t be proven and, and the church really was pretty adept at cover-ups and non-cooperation with with legal um situations, you know, both with things like the murder charges with um all the things we talked about in the episode on The the Mormon Reformation and also with polygamy cases, right? They were not quick to cooperate and so, um, surprisingly, the Salt Lake court convicted, um, John Mill’s lawyers appeal appealed, and they again, and he was again convicted by the territorial court, but they appealed a third time and it was the US Supreme Court that overturned the conviction because they couldn’t prove that he was married to either woman and Emily never testified, and I can’t remember if I think that Caroline had not been allowed to testify because she needed her husband’s permission. Anyway, again, it was confusing to try to follow the legal legal case, but his conviction was eventually overturned and he was never convicted of bigamy. So It, um, obviously the case was big news in Utah and then became national, national news. And so, um, it was this sad situation that ignited Jenny Frey and the Blue Tes into action. It almost sounds like a band, right? Jenny Froy and the Blue Teas, but um. So the disastrous marriage took place on October 24th and just two weeks later, on November 7th, Jenny and Sarah Cook, who um they, they were the first two presidents of the Blue tea. In fact, I think this time Sarah Cook had taken over as president of the Blue Tea. Um, they had organized and they held an anti-polygamy rally in Independence Hall in Salt Lake City, where over 200 women gathered to write a letter to the nation’s first lady, Mrs. Rutherford B. Hayes, the United States Congress, and various clergy urging them to update and enforce anti-polygamy legislation. So they had been living there. Among the Mormons in Utah, and this got their attention. They were like, this has to stop. We have to make this stop and they flew into action. And so there’s a similar, a similar feeling to me about the relief society barely being organized and then the um Congress starting to make some sounds against polygamy so them them holding the great indignation meeting, you know, and then this, the blue tea being organized and then. This poor girl showing up on their doorstep and then jumping into action and going,
[00:24:30] we have to, we have to help here. And so I think if they hadn’t been organized as they were, it would have been much harder to to get this going. So they were perfectly primed to jump into the fray. So immediately after they held that rally and they worked together to write this letter, and then immediately after the rally the women organized the anti-polygamy society. Jenny wrote that the leaders of the anti-polygamy society are determined to preserve and keep this subject in agitation until it, like the other twin relic of barbarism, should no longer be a foul blot on our escutcheon as a nation. escutcheon, I had to look up that word. It’s a shield that bears a coat of arms. So it’s basically um a symbol of achievement. So she’s saying this is, this is staining what our nation stands for. So the society’s first act was to publish and then distribute 30,000 copies of the letter they had written at that meeting at their rally. So they distributed those throughout the nation to all of Congress to clergymen everywhere. They um really went to action to do that, and the letter had its desired effect and petitions advocating for sterner polygamy laws and strict enforcement flooded into Congress from across. So isn’t it interesting? The power of women is making me feel like the, the great indignation meeting stopped the um the polygamy legislation that was going through and changed, really, really changed the situation, and then a few years later, here come these women and they jump into action and they’re like, no, no, we need polygamy legislation, this is not OK, what’s happening. And so they actually had a huge effect as well. So At the time that the polygamy, I mean that the anti-polygamy society was formed, Jenny was 28 with several young children. So it’s just, it’s amazing to put this into context and think of who she was and what she did for a woman that young to feel that empowered to jump into leadership is is pretty cool to me. So both organizations continue to meet the Blue teas and the anti-polygamy Society and Interestingly, they seem to really keep them separate. Like in the minutes of the blue tea there are no mentions of discussion about polygamy. They really just kept focusing on their intellectual and academic pursuits and then they continued to meet also separately as the um anti polygamy society. And so just over, just over a year after starting the anti polygamy Society and keeping both of these organizations going. Jenny started a newspaper, the anti-polygamy Standard, and she printed the first edition. She um she was the editor. She served as the editor and main, like it seems like promoter of the newspaper for all three years of its existence. So it was an eight page monthly publication that she completely oversaw and and managed. She of course had um other women write much for it, but um it, it included many, many different topics and many things. It was a newspaper like, like those of it stay, but in every edition it included several stories of women living in polygamy that she and her associates collected throughout the territory. So, um, printed on the heading of each edition. Was this scripture. Let every man have one wife and let every woman have her own let every man have his own wife and let every woman have her own husband. 1 Corinthians 7:2. And then it also had in the first column of every of every edition, this reapplied quote from Harriet Beecher Stowe Let every happy
[00:28:09] wife and mother who reads these lines give her sympathy, prayers, and Efforts to see her sisters freed from this degrading bondage. Let all the womanhood of the country stand united for them. There is a power in combined enlightenment, sentiment, and sympathy before which every form of injustice and cruelty must finally go down. So she really was making this connection between the twin relics of barbarism, right? Like, here, we Ended slavery. Now we need to attack polygamy and end polygamy. And again, she was not attacking the women of Utah and she wasn’t even attacking the people or the religion. She just wanted to attack this system that she saw as, as just abhorrent. So, um she wrote this, I think this was in the 2nd, um this, her 2nd month’s publication. She wrote, We have but one feeling toward the women of this territory, that is of kindness and goodwill. We do not purpose to wage a war against any party, sect, or person, but we do intend to fight to the death that system which so enslaves and degrades our sex and which robs them of so much happiness. We shall endeavor to induce the Mormon women to investigate for themselves the foundations of that system and show them that the facts in regard to its inception fully prove that. There is no religious principle whatever about it. We shall endeavor to convince convince them by fact as well as argument that polygamy is not only against the laws of the country but also the laws of God and the contrary to the holiest sentiments of a woman’s heart and of all the teachings of nature. We shall try to make them comprehend that an all wise and loving heavenly Father could never sanction, let alone command the practice of a system. That is so revolting to all sentiments of purity and goodness and productive of so much misery and wickedness, we sympathize with them. We aim to elevate them, to open a way for them to something better than the life which is the lowest, then that life which is the lowest form of slavery and most degrading type of bondage. It was amazing to me to read this because in some ways, like so many of the things that she said are the things I feel so called to do as well because the women then, just as most of us now, were really ignorant about, about what the scriptures actually say about the polygamy and, and, you know, like the, the quest that I’ve gone on. And that I’ve tried to share here. I have learned so much more and that we just didn’t know and Jenny was saying we need to help the women that are living in this understand it so that they can free themselves from bondage. And I think that that’s really profound. It’s just a beautiful lofty goal. And so she goes on to explain that their desires were born of good intentions. pure motives and kind feelings and that they um they had the desire to do no harm to women, but to expose all the horrors of the system and reveal its infamous working and pernicious results so far as decency will permit. So there are several stories where she explains that there are details they can’t include because it would be too. Opposed to decency. It was, there was some pretty tough stuff that they covered. So and um as I said, in every edition, she included stories of women that they had collected. So I want to just like go over the three stories that I read in the first in the first edition. I’ve read through the 1st 2, I think they’re quite long. They’re 8 pages each and there are 36 of them, so I did not read them all. But I just want to share the stories that were included in the first edition. So on the first page
[00:31:42] was a story of a man with 3 wives and many children all living in deplorable poverty in a filthy hovel. So, um, she said, I could never have dreamt of such dirt rags and squalor existing in a Christian country. I had seen nothing equal to it. She said even among the Indian reservations, there was nothing to compare. Um, yet her hostess assured her that she would find many cases as bad as this one if you travel far in Utah. OK, I was not going to include that about the Native Americans because that sounds so insulting. I think that the point was that those people had been pulled out of their homes and were living in basically refugee camps in horrible conditions, and she said that the way that the Mormons were living was even worse than what she had seen there, so. So just wanted to clarify that. So the complicated the situation between this man and his three wives was complicated. The first two wives were sisters. So he married one wife. The younger sister had actually been married to another man and had a baby girl with with her first husband, but he died, leaving her a young widow. And so it was at that point that she married her sister’s husband and they became sister wives as well as sisters. So this man had these two wives. When that baby grew up and became 16, the man married her. So the stepfather married his stepdaughter as his third wife. And um, after a few months, that girl, that 16 year old, the stepdaughter ran away and became and became another man’s plural wife. She had two children by him, but he died, so she, like her mother, became a widow. And apparently with nowhere else to go, she went back to her mother and her first husband slash stepfather. And um and now at the time of this telling when they visited, her oldest daughter that she had had with her husband who died was now 15 and the step-grandfather was planning to marry her. And so um it was really a terrible, terrible story and um It says that within a year, let’s see if I can find it, um. Well, in any case, um, when she heard back, oh, a year after her visit, she heard back that that 15 year old, now 16, was brutally forced into marriage against her deepest desires. So this case made even the local polygamists furious. They like. They wanted to do some tarring and feathering and some lynching, but nothing was done about it, and that was the situation. So I think that’s one of the problems like, yes, these stories were not the norm, but they were too common and there was no way to really prevent them or stop them, right? And so, um. There were some really hard stories and even when we want to talk about like the good polygamous situations, they’re not good, they’re not happy, they’re right, like the situation in Utah wasn’t good. We’ll get into that a little bit more um later. So, OK, this was,
[00:34:47] that was the first story that I just recap, you know, recapped briefly. So from page 4 was a story of an English girl, so I’m going to recap most of this and be part of it. Um, she was the well educated only child of a respectable middle class parents who converted to Mormonism when she was 16, so this is just my recap. This isn’t quoting from it. This is quoting from it. As I had always been religiously inclined and the Mormon doctrines as they as they’re preached seemed to me so simple and beautiful and good, it was not long before I became an enthusiastic votary of the new religion. So she had heard that people were living polygamy in Utah, like the rumors had spread, right, but quote, the missionaries always denied it and said that the report was only a wicked invention of their enemies to injure the reputation of the saints in the outside world. So right, it was, it was just anti-Mormon literature. And so when one of the missionaries proposed, so. One of the missionaries proposed, she again asked about polygamy. She said she dug deeper and quote was positively insured by him that no such thing as polygamy existed. So she goes on, we were married and lived happily for two years when he was recalled to Utah, and I, of course, accompanied him to the promised land. I left my childhood home and bed, uh, it’s gonna make me cry, and bade farewell to my parents. Um, her parents were too aged to travel with her, so it was a very, a very sad farewell because she was their only child, but they were members of the church, they were supportive of her going. Um, they parted with many tears and regrets, yet with many bright hopes and anticipation for a happy future in Zion. She goes on, You may imagine the shock I received when on arriving in Salt Lake City, my husband brought me home to a house where another woman was installed as mistress, his first wife, the mother of several children. So this was interesting to me because I knew of these stories, but I had always thought about them from the perspective of the woman who had been left home to try to provide for her family as her husband left and then came home with a new young wife. This was the the perspective of the new young wife who didn’t know about the first wife. Like it’s just awful on both sides. It says um that she, she said that she was immediately seized with brain fever and was told later that she raved like a mad woman for a few days and then she lay unconscious for a very long time um until she recovered. She goes on to say I’m going to quote, after my health became somewhat restored, I requested my husband to permit me to return to England, where in the love of sympathy of my parents, I might find some consolation for the terrible sufferings I had endured in my brief absence from them. For some time he objected, but at last he told me that I might go since I was so unhappy. But I must leave my babes with him. One scarcely 16 months old, the other not nearly as many weeks. So she had a newborn and an almost 1.5 year old that she had, you know, she at least had the first. Before they came to Utah and, um, OK, fine, you can go, but I’m keeping the children. Um, I played with him against this cruel stipulation, but he was inexorable. Of course I could not abandon my children, so for their sakes, I remained and bore my suffering with all the fortitude I could summon in my to my aid. Will any mother believe me when I say that often I was tempted to give the little innocent something that would make them
[00:38:09] sleep their last their last long slumber, thus purchasing freedom from a life at which my nature revolted and which my conscience told me was as sinful as it was degrading to my womanhood. But it is true, and I might marvel now that I resisted the temptation as well as I did. So, um. Pretty, pretty dark, then she goes on to say, um. Sorry, I’m trying to find where I was supposed to go from there. OK, um, she, her parents, she told them and they were just sick about it, and her father made plans to come and rescue her, but he passed away before he could leave and her mother soon followed him in death. And so, you know, we can assume that maybe their heartache for their daughter was part of what brought them low. I don’t know, but um. She describes, so she wishes that she had not even told them because they lived their last days in deep, deep sorrow for her. She describes living for years in these conditions, but secretly, but she was secretly teaching her children to hate polygamy and Mormonism. She ends by saying, before I came to Utah, I was a trusting true-hearted girl. A religious fervor almost and in religious fervor, fervor, almost a devotee. Now I am but a poor miserable apology for a woman. I have no belief in anything, no confidence in humanity, no faith in religion, no hope in God. I am simply a wreck like thousands of other women whose lives have been blasted under this cruel system. So that was one of the stories. Um, and then, OK, I’m going to read the third story that was included. I hope you don’t mind me reading them. I find them very interesting, and then we’ll talk about them a little bit more going forward. But so this is the story of a woman who was coerced into polygamy. She starts. Many friends who have heard me complain of the sorrows I have endured in polygamy have censured me for having given consent for my husband to take another wife. They say I could easily have prevented it if I had been determined and threatened him with gentile law, as it is only a few years since he went into plurality. I will relate the facts just as they are, and people can see for themselves that it was utterly impossible for me to have acted any differently. My husband was doing well in his business and had been counseled that he had better avail himself of his privilege and add to his family. One day he announced to me that he had determined to quote. Live his religion and take another wife. In one way, I was not surprised, for I had seen that I had seen that blighting shadow destroy the peace of too many homes, not to fear that it might also cast its baleful baleful influence over mine. Yet still I hoped that it might pass by me. We, um, we had lived together happily for 15 years, and I had had 7 children, 4 of whom were living. One of these children was a dearly loved, I may say an idolized little girl who had been an invalid from her birth and whom I cherished like a rare delicate hot house flower. Another was a babe in arms. The rest were two stout, hearty little boys not old enough to do anything to help themselves, so she had an older girl that was an invalid. A a babe in arms and two toddlers or preschoolers. When he told me of his intentions, he also said that he had been counseled to marry a certain woman. I had many reasons to regard this woman with special aversion. A year or two previous, she had been a servant in my family and had annoyed and disgusted me by her efforts to attract the attention of my husband. He did not seem to notice her at all at the time and made no objections when I discharged her for an unkind action toward my little girl whom she appeared to dislike extremely and why I could never imagine,
[00:41:47] for she was as sweet and gentle a creature as ever lived. Subsequently, I heard that he had been advised by a high man in authority in the church to marry this woman on purpose to humble me because I was suspected of having too much spirit for a true saint. Well, it is no it is no use repeating what I said to him, how I wept and prayed to him not to ruin our happy home, reminded him of what we had been to each other for 15 long years and how I had forsaken all my friends for him, how I had tried to be an exemplary wife and a good mother to his children. He said, I am glad you think of your children. Oh, I am glad you think of your children, was his reply, for if you will not do your duty and consent for me to do mine and live up to the privileges of a saint, they shall have neither food, clothing, nor shelter of my providing during the coming winter. What could I do? Could I see my innocent children who had always been tenderly cared for, go hungry, naked, and homeless? I was not strong enough to do all my own housework, and I had a 3 month old baby at my breast, much less go out and earn their food and clothes. I could not bring myself to see my children suffer as I knew they must do, for I knew him well enough to be assured that he would carry out his threat. So I said, well, if you must take another wife, do so, but let it be any other woman in the world than the one you have named, you know, um, you know how hateful she was to May, her daughter, and how could I tolerate anyone in the house that would be so unkind to her. She it must be, and none other was his reply. You keep your side of the house and keep your children, and mind your children, and I will make you and I will make her keep hers. Henry, I said, the day that woman enters this house will be the last day of domestic happiness for us. I cannot help it, Mary, he answered. I have determined to live up to my privileges, and if you know, and if you know when. And if you know when you are well off, you will not make any fuss but act like a sensible woman. There is nothing to prevent me leaving you without a penny if I live, for you have, for you have no rights in this territory, not even the right of a tower. Do as you ought, and I will pledge myself that you nor your children shall never want for anything. But make a fool of yourself, and you may go where you like and do the best you can for them. Again, I hear a lot of um Brigham sentiments rehashed in what this husband is saying. Again, I ask, what could I do? Nothing. So I consented, went to the endowment house, and gave his wife to my husband, the woman that I hated most and despised of all women in the world. I saw her enter my house and take my place in the heart of the man for whom I had given up all that I held dear in this life. I know that the Gentile ladies, as a rule, consider the Mormon women as weak, miserable creatures to bear what they do. But the sacrifices that that many of us make for the sake of our children will prove that we are not different from other women in the matter of a mother’s love. How our once peaceful and happy home became worse than a hell. How that woman’s influence awakened and fostered all that was evil in my nature, and how we both changed my kind, tender husband into a perfect brute. How the strong arm that had defended me for 15 years came to be lifted against me. And um she goes on to talk about how awful it was. It, it sounds like, well, this is, I’ll just read what she says, um, came to be lifted against me, and how the death blow came to my little angel child in trying to save her mother from it as she thought is too long to be
[00:45:13] related here and must be reserved for another communication. But before I close, let me say this much, that Satan himself could not devise or invent any worse tortures than women experience in polygamy. So those were the stories that were included just in the first edition and um. The um Let’s see. OK, so I, I will acknowledge the stories were printed anonymously. We have the names May and Mary in that story, but the names are just um a first wife or I mean the titles of the stories. So it is hard to substantiate the specific claims and um so some people use that to say these are these are just made up stories, but it is, it is, however, generally acknowledged by historians from what I could see that these are true histories given by real women. Um, Jenny and others did travel through the territory collecting stories and in any case, although we do not have the specific names to verify each each case in these specific stories, we do have enough similar stories from our histories, from Anywhere we want to look diaries to know that they are not at all uncommon or unlikely to be true. In any case, the Kerry Owens story can’t be denied because we do have the specifics on that and the court cases to to verify that one that got this all going. So, um, Jenny’s dedication to gather and tell these stories must have been infuriating to Mormons who wanted to keep their secrets secret, right? Nobody wants the Their dirty laundry aired, especially when there’s abuse. But, um, but it must have also been, she must have also been a godsend to women who up until now had been forced to suffer in silence and had to deny their suffering. They were finally given a voice. And so, um, I want to say a little bit more about, um, the truthfulness of her story. So I guess I’ll get to that in a minute. I thought it was here, but I’ll, I’ll get to that in a minute. So. In addition to the publication, the editing and publishing the newspaper, she did even more. So she had already founded the Blue Tea and served as its president for many years, and then she founded and served as the vice president of the anti-polygamy Society. So Sarah Cook was an older woman and she served as the president. She was actually a former Mormon, so she had been Mormon and left the church and was now the president of the anti-polygamy Society. Um, she also edited the eight page Monthly newspaper. She now began speaking nationwide on her anti-polygamy campaign to bring the focus of the nation to the unhappy state of women in Utah. She was quoted to say, I saw and heard enough in my visits to, um, to the to the Mormon women in the Utah territory to assure me that there is not a happy Mormon household in Utah. So that was the impression that she came away with, whether it was true or not. Um, so, While her opponent, while her opponents objected to her characterizations, so you know, claimed these stories aren’t true, these are lies. It is amazing how well they line up with what we, we do know of early Mormonism, even, even the testimonies of early church leaders. So you may recall, um, in episode 31 I read several quotes from Brigham Young and Jenadiah Grant and Hebrew C. Kimball and There are many others.
[00:48:30] I’ll just recap a couple of those to show, you know, the mouths of two or three witnesses, and some of those witnesses were even the church leaders. Brigham Young himself complained that the women are always happy and always unhappy and ceaselessly whining. Remember, he went on and on about their never ending whining. He said, men will say my wife, though a most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day since I took my second wife. No, not a happy day for a year, says one, and another has not seen a happy day for five years. It is said that women are tied down and and abused and are misused and have not the liberty they liberty they ought to have, that many of them are wading through a perfect flood of tears. So you’ll remember, he goes on and makes his ultimatum. Either round up your shoulders and Bury your lot without the incessant whining or leave. That was that, you know, that was, that was that speech. So he also confirmed what the women experienced and suffered. Um, another just recapped quote from Jedediah Grant, he complained that the women say they have not seen a week’s. Happiness since they became acquainted with the law or since their husbands took a second wife. They like anything but the celestial law of God, and if they could break asunder the cable of the Church of Christ, there is scarcely a mother in Israel but would do it this day. So he also testified that all of the women hated polygamy and wanted it to end, um, all of the women living in it. And so, so it’s hard to say, no, Jenny’s not telling the truth when the church leaders themselves. are saying the same thing. So, so it’s a really interesting, I think that we are not on um solid footing to just throw out all of the case studies that That were reported um in in Jenny’s newspaper. So, um, OK, let’s see, um, as if she wasn’t already doing enough with everything I listed and now adding travel, she also published her book, The Women of Mormonism or The Story of Polygamy as told by the victims themselves, which sold thousands of copies and went through numerous reprintings, um, and Amazingly, is even still in print today. It included many of the firsthand stories she had gathered and printed in the newspaper and she wanted to bring more attention, more national attention to them. So she put them, she, she wrote a book and included many of those stories. She also kept the newspaper going during this time. She kept it going for 3 years from April 1880 to March 1883 until she ran out of funds. She had tried and tried to sell more subscriptions, but she just couldn’t get enough funds to keep it going. So partly because then as now, the polygamy question is difficult, right? It’s a difficult one. The system was and is awful, but when people sincerely believe in it, what can and should be done. So it’s, it’s a tough situation. Um I have a lot of thoughts about that, but I won’t go into them right now. So, um, let’s see what I was going to say. OK, so, and it was really interesting because um Jenny started
[00:51:33] exposing these stories, so the women’s exponent, the Relief Society paper, then went into action to try to, they were sort of opponents, right? They were contrary newspapers. And so it’s really interesting because Emmeline B. Wells, who became a few decades after. Polygamy was ended. She became the 5th general president of the Relief Society, but she was the editor at this time of the exponent. And um, she worked to counter the claims of the anti-polygamy standards. So we are going to do a future episode on Emmeline Wells because she is a fascinating, fascinating woman. Again, brilliant, utterly brilliant and deeply complex. So it’ll be interesting to learn, to learn more about her. But um So let’s see what I was going to say. Yeah, so she was um it was it was interesting reading about her with the women’s exponent cause she expected a lot of stories to, a lot of women to make contributions, but It was really hard to get to contributions, so she ended up having to do tons of the writing for it in addition to editing it. So she had several pseudonyms that she used so she could have many different contributors even though it was mostly, mostly all her. And so, um, so yeah, so she was the editor of the Exponent, Jenny was the um. Editor of the anti-polygamy standard. But the thing that’s so interesting about Emmeline Wells and so ironic in this whole situation is that while she publicly defended polygamy, her diaries make it painfully clear that she was just utterly miserable and suffered terribly in the practice. And so I read a few of her quotes back in episode 12 on Jacob’s polygamy, so I’m just here just going to read one more of literally dozens and probably more of heartbreaking lonely laments from her diaries. She wrote, This evening I fully expected my husband here, but was again disappointed if it was one of their children’s birthday, I believe. If he only knew how much good it would do to me and what pleasure and happiness it brings to my subsequent days, he would not be so cherry of Attentions. Cherry is spelled Chari, and it means stingy in this context, I suppose it is rather an exertion in him to come. He is not in want of me, so it means it’s just effort with no reward. He is not in want of me for a companion or in any sense. He does not need me at all. There are plenty ready and willing to administer to every wish, caprice, or whim of his. Indeed they anticipate them. They are near him always while I am shut out of his life and out of sight, out of mind. It is impossible for me to make myself useful to him in any way while I am held at such a distance. So she struggled terribly with loneliness and feeling unloved and. Oh, it was just, it was a really, really difficult situation for her. So, you know, so she, she was one who defended polygamy. So we really need to look at that where Jenny didn’t have any of those complications. She was living in monogamy and saw the suffering and was free to just advocate for what she knew to be right. Where there were much more complicated situations for the Mormon women, um, to navigate.
[00:54:50] So, um, yeah, so, OK, I guess I am talking about a little bit then is now the balance between religious rights and human rights is a difficult one to navigate, right? Like some people said you can’t trample their religious rights and others argued, you can’t allow religious rights to trample human rights and so. The prevailing argument, however, was that polygamy did trample on human rights and religious rights could not legally do that. So while it was a difficult situation with strong feelings on all sides and Mormon women and children caught in the middle, the um the anti-polygamists went out, right? So despite Emmeline Well’s valiant efforts and straightforward, um, the straightforward claims and tragic accounts of the anti-polygamists won the day. And the US increased the pressure until finally in 1990 the church at least pretended to end polygamy, but finally did actually completely phase it out by the mid 1910s. Um, while this is often seen as a but in I think in church history this is often seen as sort of a tragic saga of persecution. I think most of us today would agree that the right side won, right? Otherwise we might all still be living in polygamy. Like, it blessed our lives that this practice was ended among our ancestors. So, It’s interesting to compare the anti-polygamist efforts today. Um, 00, it’s interesting to compare that situation with the anti-polygamist efforts today. Um, the best example being Warren Jeffs and the SLDS, right? Because when that raid happened, I remember the polygamist women being all over the news and crying that their children had been taken and being so upset at what was happening to them and so torn about it. But then as more information came out and you learned what was actually happening there and how those children. That were removed. Many, if not most of them weren’t even the children of those women because they had been taken from their other parents and taken to this ranch where there was this incredible abuse and horror occurring. And so while it seemed like a hard infringement of rights, I think it’s hard to now claim that it wasn’t the right thing to do, right? To arrest Warren Jeffs and to end that terrible community and that practice. So. So, uh, it’s, it’s, it’s a really hard thing to navigate. I really would like to hear your thoughts of how we navigate this because I don’t know that every polygamist community is as outrightly abusive as what happened in the early church and what happened even worse under Warren Jeffs and, you know, and I think there are groups like I think there are terrible abuses in the Kingstons and I, I think there are actually, I actually the more I’ve studied it, the more I think. Polygamy is inherently an abusive practice because the people are taught from their infancy that they must live this or be damned, and that’s really a manipulation that doesn’t allow them to truly make a free choice, right? It really does limit their agency, and so they’re being forced into this miserable life out of fear for for many of them. And so So it’s, it’s a hard, it’s a hard situation, right? I think where I am right now, and again, I want to hear your thoughts. I’m not, I don’t advocate for persecuting polygamists and for prosecuting polygamists necessarily, but I am adamantly opposed to turning a blind eye to abuse.
[00:58:10] And so I guess that maybe. We’re doing about the best we can where polygamy is decriminalized, but abuse is, is prosecuted. Is that, is that how we’re handling it now? And is that the best we can hope for? I would love to hear your thoughts because as I said at the beginning, like my polygamist friends, I don’t want them to feel persecuted and often That feeling of persecution makes them retrench more and more and more, so it’s a really, really hard thing to navigate. I think that these early women, Jenny Anderson, Frey and the anti-polygamy Society did a remarkable job. So they actually had more success than they could have possibly imagined. They were so effective at bringing national attention and opposition opposition to polygamy that they actually worked themselves out of a need to exist, right? So Both the anti-polygamy Society and the blue tea um fizzled out and came to an end, but the ladies literary Club continued on for over 100 years, as I said just recently, their clubhouse was turned over to the historical Society. So Jenny, who had been the founder of the Blue tea and anti-polygamy Society and the inspiration for the ladies Literary Club, continued her work for the rest of her life for the betterment of women in Utah. She was a suffragist, and that was complicated, right, because polygamy and suffrage were so complicated going together. So while Emmeline Wells and others were adamant. That Utah women should have the vote and adamant that there should be polygamy, Jenny was on the opposite side of both issues where she thought that women should vote unless they were polygamists. And so, right, so it was, it was really tough and it those differences um made made these two women who would have been natural allies in so many ways. It it kind of kept them apart for a for a long time. But um once statehood was finally achieved and with the universal suffrage in Utah and the end of polygamy. She and Emmeline did find common ground and began to work together on political causes in the Republican Party and for the betterment of Utah women. So I like that they actually did see that, you know, the value. I they probably always saw the value of one another, but they were finally able to be allies, which I really love. So, um, Jenny Anderson spent the rest of her life working on charitable causes to benefit Utah women and children. Just the year after she stopped publishing the polygamy, the anti-polygamy standard, she was instrumental in organizing the women of Utah to start the Children’s Service Society to quote help destitute, neglected, and orphaned children and to assist working mothers. It was Utah’s first orphanage and daycare, and it is still in operation. It’s it’s moved more to foster care, but it’s still operating, that organization that they founded at that time. And I have, I can’t help but believe that this was in part motivated by her desire to help polygamist women have options, right? So that they could. Get a job and have their children provided for so that they could leave their terrible situations. Um, in her later years she worked to establish the Sarah Draft home. That was Utah’s first care center for elderly people. So think of what this woman did like Utah’s first daycare and Um, orphanage and sort of women’s shelter almost and then America, I mean, Utah’s first elderly home, and um and it says in 1904, Sarah Draft left a sum in her will to be used to create a place where lonesome old people can go to live out their lives without worry where their next meal is coming from or where they are going to get the winter’s cold or necessary clothing.
[01:01:48] So that happened in 1904 and those funds sat there. Until in 1911, guess who? Jenny Anderson Froy said. It says Jenny Anderson Froy, a community activist, took this idea and ran with it. So it means she actually did the work to put the vision into action. It continues. After a long tough journey, the doors to the Sarah Draft home opened in 1914. Sarah Draft’s dream still resonates in the community today to help those in need live a happy and healthy life. And again, this, the Sarah Draft home is still in operation and it might be the only nonprofit elderly home in Utah. At least it was the first one if it’s not the only one. So anyway, by the time Jenny started this project, she was in her 60s and you can hear just from the description how hard she had to work to get that going. So I have to say I, I was thrilled to learn about this woman though she does not, she did not share my faith. Her entire life was a legacy of goodness, service, and tireless efforts to improve her community and the lives of its women and children. So we have beautiful examples of these same virtues in action through the history of the relief society and the church, but I really think we are doing ourselves as women, you know, of Utah, whether we live in Utah or not, as Mormon women with this in our heritage, we’re doing ourselves a great disservice to fail to recognize great women who were not members of the church. So anyone who is thankful to no longer be living in polygamy needs to thank Jenny Anderson Frey. She deserves to be known, remembered and honored for everything she did. So I, I have to say, after learning about her, I am even more inspired and committed to try to live a life of continued progression, um, expansion, intellectual expansion, and also just service and goodness and making the world around me a better place. She is an inspirational figure before, so. That is what I am dedicated to do. But first, I’m going to sit and finish sipping my blue tea and read more stories from the women of Mormonism, which I am sure I will share in future episodes. So again, thank you for sticking in for this episode. I hope you found it enjoyable, and I will see you next time.
