I · Wear · My · Heart · on · My · Sleeve

Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young
Divorced Brigham Young

Brigham Young had lots of wives. A few of them weren't satisfied with their lot and divorced him. (For the most part, Brigham Young did all right by his wives, assuring they had sufficient financial support for them and their children. Even if they decided to divorce him, he was more than willing to offer them continued support.) Ann Eliza was one of those dissatisfied few.

Some call her the nineteenth wife, other the twenty-seventh. (Wikipedia, lists them in order of marriage date, putting her (married in 1868) at number forty-ninth of fifty-two, other sources list her as fifty-second of fifty-five.) I'm not completely sure, but I believe she's one of those wives-in-name-only and never enjoyed the marital bed.

Brother Brigham was not Ann Eliza's first husband. She had already been divorced from her first husband James L. Dee by the age of twenty-four, two children in tow. She was a strong-willed, prideful feminist who probably shouldn't have married Brother Brigham. We may never know what led her to accept plural marriage with Brother Brigham.

Perhaps it was the money. Brother Brigham was a wealthy man. Maybe she thought that if he was loaded, her life would be one of ease. Ann Eliza was a city girl, so when she was dropped off at Brigham Young's Forest Farmhouse, about seven miles south of the city, she wasn't happy. Why should she slave at a farmhouse so far removed from the social hub of Salt Lake? It wasn't fair! Why couldn't she live at the Beehive House? Or why couldn't she have a nice place like the Gardo House? And if she had to live at some isolated farmhouse, why did the stairway have to be in the parlour?

Ann Eliza grew bitter and resentful. She became jealous of his other wives, especially the lovely Amelia Folsom (residing in the rather nice Gardo House), who had married Brother Brigham five years before Ann Eliza did. Ann Eliza became a rather shrewish woman, who felt abandoned and put upon by her husband.

Ann Eliza fled Utah and launched bitter civil divorce proceedings against Brigham Young. She claimed he was worth over six million dollars, therefore she wanted at least US$500 a month, plus court costs. Brigham was more than willing to settle, offering her a livable $100 a month. He claimed he was nowhere near as rich as she made him out to be.

The courts wanted him to pay an expensive alimony to Ann Eliza. Brother Brigham said he'd pay it if this meant that the courts were willing to recognize polygamy as legal and lawful in the US. If not, then Ann Eliza was not his legal wife in the eyes of that court, and he was under no obligation to pay anything.

The courts threw out the case, and Brigham Young honoured his original offer of $100 a month.

After that, Ann Eliza was a vocal opponent of Brigham Young, polygamy and Mormons in general. She went apostate, was later excommunicated and wrote a scathing exposé that is still being published today. Feel free to read it, but keep in mind the veracity of a bitter, disillusioned woman.

She later married one Moses R Deming, but that marriage didn't last either. Marriage didn't seem to be her thing.

The neat thing about Ann Eliza that most people may not know is that it is rumoured that her ghost haunts the Forest Farm House. I'm certainly not inclined to disbelieve this, as lots of freaky things happened when I was working there in the 1980's.

One summer day we were having an outside activity when one of the other living history interpreters pointed to a dining room window and said, "Look." We turned and looked, and there was a woman standing at the dining room window. She backed away, fading from view, and a few of us hurried to the house, as there aren't supposed to be any public visitors inside without an interpreter (all of whom were outside) in the house.

When we got up to the house and unlocked the door, we found no one inside. All the doors had been locked at the time. I’m not sure who the woman at the window was, but general consensus among us was that she was the ghost of Ann Eliza Young. That was the first and only time I've seen her, but other guides have had more experiences, including talking to her.

There are a few other ghosts there, like the dancing children, and the mysterious man who may have been a farm overseer, but Ann Eliza, the bitterest of Brigham Young's wives, is probably the most famous.


Next Post: Jane Manning James, someone quite the opposite of Ann Eliza.