Current location:	the other side of the world
Current mood:	looking through time
Current music:	Motherlife.
Entry tags:	uppity mormon women

Uppity Mormon Women: Interlude

Uppity Mormon Women: Interlude

Stories of some of the Uppity Mormon Women from Utah's history are plentiful, and often retold. We're lucky that we have their stories, for they and others thought to write them down.

The LDS faith has always been an advocate of keeping a journal, to record the moments, both subtle and significant, of our lives. It is thanks, mainly due to these journals, that we have much of the information we do of these women.

Granted, those who seem to have lived significant lives have had much written about them, these vocal, outstanding, public-faced women, but what about all the others? How much do we know about Harriet E. Cook, Brigham Young's fourth wife?

How much do we know about Rebecca Hood Hill? (see image right) Believe me, she may not have been some radically outspoken feminist, some politician, or any other sort of public figure, but she was very important to her family, and they remember her still to this day because someone thought to write down her story. (Her husband was a diarist and had a few adventures himself.)

I'm not terribly good with names, even of the living. (Just ask my daughters. They get called everything but the name they were born with.) Likewise, I forget the name of one of my ancestresses no matter how often I ask my family for her name and write it down. I always seem to lose that piece of paper. But I don't forget who she was, because of something she wrote down that stuck with me ever since I first heard it.

She was the mother to many children. Unfortunately, the family was struck repeatedly by illness and she lost four young children within the space of two years. Even before I had children of my own, before I lost children of my own, and even before I was married, I felt touched by the words she recorded:



"Oh the stillness of the room where the children used to play.
Oh the silence of the house, when the children went away.
This is the Motherlife, to bear, to love, to lose,
Till all the sweet, sad tale is told in a pair of little shoes,
In a single broken toy, in a flower pressed to keep,
All fragrant still the simple life of those who fell asleep."



It touched me so much I had to write music to it.

The world probably won't remember us for the things we do, only for the things someone remembered to write down.

In one hundred years, what will be remembered about you?

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For those of you who are interested in knowing more about Uppity Mormon Women, here are some books to get you started:

• orth Their Salt: Notable But Often Unnoted Women of Utah, Colleen Whitley (Editor.) Utah State University Press, 1996 ISBN: 0874212065
  
  
  
• Worth Their Salt, Too: More Notable but Often Unnoted Women of Utah, Colleen Whitley (Editor.) Utah State University Press, 2000 ISBN: 087421288X
  
  
  
• Heroines of the Restoration, ed.Barbara B. Smith and Blythe Darlyn Thatcher. Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1997 ISBN: 157008307X
  
  
  
• Heroic Mormon Women: True Stories from the Lives of Sixteen Amazing Women in Church History, Ivan J. Barrett. Covenant Communications, 1991 ISBN: 1-57734-676-9
  
  
  
• Representative Women Of Deseret: A Book Of Biographical Sketches To Accompany The Picture Bearing The Same Title, Compiled And Written By Augusta Joyce Crocheron (1884)
  Intro: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ut/state/bios/ajc/intro1.txt
  Index: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ut/state/bios/ajc/
  
  

And now, for more Uppity Mormon Women.