2. Throughout this article, for the sake of simplicity and brevity, I refer to members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as “Mormons,” “Latter-day Saints,” or “Saints,” employing the corresponding adjectives “Mormon” and “LDS.” Church members themselves customarily used these designations in their published and unpublished writings during the period I have studied.

3. Some notable scholarship on the historical evolution of Mormonism includes: Hansen, Klaus J., Mormonism and the American Experience (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Shipps, Jan, Mormonism: The Story of a New Religious Tradition (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1985)Google Scholar; Alexander, Thomas G., Mormonism in Transition, 1890-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar; and Yorgason, Ethan R., Transformation of the Mormon Culture Region (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2003)Google Scholar. The late Arrington, Leonard J.characterized this process of evolution perhaps too charitably, playing down strong elements of social control, when he described the church as handling its historical moments of crisis with “minimal adjustment and pragmatic compromise“: Arrington, “Crisis in Identity: Mormon Responses in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” in S. Hill, Marvin and B. Allen, James, eds., Mormonism and American Culture (New York: Harper and Row, 1972), 169Google Scholar.

4. For a recent history of Mormon polygamy, see M. Daines, Kathryn, More Wives than One: the Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001)Google Scholar. Leo Lyman's, EdwardPolitical Deliverance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1986)Google Scholar provides the best account of how post-Manifesto political realignment (from mainly Mormon and anti-Mormon parties to Democratic and Republican ones) strengthened the case for statehood. On the economic history of the Mormons, see Arrington, Leonard, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958)Google Scholar. For the major changes in Mormon religious practice, see Shipps, Mormonism, chapter 7.

5. Mark Leone and others have described the development as a transition from a closed, communitarian, theocratic society to an open, individualistic, and republican one. The former was confrontational in its posture toward the Gentile world; the latter more accommodating: Leone, Mark, The Roots of Modern Mormonism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Following Leone's lead, R. Laurence Moore has asserted that accommodating Mormons “forgot their history” as a persecuted community of American “outsiders“: Laurence Moore, R., Religious Outsiders and the Making of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 42Google Scholar. Jan Shipps gives the changes a less negative cast but sees them as no less dramatic. Charting new religious practices among Mormons in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she notes that “the behavioral boundary that had once separated Mormons from the outside world was being seriously eroded.” To preserve a sense of sainthood, Mormons cultivated practices that softened their earlier separatism. They began to pay increasing attention to regulations concerning diet and appearance. Devotion to genealogy and temple work on behalf of the dead also intensified. No longer distinguished by their communitarianism or theocracy, Mormons found in these new gestures, interests, and callings a way to feel faithful to their principles and their past: Shipps, Mormonism, 139.

6. By 1900, long after Young's death, hundreds of Mormons had left Utah and Idaho to enroll in many of the most elite American universities: the University of Michigan, Columbia, Harvard, Cornell, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and Berkeley. Returning graduates would exercise a disproportionate influence in the development of scientific and professionalized medical, legal, agricultural, and educational practice in Utah.

7. Doctrine and Covenants 93:36, 90:15 (hereafter D&C).

8. Young, Brigham, “Intelligence, Etc.,” remarks given in the Salt Lake Tabernacle, 9 October 1859, in Discourses of Brigham Young, Second President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. A. Widtsoe, John (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book, 1925), 7:283–284Google Scholar.

9. Young, Brigham, “Diversity among Men as to their Capacity for Receiving Truth, &c,” remarks given in the Bowery, Salt Lake City, 2 September 1860Google Scholar, in Discourses, 8:160.

10. Brigham Young to Theodore W. Curtis, 24 July 1866, in Brigham Young Letter Books, Leonard J. Arrington Papers, series 9, box 6, folder 3, at the Leonard J. Arrington Historical Archives, Special Collections and Archives, Utah State University, Logan, Utah.

11. In 1850 the general assembly of the provisional state of Deseret had provided for a “University of Deseret” in Salt Lake City, but financial troubles dogged that institution until its revival and reorganization in 1869. Deseret—the “t” is pronounced—is a word that comes from the Book of Mormon (Ether 2:3). It denotes “a honey bee,” and it symbolized Mormons’ industrious, close-knit society. (Before Utah became a territory in 1850 Mormons had proposed a massive state of Deseret that would have extended from western Colorado to the southern California coast. It would have included all of modern-day Utah, most of what is now Nevada and Arizona, and sections of what became New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho, Oregon, and California. The Utah territory, organized in 1850, covered a significantly smaller area, but it still included most of what became Nevada, as well as portions of modern-day Colorado and Wyoming. Utah assumed its current borders in 1868. For a map of the proposed territory of Deseret and the territory of Utah, see S. Gaustad, Edwin and L. Barlow, Philip, New Historical Atlas of Religion in America [New York: Oxford University Press, 2001], 300Google Scholar.)

12. Brigham Young to Thomas L. Kane, 9 November 1867, in Brigham Young Letter Books, box 6, folder 5.

13. D&C 66:9, 42:43. Spurning professional medicine, Mormons joined other Americans in embracing the teachings of Samuel Thomson, an untrained but popular nineteenthcentury promoter of “botanic” natural remedies: Divett, Robert T., “Medicine and the Mormons,” Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 51 (January 1963): 2–3Google Scholar. As Nathan Hatch has explained, Thomson struck a chord with Mormons and other “democratizing” Christian movements in post-revolutionary America by calling on them to “throw off the oppressive yoke of clergym en, lawyers, and physicians“: Hatch, , The Democratization of American Christianity (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1989), 29Google Scholar.

14. Brigham Young to Heber John Richards, undated letter written between 25 and 30 December 1867, in Brigham Young Letter Books, box 6, folder 6.

15. A Mormon male earns the status of elder after entering the church's lay priesthood at age twelve, then ascending through the ranks of deacon, teacher, and priest. The title is reserved for missionaries and high-ranking (“general“) authorities.

16. Brigham Young to Heber John Richards, between 25 and 30 December, 1867, in Brigham Young Letter Books, box 6, folder 6.

17. Brigham Young to Heber John Richards, 10 November 1867, in Brigham Young Letter Books, box 6, folder 5. Young also allowed for Heber's brother Joseph Richards to study at Bellevue at the same time, but Joseph would not study at Bellevue until 1873. He graduated in 1875.

18. Brigham Young's letters do not provide evidence that Richards had the church's financial support, but Claire Noall's history of Mormons and medicine claims that Richards went to Bellevue “at Church expense“: Noall, , Guardians of the Hearth: Utah's Pioneer Midzvives and Women Doctors (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon, 1974), 97Google Scholar.

19. Young to Richards, 10 November 1867, in Brigham Young Letter Books, box 6, folder 5.

20. Elder John Taylor, Blessing upon Heber John Richards, 10 November 1867, in Heber John Richards Papers, Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

21. Stewart, David M., Letter to the Editor of The Deseret News, 8 May 1868Google Scholar. Journal History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the church's massive, official compilation of documents relating to the history of the church, housed in the church archives, with microfilm copies elsewhere; hereafter referred to as J.H.), 8 May 1868.

22. Stewart, David M., Letter to the Editor of The Deseret News, 25 January 1869Google Scholar, J.H.

23. “Dr. Heber John Richards Dies at Provo,” The Deseret Evening News, 12 May 1919, J.H.

24. J. Arrington, Leonard, Brigham Young: American Moses (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1985), 342Google Scholar.

25. Brigham Young had 25 wives during his life (two additional wives died in the winter of 1845-46 shortly after being “sealed” to Brigham) and sired 57 children. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 420-421.

26. Blessing cited in Young, Brigham, Letters of Brigham Young to His Sons, ed. C. Jessee, Dean (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book in Collaboration with the Historical Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1974), 163Google Scholar.

27. Brigham Young to Willard Young, 17 June 1871, in Young, Letters, 166-168.

28. Willard Young to Brigham Young, 19 June 1871, cited in Young, Letters, 169; Brigham Young to Willard Young, 25 July 1871, in Young, Letters, 171; Willard Young to Brigham Young, 9 December 1871, in Young, Letters, 172.

29. Editorial, with text of interview included, The Deseret News, 8 June 1871, J.H.

30. “Return of Utah's West Point Cadet,” The Deseret Evening News, 2 July 1875, J.H.

31. Yet after sending Willard to West Point in 1871, Brigham continued to support educational missions only in cases that promised immediate, practical benefit for the Mormon kingdom. In 1872 Brigham sent just one student east to study: his thirty-five-year-old nephew, Seymour Young. Seymour studied at the medical college of New York University during the winters of 1872-1873 and 1873-1874. After earning his M.D. in February of 1874, Seymour felt that he had “succeeded in my studies beyond my most sanguine expectations.” He returned to Salt Lake City, where he opened his own practice and attended personally to the ailing Brigham Young. Seymour B. Young Journal, entry dated 30 October 1872 (but written February 1874 or later), Seymour B. Young Papers, Archives of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

32. H. Backman, James, “Attitudes within the Mormon Church toward the Study of Law, Lawyers, and Litigation—From Brigham Young to the Present,” in Backman, , B.Y.U. Education Week Lectures on the History of Mormon Lawyers (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Education Week, 1980), 15Google Scholar; and Claire Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, 100.

33. Dean C. Jessee, introduction to 21 October 1875 letter from Brigham Young to Don Carlos Young, in Young, Letters, 265. Brigham had supported the revival of the University of Deseret in the late 1860s. His able ally in resurrecting the university was its president, John R. Park, a native of Ohio and a trained doctor who had come to Salt Lake City in 1861. The school was not parochial; the curriculum was broad, and easterntrained, non-Mormon faculty directly contributed to the university's early success. See Chamberlin, Ralph, The University of Utah: A History of its First Hundred Years, 1850-1950, ed. W. Bentley, Harold (Salt Lake City, Utah: University of Utah, 1960)Google Scholar; and Arrington, , Brigham Young: American Moses, 353–354Google Scholar.

34. The fears of George A. Smith—that Mormons educated abroad might not benefit but rather corrupt the kingdom of the Saints—received some substantiation in the example of LeGrand Young, Brigham's nephew. From 1873 to 1874, LeGrand worked toward his LL.B. degree at the University of Michigan. As he approached graduation and surveyed his options for employment in Utah, he made a choice that would aggravate the Mormons. He entered the practice of law in Salt Lake City with Parley Williams, a notorious anti-Mormon, and he became temporarily “inactive” (non-practicing) as a Mormon. LeGrand's sparse journal reveals no reason for the unpopular decision. Although he later defended Brigham and the church from non-Mormon legal attacks, and even though he later resumed his activity in the church, Mormons would remember LeGrand as an example of the dangers of studying abroad: Backman, “The Pioneer Lawyer,” in Backman, B.Y.U. Education Week Lectures on the History of Mormon Lawyers, 28.

35. Backman, “Attitudes within the Mormon Church toward the Study of Law, Lawyers, and Litigation—From Brigham Young to the Present,” 15.

36. Brigham Young to Alfales Young, 17 August 1876, in Young, Letters, 232.

37. Backman has noted that “up until the 1870's the Mormon lawyers with very few exceptions had become involved in the legal profession through their own reading or they had been thrust into a quasi-legal position as probate judges because they were leading authorities and citizens in the community. By the mid 1870's a number of gentile lawyers had come into the city, some of them had been trained at law schools in the east and some had prior experience in other communities. In general there were two types of attorneys coming from the outside to practice law in Utah. First were the federally appointed officials in the territory who continued to live in Utah and to conduct a private practice of law. These included Judge Robert N. Baskin, Judge Orlando Powers, and Judge Charles Zane. The other development that brought many gentile lawyers to Utah was the completion of the railroad and the increasing importance of the mining industries in Utah. Many ambitious young lawyers followed businesses into the territory hoping to become successful“: Backman, “The Pioneer Lawyer,” 17.

38. Brigham Young, October 1873 General Conference address, cited in Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, 105.

39. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 367. The Relief Society, the LDS women's humanitarian organization with origins in Nauvoo, Illinois, in the 1840s, was revived in the late 1860s as part of Brigham Young's drive to protect the Mormon kingdom. According to Arrington, “Their objectives were to prevent or diminish female extravagance; inform themselves on political matters so they could lobby effectively against anti-Mormon legislation; establish a woman's commission store as an outlet for their handicraft and home manufacturing; and direct the education of their daughters.” The Young Ladies’ Retrenchment Society, organized by Brigham in the late 1860s, encouraged young women to cultivate simplicity and independence from the outside world in their manner of living. In 1878 the group changed its name to the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association (later the Young Women's Mutual Improvement Association), marking a shift in purpose toward self-improvement. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 351-353.

40. Report on young ladies’ meeting in Ogden, The Ogden Junction, 15 August 1873. Article reprinted in The Deseret News, 16 August 1873 and typed into J.H. 15 August 1873.

41. Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, 105-106.

42. T. A. Larson notes that “in the [U.S.] territories … woman suffrage could be adopted without a popular vote, and, indeed, woman suffrage bills came close to being passed by the legislatures of Washington and Nebraska territories in 1854 and 1856, respectively. A simple majority, either in Congress or in a territorial legislature, with the approval of the executive in each case, was all that was necessary.” Wyoming's legislature approved woman suffrage in 1869, and Utah followed in 1870. Under the terms of Utah's amendment, however, women could not hold office. Larson, , “Woman Suffrage in Western America,”Utah Historical Quarterly 38:1 (Winter 1970)Google Scholar: 9, 10.

43. The political divisions remained intact until the 1890s, when realignment into democratic and republican parties served as a preface to Utah's admission into the union. See Lyman, Political Deliverance.

44. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 363, 365.

45. Louisa Lula Greene, a grandniece of Brigham Young, started the magazine, which, according to Leonard Arrington, was just the second magazine “by and for women west of the Mississippi.” The official motto of the magazine was “The Rights of the Women of Zion, and the Rights of Women of all Nations.” The magazine ran under its original name until 1914, when the name was changed to the Relief Society Magazine. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 366.

46. “Lady Lawyers,” The Woman's Exponent 1:9 (October 1, 1872): 68.

47. “Educate Yourself,” The Woman's Exponent 1:9 (October 1, 1872): 69.

48. Beechwood, Blanche, “A Mormon Woman's Views of Marriage,” The Woman's Exponent 6:7 (September 1, 1877): 54Google Scholar.

49. “Women in Reform,” The Woman's Exponent 6:12 (November 15, 1877): 92.

50. Arrington, Brigham Young: American Moses, 367; “Home Affairs,” The Woman's Exponent 3:22 (April 15, 1875): 173. The account in The Woman's Exponent states that Pratt had studied at the Free Medical College for Women and the Eye and Ear Infirmary in New York City during her fourteen-month absence. That information does not square with Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, but Pratt may have studied at the New York schools while she was with Parley there.

51. Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, 107.

52. That fall Eliza R. Snow was planning to ask the Utah legislature for funds for a women's medical college in Utah, and she hoped Pratt's eastern training would qualify her to preside over the school. “R. S. Reports,” The Woman's Exponent 4:10 (October 15, 1875): 74. The plans for the medical college never materialized, but the Relief Society would succeed in establishing the Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City in 1882, and Romania Pratt would play a leading role in the operation of the hospital.

53. Reynolds Shipp, Ellis, undated 1875 diary entry, in While Others Slept: Autobiography and Journal of Ellis Reynolds Shipp, M.D. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Bookcraft, 1962), 172Google Scholar.

54. Shipp diary, 13 November 1872, in While Others Slept, 110.

55. Shipp diary, 10 November 1875, in While Others Slept, 172.

56. Noall, Guardians of the Hearth, 121.

57. Shipp diary, 20 January 1876, in While Others Slept, 184.

58. Shipp diary, 20 January 1874, in While Others Slept, 151.

59. Shipp diary, 3 February 1876 and 28 March 1876, in While Others Slept, 189, 204, 205.

60. Sanction for plural marriage is found in Section 132 of D&C. Joseph Smith and close associates practiced “the principle,” but it became more widespread after Brigham Young's public endorsement of it in Utah in 1852. Estimates of how many Mormons actually practiced polygamy range from about 9 percent to 20 percent. More accurate numbers are difficult to produce because of incomplete historical records.

61. Shipp diary, 17 February 1873, in While Others Slept, 78.

62. Shipp diary, 28 June 1872, in While Others Slept, 103.

63. Maggie Curtis Shipp, Letter to Ellis Reynolds Shipp, 2 January 1876, in Ellis Reynolds Shipp Papers, Utah State Historical Society, Salt Lake City, Utah.

64. Shipp diary, 14 April 1877, in While Others Slept, 252-253.

65. Shipp diary, 12 March 1877, in While Others Slept, 251.

66. In the fall of 1877, Ellis received an unexpected comfort when Maggie arrived. Maggie had been working to save money to come to the Woman's Medical College, but by August she had been ready to give up, thinking that it would be too expensive for the family to have Ellis and Maggie in school at the same time. In late September, Maggie suddenly appeared at the home where Ellis was boarding, and they “sprang into each other's arms while tears of joy fell thick and fast“: Shipp diary, 6 August and 25 September 1877, in While Others Slept, 264, 275.

67. “Women Physicians,” The Woman's Exponent 5:22 (April 15, 1877): 171.

68. “Correspondence,” The Woman's Exponent 6:4 (July 15, 1877): 30.

69. Ibid., 30.

70. Brigham Young to Feramorz Young, 15 October 1874, in Young, Letters, 298.

71. Brigham Young to Alfales Young, 21 September 1875, in Young, Letters, 221. Alfales thought that fellow Mormon law student A. B. Taylor was too prone to provoking arguments with non-Mormons. Taylor, the son of John Taylor (the counselor of Brigham Young who succeeded him as prophet), also studied law at Michigan from 1875-1877, earning the LL.B.

72. Brigham Young to Alfales Young, 6 October 1875, in Young, Letters, 223.

73. Brigham Young to Willard Young, 19 October 1876, in Young, Letters, 199.

74. Brigham Young to Alfales Young, 23 August 1877, in Young, Letters, 315. See also Brigham Young to Alfales Young, 26 December 1876, in Young, Letters, 238.