An Englishwoman in Utah: The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism

by Mrs. T. B. H. Stenhouse

And thus matters continued until the following year—our life of uncertainty and care unchanged. Little in my life at that time is worth recording: to me it was one long, painful struggle, and any change which could come I felt must be for the better. My experience of Mormonism was of course enlarged as new facts presented themselves to my observation, and by nothing was my faith so much shaken as by the discrepancies between the written and spoken Mormonism which was presented with fair face to the European Saints and the world at large, and the actual conduct of the Elders.

From the first moment when Polygamy was announced, the leaders had strictly forbidden the missionaries to enter into any alliances with the sisters abroad, or to make any proposals of marriage to them, or to enter into any matrimonial covenants. In the language of Heber C. Kimball—Brigham’s first counsellor—they were “not to pick out from the flock the young, fair, and tender lambs,” but were to bring them all safely home to Zion.

This counsel was all very well, for it tended to keep the Elders out of mischief, and afforded an opportunity to the brethren at home to select more and more youthful wives from the fair converts who were gathered in to Zion. But the missionaries found it very irksome to obey this counsel, and in point of fact those who did so formed a very small minority.

One of the missionaries who had just returned from Europe came one day to our house in New York, and brought a youthful sister with him. He was by no means a handsome man or prepossessing in his appearance, but I saw at once that he had succeeded in obtaining considerable influence over the young sister’s mind. He said she was not very happy, and he wanted her to stay with some respectable family for a week or two until they set out for Utah, and I agreed that she should stay with us.

She began to play with the children, and took one of them in her arms in a way which attracted my attention, for I noticed that tears were in her eyes, and she excited my sympathy. I asked her as gently and as delicately as I could what was the matter with her, and what her sorrow was, and she told me that she herself had two little ones at home and was wretched at being parted from them. She had obeyed counsel, and had left her husband and a happy home to go to Zion. She loved them all dearly; but, deluded by false teachings, and promises that she should soon have her children again, she had stolen away and left them all.

I reasoned with her, tried to make her see how wrongly she had acted, and persuaded her to return to her husband and seek his forgiveness. But it was all in vain. The salvation of her soul she thought was beyond all earthly considerations; she must stifle the suggestions of her heart within her; she must hasten to Zion. Thus she left me, and like many another victim, I never expected to see her again.

One morning, a few months later, I was astonished to receive a visit from her. After expressing my pleasure at seeing her once more, she told me that what I said had so impressed her that when the emigrants had arrived at St. Louis she had refused to proceed any further on the journey, had written to her husband, had made everything right with him, and was now on her way back to her home in England.

My story is so full of painful reminiscences, that it is with pleasure that I record this incident—one of the rare cases in which folly was not succeeded by utter ruin and misery. Alas, how many instances I might mention, which fell beneath my own personal observation, of wives and mothers led away by the delusive doctrines which they mistook for inspiration, and who sought vainly, through years of misery, for peace and rest, until at length they found it in the darkness of the tomb.

Towards the end of the year 1857, the difficulties in Utah, and a financial panic in New York, resulted in the discontinuance of the Mormon. My husband was thus thrown out of employment, and to add to our difficulties the people for whom I worked suspended operations. This new trial of our faith, however, was not long; out of apparent evil good came. Released from his obligations to the Apostle and the Mormon paper, my husband now set earnestly to work to obtain a living without the crippling influences of “counsel” or the dictates of those whom his religion taught him to respect.

I had always believed that if suffered to act for himself, his energy was such that he would certainly carve his way to a respectable position in the world. In this I was not deceived, either at the time of which I speak or at a later period when, in Salt Lake City, he engaged in active business on his own account. In New York, where he had been, by this time, appointed President of the Eastern Mission, and was actively engaged in advocating the claims of the Mormon Church, he sought and found employment on the staff of the Herald, and in connexion with other daily papers; and such was his success, that from a condition of misery and poverty we were very soon raised to a position of comfort, and surrounded by every luxury suitable to our station in life; and this position we enjoyed until called upon to leave all and journey across the Plains to Zion.