The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History

Jill Mulvay Derr

ISBN 10: 1629721506 / ISBN 13: 9781629721507

Published by Church Historian's Press, 2016

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Bibliographic Details

• Title: The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History
• Publisher: Church Historian's Press
• Publication Date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1629721506
• ISBN 13: 9781629721507
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: new

About this title

Synopsis

The groundbreaking book that Harvard professor Laurel Thatcher Ulrich has called "the most important work to emerge from the Mormon press in the last fifty years."

This collection of original documents explores the fascinating and largely unknown history of the Relief Society in the nineteenth century. The story begins with the founding of the Nauvoo Female Relief Society, and the complete and unabridged minutes of that organization are reproduced in this book for the first time in print. The large majority of the volume covers the lesser-known period after the Relief Society was reestablished in territorial Utah and began to spread to areas as remote as Hawaii and England. Not only did Relief Society women care for their families and the poor, they manufactured and sold goods, went to medical school, gave healing blessings and set apart Relief Society officers, stored grain, built assembly halls, fought for women's suffrage, founded a hospital, defended the practice of plural marriage, and started the Primary and Young Women organizations. Prominent in the documents are the towering figures of Mormon women's history from this period, including Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, Emmeline B. Wells, Zina D. H. Young, and many others.

About the Author

Jill Mulvay Derr is a retired senior research historian for the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carol Cornwall Madsen is a professor emerita of history at Brigham Young University. Kate Holbrook is a specialist in women's history for the Church History Department. Matthew J. Grow is the director of publications for the Church History Department.