I’m posting this information about The Miller Eccles Study Group for any SoCal fMh readers who may be interested in attending their next meeting. The short bio of Eliza R. Snow attached is post-worthy in itself.

Date: Sept 15 (OC), Sept 16th (LAC)

Time:7:30 PM

Speaker: Prof. Jill Derr

Subject: Eliza R. Snow

Directions (scroll to bottom) and Contact Information.

ABOUT THE TOPIC:
Full Name: Eliza Roxcy Snow
Born: January 21, 1804
Birthplace: Becket, Massachusetts
When Eliza was four years old her family moved to the heavily wooded frontier of Mantua, Ohio.

Father: Oliver Snow
Mother: Rosetta Pettibone Snow
Siblings: Leonora, Percy, Melissa, Lorenzo, Lucius, and Samuel

She walked not in the borrowed light of others, but faced the morning unafraid and invincible.

Joseph F. Smith

Called To Serve

On March 17, 1842, the Relief Society was organized under the direction of Joseph Smith and Eliza R. Snow was called to be the secretary. Her duties included keeping minutes and making sure the meetings started and ended on time.

After the death of Joseph Smith the Saints were forced to travel West and the Relief Society was disbanded. It wasn’t until December 18, 1867, years after the Saints had settled in the Salt Lake Valley, that the Relief Society was reorganized under the direction of Brigham Young and Eliza was called as the second General Relief Society President of the Church.

Eliza’s first important job as president was to rekindle the spirit of the Relief Society, which she had loved and nurtured for twenty-three years, and to reestablish its place in the Church. Her primary goal continued to be to establish the organization after the pattern set in Nauvoo by the Prophet Joseph Smith. As she traveled to the various wards, she told the Saints about that original Relief Society and bore her testimony of Joseph as a prophet of God.

As Relief Society president, Eliza also echoed the priorities that her mother had taught her in her childhood. “Let your first business be to perform your duties at home,” she said.

“Inasmuch as you are wise stewards, you will find time for social duties, because these are incumbent upon us as daughters and mothers in Zion. By seeking to perform every duty, you will find that your capacity will increase, and you will be astonished at what you can accomplish.”

Elect Ladies, p. 36 - 37

A Prophet’s Wife

First Husband: Joseph Smith
Married: June 29, 1842

From Eliza’s diary we read, “I was sealed to the prophet, Joseph Smith, for time and eternity in accordance with the celestial law of marriage which God had revealed…. This, one of the most important events of my life, I have never had cause to regret.”

Throughout her life Eliza referred to Joseph as “her first and only love . . . the choice of her heart and the crown of her life.” and when Joseph was martyred in 1844 she was so overcome by grief that she could not eat or sleep and even pled with the Lord to allow her to die. It was during this time of grieving that Joseph appeared to her in vision and told her that she must not desire to die. He then explained that her mission on earth was not yet completed and counseled her to be of good cheer and service to those around her.

Second Husband: Brigham Young
Married: 1844

Though this marriage was one of convenience and respect, it provided Eliza with security after the death of Joseph. When Eliza arrived in the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, Brigham arranged for her to live in a log cabin with Clara Decker, one of his other plural wives. Then, in 1856, he moved Eliza into the Lion House which he had built to house many of his wives and children. Brigham highly respected Eliza’s intellect and valued her opinion. She always sat on his right side at the dinner table and during family prayer.

Physical Appearance

Eliza’s meticulous and precise approach to everything she did carried over into her appearance. She loved elegant yet feminine clothes. She put extra yards of material into her dresses and trimmed them elaborately, which complemented her slender build and above average height and added to her graceful, lofty carriage. A high forehead and large, deep-set eyes gave her a regal countenance. Her speech was eloquent and dynamic.

Elect Ladies, p. 26

She was slight and fragile and always immaculate in dress. I see her now in her full-skirted, lace-trimmed caps and a gold chain around her neck, looking for all the world like a piece of Dresden china.

Clarissa Young Spencer

[Eliza was] dignified, reserved, and rather cold, so much so that one would hesitate to approach her or to assume any familiarity whatever. She was so powerful and able, however, that she impressed people, even children, with her superior intelligence, wisdom, vision, and leadership, and won their admiration and confidence.

Amy Brown Lyman

Zion’s Poetess

Throughout her life, Eliza often expressed her feelings and ideas in writing, especially poetry. Once, as a child, she even wrote a school assignment in verse. In 1826, following the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, Eliza wrote a requiem for which she recieved wide recognition. After her coversion and baptism in the spring of 1835, Eliza began to use her talents to write poetry for the purpose of cheering and edifying the Saints. Over time she came to be known as “Zion’s Poetess”, a name given to her by Joseph Smith. Eliza’s poetry and songs inspired the early Saints with a hope in the Savior and in eternity as they endured the trials and persecutions of their day. Today the Saints continue to be uplifted as they sing the words to such hymns as God of our Fathers; Behold the Great Redeemer Die; How Great the Wisdom and the Love; and O My Father.

Pioneer

Eliza and her family left Kirtland, Ohio in the spring of 1838 in hopes of finding refuge in Missouri. Along the way Lorenzo became very ill and Eliza held his head in her arms to absorb the shocks as the wagon jolted over the rough roads. When the family arrived in Far West, Missouri Lorenzo was still ill and Eliza stayed with him for two weeks while the rest of the family went ahead to Adam-ondi-Ahman.

In the cold winter months of 1839, Eliza’s family followed the Saints to Nauvoo, Illinois leaving behind many of their possessions including two homes. During this journey, Eliza walked beside the wagon to keep warm and to keep her feet from freezing. After a short stay in Quincy, Illinois, Eliza finally arrived in Nauvoo.

I will go forward. I will smile at the rage of the tempest, and ride fearlessly and triumphantly across the boisterous ocean of circumstance.

In February 1846, after the Saints were ordered out of Nauvoo, Eliza travelled with the Markham family across the frozen Mississippi River and began the long journey westward with the Saints. It was during this time that she learned to drive a team of oxen. Of the experience she wrote:

Had it been a horse-team I should have been amply qualified, but driving oxen was entirely a new business; however, I took the whip and very soon learned to ‘haw and gee,’ driving most of the way to Winter Quarters.

At Winter Quarters Eliza became ill with “a slow fever that terminated in chills and fever.”

Sometimes wet nearly from head to foot, I realized that I was near the gate of death; but my trust was in God, and his power preserved me.

Once she recovered from her illness, Eliza spent her days preparing for the trek west and attending meetings where she shared testimony and spiritual gifts. In the summer of 1847, Eliza began her journey to the Salt Lake Valley with the Robert Pierce famly. Before she left she used her last bit of money to buy a bottle of ink which she would use to write inspiring songs, letters, and personal journal entries.

Her Testimony

I will go forward. I will smile at the rage of the tempest, and ride fearlessly and triumphantly across the boisterous ocean of circumstance… and ‘the testimony of Jesus’ will light up a lamp that will guide my vision through the portals of immortality, and communicate to my understanding the glories of the Celestial kingdom.

Eliza R. Snow

A Peaceful Parting

Eliza died on December 5, 1887 and was buried on a hillside near the Lion House in President Brigham Young’s private cemetery. Eliza had arranged all the details of her funeral before she died and requested that the choir sing, “O My Father”, a hymn she wrote which speaks of returning to live with her heavenly parents. She also requested that the Assembly Hall be draped in white and filled with white flowers as a symbol of hope.

Don’t miss this stimulating evening!

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:

Autobiographical Information from Prof. Derr:

History was my minor when I graduated from the University of Utah in 1970. My first love was literature. I hoped to teach English—to acquaint students with the novels and poetry of writers I had come to love through fine professors such as Jack H. Adamson, Dorothy Snow, and William Mulder. Born and reared in Salt Lake City, in 1969 I spent my first summer away from home working in Boston and decided I wanted to do graduate work there. I began work on a master’s in teaching at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in the summer of 1970. The program provided a wonderful opportunity to combine education courses and teaching experience with course work in literature. In the wake of the Civil Rights movement, I wanted my teaching to impact the students hardest hit by poverty and prejudice. I studied what was then known as Black literature and completed my student teaching at the Martin Luther King Middle School in Roxbury, Massachusetts. I struggled with the combination of coarseness and brightness, hopelessness and hope that marks the lives of ghetto youth. After I received my MAT in June 1971, I taught in the Boston Public Schools for two years.

Ironically, I was so taken with my new profession that I was largely oblivious to many of the people and ideas that would have such an impact on my later life. A single student, I knew Richard L. Bushman as a beloved bishop, not as a historian. In June 1970, his wife Claudia Lauper Bushman and other women had begun a discussion group on Mormon women’s lives and history which resulted in publication of the summer 1971 women’s issue of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought and an invitation in the spring of 1973 to Maureen Ursenbach to speak to interested Boston women on the life of Eliza R. Snow. I had not been part of the discussion group, but I attended the lecture. I was fascinated and a bit piqued. Why did I know Eliza Snow only as a writer of hymns and not as a powerful leader of Mormon women?

In the summer of 1973, I returned to Utah. Unable to find a teaching job, I applied to be a research fellow where Maureen Ursenbach worked: at the new History Division of the LDS Church Historical Department, under the direction of Church Historian Leonard J. Arrington. I welcomed the task he assigned me: to find and catalogue the poetry of Eliza R. Snow. I loved reading the Woman’s Exponent (1872–1914) page by page and becoming acquainted with dozens of Latter-day Saint women whose lives gradually unfolded before me. My three-month fellowship was extended to a year and then continued. As I began writing my own articles about Mormon women, I had superb coaching from Maureen Ursenbach [Beecher] and from Leonard J. Arrington and his two assistants Davis Bitton and James B. Allen. These and other History Division colleagues became dear friends, and we worked together over the years, united in our purpose to write scholarly, faithful history.

In the fall of 1977, I married C. Brooklyn Derr, moved with him to Alpine, Utah, and began mothering his three children—Bentley, Danielle, and Yvette. Our son Zachary was born in 1979. I left the History Division in order to give most of my energy to the family, but my husband and colleagues supported me in keeping my hand in history. A History Division book I co-edited with Kenneth W. and Audrey M. Godfrey, Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints was published by Deseret Book in 1982. Brooke and I and our children lived in Fontainebleau, France, for eight months in 1985 while he taught courses at an international business school there. He had a similar teaching assignment which planted us near Lausanne, Switzerland, from 1989 to 1991. These interludes provided occasions to sharpen my French, learn about the Church outside Utah, and work on some long-term historical projects, including histories of LDS Social Services and the Relief Society. The History Division moved to Brigham Young University in 1980, becoming the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for LDS History, and I formally reconnected with colleagues there in 1987. With the support of the Institute, and in collaboration with Janath R. Cannon and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, I completed Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society in 1992.

I continue to pursue the work that served as my entree into Mormon history, the poetry of Eliza R. Snow. Karen Lynn Davidson and I are currently co-editing for publication nearly five hundred of Eliza’s poems, and my major work in progress is a biography of Eliza R. Snow.

SUPPORT FOR THE MILLER ECCLES STUDY GROUP

The Miller Eccles Study Group is supported by the donations of those who attend. We suggest a donation of $10 per person. For students and recent graduates, we suggest $5.00 per person. For those for whom these donations are a burden, please contribute what you can. The principal costs are transportation, lodging, and related expenses.