MANUSCRIPT: Woman's Journal of a Trip West, Through Colorado and Utah in 1873.
8vo.; 61 pp. ink manuscript; cloth-backed marbled boards.
A travel journal recording a woman's journey through the Western Rocky Mountain region in 1873, and documenting her time among Mormon women in Utah. This volume begins July 27 and concludes August 22, and appears to be one of a series of journals Clancy kept; it is labeled "Book No. 11" on the front pastedown. Internal evidence suggests her tour in its entirety lasted five weeks, close to four of which are represented here, including her time in Kansas, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, and Utah (absent is the portion of the journey from New York to Kansas by rail). The trip seems to have been primarily scientific tourism of a group of academics: the itinerary is oriented towards geological attractions and Clancy's traveling companions include:
Samuel Roberts Wells, a leading phrenologist; the Fowler brothers, publishers; and Dr. Fuller, an entomologist. Clancy describes the natural scenery and geologic curiosities of the American West, and the effects of the encroaching industrialization upon it. Describing a prairie dog town, she laments “Ah little creatures your doom is sealed as surely as is that of your companions the buffalo, the antelope, and the Indian. Your pert, funny ways will soon live only in memory.”
A large portion of the journal is devoted to Clancy's time in Utah, and her encounters with Mormons. She describes her encounters with several Mormon women:
“Walking out one evening I met and conversed with several of the sisters. One pleasant refined old lady said she came here 13 years ago from Pennsylvania. She said she liked this country and would not willingly return though it would be pleasing to see her friends again. Her countenance wore a look of resignation and self-abnegation corresponding to her gentle voice but painful nevertheless... Another lady said 'I went to the States last year. People said my sister and I would never return but nothing would induce me to live there. People think we are not happy but they are greatly in error.' So the ladies talked to me with perfect apparent freedom. Is human nature different in Utah or do they conceal those jealousies which appear inevitable to their lot. Perhaps implicit faith in their religion leads them to offer their [ ] a willing sacrifice on its altar. The Mormon ladies are sweet, gentle, ladylike, subdued, painfully subdued in measures, devoted to their domestic ties but nothing is visible of that pertness of energy which characterize their sex in other societies. All dictation and leadership is left to the lords of creation.”
Clancy also describes a remarkable encounter with Ann Eliza Young, a Mormon apostate who, after being forced to marry Brigham Young, fled the church and wrote Wife No. 19, a “Complete Expose of Mormonism.” Clancy quotes her story at length, covering two manuscript pages dated August 13, 1873, just 16 days after Ann Eliza had filed for divorce, making Clancy's account of her story is one of the very earliest recorded versions. Clancy's admiration for Ann Eliza is evident; she describes her as “very pretty, interesting, and ladylike though her gentleness covers a volcanic fire that will never tamely submit to wrong.” Young's story was printed in the Rocky Mountain Presbyterian, an anti-Mormon newspaper edited by Reverend Sheldon Jackson, a missionary and leader of the anti-Mormon movement, whose wife, Mary (Vorhees) Jackson is mentioned in Clancy's journal as they spend the Sabbath together.
The anti-Morman movement of the 19th century was largely cast as a feminist issue, appealing to Protestant women to rescue the female victims of Mormonism, brainwashed and trapped in polygamous marriages. As part of this effort, Rev. Jackson wrote an open letter in 1876 to the “Ladies of the Presbyterian Churches of Brooklyn,” describing the poor treatment of Mormon women. However, the movement's purported concern for women's rights was occasionally trumped by their more zealous anti-Mormon sentiment: in the 1878 issue of Rocky Mountain Presbyterian, George Bird called for a repeal of the law allowing women the right to vote in Utah, at the time one of the few states that allowed female suffrage, because as he noted, Mormon women voted "in solid phalanxes for Mormonism and polygamy” (Banker, Mark T. Presbyterian Missions and Cultural Interaction in the Far Southwest, 1850-1950. University of Illinois Press: 1993).
A small card printed with 13 “Articles of Faith of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints" is included.
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