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Maurine C. Ward: Women of the Nauvoo Relief Society 87 86 Mormon Historical Studies “Organization of the Relief Society” by Dale Kilbourn. © by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Courtesy of Museum of Church History and Art, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Maurine C. Ward: Women of the Nauvoo Relief Society 87 “This Institution Is a Good One”: The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, 17 March 1842 to 16 March 1844 Maurine Carr Ward The story of Relief Society began as an idea in the parlor of Sarah Melissa Kimball between Sarah and her seamstress, Margaret Cook. It became a possibility as Sarah and Margaret gathered their friends and neigh- bors to Sarah’s home and planned for a women’s organization. It became a reality when Joseph Smith invited these sisters to the upper floor of his red brick store and formally organized The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo. Twenty women were voted into membership at that historic meeting. It became energized when these women, and the hundreds who followed during the next two years, realized that the word “relief” was an action word, not a passive one. “It is natural for females to have feelings of charity,” the Prophet Joseph Smith instructed. “You are now plac’d in a situation where you can act according to those sympathies which God has planted in your bosoms.”1 Following that admonition, orphans and widows with large families were cared for. The sick were taken into homes and nursed. Women donat- ed apples, flour, meat, coffee, milk, sugar, rolls, cornmeal, and rice. Others donated cotton flannel, coarse linen for pantaloons, thread, and flax for spinning, while those who had no means to give used their talents to sew, spin, and weave. Still others donated quilts, sheets, pillow slips, tablecloths, towels, soap, and candles. Hulda Barruss gave shingles. Weekly, the sisters donated what money they could spare. Mrs. Durfee took a wagon and col- lected wool that could be used for clothes for the temple workers. A Sister MAURINE CARR WARD is the editor of Mormon Historical Studies. She is also the editor of Winter Quarters: The 1846–1848 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards, published in 1996 by Utah State University Press. Any corrections to the Relief Society database, as well as additional information, stories, or photographs of the women, can be sent to her at 433 East 300 South, Hyrum, UT 84319 or at [email protected]. 88 Mormon Historical Studies Smith proposed calling on friendly nonmember merchants for goods. The sisters even involved their menfolk, when it became necessary. When some men refused to pay Sister Hillman for work she had done, they were com- plained about at the Masonic Lodge. If a woman needed her yard plowed, the Relief Society sisters knew just which brother to ask for help. Not all the women who joined the society contributed. Many of them were the beneficiaries. Cynthia Baggs was given shoes. She and Prudence Barkdull, both widows, were given money to pay for their children’s school- ing. One sister wept, saying she had nothing to give, and spoke of her hus- band’s death in Missouri. Other women came to the meetings asking for work where they could be paid. It is possible that the majority of the service was not recorded in the minutes, as women provided emotional, spiritual, and physical aid to each other. Even after the last Relief Society meeting was held in Nauvoo, on 16 March 1844, the sisters continued to serve. In the April conference of 1844, the Relief Society sisters were asked to donate one cent a week or fifty cents a year to help purchase nails and glass for the temple. Their goal was to raise a thousand dollars, which they did by the end of March 1845.2 In July of 1844, women of Macedonia and LaHarpe decided to raise money to pur- chase an additional crane for the temple. It is not known if this was a Relief Society project, but there were many Relief Society members, perhaps even a branch Relief Society, in these settlements. In two weeks, $194 was col- lected for the crane.3 The Women The Relief Society minutes list the names of 1,341 women who were voted into membership. Ten of these names are definitely duplicates. Although an additional ten to fifteen names may also be duplicates, I have chosen to use 1,331 as the total. Of this amount, I have positively identified 1,010 women. These are women who are found in various Nauvoo records and/or have birth, marriage, or death dates and/or are linked to other fami- ly members who were in Nauvoo. The remaining 321 names have (1) more than one person who fits the name, (2) scant information but need more research, or (3) no information at all. During the second Relief Society meeting held on 24 March 1842, Mother Lucy Mack Smith stated, “This Institution is a good one—we must cherish one another, watch over one another, comfort one another and gain instruction, that we may all sit down in heaven together.” Who were the 1,010 known women who believed as Mother Smith that the institution was a good one? Maurine C. Ward: Women of the Nauvoo Relief Society 89 Forty-four of these women were ages fifteen and younger on the date the Relief Society was organized. Two women were over seventy: Mary Nalls Younger, age seventy-five, and Hannah Kidd Drollinger, age seventy-six. In between those extremes are women ages sixteen through twenty (119), twenty-one through thirty (299), thirty-one through forty (271), forty-one through fifty (133), fifty-one through sixty (66), and sixty-one through sev- enty (34).4 Some ages are unknown. Romance blossomed in Nauvoo as hundreds of young men and women entered the city. One hundred fifty marriages took place in Nauvoo between 1839 and 1846. Another twenty marriages were solemnized in Adams, Pike, and Hancock Counties, Illinois, and in Lee County, Iowa. It was not just the young who married. About twenty widows were married in Nauvoo during those years.5 On the other edge of the spec- trum were deaths. Fifty-eight of the Relief Society sisters died in Nauvoo, with another thirty-five at Council Bluffs, Kanesville, and Winter Quarters. Twenty-three other women died as they crossed Iowa, Nebraska, and Wyoming. Fifty-seven of the women lost spouses in Nauvoo, not counting those men who died outside the city, such as Joseph and Hyrum Smith. Sixteen women wrote a peti- tion to the U.S. Congress for their suffering in Missouri. Philinda Myrick and Amanda Barnes Smith had husbands who were killed at Haun’s Mill. Mahala Ann Overton and her small daughter, along with a friend, Mrs. Gates, Tombstone of Dorcas Willis Averett, who died and her nine children were forced 6 February 1843 in Nauvoo, age thirty-three from their home to start for Far years and five days. West, on foot, in the cold weather Photograph by Maurine C. Ward of September and October 1838. Louisa Tanner Follett’s husband was impris- oned in Liberty Jail. Betsy Bidwell refused to disclose the location of her hus- band. One of the mob “put his gun up to his face to take ame and swore that he would blow my brains out if I did not tell the truth they offered maney 90 Mormon Historical Studies other abuses to tedious to mention.”6 More than half of the women in Relief Society shared the experience with another family member. This could be a mother, sister-in-law, grand- daughter, or whole families. Mary Calvert Allred brought in three daughters and one daughter-in-law on the same day. Bradley and Mary Wilson had six daughters-in-law all join the same day, followed by three granddaughters later. Some women were like Leah Childs. When she joined, she was accom- panied by daughters from three marriages. An interesting family situation shows up with Joseph Smith. Besides Emma, who was the first president of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, twenty of his plural wives joined. The Relief Society sisters represented several countries, although some of the women had already immigrated to the United States before they joined the Church. The countries include Canada (50), England (76), Ireland (6), Germany (1), Scotland (5), and Wales (2). The completion of the temple was foremost in the minds of all Nauvoo Saints and had been the impetus for starting the Relief Society organization. When the principle of baptism for the dead was introduced and baptisms were begun in the Mississippi River, 452 of the Relief Society women eager- ly performed work for their dead ancestors, friends, and even deceased for- mer spouses.7 In December 1845 and January 1846, 673 women received their endowments. When Brigham Young reorganized the Relief Society Organization in 1867, it was the women from the original Relief Society in Nauvoo who filled the presidencies.8 Salt Lake City, Beaver, Bountiful, Grantsville, Lehi, Manti, Marriott, Minersville, Oak Creek, Ogden, Richmond, Spring City, and Wallsburg in Utah had their first presidents trained in Nauvoo. Paris, Idaho, had Eliza Ann Graves Rich as the first president, and Talitha Cumi Garlick Cheney became the first president of Victor, Idaho, at the age of sev- enty-two. Perhaps as many as two hundred women did not remain with the Church in Nauvoo or with Brigham Young when he went west. The families of Sidney Rigdon, William Marks, Joseph Smith Sr., and others went a dif- ferent way. Sarah Schroeder Hawley and Verona Brace Jenkins followed Lyman Wight to Texas and performed proxy endowments in Wight’s temple at Zodiac.9 Lavina Jackson Murphy moved her family back to Tennessee after her husband’s apostasy and death.
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