Utah State University DigitalCommons@USU All USU Press Publications USU Press 2003 A Widow's Tale: 1884-1896 Diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney Charles M. Hatch Todd M. Compton Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs Part of the Cultural History Commons Recommended Citation Whitney, H. M., Hatch, C. M., & Compton, T. (2003). A widow's tale: The 1884-1896 diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. This Book is brought to you for free and open access by the USU Press at DigitalCommons@USU. It has been accepted for inclusion in All USU Press Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@USU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. A Widow’s Tale The 1884–1896 Diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney Volume 6 Life Writings of Frontier Women A Series Edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher Volume 1 Winter Quarters The 1846–1848 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards Edited by Maurine Carr Ward Volume 2 Mormon Midwife The 1846–1888 Diaries of Patty Bartlett Sessions Edited by Donna Toland Smart Volume 3 The History of Louisa Barnes Pratt Being the Autobiography of a Mormon Missionary Widow and Pioneer Edited by S. George Ellsworth Volume 4 Out of the Black Patch The Autobiography of Effie Marquess Carmack Folk Musician, Artist, and Writer Edited by Noel A. Carmack and Karen Lynn Davidson Volume 5 The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow Edited by Maureen Ursenbach Beecher Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Courtesy of Special Collections and Archives, Merrill Library, Utah State University. A Widow’s Tale The 1884–1896 Diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney Transcribed and Edited by Charles M. Hatch and Todd M. Compton Introduction, Notes, and Register by Todd M. Compton Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 2003 Copyright © 2003 Utah State University Press Utah State University Press Logan, Utah 84322-7800 Publication of this book was supported by subventions from the Smith- Pettit Foundation and the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, Brigham Young University. Manufactured in the United States of America Printed on acid-free paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Whitney, Helen Mar, 1828-1896. A widow's tale : the 1884 1896 diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney / transcribed and edited by Charles M. Hatch and Todd M. Compton ; introduction, notes, and register by Todd M. Compton. p. cm. -- (Life writings of frontier women ; v. 6) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-87421-557-9 (alk. paper) 1. Whitney, Helen Mar, 1828–1896—Diaries. 2. Mormon women--Diaries. 3. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints--History--19th century. 4. Mormon Church--History--19th century. I. Hatch, Charles M., 1945– II. Compton, Todd, 1952– III. Title. IV. Series. BX8695.W52 A3 2003 289.3'092--dc21 2002155489 Contents Foreword vii Maureen Ursenbach Beecher Preface ix Introduction 1 Helen Mar Whitney’s Family 37 1884: Horace Has Spent a Dreadful Night 43 1885: Oh! How I Feel My Loss—My Widowhood 61 1886: It Seemed Like a Dream That I Must Awake From 129 1887: I Woke Myself Sobbing Three Times 213 1888: This Valley Is Covered with Thick Fog 277 To Day—Very Dreary 1889: A Beautiful White Coffin Held the Little Lamb & 339 All Pronounced Him Beautiful 1890: A “Liberal” Gang of the Scum & Boys Passed Up 388 Our Street 1891: E. M. Wells Came to See Us, & the House, 428 at Evening— Thought It Lovely 1892: We've Got to Do Something to Keep Ourselves 484 Out of Debt 1893: Mary . Gone to Chicago . We Can’t Afford to Go 527 to the Saltair 1894: They Were the Best & Firmest in the Cause of Truth 581 1895: She . Proposed to Have All Lay Hands On My Head 639 & Rebuke My Afflictions 1896: I Couldnt Talk Right—After One Word 688 All Was Mudled Notes 719 Bibliography 811 Register of Names in the Diary 831 Subject Index 875 Foreword Maureen Ursenbach Beecher Helen Mar Kimball Whitney has been known to readers of Western history and literature through her memoirs published initially in The Woman’s Exponent and recently compiled in A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History.1 But her published accounts end before that point designated by many a woman as the end of her life’s sig- nificance: the death of her husband. “After that I just chored around” was a not unusual attitude expressed by widows, dismissing the possibility of significant experience in subsequent years. Of all the “frontiers” women must confront—geographical, material, cultural, emotional—widowhood can be one of the most challenging. In detailing her life after the death of her husband Horace, Helen Mar pro- vides a description of the threats and dangers inherent along the way that is both individual and universal. Hardship was not new to Helen Mar. Her life among her Mormon co- religionists was full of strangeness and danger: a polygynous child bride among a persecuted people; a refugee, travelling, pregnant, through winter mud, only to birth a dead baby in a temporary shantytown; a pioneer trekking across mid-America to settle in a semidesert where starvation threatened and a hostile army menaced; mother of a large family in a com- munity despised by the rest of America for its religious convictions and social peculiarities; and now a widow, without the status a living husband would have guaranteed her, destitute of means to maintain that position alone. And yet Helen Mar’s life was less than unique in her time, or among her compatriots. Her involvement in polygamy was accepted among her group; her subsequent marriage and parenthood, including the loss of four children at birth, was not unusual then and there. Her pioneering sisters, both Mormon and not, suffered similar privations, faced similar dangers. Her involvement in the women’s movement and her career as a published writer were expected among her sisters. As distinctive as her individual path seemed, in the micro-world of her own home and community, the way was a vii viii A Widow’s Tale well-trodden one, especially during the years between Horace’s death and her own, the years detailed in these diaries. In the seminal collection On Their Own: Widows and Widowhood in the American Southwest,2 historians and anthropologists, describing widowhood as it was experienced in various segments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, demonstrate more similarity than difference, group by group, place by place. The grieving, the sole responsibility for remaining children, the financial burden in a time of little opportunity for a woman in the labor market, the loss of the status attributed to the husband, the inse- curity of dependence on others. In the light of Geraldine Mineau’s demo- graphic analysis, included in On Their Own,3 Helen Mar sat firmly in the mainstream of western women facing life after widowhood. More than an intimate look into one woman’s struggles, the diaries of Helen Mar’s later years provide, as did her earlier published accounts, vivid pictures, both panoramic and close-up, of Utah in its approach to statehood. All the issues are here: commerce and trade, politics and polygamy, Mormons and Gentiles, religion and society, status and social invisibility. Congratulations are due Todd Compton and Charles Hatch for their meticulous collecting, transcribing, and editing of the original diaries, and for the scholarship evident in the introduction and notes. We are pleased to add yet another volume to the series “Life Writings of Frontier Women,” yet another intimate view of life from the kitchen table. As noted historian, the late Leonard J. Arrington, observed of such sources of historical under- standing: “Give me a pile of ten men’s diaries, or one woman’s diary, and I’ll choose the woman’s account every time.” He would have enjoyed the intimate view of Utah through the eyes of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Preface In November 1992, W. Whitney Smith, a distinguished professor of bacteri- ology at Utah State University (USU), donated a large collection of family papers to the Merrill Library on behalf of himself, his family, and his wife, Alice. The material included eleven notebooks containing the 1885–1896 diaries of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. The staff of Special Collections at the library immediately recognized the significance of the donation and was delighted. They cataloged the collection, constructed a register, and began looking for an editor to prepare the diaries for publication. Around the same time, John Alley, executive editor of Utah State University Press, contacted A. J. Simmonds, curator of Special Collections, and Charles “Chick” Hatch to discuss holdings at USU that could be made suitable for publication. Simmonds described the Helen Mar Whitney diaries, and Alley and Hatch quickly became convinced the diaries were at least as important as Simmonds said. The three agreed to prepare them for publi- cation at USU Press. Alley and Simmonds joined F. Ross Peterson of the Mountain West Center for Regional Studies in arranging a small grant to help defray some transcription expenses, and Chick Hatch transcribed the eleven diaries and announced them in a paper he presented to the Mormon History Association in Park City, Utah. As Hatch worked on the project, Todd Compton was researching Helen Mar Whitney for his book, In Sacred Loneliness. He found and transcribed two additional notebooks of Helen Mar’s diaries held by the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City, and arranged with Maureen Ursenbach Beecher to edit a volume of Helen Mar’s writings for a series of Mormon women’s life writings she had begun to assemble for publication.