BYU Studies

I study the history of women’s voting rights in Utah. For the past two years, I’ve been the historical director for Better Days 2020, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with a mission to popularize Utah women’s history. The year 2020 marks the 150th anniversary of Utah women’s first votes, the centennial of the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment, and the 55th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, all important parts of the long struggle for equal suffrage in the United States. So this anniversary year is a golden opportunity to learn about women in history who fought for equality, spoke out on a national stage, and improved their local communities. Better Days 2020 has created several resources available to anyone who wants to explore the story of suffrage in Utah.

Our team worked with local historians, community leaders, and educators to develop educational resources that highlight Utah women’s role in the national suffrage movement and feature Utah women who made a difference in other ways. We also commissioned Utah artist Brooke Smart to illustrate fifty Utah women’s advocates from history. She brought the stories of a diverse range of Utah leaders to life in vivid color, collaborating with subjects’ descendants to represent the women authentically. The illustrations are available at www.utahwomenshistory.org along with biographies, primary sources, articles, and other materials. Additionally, two books by our team members share stories of leading Utah women: Champions of Change: 25 Women Who Made History and Thinking Women: A Timeline of Suffrage in Utah.

Volume 59:3 (2020) - It is with pride and gratitude that we present this issue of BYU Studies Quarterly—pride in recognizing the 100th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution giving women the right to vote and the 150th anniversary of the granting of that right to the women of Utah, and gratitude to the excellent historians, other writers, and artists who have contributed to the issue.

Volume 58:3 (2019) - Book notice about Salt Lake School of the Prophets, 1867-1883 by Devery S. Anderson

Volume 58:3 (2019) - Book notice about Alexander Campbell and Joseph Smith: Nineteenth-Century Restorationists by RoseAnn Benson

Volume 58:3 (2019) - Elder Steven E. Snow served as the Church Historian and Recorder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from August 1, 2012, to July 31, 2019. During this time, he oversaw significant developments in the work of Church history, from record keeping to publishing to developing historic sites and exhibits. The conversation in this article, between Elder Snow and Keith A. Erekson, director of the Church History Library, opens with reflections on Elder Snow’s service and how he learned about the office of Church Recorder. A brief history of Church record keeping is given, followed by discussions on the modernization of record keeping during the twentieth century, the years spent without a Church Recorder, the work in the twenty-first century, and recent efforts that define the work of the Church Recorder today.

Volume 58:3 (2019) - Joseph Smith and his followers declared the Book of Mormon’s supernatural origin—that it was a divinely inspired translation of an ancient-American record, acquired by Joseph through visions and the help of an angel. This explanation, however, was widely rejected by outsiders from the outset. Within weeks after the Book of Mormon’s first pages came off the press, critics promoted “naturalistic explanations”—so called because they are based on scientific observation or natural phenomena—that rejected the possibility of a divine, supernatural origin of the Book of Mormon. To varying degrees, these naturalistic theories continue to be perpetuated today. This article examines the most popular naturalistic explanations for the Book of Mormon longitudinally, which will enable readers to better understand them and why they have waxed and waned in popularity over time.

Volume 58:3 (2019) - Who would be more likely to survive in a wilderness setting, beset by starvation and extreme cold? Women or men? Single individuals or families? Would age make a difference? In Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail, Donald Grayson looks at who died and who lived in three mid-nineteenth-century emigrant groups. An emeritus professor of anthropology at the University of Washington, Grayson began looking at patterns of death in the Donner Party, publishing his findings in 1990 and 1993. Curious if those same patterns of death were manifest in another emigrant group, Grayson began looking at the 1856 Willie handcart company. Grayson acknowledges my help with his research at the Church Historical Department in the mid-1990s, and he published his findings about mortality in the Willie handcart company in the Journal of Anthropological Research in 1996. In Sex and Death on the Western Emigrant Trail, Grayson re-examines his earlier analyses, adds new ones, and in some instances, reaches different conclusions than his earlier studies. He also looks at death in the Martin handcart company, an entirely new analysis for him. While his earlier publications were written in technical form, in this book, the statistical analyses are woven into the fabric of the story of the tragic disasters. This makes Sex and Death suitably readable for anyone curious about the differences in death and survivorship among groups entrapped in situations like those faced by the unfortunate members of the Donner Party and Willie and Martin handcart companies.