Ann Eliza Young

A lithograph of Ann Eliza Young, sometime between 1869 and 1875

Ann Eliza Young (September 13, 1844–1925) also known as Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning^[1] was one of Brigham Young's fifty-five wives and later a critic of polygamy.^[2] She spoke out against the suppression of women and was an advocate for women's rights during the 19th century.^[3]

Early life

She was born in 1844 in Nauvoo, Illinois to Chauncey Griswold Webb and his wife, born Eliza Jane Churchill.^[1]

First marriage

Webb married James Dee monogamously on April 4, 1863 in Salt Lake City, Utah. They had two children together and later divorced.^[2] According to Ann Eliza's biographer Irving Wallace, "for the rest of her days Ann Eliza would always refer to James Dee as the man who 'blighted' her life."^[4]

Brigham Young

On the advice of her family Webb later married Brigham Young, the second president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), when he was 67 years old and she was a 24-year-old divorcee.^[2]

Although she later called herself Young's "wife no. 19," others have referred to her as his "27th wife." One researcher concluded that she was actually the 52nd woman to marry Young.^[5] The discrepancies may be due, in part, to difficulties in defining what constitutes a 'wife' in early Mormon polygamous practices.

Divorce

Webb filed for divorce from Young in January 1873, an act that attracted much attention. Her bill for divorce alleged neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion, and claimed that her husband had property worth $8,000,000 and an income exceeding $40,000 a month. Young countered that he owned less than $600,000 in property and that his income was less than $6000 per month.^[6]

Excommunication

She was excommunicated from the LDS Church on 10 October 1874.^[5] She then proceeded to auction off several pieces of Young's furniture in response, which she did not own.^[7] The divorce was granted in January 1875 and Brigham Young was ordered to pay a $500 per month allowance and $3000 in court fees.^[5] When Young initially refused, he was found in contempt of court and sentenced to a day in jail and a $25 fine.^[5] The alimony award was later set aside on the grounds that a polygamous marriage was legally invalid, potentially indicting them both for unlawful cohabitation.^[5]

Advocacy for Women's Rights

Ann Eliza Young subsequently traveled the United States and spoke out against polygamy, Mormonism, and Brigham Young himself.^[8] She testified before the U.S. Congress in 1875; these remarks were credited with contributing to the passage of the Poland Act^{[citation needed]} that reorganized the judicial system of Utah Territory and made it easier for the Federal Government to prosecute polygamists.^[3]

Wife No. 19

In 1876, she published an autobiography entitled Wife No. 19. In it she wrote that she had "a desire to impress upon the world what Mormonism really is; to show the pitiable condition of its women, held in a system of bondage that is more cruel than African slavery ever was, since it claims to hold body and soul alike."^[3] Her account of the "horrors of polygamy and masonry" is available from various sources.^[9][10] It was the basis of Irving Wallace's 1961 biography, The Twenty-Seventh Wife, and of David Ebershoff's 2008 novel, The 19th Wife.

Moses R. Denning

After her divorce from Brigham Young, she married 53-year-old Moses R. Denning of Manistee, Michigan,^[5] a non-Mormon and wealthy logger known to have only one arm.^[11][12] Two years prior to her marriage to Denning, Ann Eliza stayed at the home of Denning, who at the time was married with children.^[12] Because of Denning's financial stability, Ann Eliza lost interest in her crusade against Mormonism and polygamy and stopped delivering lectures the week she married Denning.^[11][13] She eventually became estranged from her family, including her children (a grandson told Wallace that neither of her sons had contact with her after they reached early adulthood). In 1930, her older grandson told Wallace "I hope to hell I never see her again."^[14]

Divorce

Denning later left Ann Eliza after a series of alleged affairs she'd had with local townsmen.^[15] Ann Eliza retaliated on the advice of her attorney by charging large amounts of money to Denning's accounts, as she had previously done in her divorce from Brigham Young. According to Wallace, "she bought a thousand dollars worth of groceries and provisions, dry goods, shoes, slippers, furniture and hardware in a couple of days."^[16]

A 1907 article on the 30th anniversary of Young's death updated the public on his then surviving widows and stated that Ann Eliza was divorced for the third time and living in Lansing, Michigan. Ann Eliza would eventually return to Utah to claim a $2,000 legacy from her first husband, whom she had previously described as the "blight of my life."^[17]

Life in Mormon Bondage

In 1908, she published a revised version of Wife No. 19 entitled Life in Mormon Bondage, a revision of her previously published work and which excluded the story of her first marriage to Dee, and her third marriage to Denning entirely. After its publication, little is known about her whereabouts from personal accounts or historical records. Neither the date^[18][19] nor the location of her death or her burial place are known.^[20] One source says she died in 1925 in Rochester, New York.^[1]

Published works

• Young, Ann Eliza (1876). Wife No. 19, or the story of a life in bondage. Being a complete exposé of Mormonism, and revealing the sorrows, sacrifices and sufferings of women in polygamy. Hartford, Connecticut: Dustin, Oilman & Co.. http://www.archive.org/details/wifenoorstoryofl00youniala 

See also

• Celestial marriage
• Current state of polygamy in the Latter Day Saint movement
• History of civil marriage in the United States
• Latter Day Saint polygamy in the late 19th century
• Polygamy in the United States

References

1. ^ ^{a b c} "Orson Pratt Brown - Life, Times, Family". http://www.orsonprattbrown.com/CJB/03Esther-Jones/ann-eliza-webb-dee1844-1925.html. Retrieved 2010-07-10. "
   Ann Eliza Webb Dee Young Denning
   Born: September 13, 1844 at Nauvoo, Hancock, Illinois
   Died: 1925 at Rochester, New York
   James Dee married Ann Eliza Webb on April 4, 1863 at Salt Lake City, Utah, ceremony was performed by President Brigham Young. She is the daughter of Chauncey Griswold Webb b. October 24, 1811 and Eliza Jane Churchill Webb b. May 4, 1817." 
2. ^ ^{a b c} "Brigham Young's Wives and His Divorce From Ann Eliza Webb". Utah Lighthouse Ministry. Accessed March 10, 2007.^{[unreliable source?]}
3. ^ ^{a b c} Cullen, Jack B. "Ann Eliza Young: A Nineteenth Century Champion of Women's Rights." Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Western Speech Communication Association (Albuquerque, New Mexico, February , 1983).^{[unreliable source?]}
4. ^ Wallace, Irving. The Twenty-Seventh Wife, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 150
5. ^ ^{a b c d e f} Johnson, Jeffrey Odgen. "Determining and Defining 'Wife' — The Brigham Young Households", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 20, no. 3 (Fall 1987) pp. 57-70
6. ^ Linn, William Alexander (1901). The Story of the Mormons: From the Date of their Origin to the Year 1901. New York: McMillan. p. 572. OCLC 621583. http://books.google.com/books?id=QDdAAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false. 
7. ^ Young, Ann Eliza Webb. Wife No. 19; Or, the Story of a Life of Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices, and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, (Hartford, Connecticut: Dustin, Gilman, 1875), 546
8. ^ Troy Taylor. Forest Farm House at Old Deseret Salt Lake City, Utah. Haunted Utah at prairieghosts.com. Accessed March 10, 2007.^{[unreliable source?]}
9. ^ http://www.archive.org/details/wifenoorstoryofl00youniala
10. ^ Ebershoff, David. "Who Is Ann Eliza Young?" (PDF). http://www.ebershoff.com/pdfs/Wife_No_19_Ann_Eliza_Young.pdf. Retrieved 11 September 2010. (Warning: PDF is quite large.)
11. ^ ^{a b} Wallace, Irving. The Twenty-Seventh Wife, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 396
12. ^ ^{a b} Woodward, Helen B. The Bold Women (New York: Farrar, Straus and Young, 1953), 330
13. ^ Nibley, Hugh W. Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book Company, 1991), 441
14. ^ Wallace, Irving. The Twenty Seventh Wife, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 427
15. ^ Wallace, Irving. The Twenty Seventh Wife, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 411
16. ^ Wallace, Irving. The Twenty Seventh Wife, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1961), 413
17. ^ Nibley, Hugh W. Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales about Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, (Salt Lake City, Deseret Book Company, 1991), 442
18. ^ Derounian-Stodola, Kathryn Zabelle (2009). "Ann Eliza Webb Young (Denning) (1844-after 1908)" (fee). Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (University of Nebraska Press) 26 (1): 150–159. doi:10.1353/leg.0.0072. ISSN 0748-4321. http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/legacy/v026/26.1.derounian-stodola.html. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 
19. ^ Kott, Ruth E. (November - December, 2008). "Plural views: Plural views: Novelist David Ebershoff investigates the sensitive subject of polygamy". University of Chicago Magazine (University of Chicago). http://magazine.uchicago.edu/0811/arts_letters/plural_views.shtml. Retrieved 2010-07-10. "Claiming spousal neglect and poor treatment, she left the LDS Church in 1873, filed for divorce, and embarked on a cross-country lecture tour. She also published two memoirs before mysteriously disappearing in 1908." 
20. ^ Lenfestey, James P.. "Brigham Young’s Rebellious Wife". History Channel Magazine. http://www.thehistorychannelclub.com/articles/articletype/articleview/articleid/261/brigham-youngs-rebellious-wife. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 

Further reading

• Nibley, Hugh W. (1991). Tinkling Cymbals and Sounding Brass: The Art of Telling Tales About Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company. ISBN 0-87579-516-1. http://maxwellinstitute.byu.edu/publications/books/?bookid=77. Retrieved 2010-09-19. 
• Wallace, Irving (1961). The Twenty-Seventh Wife. Simon and Schuster 
• Quinn, D. Michael (1994). The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power. Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books. ISBN 1560850604 
• Ebershoff, David (2008). The 19th Wife: A Novel. Random House. ISBN 9781400063970. http://www.randomhouse.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9781400063970 
• Portrait and biographical record of northern Michigan. Chicago: Record Publishing Company. 1895. pp. 457 et seq. http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=micounty&cc=micounty&idno=bad6044.0001.001&frm=frameset&view=image&seq=455. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 
• Stenhouse, Mrs. T. B. H. (1890) [1874]. "Tell it all": the story of a life's experience in Mormonism. An autobiography. Hartford, Connecticut: A. D. Worthington and Company. pp. 285 & seq. http://books.google.com/?id=rwJRRb9GJNsC&pg=PA285&dq=%22Eliza+Ann+Young%22+OR+%22eliza+ann+webb%22&q=%22Eliza%20Ann%20Young%22%20OR%20%22eliza%20ann%20webb%22. Retrieved 2010-07-10. 

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Name	Young, Ann Eliza
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Date of birth	September 13, 1844
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