Eliza R. Snow

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Eliza Roxey Snow
Bust Photo of Eliza R. Snow
Eliza Roxey Snow (1870)
2nd Relief Society General President
December 1866 (1866-12)[1][2] – December 5, 1887 (1887-12-05)[3]
PredecessorEmma Smith
SuccessorZina D. H. Young
1st Secretary of the Relief Society
1842 – 1844
Personal details
BornEliza Roxey Snow
(1804-01-21)January 21, 1804
Joseph Smith Jr (1842–44; sealed)
Brigham Young (1844–77; deceased)
Signature 
Signature of Eliza R. Snow

Eliza Roxey Snow (January 21, 1804 – December 5, 1887) was one of the most celebrated

Smith's death. Snow was the second general president of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), which she reestablished in the Utah Territory in 1866.[2] She was also the older sister of Lorenzo Snow, the church's fifth president
.

Early years and education

Eliza Roxey Snow was born in

Western Reserve valley, in Mantua Township, Portage County, Ohio.[5]
The Snow family valued learning and saw that each child had educational opportunities.

Although a farmer by occupation, Oliver Snow performed much public business, officiating in several responsible positions. His daughter, Eliza, being ten years the senior of her eldest brother, was employed as secretary,

county fair, for the best manufactured leghorn.[4]

Early church involvement

House in Mantua, Ohio where the Snow family lived from 1815 to 1838

Snow's

restorationist movement, the Disciples of Christ. In 1831, when Joseph Smith, founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, took up residence in Hiram, Ohio, four miles from the family's farm, the Snow family took a strong interest in the new religious movement. Snow's mother and sister joined the Church of the Latter Day Saints early on. Several years later, in 1835, Snow was baptized and moved to Kirtland, Ohio, the headquarters of the church. Upon her arrival, Snow donated her inheritance, a large sum of money, toward the building of the church's Kirtland Temple. In appreciation, the building committee provided her with the title to "a very valuable [lot]-situated near the Temple, with a fruit tree-an excellent spring of water, and house that accommodated two families." Here, Snow taught school for Smith's family and was influential in interesting her younger brother, Lorenzo, in Mormonism. He later became an apostle
and the church's fifth president.

Snow moved west with her family and the body of the church, first to

gang-raped by eight Missourians, which left her unable to have children.[6] Later, according to Horne, Joseph Smith offered her marriage as a plural wife "as a way of promising her that she would still have eternal offspring and that she would be a mother in Zion."[6]

In Nauvoo, Snow again made her living as a school teacher. After Smith's death, Snow stated she had secretly wed him on June 29, 1842, as a plural wife. Snow wrote fondly of Smith, "my beloved husband, the choice of my heart and the crown of my life".[7] However, Snow had organized a petition in that same summer of 1842, with a thousand female signatures, denying that Smith was connected with polygamy and extolling his virtue.[8] As secretary of the Ladies' Relief Society, she organized the publishing of a certificate in October 1842 denouncing polygamy and denying Smith as its creator or participant.[9] Years later, when Snow was informed that Smith's first wife, Emma, had stated on her deathbed that her husband had never been a polygamist. Snow was reported to have stated she doubted the story but "If ... [this] was really [Sister Emma's] testimony she died with a libel on her lips".[10]

After Smith's death, Snow married Brigham Young as a plural wife. She traveled west across the plains and arrived in the

Lion House
.

Relief Society service

Engraving of Eliza Roxey Snow

The first Relief Society of the LDS Church was organized by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, Illinois on March 17, 1842, as a philanthropic and women's educational organization.[11] Snow served as the organization's first secretary, with Smith's wife, Emma, as president. The organization was originally known as "The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo."[12] It later became known simply as "The Relief Society." For the next three years, Snow kept copious notes of the organization's meetings, including Joseph Smith's teachings on how the organization should operate. Members of the original Relief Society stopped meeting shortly after Smith's death in 1844, and the organization soon became defunct.[11]

Brigham Young led a migration of LDS Church members to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, and for the next twenty years attempts were periodically made to reestablish the organization. Until 1868, however, activity was limited, and no sustained, church-wide Relief Society existed.[13]

In 1868, Young commissioned Snow with reestablishing the Relief Society. For the next several years, Snow traveled throughout the Utah Territory helping Latter-day Saint bishops again organize Relief Society in their local wards, using the notes she took as secretary in Nauvoo as the founding principles of the reestablished Relief Society.[14] "What is the object of the Female Relief Society?" Snow wrote on one occasion. "I would reply—to do good—to bring into requisition every capacity we possess for doing good, not only in relieving the poor but in saving souls."[15] Local Relief Societies soon fell under the umbrella of a church-wide, general Relief Society of which Snow served as president until 1887.[14]

Snow's presidency emphasized spirituality and self-sufficiency. The Relief Society sent women to medical school, trained nurses, opened the Deseret Hospital, operated cooperative stores, promoted silk manufacture, saved wheat, and built granaries. In 1872, Snow provided assistance and advice to

Primary Association
in 1878.

Snow served as president of the Relief Society until her death in 1887. By 1888, the Relief Society had more than 22,000 members in 400 local congregations.

Snow died in Salt Lake City, and was buried in

Brigham Young's family cemetery
.

Snow's grave in Mormon Pioneer Memorial Monument, near that of Brigham Young
Grave
Monument

Poetry

Snow wrote poetry from a young age, one time even writing school lessons in rhyme. Between 1826 and 1832, she published more than 20 poems in local newspapers under various pen names, including the Western Courier of

LDS Church's hymnal. One of her hymns, "Great is the Lord", was published in the first Latter Day Saint hymnal
in 1835, the year of her baptism.

In Nauvoo, Snow gained unique distinction as a Mormon poet featured in local newspapers, and she was later called "Zion's Poetess." She continued to write poems as she journeyed to the Salt Lake Valley, documenting the pioneer trail and life in Utah. The first of her two volumes of Poems, Religious, Historical, and Political appeared in 1856, followed by the second in 1877. Some of her poems are:

One of her best-known poems, "Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother," was written soon after the death of her father and just over a year after the death of Joseph Smith.[21] The poem, renamed "O My Father" after the first line, is included in the LDS Church's current hymnal, as are Snow's hymns "Great is the Lord"; "Again We Meet Around the Board"; "Awake, Ye Saints of God, Awake!"; "How Great the Wisdom and the Love"; "The Time Is Far Spent"; "In Our Lovely Deseret"; "Though Deepening Trials"; "Behold the Great Redeemer Die"; and "Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses".

Eliza Snow and her brother, Lorenzo Snow, founded the Polysophical Society in December 1854 in Salt Lake City. Members shared poetry and musical and dramatic performances. Church leaders Jedediah M. Grant and Heber C. Kimball halted the society's activities because of its "adulterous spirit."[22]


Image gallery

  • Snow's biographical sketch at the Pioneer Memorial Museum (PMM)
    Snow's biographical sketch at the Pioneer Memorial Museum (PMM)
  • Snow (by Ortho R. Fairbanks; 1952) in front of the PMM
    Snow (by Ortho R. Fairbanks; 1952) in front of the PMM
  • Snow's embroidery (1830) in the PMM
    Snow's embroidery (1830) in the PMM
  • Snow’s pocket watch from Joseph Smith, located in the Church History Museum
    Snow’s pocket watch from Joseph Smith, located in the Church History Museum
  • Snow (by Lewis Aquilla Ramsey; 1909)
    Snow (by Lewis Aquilla Ramsey; 1909)
  • Snow (by Charles Roscoe Savage & George Martin Ottinger)
    Snow (by Charles Roscoe Savage & George Martin Ottinger)
  • Snow (by Danquart Anthon Weggeland; 1883) in the PMM
    Snow (by Danquart Anthon Weggeland; 1883) in the PMM
  • Snow (by Edward Martin)
    Snow (by Edward Martin)
  • Snow (by Marsena Cannon; 1852)
    Snow (by Marsena Cannon; 1852)
  • Snow (by Hippolyte Délié & Emile Béchard; 1873)
    Snow (by Hippolyte Délié & Emile Béchard; 1873)

Publications

  • Snow, Eliza R. (1856). Poems: Religious, Historical and Political, Volume 1. Liverpool: F.D. Richards.
    OCLC 6549748
    .
  • OCLC 85796473
    .
  • Snow, Eliza R. (1877). Poems: Religious, Historical and Political, Volume 2. Salt Lake City: The Latter-day Saints Printing and Publishing Establishment.
    OCLC 6549777
    .
  • —— (1880). Hymns and Songs: Selected From Various Authors, for the Primary Associations of the Children of Zion. Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
    OCLC 5330531
    .
  • —— (1880). Children's Primary Tune Book. Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office.
  • —— (1881). Bible Questions and Answers for Children. Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office.
    OCLC 228702929
    .
  • —— (1884). Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Salt Lake City: Deseret News.
    OCLC 4623484
    .

Relief Society Magazine

Articles

Poetry

Posthumous publications

See also

References

  1. OCLC 24502140. In December 1866, following the Civil War, President Young
    once more saw need for the Women to be organized, and called Eliza R Snow to "head up" the movement, this time on an all-church basis.
  2. ^ a b Although Snow was the churchwide leader of the Relief Society since 1866 or 1867, she was not officially sustained as its president until June 19, 1880, following the death of Emma Smith, the first such president. See:
  3. ^ "Appendix 1: Biographical Register of General Church Officers". Encyclopedia of Mormonism. p. 1647.
  4. ^ a b c Tullidge, Edward, W. (1881). Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine, Vol. 1. Salt Lake City, Utah: Edward W. Tullidge. pp. 116–.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  5. ^ a b c d e "Death of Sister E. R. Snow Smith Obituary". Deseret News. December 5, 1887.
  6. ^ a b Peggy Fletcher Stack, "Shocking historical finding: Mormon icon Eliza R. Snow was gang-raped by Missouri ruffians", The Salt Lake Tribune, 3 March 2016.
  7. ^ "The Significance of "O My Father" in the Personal Journey of Eliza R. Snow" (PDF). BYU Studies. 36 (1). Brigham Young University: 87. Archived from the original on October 21, 2013. Retrieved April 24, 2017.
  8. ^ Times and Seasons 3 (August 1, 1842): 869.
  9. ^ Times and Seasons 3 (October 1, 1842): 940.
  10. Women's Exponent.[full citation needed
    ]
  11. ^
    ISBN 9781629721507
    .
  12. ISBN 9781629721507
    .
  13. ISBN 9781629721507
    .
  14. ^
    ISBN 9781629721507
    .
  15. ISBN 9781629721507
    .
  16. ^ How Great the Wisdom and the Love, Mormon Literature Website, BYU
  17. ^ Invocation, or the Eternal Father and Mother, Mormon Literature Website, BYU
  18. ^ Be Not Discouraged, Mormon Literature Website, BYU
  19. ^ My First View of a Western Prairie, Mormon Literature Website, BYU
  20. ^ Mental Gas, Mormon Literature Website, BYU
  21. ^ Snow, E.R. "My Father in Heaven", Times and Seasons 6 (November 15, 1845).
  22. ^ Christensen, McKenzi. "The Polysophical Society". Intermountain Histories.

Bibliography

  • Public Domain This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Tullidge, Edward W. (1881). Tullidge's Quarterly Magazine. Vol. 1 (Public domain ed.). Salt Lake City, Utah: Edward W. Tullidge.

Further reading

External links

Wikisource has original works by or about:
Eliza Roxcy Snow
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The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints titles
Preceded by
Emma Hale Smith
General President

December 1866 – December 5, 1887 (1887-12-05) 		Succeeded by
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