A Widow's Tale: The 1884-1896 Diary Of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney (life Writings Of Frontier Women, Vol. 6) (life Writings Frontier Women)
by Charles Hatch /
2003 / English / PDF
3.7 MB Download
Volume 6, Life Writings of Frontier Women series, ed. Maureen
Ursenbach Beecher
Volume 6, Life Writings of Frontier Women series, ed. Maureen
Ursenbach Beecher
Mormon culture has produced during its history an unusual number
of historically valuable personal writings. Few such diaries,
journals, and memoirs published have provided as rich and well
rounded a window into their authors' lives and worlds as the
diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Because it provides a rare
account of the widely experienced situations and problems faced
by widows, her record has relevance far beyond Mormon history
though.
Mormon culture has produced during its history an unusual number
of historically valuable personal writings. Few such diaries,
journals, and memoirs published have provided as rich and well
rounded a window into their authors' lives and worlds as the
diary of Helen Mar Kimball Whitney. Because it provides a rare
account of the widely experienced situations and problems faced
by widows, her record has relevance far beyond Mormon history
though.
As a teenager Helen Kimball had been a polygamous wife of Mormon
founder Joseph Smith. She subsequently married Horace Whitney.
Her children included the noted Mormon author, religious
authority, and politician Orson F. Whitney. She herself was a
leading woman in her church and society and a writer known
especially for her defense of plural marriage. Upon Horace's
death, she began keeping a diary. In it, she recorded her
economic, physical, and psychological struggles to meet the
challenges of widowhood. Her writing was introspective and
revelatory. She also commented on the changing society around
her, as Salt Lake City in the last decades of the nineteenth
century underwent rapid transformation, modernizing and opening
up from its pioneer beginnings. She remained a well-connected
member of an elite group of leading Latter-day Saint women, and
prominent Utah and Mormon historical figures appear frequently in
her daily entries. Above all, though, her diary is an unusual
record of difficulties faced in many times and places by women,
of all classes, whose husbands died and left them without
sufficient means to carry on the types of lives to which they had
been accustomed.
As a teenager Helen Kimball had been a polygamous wife of Mormon
founder Joseph Smith. She subsequently married Horace Whitney.
Her children included the noted Mormon author, religious
authority, and politician Orson F. Whitney. She herself was a
leading woman in her church and society and a writer known
especially for her defense of plural marriage. Upon Horace's
death, she began keeping a diary. In it, she recorded her
economic, physical, and psychological struggles to meet the
challenges of widowhood. Her writing was introspective and
revelatory. She also commented on the changing society around
her, as Salt Lake City in the last decades of the nineteenth
century underwent rapid transformation, modernizing and opening
up from its pioneer beginnings. She remained a well-connected
member of an elite group of leading Latter-day Saint women, and
prominent Utah and Mormon historical figures appear frequently in
her daily entries. Above all, though, her diary is an unusual
record of difficulties faced in many times and places by women,
of all classes, whose husbands died and left them without
sufficient means to carry on the types of lives to which they had
been accustomed.