Item #45859 [Autograph Quote Signed] "God grant your sufferings may never equal mine," from Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's 19th Wife. Mormons. Women's Rights, Ann Eliza Young.

[Autograph Quote Signed] "God grant your sufferings may never equal mine," from Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's 19th Wife.

1874. 1 sheet. 4.4 x 7.5 inches. Very good, minor soiling, title inked along top margin. Item #45859

Signed quote from Ann Eliza Young (1844-1917) during her divorce proceedings with Brigham Young. Born into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints in Nauvoo, IL, Ann Eliza Webb divorced her first husband, James Dee, and married Brigham Young when he was 66 years old. In 1873 she filed for divorce, claiming "neglect, cruel treatment, and desertion," (which was granted early in 1875). Ann spent the years after her filing, speaking out against polygamy and Mormonism and in 1876 published "Wife No. 19," (1876), an autobiographical account of her experience with Young and with Mormon culture.

"In New York City she told a reporter that Congress needed to legislate Mormonism out of existence. To that end, she traveled to Washington, D.C., went to the Ladies Reception Room of the House of Representatives, and passed out photographs of polygamous wives to show from their faces the effects of polygamy. President Ulysses S. Grant and Julia Dent Grant attended one of her lectures and personally congratulated her.

"Not long afterward Congress passed the Poland Law, which took civil and criminal cases out of Mormon probate courts and gave them to the federal government and stated that jurors who believed in plural marriage or practiced it could not serve. The Salt Lake Tribune, an anti-Mormon newspaper, credited Young’s influence for the enactment of the law" ....

"Young’s lectures on her marriage and the Mormon religion entertained the American public for several years and helped influence legislation so that the Mormon church in 1890 issued a Manifesto advising church members to refrain from marriages forbidden by the law of the land. Her life, however, was a personally unhappy one; she failed in her attempts to destroy the church, and her end remains a mystery" (ANB).

Provenance: Milton Slater from Scott J Winslow Assoc. 7/8/1999, Lot 684.

Price: $750.00

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