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A Book of Mormons Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker Copyright 1982, Signature Books |
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Alice Louise Reynolds (1873-1938)
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Alice Louise Reynolds was a professor, a "seeker after knowledge." Photograph courtesy LDS Church Archives. |
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Family Background 1873. April 1: Born in Salt Lake City to Mary Ann Tuddenham and George Reynolds, secretary to Brigham Young, John Taylor, Wilford Woodruff, Lorenzo Snow, and Joseph F. Smith. Alice described her father as a man who "loved knowledge and it certainly was a dreadful thing in [his] eyes to be unnecessarily ignorant." Alice Louise Reynolds never married. "To some of you," she said, "the sweetest word in the English language is 'husband,' to some of you, 'child,' but to me the sweetest word in the English language is 'friend.'" 1877. When she was four, Alice was wheeled by her mother's maid to her first day at school in a baby buggy. Thereafter family and friends referred to her as "Princess Alice."
Extremely absentminded, she "carried her teakettle to school, thinking it to be her purse, she wore a dress the wrong side out to a play, she slid through a window to a classroom, bloomers first, and once she walked while reading a book through a herd of cows, absently swatting them with her purse." 1890. Having begun her studies with Karl G. Maeser at thirteen, she graduated from the Brigham Young Academy and began teaching there.
1894. Completing a B.A. in two years at the University of Michigan, she returned to Brigham Young Academy, where she taught until her death forty-four years later. She taught theology, organized a literature department, and established the first library collection at the school. Much of her time was spent helping students edit their compositions; she felt "tough criticism would help them to grow." She was the second woman in Utah to attain full professorship. Her sabbaticals were spent at the University of Chicago, Columbia, Queens College in London, Berkeley, and Cornell.
1933. She encouraged women's clubs to donate books to the Brigham Young University library and in 1933 helped former students and friends organize the Alice Louise Reynolds Club, which promoted libraries and the study of literature throughout the country. "Members found in her a champion of their sex, a custodian of their cultural and spiritual values, and an exponent of friendship. They continued to send back books and money, and to sponsor an English student scholarship. Their meetings became spontaneous centers of continuing education." Thirteen chapters of the club were organized in Provo, Springville, Salt Lake City, Hurricane, Saint George, and New York City. Reynolds wrote extensively for the Young Woman's Journal, the Improvement Era, the Instructor, and the Relief Society Magazine. She also wrote many lessons for Church auxiliaries, including ten years of literature courses for the Relief Society.
During a single six-month period in 1934 Reynolds lectured to sixteen different groups. She was a leader in the Federation of Women's Clubs and the National Education Association, and represented the Relief Society General Board in the National Council of Women in the years just prior to World War I.
1938. December 6: Died of cancer at the age of sixty-five in Salt Lake City's LDS Hospital. Shortly before her death, she commented to her sister Polly, "Well, I am not afraid to die. I have lived the best I could, and I am sure no girl or [p.227] woman ever had a more wonderful life, with more opportunities, more privileges, and more friends. I have been most fortunate and for all these blessings, I am sincerely grateful." Buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
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