Family Background

1804. January 21: Born Eliza Roxcy Snow in Becket, Massachusetts. The family later moved to Ohio. She was the older sister of future apostle Lorenzo Snow and a distant cousin of Erastus Snow.

Convert

1828. Eliza joined the Campbellites after studying with Sidney Rigdon and Walter Scott in Ohio.

1835. The night after her baptism as a Latter-day Saint, "as I was reflecting on the wonderful events transpiring around me, I felt an indescribable, tangible sensation … commencing at my head and enveloping my person and passing off at my feet, producing inexpressible happiness. Immediately following, I saw a beautiful candle with an unusual long, bright blaze directly over my feet. I sought to know the interpretation, and received the following, 'The lamp of intelligence shall be lighted over your path.'"

Eliza Snow taught Joseph Smith's children and boarded with the family in Kirtland and Nauvoo.

"Prophetess"

1838. When the Snow family moved to Adam-Ondi-Ahman, Missouri, the thirty-one-year-old teacher became friends with Zina Diantha Huntington (later Young). The two exercised the gift of tongues jointly throughout their lives—one would speak in tongues, the other interpret.

From Missouri through Nauvoo, the trek west, and well into the Utah period, Eliza R. Snow met often with other Mormon women to speak in tongues, bless each other, sing, and prophesy.

Many of Eliza's prophecies did not come to pass. People she promised would see the redemption of Jackson County did not. People she prophesied would see the Savior's face in the Independence Temple died. But Heber J. Grant related that when he was a young boy, she and Zina D. H. Young testified he would become an apostle. Mary Ann Chadwick Hull was promised by Eliza that her unborn child would reach womanhood: the girl lived to the age of twenty.

Nauvoo Ladies Society

1842. March: Eliza R. Snow drew up the constitution for a benevolent society of women which met at Sarah Kimball's home in Nauvoo. When they presented the plan to Joseph Smith, he told them that the Lord had something better for them under the organization of the priesthood. The Relief Society was formed the next week, and Eliza Snow was elected secretary.

Plural Wife to Prophets

1842. June 29: Eliza R. Snow became a plural wife of Joseph Smith, whom she described as "the choice of my heart, the crown of my life." "The Prophet Joseph had taught me the principle of plural, or celestial marriage, and I was married to him for time and eternity. In consequence of the ignorance of most of the Saints, as well as the people of the world, on this subject, it was not mentioned only privately between the few whose minds were enlightened on the subject."

1844. After the Prophet's death, she became a plural wife of Brigham Young. Their relationship appears to have been platonic, she serving as a counselor, he as a provider. She always referred to him with nineteenth-century formality as "President Young"; he called her "Sister Snow."

Brigham Young did not always heed Eliza's counsel. On one occasion he gave his older daughters colorful sashes. When Phoebe Young laid her sash out on the bed while dressing for a dance, the ribbon disappeared. Confronted by President Young, Eliza replied, "I felt that you wouldn't approve of anything so frivolous for your girls so I put it away."

"Sister Eliza," said her husband, "I gave the girls those ribbons, and I am judge of what is right and wrong for my girls to wear. Phoebe is to have her sash."

"Priestess"

1845. Called as Nauvoo Temple recorder by Brigham Young. In Salt Lake she directed the women's section of the Endowment House on Temple Square.

Eliza R. Snow and other Mormon women often administered to sick women and children. Elmina A. Shepard Taylor recorded in her journal: "Being quite debilitated and sick from the effect of my heart, Sisters Eliza, Horne, Margaret Young, and B. Smith laid their hands on my head and Sister Snow blessed me and rebuked the disease and I was much improved from that very time."

Their authority was confirmed by President Joseph F. Smith in 1914: "Women may indeed administer with consecrated oil, confirming rather than sealing the blessing, making no mention of authority. They may also continue the practice of washing and anointing women who are about to give birth."

Relief Society "Presidentess"

1867. Called as the second president of the Church Relief Society. For the next twenty years she was, in effect, a counselor to Brigham Young on matters pertaining to women, often being introduced as "Presidentess."

1869. Established the "Young Ladies' Retrenchment Association" under Brigham Young's supervision.

1872. Founded the Woman's Exponent on suggestion of her niece, Louisa Greene.

1878. Organized the Primary Association at the suggestion of Aurelia Rogers.

1881. President of the board of directors of the Deseret Hospital Association.

Unlike many Mormon women of her time, Eliza R. Snow was not a feminist. Though she supported women's right to vote, she did not play an active role in the suffrage movement. She believed that God's order required "submission on the part of women."

She argued, "The Lord has placed the means in our hands, in the Gospel, whereby we can regain our lost position. But how? Can it be done by rising, as women are doing in the world, to clamor for our rights? No. … It was through disobedience that woman came into her present position, and it is only by honoring God in all the institutions he has revealed to us, that we can come out from under that curse, regain the position originally occupied by Eve, and attain to a fulness of exaltation in the presence of God."

"Zion's Poetess"

Eliza R. Snow wrote from a very early age. She published ten books, including two volumes of poetry which many modern literary critics consider "superficial, maudlin, trite, and unimaginative." To nineteenth-century Mormons, however, she was "Zion's Poetess," "Utah's First Lady of Letters," the respected author of such beloved Mormon hymns as "How Great the Wisdom and the Love," "Truth Reflects Upon Our Senses," "Behold the Great Redeemer Die," and "O, My Father," which she wrote in Nauvoo after Joseph Smith's death.

Death

1887. December 5: Died at the Lion House in Salt Lake City; buried in Brigham Young's private cemetery one block east of the Lion House. Shortly before her death, she penned her epitaph:

In friendship's mem'ry let me live:
I know no selfish wish beside—
I ask no more; yet, O forgive
This impulse of instinctive pride.
The silent pulse of memory
That beats to the unuttered tone
Of tenderness, is more to me
Than the insignia of a stone.

Sources
Barrett, Ivan J. Heroines of the Church. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Extension Publications Division of Continuing Education, 1966.
Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach. "The Eliza Enigma: The Life and Legend of Eliza R. Snow." Sister Saints. Edited by Vicky Burgess-Olson. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1978.
Clark, James R. Messages of the First Presidency. 6 vols. Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1964-1974.
Life and Labors of Eliza R. Snow Smith, Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1888.
"Miss E. R. Snow's Address to the Female Relief Societies of Weber County." Millennial Star, 12 September 1871, p. 578.
Newell, Linda King. "A Gift Given, A Gift Taken: Washing, Anointing, and Blessing the Sick Among Mormon Women." Sunstone 6 (September-October 1981):16-25.
Woman's Exponent, August 1886, p. 37.