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A Book of Mormons Richard S. Van Wagoner and Steven C. Walker Copyright 1982, Signature Books |
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Susa Young Gates (1856-1933)
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Susa Young Gates was a women's rights advocate and "the thirteenth apostle." Photograph courtesy Utah State Historical Society. |
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Family Background 1856. March 18: Born in the Lion House in Salt Lake City, Susa Amelia Young was Brigham Young's forty-first child. When told she was a girl, Susa's mother, Lucy Bigelow, exclaimed: "Shucks." "No!" cried midwife Zina D. H. Young, "It isn't all shucks, it's wheat, and full weight too!"
1869. At thirteen, she entered the University of Deseret, but her father soon banished her to Saint George for helping her sister Dora elope. A few months later she recorded this self-portrait: "5'3". 115 lbs. Dark blue or grey eyes, light 'rather curly' brown hair. I must confess my teeth are the only redeeming feature of my face." In 1877 Susa became the first person to be baptized for the dead in the newly completed Saint George Temple. Returning to Salt Lake City, she mastered courses in telegraphy and shorthand. As Church recorder David W. Evans's "star pupil," Susa attained such proficiency that she occasionally served as her father's clerk at conferences.
1872. Married Saint George dentist Alma Dunford. Sixteen years old at the time, she was psychologically unprepared for the intimacies of married life. Her husband's drinking problem complicated their relationship. In 1877, while Dunford was serving a mission intended to rehabilitate him from alcoholism, Susa filed for divorce. He returned and raised their two children. Even on her deathbed more than fifty years later, she worried, "I hope I have not wronged Dr. Dunford." 1880. Married Jacob Gates; they had eleven children, seven of whom died in childhood accidents or illnesses: Simpson Mark and Heber died shortly after birth, Joseph Sterling at the age of five. Jacob Young and Karl Naham died in Hawaii, where Elder Gates had been called on a mission, of "diptheriatric croup." Sarah Beulah was shot to death in childhood play. Three-year old Brigham died of dye poisoning from a candy wrapper. Baily Dunford, her eldest son was blown up in adulthood in a powder factory explosion in Butte, Montana. |
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Susa and Jacob Gates with descendents, courtesy Utah State Historical Society.
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| "The Thirteenth Apostle"
1899 Though she "admitted to not having a spiritual conviction of the Gospel until her fortieth year," Gates was called to the general board of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, and twenty years later to the general board of the Relief Society. The only woman given an office in the Church Office Building at 47 East South Temple, she was jokingly referred to as "the thirteenth apostle." She advised, "Provoke the brethren to good works, but don't provoke the brethren while doing so."
1901. Delegate to the International Council of Women in Copenhagen and London. In England she presented a paper, "Scientific Treatment of Domestic Science," and was invited to tea with Queen Victoria. "In times past," she wrote to her colleagues, "women have… done many improper things; and one of them is they often preferred men's opinions to their own and even yielded points of conscience for the sake of pleasing them, until, very naturally, they are looked upon by men as shallow, weak, and contemptible …. A course of self-reliance and self-assertion will restore our credit." She organized the music department at Brigham Young Academy when she was twenty-two, and nineteen years later established the domestic science department. She served on the boards of directors of both the Brigham Young Academy and the Utah Agricultural College. 1904. As president of the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers, Gates established the Hall of Relics. Acclaimed "founder of modern Mormon genealogical research," in 1923 she became head of the Genealogical Society of Utah's Library and Research Department.
She founded the Young Woman's Journal (1889), edited the Relief Society Magazine, and, under the pen name of "Homespun," wrote many articles for the Deseret News, Juvenile Instructor, Woman's Exponent, and Young Woman's Journal. She also wrote several books, including Lydia Knight's History, John Steven's Courtship, History of the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association, The Prince of Ur, Surname Book and Racial History, and, with her daughter Leah Dunford Widtsoe, The Life Story of Brigham Young.
1933. May 27: Died of cancer at the age of seventy-seven in Salt Lake City. Buried in the Provo, Utah, Cemetery.
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