The 19th Wife

by David Ebershoff

  Again time played its trick on me. I pushed off the task of contacting my mother for a few more years. Then, sometime just before the war, I started asking around; I made a trip east. I hired a detective, a sincere man named Scotty Rivers; he was a gentle soul, some terrible abuse had shaped him early in life, I am sure. After two months Detective Rivers handed me an empty file and returned his fee. “The trail ends in 1908. She was leasing a cottage in Arizona, the rent paid through the year. At the turn of 1909, the landlord went for his rent but found the cottage cleared out. No one could say when she left or where she went. After that I found nothing, no insurance papers, no medical records, no police reports, nothing from an estate. One old woman, a neighbor, says she remembers your mother talk of traveling east to promote the revised edition of her memoirs, but her mind is faulty, I discovered, and her word can’t be accepted as fact. Other than that I’m afraid I don’t have anything for you,” the man said. “I won’t take your money.”

  I said to Rosemary, “How can someone vanish without a trace?”

  But so she did. We never heard from my mother again.

  I have to assume she’s dead now, but where she rests I have no idea. This outcome, no doubt, colors my perception of my mother. To what degree, in what shade, I should say, I cannot say. If Rosemary were here, I would leave it to her to assess the effects of my grief. I should have told you all this sooner. I did not want you to think I am a man who thinks under the influence of sentiment. But I suppose I do, for not a day passes without my wishing to speak to my mother one last time. When I think of her now, I feel like that little boy locked up in the Walker House, waiting for her return.

  My mind tells me to end my letter here, yet my heart compels me to continue. I would like to share with you my speculative thoughts about my mother’s fate. You must put no more weight into them than you would do so with the theories of a conspiracist.

  First, I must lay out the three possible outcomes.

  One, she died naturally somewhere, a once famous woman forgotten, penniless, laid to peace in a potter’s field. With the failure of the second edition of The 19th Wife, and her career as a lecturer over, I cannot imagine how my mother sustained herself. No one wanted to hear her tale. Her Cassandra-like voice could not arouse the nation a second time. Rage is a candle, it will always burn out. And we must acknowledge that this was now the twentieth century, not the nineteenth. So much had already come to pass. And so a disease came upon my destitute mother, a quick and vicious illness, or a slow one, or a tumble down the stairs, or a reckless automobile ran her down on a sparkling afternoon—I cannot know the details. But something felled her and a quiet neighbor gave her a grave.

  Two, an enemy murdered her, scattering her remains to the buzzards, or some other such thorough manner of disposal. This scenario, of course, leaves us with the very large question, Who? Your enemies, the antagonists of the Mormon Church, I mean, would say it was someone affiliated with the Saints. I cannot imagine it, for what cause? The old attacks on Brigham Young? Unlikely. More probable, it would seem to me—if this bleak scenario were true, which I have no evidence that it is—the break-away Saints, the Firsts they call themselves, I believe, those men and women splintered off in Red Creek and elsewhere, polygamous and paranoid, upon seeing my mother reemerge on the national stage with the second edition of The 19th Wife wrongly anticipated she would bring the law’s wrath upon them to end their poly-amorous ways, just as she had done with the Mormons of Salt Lake. Any reader of mysteries will tell you the key to solving a crime is understanding the motive. So here is one, concocted by the imagination and a scarcity of facts.

  Three, she is alive today, on the verge of her ninety-sixth birthday, rocking in a chair somewhere very far away. In this scenario she looks out upon a still landscape, the red desert, no doubt, pondering all that she has achieved. Her day will come soon, she knows, and she awaits it with a devotion that is tinted with anticipatory glee.

  Change the details, and one of these three outcomes is more or less true. Which one, however, I cannot know with any kind of empirical certainty. Although I will never know the truth, it does not mean I have stopped pondering the puzzle of her last days. I am like the devoted but less than brilliant mathematician who knows he will never unlock a certain equation, yet still he keeps probing it diligently, trying again and again until his own final hour.

  Since reasoning and logic have not helped me solve the mystery of my mother’s disappearance, and I expect they never will, I will allow myself to tell you what my heart says, although I know I should not. Yet here I go. The first scenario and the last strike me as unlikely. The second, therefore, must be true. The Firsts of Red Creek silenced her. They had every reason. My uncle Aaron was their first Prophet. He never liked Ann Eliza, anyone will tell you that, their antagonism goes back to their youth. And so he removed her, or sent out his followers to remove her. I think of her fear, the terror of her final moment—the blade shining in the dark, the club falling through the air, the gun’s muzzle taking aim of her, and the white flash when the trigger was pulled. I like to believe she understood what was happening to her. At the moment of her death, knowing the meaning of her fate was her only comfort. She saw the face of her enemy. In her last second on earth, she could hope her death would have significance. Then she was gone. Dead but not silenced, for The 19th Wife will always live on. Although I cannot prove this scenario, I know it—and isn’t that the ultimate definition of faith? Knowing what we can’t know. Seeing what isn’t there.

  And so there you have it, my friend—the end of Ann Eliza Young. All speculation and imagination, yet so true, I know, so true.

  Yours most fondly,

  LORENZO DEE, SON

  Women’s Research Institute

  Brigham Young University

  Thesis for Master’s Degree

  Adviser, Professor Mary P. Sprague

  April 13, 2007

  WIFE #19:

  A Desert Mystery

  Introduction

  My research into the life of Ann Eliza Young (1844–unknown) began more than two years ago. After studying her mother, Elizabeth Churchill Webb, and her father, Chauncey Webb, I turned to Ann Eliza herself and her complicated legacy in Church history. Fortunately for my scholarship many people, especially those closest to her, left written memories of her in the form of letters, diaries, depositions, testimonies, and news accounts.1 In reading these, I have been able to construct what I hope is a complex view of the woman known as the notorious 19th Wife. My research has led me to form five conclusions about Ann Eliza and the role of polygamy in Church history.

  One, her reports on the moral and spiritual debasement of the nineteenth-century plural wife are more accurate than generally recognized. For many of us this is an uncomfortable truth, for it has been more convenient to dismiss her so-called exposé as an exaggerated depiction of how the plural wife lived. In truth, polygamy generally compromised the moral and spiritual development of its women and, equally important, its children. Ann Eliza Young’s memoir, for the most part, tells it as it was. Certainly her depiction of Brigham Young is limited mostly to his role as polygamous husband and thus omits his many achievements as spiritual leader to thousands as well as those related to his colonization of the West. This partial portrait, by its very nature, is skewed. Yet her account of Brigham, in relation to her, her family, and her beloved sons, I regret to confirm is factually correct. As a husband and father, he failed many, including his so-called 19th wife.2

  Two, by studying her father, Chauncey, and her half-brother Gilbert, I have come to realize that plural marriage could compromise the husband’s soul as much as, if not more than, that of the plural wife. The false promise of sexual freedom, cloaked as it was in religious righteousness, led some men into an abundance of marriages they were not prepared to sustain financially, emotionally, or spiritually. This too is an awkward revelation, for it suggests our beloved leaders Joseph and Brigham, each of whom had at least h
alf a hundred wives, were morally compromised by their conjugal indulgences. It brings me much pain to type this conclusion.

  I often wonder how Brigham, who saved his people from mass extermination, who risked everything to deliver tens of thousands to the glory of Zion, could go on to nearly destroy his followers. Was it blind faith? A raging libido? I have an idea about it. I believe most men, even the greatest, can offer salvation only once in their lifetime; for if he succeeds (and most do not), he will overestimate his powers and thereafter will behave recklessly. Brigham achieved so much for us, assured us our survival and place on earth, yet he risked all in the name of polygamy. As Saints, we must consider this difficult truth. Its meaning resonates today.

  Three, in bringing the issue of polygamy into the national debate, Ann Eliza Young indirectly saved the LDS Church from itself. She was not alone in this; many others played significant parts, yet her leadership in the campaign to end polygamy, and the impact of the first edition of The 19th Wife, cannot be denied. This is an awkward fact, for it means one of Brigham’s fiercest enemies set the course for the Church’s future—a future that we thrive in today. In this irony, however, I believe we can find many Christian truths.

  Four, with the 1890 Manifesto, and the more forceful second Manifesto, issued in 1904, the LDS Church made its position on polygamy clear—any Saint participating in a plural marriage would face excommunication. Yet in abandoning polygamy, the Latter-day Saints were now burdened with an untenable theological problem. The doctrine Joseph and Brigham had preached as the Word of God was now being revised. If polygamy was no longer a divine doctrine, many in and out of the Church asked, what about the Doctrine & Covenants as a whole? And what about the Book of Mormon itself? Could it too be edited, revised, trimmed, amended, and otherwise altered by Church leaders in Salt Lake?

  Furthermore, the revised Doctrine left many polygamists, including President Woodruff himself, who had five or six wives, in a legal and theological purgatory. If polygamy was no longer a religious doctrine, and no longer the path to salvation, what should a man with a dozen wives do? Abandon the last eleven? Live on as a historical curiosity? And how should a plural wife feel about herself now? To use Brigham’s own uncharacteristically cruel words, was she now merely a social harlot? The Church was woefully inept in guiding the Saints through these confusing days. This spiritual ambiguity pushed many Saints, under the leadership of Aaron Webb, to break away from the LDS Church, forming the so-called Firsts in and around Red Creek, Utah, which later became known as Mesadale.

  Through my work at the Ann Eliza House I have come to know many women and children whose lives have been defined by polygamy today. I formally interviewed twenty-two of these, recording their experiences.3 These conversations were first done for background purposes—to gain insight into the life of a child of polygamy and the life of a plural wife. Yet the more women and children I spoke to, the more pressing their stories became. At some point, I saw the connection between Ann Eliza Young, nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy, and the polygamists of today. Polygamists like the Firsts in Mesadale are not Mormons; we are not of the same Church. This is not in dispute. Yet they are the unintended consequences of Joseph and Brigham’s polygamous policies. To deny this is to deny the cold facts of history. To ignore their stories is to abandon Christian principles. And so I could not look away.

  Five, to my profound disappointment, I was unable to determine the fate of Ann Eliza Young. We know that after the publication of The 19th Wife in 1875 she reconciled with her mother, who apostatized after Brigham sought to destroy her daughter’s reputation. Elizabeth Churchill Webb died in 1884, presumably while living with Ann Eliza. In 1890, after seeing the Church renounce polygamy, Ann Eliza retired from the lecture circuit. She married a wealthy Michigan industrialist, but the marriage soured after a few years and they divorced. We know that by the late 1890s she was living in Arizona, most probably on limited means. There is a large gap in her biography until 1908, when she reemerged with the second edition of The 19th Wife from a vanity press. It seems she spent most or all of her assets on the book’s reissue, which failed to sell one thousand copies. Thereafter there are no reliable sources documenting her whereabouts. There are two reports of sightings: A son of James Dee, her first husband, claims to have seen her in Phoenix in 1915. One of Brigham’s sons, John Willard Young, wrote that he passed her by near his apartment on Broadway in New York City the year before his death in 1923. Although intriguing, neither claim can be confirmed. Both strike me as unlikely.

  Lorenzo Leonard Dee, Ann Eliza’s second son (and my great-great-grand-uncle), believed that his mother was murdered by a member or members of the Firsts community. Certainly Aaron, or his followers, would have the most reason to silence polygamy’s most effective opponent. Yet as tantalizing as this theory is, there is no evidence to support it, other than the distinct voice of a grieving son.

  Then what happened to Ann Eliza Young? My searches through archives in Utah, California, New York, and Washington have turned up nothing regarding her last days. None of the local or national papers ever ran an obituary. As far as I know, there are no police reports, insurance records, estate papers, or any other clues concerning her fate. I have come to the conclusion, alas, that the mystery of her final outcome cannot be solved. Indeed, there are some mysteries that must exist without answer. In the end we must accept them for what they are: complex and many-sided, ornamented with clues and theories, yet ultimately unknowable—like life itself.

  Thus, with these five conclusions formed, I submit what can only be described as an unorthodox thesis. After more than two years of research, I realized that a historical paper would not suffice. With this in mind, I have worked closely with a young man named Jordan Scott for several months. I interviewed him for nearly sixty hours about his life among the Firsts and, especially, his extraordinary relationship with his mother. At first, I tried to retell his story in an analytically detached way. Always, the results were cold and uninspired. Although his story offers much illumination on Ann Eliza and her legacy, my scholarly approach sucked the life out of his life. After many attempts I abandoned my voice for his. I edited the transcripts of our interviews into an early draft, then went back to him for more interviews. Together we edited the draft into a final narrative, Wife #19: A Desert Mystery.

  Whether or not this will meet the thesis requirements is up to the Department. Yet I ask you to consider the questions Wife #19 asks of the reader, and of itself. In my opinion these inquiries are serious and urgent and worthy of a scholar’s attention. Although the words are Jordan’s, it is shaped by my years of scholarship and thought, and a lifetime of open faith.

  1 Transcripts of the documents I have studied have been placed in the WRI’s archives.

  2 A final note on numbers: My research shows Ann Eliza was most likely Brigham’s 52nd of 55 wives. As far as I can tell, she was called the 19th because removed from the total tally were the wives who had died, who were barren, or whom Brigham no longer had sexual relations with. This discrepancy in marital accounting speaks volumes about Brigham’s complicated relations with his spouses and polygamy’s moral corrosion. If anyone still wonders why Ann Eliza was so ticked off, they need only consider this footnote.

  3 Transcripts of these interviews are in the WRI’s archives.

  WIFE #19:

  EPILOGUE

  Focus on the Family

  A week later Maureen and I went shopping. We were in a discount women’s store, pushing a shopping cart down the aisle. Maureen had a firm sense of what we needed. “At least three pairs of shoes, one for dressier situations, one for every day, and one for walking and other activities. Any idea what color she likes?”

  “Red,” I said. “Mostly red.”

  “I’m afraid red can only go so far.” Maureen inspected permanent press slacks, braided belts, t-shirts with piped sleeves, nylon socks, and other basics. “Now let’s go get her some bath things.”

  “I h
ave some soap.”

  “A woman needs more than a bar of soap.” She examined a jar of face cream. “I’ve gone ahead and made her an appointment at my beauty parlor. She’ll need to figure out what to do with her hair.”

  An hour later we unpacked our purchases in Room 111, Maureen hummed about, snipping off tags and folding the shirts and slacks into a drawer she had lined with tissue. When she was done she clapped her hands. “All done. Now, if you need anything else …”

  “I’m all set.”

  “I know, but if you ever need anything else, you let me know.” She hugged me, her handbag clobbering me in the back.

  “I couldn’t’ve done this without you,” I said.

  “Of course you could’ve.”

  “No, actually, I couldn’t.”

  “I’ll just go say good-bye to Tom and the dogs.” Then she was gone, a blur of blue.

  The next morning at a quarter to eight, Tom and I waited at the security entrance of the jail. Officer Cunningham was manning the desk. “Big day,” she said. “It’ll only be another minute.” We talked some about our dogs; she was taking her corgis to a show in Colorado next weekend and had their grooming on her mind.

  At five to eight a photographer showed up, three cameras hanging around her neck. She gave her card to Officer Cunningham, who told her she could set up in the corner. The photographer opened a camera bag and changed her lenses, wiping them with a small tissue, readying everything so that when the moon-faced clock said it was exactly eight, she’d be all set to capture that picture everyone loves—a wrongly accused prisoner being freed.