Diary of Martha Spence Heywood [microform] : 1850-1856 | Collections | The Huntington

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Diary of Martha Spence Heywood [microform] : 1850-1856

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Description: Microfilm of a typescript of Martha Spence Heywood's diary, kept from 1850-1856. It begins when Martha was living in Kanesville, Iowa, after joining the Mormon Church and while waiting to travel westward. She gives a brief account of her baptism in Canada and sojourns with various Mormon families in New York State. She also recounts her travels to St. Louis in 1849 and teaching school in Springville. Martha departed with the Joseph Heywood company for Utah in 1850 and gives a detailed account of the company's journey across the plains. The majority of the diary recounts in detail Martha's life in Nephi, Utah, from 1850-1856. She writes personal and insightful insights on polygamy (shortly after her marriage to Heywood she wrote "Tis rather trying to a woman's feelings not to be acknowledged by the man she has given herself to and desires to love with all her heart"), the birth and raising of her children, her illnesses from childbirth, the death of her daughter Serepta Maria from measles in 1856, her loneliness in Nephi (she wrote that she "could not bear" to be left alone by her husband and taught school in 1854 since it was "of much benefit to me as the activity ... and its responsibility prevented lonesomeness that otherwise would have been disagreeable"), and politics within the Mormon settlement at Nephi. She also writes of Indian troubles, including Mormons killed by Indians in 1853, and of the discovery of two bodies dressed in United States livery who were shot to death in November 1852. Martha also writes frequently of her acquaintances in Nephi, visits by Brigham Young, and a variety of other domestic concerns.

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