Remarkable Utah Women

Utah presents a paradox in women’s history as a state founded by deeply religious pioneers who supported polygamy but also a place that offered women early suffrage and encouraged education and leadership. Remarkable Utah Women tells the stories of seventeen strong and determined women who broke through the social, cultural, and political barriers of their times. The women in these pages include Emmeline B. Wells, who served as president of both the Mormon Relief Society and the Woman Suffrage Association of Utah; the Bassett sisters, who ran with Butch Cassidy’s Wild Bunch; and Reva Beck Bosone, a US congresswoman and the state’s first female judge. The second edition features new biographies of historian Helen Papanikolas, who meticulously researched Utah’s immigrant communities; Mae Timbimboo Parry, who collected and shared the history of her Northwestern Shoshone people and brought to light the horrors of the Bear River Massacre; and Barbara Toomer, an activist who organized daring protests to demand a more accessible world for people with disabilities. Each of these women demonstrated an independence of spirit that still has the power to inspire us today. Read about their extraordinary lives and outsized personalities in this captivating collection that tells the story of Utah through the voices and legacies of indomitable women.

More than Petticoats: Remarkable Utah Women tells the stories of twelve strong and determined women who broke through social, cultural, or political barriers.

More than Petticoats: Remarkable Washington Women, 2nd Edition celebrates the women who shaped the Evergreen State. Short, illuminating biographies and archival photographs and paintings tell the stories of women from across the state who served as teachers, writers, entrepreneurs, and artists.

Representing lawmakers and lawbreakers, artists and adventurers or scholars and activists, the women of Utah defied stereotypes. At the crossroads of the West, they found new challenges and opportunities to forge their own paths. Emma Dean explored the Rocky Mountains with her famous spouse, John Wesley Powell. Martha Hughes Cannon defeated her husband to become the first female state senator. Maud Fitch drove an ambulance under German artillery fire to rescue downed pilots in World War I. Author Emily Brooksby Wheeler celebrates the remarkable Utah women who, whether racing into danger or nurturing those who fell behind, changed their world and ours.

Wild West Women features the true stories of the pioneering wives, mothers, daughters, teachers, writers, entrepreneurs, and artists who shaped the frontier and helped change the face of American history. These fifty stories cover the Western experience from Kansas City to Sacramento and the Yukon to the Texas Gulf.

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In the nineteenth century, white Americans contrasted the perceived purity of white, middle-class women with the perceived eroticism of women of color and the working classes. The Latter-day Saint practice of polygamy challenged this separation, encouraging white women to participate in an institution that many people associated with the streets of Calcutta or Turkish palaces. At the same time, Latter-day Saints participated in American settler colonialism. After their expulsion from Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois, Latter-day Saints dispossessed Ute and Shoshone communities in an attempt to build their American Zion. Their missionary work abroad also helped to solidify American influence in the Pacific Islands as the church became a participant in American expansion. Imperial Zions explores the importance of the body in Latter-day Saint theology with the faith’s attempts to spread its gospel as a “civilizing” force in the American West and the Pacific. By highlighting the intertwining of Latter-day Saint theology and American ideas about race, sexuality, and the nature of colonialism, Imperial Zions argues that Latter-day Saints created their understandings of polygamy at the same time they tried to change the domestic practices of Native Americans and other Indigenous peoples. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto tracks the work of missionaries as they moved through different imperial spaces to analyze the experiences of the American Indians and Native Hawaiians who became a part of white Latter-day Saint families. Imperial Zions is a foundational contribution that places Latter-day Saint discourses about race and peoplehood in the context of its ideas about sexuality, gender, and the family.

Representing lawmakers and lawbreakers, artists and adventurers or scholars and activists, the women of Utah defied stereotypes. At the crossroads of the West, they found new challenges and opportunities to forge their own paths. Emma Dean explored the Rocky Mountains with her famous spouse, John Wesley Powell. Martha Hughes Cannon defeated her husband to become the first female state senator. Maud Fitch drove an ambulance under German artillery fire to rescue downed pilots in World War I. Author Emily Brooksby Wheeler celebrates the remarkable Utah women who, whether racing into danger or nurturing those who fell behind, changed their world and ours.