Winter Quarters

Winter Quarters
ISBN-10
0874212073
ISBN-13
9780874212075
Series
Winter Quarters
Category
History (General)
Pages
336
Language
English
Published
1996-05
Publisher
Utah State University Press
Author
Mary Haskin Parker Richards

Description

The forced flight of Mormons from Nauvoo, their arduous trek across Iowa, the rebuilding of community and economic life in transitional villages near the Missouri River, and the crucial part of women in a struggling frontier society are vividly portrayed in these moving and detailed journals and letters. When she began writing, Mary Haskin Parker Richards was twenty-two, a Mormon convert who had traveled from England to the American frontier separately from her parents, and a newlywed just parted from her husband, sent to Britain as a missionary. She lived with her in-laws, an extended family led by Willard Richards, also a leader of the Mormon church. Reorganized in the aftermath of the assassination of Joseph Smith, the church was making its way west under the guidance of Brigham Young, a Richards cousin. Mary Richards was a far less prominent Latter-day Saint, but she observed and portrayed, in intimate detail, the personalities and everyday activities of both renowned and obscure church members. The Iowa crossing was the most difficult portion of the Mormon trek west, and life at Winter Quarters and nearby camps was among the most trying of any period in Mormon history. Hundreds died; thousands more suffered sickness and privation. Mary Richards was often ill from typhoid, malaria, or muscular dystrophy, depressed, or lonely, and she spent many days nursing sick friends and relatives. She lived in wagons or tents while crossing Iowa and during the first winter alongside the Missouri, and she braided hats and did other work to earn income and sustenance. Yet, her expressive writing often conveys vitality, curiosity, and joy, as she goes to camp dances, visits with friends and family, writes poetry, and during walks on the prairie, delights in natural beauty. The writings begin with a memoir describing Mary Richards's life in England, early Mormon missionary work there, her family's conversion, and her voyage to America. The journals and letters pick up with her departure from Nauvoo and husband Samuel Richards in 1846 and end with his return from Britain in 1848. Editor Maurine Carr Ward has added a comprehensive introduction and notes, filling out Mary's life story through her later years in Utah, where continuing physical ailments and psychological stress (including her resistance to Samuel's plural marriages) contributed to her early death in 1860. An appended listing contains biographical data on the hundreds of individuals mentioned in the journals and letters.

Other editions

Similar books

  • History of the British Standing Army.
    By Clifford Walton

    Clerk (or) Clark, Esqre.," held the appointment ; he was son to Sir Wm. Clarke, :1 sort of Secretary-at-War, and does not appear to have been bred up to the law. In Ireland the post was held from 1635 to 1637 by W. Clerke, J.C.B., E.

  • Running as a Woman: Gender and Power in American Politics
    By Karen M. Paget, Linda Witt, Glenna Matthews

    ... and, judging by the strange new media venues, "Saturday Night Live," "Donahue," and gossip columnist Lany King's radio and television call-in shows on which 1992's Losing 245.

  • Populist Nationalism: Republican Insurgency and American Foreign Policy Making, 1918-1925
    By Karen A. J. Miller

    His stature within the party leadership would suffer a significant blow at the Cleveland convention . Although both Lodge and Coolidge came from Massachusetts , they represented very different elements in their state's Republican party ...

  • 你一定爱读的极简世界史
    By , 李菲

    (英)玛丽奥特, 李菲. 疆域达到了最大,罗德岛、塞浦路斯和安纳托利亚西南岸上都是他们的地盘。迈锡尼人还将克里特文字变成了一种希腊文,翻译过来的文字显示,迈锡尼人也信仰一些古典希腊的神灵,如海神波塞冬、太阳神阿波罗和主神宙斯。

  • 原始富足
    By 詹姆斯.舒茲曼

    ★ 《人類大歷史》作者哈拉瑞盛讚:「深具啟發、精彩好看!」 ★ 2017年《華盛頓郵報》最佳非虛構類寫作圖書 ★ 2017年美國國家公共廣播平台(NPR)年度好書 ...

  • The American Journey: A History of the United States
    By David R. Goldfield, Virginia DeJohn Anderson, William L. Barney

    Anna J. Cooper , A Voice from the South , 1892 Anna Julia Cooper , A Voice from the South ( Xenia , Ohio : The Aldine Printing House , 1892 ) : 134-135 , 138–140 , 142–145 . The book may be accessed from the Internet ...

  • A Study of Pueblo Pottery as Illustrative of Zuñi Culture Growth. Fourth Annual Report of the Bureau of Ethnology to...
    By Frank Hamilton Cushing

    This book is part of the TREDITION CLASSICS series. The creators of this series are united by passion for literature and driven by the intention of making all public domain books available in printed format again - worldwide.

  • The Winning of the West
    By Theodore Roosevelt

    ... inhabitants are greatly Exposd . to the Saviges by whome our wives and Childring are daly Cruily murdered Notwithstanding our most Humble Petitions Canot Obtain Redress- By an other act we are Taxd . which in our 398 APPENDICES .

  • History of American Abolitionism; Its Four Great Epochs, Embracing Narratives of the Ordinance of 1787, Compromise of 1820, Annexation of...
    By F. G. 1832-1896 De Fontaine

    This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

  • The African-American Odyssey: To 1877
    By Darlene Clark Hine, William C. Hine, Stanley Harrold

    Supreme Court Justices ( continued ) Name * Years on Court Appointing President John Marshall Harlan William J. Brennan , Jr. Charles E. Whittaker Potter Stewart Byron R. White Arthur J. Goldberg Abe Fortas Thurgood Marshall WARREN E.