Susa Young Gates: Daughter of Mormonism

Romney Burke has written the first full biography of Susa Young Gates, Brigham Young's best-known child who left the greatest lasting impact. Fortunately for Burke, Gates left behind abundant source material, especially after one hundred boxes of her voluminous personal writings were discovered in her son's garage, now in the Church History Library. These included literary and historical writings, personal correspondence, notes, speeches, and diaries. Burke has approached Gates's life with precision and skill in sorting through so much information, as he “tried to allow her to speak for herself” (ix). The author's wife is a great-granddaughter of Gates, but this did not preclude Burke from the ability to treat this complex figure with fair criticism but also understanding and generosity.A good biography doesn't just tell a person's life story; it should illuminate its subject—not in isolation but within the social and cultural conditions of that individual's world, and it should demonstrate how she was shaped by the people who surrounded her. Through the intricate details of Susa's life, Burke narrates a captivating and often tragic personal history. She grew up in polygamy—and not just any polygamous home, but in the Beehive House, and later in St. George, as the daughter of Brigham Young and Lucy Bigelow. Susa's childhood recollections reveal much about relationships among sister wives and their children. Her recollections also cast light on Young himself, who comes across as a stern but loving father, and he even appears quite sympathetic through Susa's (and Burke's) eyes. Her idyllic memories of polygamy contrast with the realities faced by those who lived it. All three of Lucy's daughters struggled to find marital happiness. These included the too-hasty courtships, youthful marriages, and later divorces of Susa's sisters, Dora and Mabel, and Susa herself, who got married at age sixteen to Alma Dunford and then divorced him after years of alcoholism and abuse. She later married Jacob Gates, to whom she was happily married for over fifty years. Between her two husbands, Susa had thirteen children. Only five survived to adulthood.Gates's biography literally spans a whole transitional era of Latter-day Saint assimilation into the larger American society. Through Susa's life, Burke introduces readers to many larger themes of Latter-day Saint and Utah history: the Utah War, southern Utah colonization, the coming of the railroad, Brigham Young Academy, the Hawaiian Mission, Mormon suffrage activism, federal antipolygamy legislation, the Underground, Utah statehood and adoption of the national two-party system, the home economics movement, and the growth of the arts, drama, and music in Utah.Burke provides excellent narrative and pure storytelling. The context for Susa's life is woven carefully throughout, without being heavy-handed. Admittedly “uncomfortable with much of the speculation” in biographies, Burke tries to avoid conjecture when the documentary evidence is absent or sparse (ix). This is most apparent when the author tries to understand Susa's interpersonal relationships, including her feelings about her first husband, the reasons for their divorce, and her complicated friendships. But Burke does offer analysis when the historical record points to a likely conclusion. For example, when explaining why Jacob “remained a monogamist,” Burke suggests this was “likely because of Susa's apprehensions” (157).Burke's strongest contribution is demonstrating Gates's many contradictions. He admires Susa as an intelligent and passionate person, as well as her qualities of loyalty, religious devotion, unfailing optimism, and endurance through trials. But readers might also see a zealot who could be dogmatic, unbending, self-righteous, and self-centered. Many of Susa's extremist stances on science and medicine, birth control, race, and eugenics mirror some of today's culture wars. Gates exhibited the greatest contradictions in her attitudes about women. She was a staunch defender of polygamy but chose monogamy for herself. She believed in a woman's traditional role in marriage but divorced her first husband, and then she spent much of her second marriage outside of the home, traveling for suffrage meetings and her publishing work. She often highlighted the importance of devoted motherhood, but sadly she lost custody of her first two children and then tragically lost eight of her thirteen children to disease and accidents. She considered herself an advocate for women's equality, but she also believed in female deference to male priesthood authority in the home and the church. Arguably her most conflicting legacy is her defense of male-only priesthood ordination. Together with her daughter and son-in-law, Leah Dunford and John A. Widtsoe, Gates reasoned that motherhood was women's earthly and divine equivalent to priesthood authority. The Priesthood-Motherhood model has persisted over the last century as a rhetorical tool against calls for female ordination.Susa had a gargantuan presence among her people, and her familiarity with so many church leaders earned her the moniker “the Thirteenth Apostle.” She served on the Relief Society and Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association general boards but never as the president of any of the church's women-led organizations. Her imperious personality might have prevented it. Still, her influence on the church was monumental; she founded and edited the Young Woman's Journal and later edited the Relief Society Magazine; she professionalized genealogical practices and promoted temple work. Gates's two surviving daughters left their own legacies, and their husbands even ended up becoming apostles. But her greatest impact was as a writer and editor—what today might be called an “influencer.” Her almost limitless writing and publishing record is worth its own study. However, the author doesn't give as much attention to evaluating the substance, themes, and interpretations of Susa's many short stories, poems, and novels. For that, readers should turn to the keen literary analysis of another Gates historian, Lisa Olsen Tait. Susa's biography could be read alongside works like Amanda Hendrix-Komoto's 2022 book on Latter-day Saint missionary work in Hawaii and Steve Taysom's 2023 biography of Joseph F. Smith. In the ever-growing field of the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Romney Burke's biography of Susa Young Gates is a necessary contribution to the history of Mormon women specifically and to the history of Utah and the church generally.