Polygamous Family Life and Geographic Isolation - The Poetry of Esther Ann Birch Bennion

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2022-01-01
Journal	Journal of Mormon History
Authors	John Bennion

Abstract

Many women used the Woman’s Exponent to explore, often in conversation with other writers, their marriage tensions and feelings of secondary status as a result of nineteenth-century Mormon polygamy. These women, and the scholars who write about them, generally discuss these relationships in terms of patriarchy—male/female relationships.1 Many women, my great-great-grandmother Esther Ann Birch Bennion included, also had difficult relations with other wives, with whom they were in competition for resources, including their husband’s love. Because of both practical necessity and antipathy between her and the first wife, Esther Ann pioneered away from the family’s central home west of the Jordan River in the Salt Lake Valley. As she worked through her feelings concerning exclusion and hardship, her poems and letters reveal the complex relationships in a polygamous family and how geographical isolation affected those family tensions.During her life, she wrote forty-nine poems, fifteen of them published, two in the Juvenile Instructor and thirteen in the Woman’s Exponent, adding her voice to a group of poets who probed questions about the position of women,2 defined themselves and negotiated their roles,3 delivered sermons to each other,4 defended Mormonism and polygamy to the world,5 but especially supported each other.6 Her poems and letters illustrate what happened as colonists were sent farther and farther from the central homestead. She felt isolated, made to endure more than others who lived in the relative ease of the Salt Lake Valley. The Juvenile Instructor and the Woman’s Exponent comforted her in her isolation, and when she had more leisure, she published poems designed to strengthen and comfort others. Her poetry specifically focuses on hierarchical issues that existed then and exist today, the question of whether the lowly have as much value as those with more familial, social, or ecclesiastical power.Esther Ann’s husband, John, was born in 1820 in Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales.7 He joined the church in Liverpool after his brother had also joined. In 1842 he married Esther Wainwright of Liverpool, whose parents had formerly lived in the same Welsh parish as John’s. They sailed to America where they settled in Nauvoo and eventually relocated to Utah in 1847.8 His ancestors were day laborers and tenant farmers, but John desired to become independent economically. He was a loving man to his large family and believed in the virtue and benefits of hard work. Consequently, he and his first wife, Esther, managed the family as a work force. My grandfather writes that Esther Wainwright Bennion was “a person of unusual physical and mental strength and possessed of a driving determination to transform by austerity and hard work the grinding privations of the pioneer years into solvency and plenty.”9 She fished, grew gardens, started a weaving business, managed the household on the Jordan River in what was first named Harker’s Settlement and later Taylorsville, and was instrumental to the financial success of the family. In 1855, she lived in a rough cabin at Rush Lake, near where the town of Stockton, Utah, now sits; it was a difficult experience and probably made her never want to leave the home on the Jordan River again.10Esther Birch was born in 1833 in Wooten Parish, Kent, England. Her mother taught her to read and that became an avid pastime. She received more education than her siblings, nine months at a school in Swingfield, a couple of miles from her home.11 She followed her sisters into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1852 at the age of eighteen, emigrated to America three years later, and walked across the plains from Missouri to the Salt Lake Valley.12 At first, she lived with a family in Cottonwood and worked for her board. She married John Bennion the next summer. She was driven by her devotion to family, both her birth family and her marriage family, and by her desire to become an accomplished writer.Esther Ann’s writing life can be divided into six segments, and her living conditions affected the kind of writing she did—letters when she was isolated from the larger family and poems when she had time to reflect and revise. After leaving home and before emigrating to America, she lived with her sisters and worked from 1854 to 1856 as a maid to earn money to travel to Utah. She wrote a couple of poems about her new faith, but they are dissimilar to her mature poems. After her marriage, she moved between the main family household on the west side of the Jordan River in the Salt Lake Valley and herding shacks or pioneer cabins in Bingham Canyon and Rush Valley between 1856 and 1867. During the third segment of her life (1867-1873) she and John pioneered in the Muddy Mission, isolated from most of the family. Returning northward, she lived closer to family and experienced less physical hardship (1873-1877). After her husband’s death, she lived in Vernon, Rush Valley, on her own property (1877-1903), and later moved to Vernal, Utah, to live near the majority of her children until her death (1903-1909).After Esther Ann’s marriage to John, she moved into a bedroom in the main house on the Jordan River, but Esther Wainwright surprised her husband by refusing to embrace polygamy. Whether she knew about her husband’s second marriage in advance is not clear as John’s account of the ceremony is missing from his daybook because that page was torn out. As Brigham Young performed the ceremony, he added “Ann” to her birth name to distinguish her from the first wife.13 This displacement of identity was followed by others as the first wife’s aversion to her forced her from the central home and she was required to call her “Mother,” as if she was a child in the family. In a footnote, Mildred Bennion Eyring—editor of the volume of Bennion family history containing John’s daybook—writes, “Careful readers of this volume will discover that these two good women, Esther Wainwright and Esther Ann Birch, having very different temperaments and backgrounds were not congenial and probably would not have been under any circumstances.”14 Although some polygamous wives had harmonious relationships with their sister wives, often working together to manage their households, the institution also produced inequities in resources and affection, straining relationships.15 In John’s family, the main contention was between the two Esthers. Eyring continues, “A very close affectionate relationship existed between all of the children of John Bennion throughout their lives, and most of the grandchildren were given the impression that there was no friction between the three wives at any time.”16 In volume 4 of the family history, amateur historian Ruth Rogers writes, “The usual procedure had not been followed in allowing the women to know each other as friends prior to the wedding. This made it difficult to bridge the gap in age and in sharing the man whose life was bound to Esther’s these many years by devotion and sacrifice. As the months passed in the small, crowded home, nerves were stretched taut with trying too hard to please, and problems developed between Esther and Esther Ann.”17 Rogers includes an anecdote told by Mary Bennion (Calder), the oldest child in the family, who one evening watched her mother’s face when John went to Esther Ann’s bedroom: “As the door closed behind him, she stopped reading and looked at the door with such an expression of dismay in her eyes that I have never forgotten it.”18Two months after marrying Esther Ann, John had a dream where his first wife and her children were caught in a river. He stood on the shore and called to them. The children swam toward him, but Esther did not heed and was soon in over her head, baby in her arms. “I went in swimming after her. She was glad to catch hold of me and I dragged her out, to the children. I felt very glad to see them all safe on shore.”19 Sharing his dream with Esther did not soften her powerful will, and the arrangement of the two women living in one house lasted only six more months. On March 25, 1857, John wrote in his daybook, “in the evening went over to Saml to see if E. A. could live there a short time until I got her a house apart from Esther who was disposed to oppress her & disregard my council.”20 The next day John moved her belongings to his brother Samuel’s house. He occasionally records that the two women traveled or worked together, but he doesn’t describe them living together.In April 1857 John took a third wife, Mary Turpin.21 But this time John involved Esther Wainwright in the process. She was friends with Mary’s mother. Contrary to what he did when marrying Esther Ann, John took Esther with him when he was sealed to Mary. The two younger wives became close friends and the need for pioneering outward to find new grazing affected this friendship. Either they pioneered together away from the central home or they pioneered in separate areas and communicated through letters about their trials and desires.Esther Ann’s duties away from the central family home were to herd livestock and feed and care for the children old enough to help in that enterprise. The whole family worked wherever John and Esther decided they were needed, irrespective of who their mother was, and there was an informal system of rotation between the older children and Esther Ann living in the cabin and herding the livestock. Even though she was often around others, at times she was alone as she moved between Samuel’s house, a herding shack on Bingham Creek, and a cabin in the southern end of Rush Valley, a long valley in western Utah that extends southward from Tooele.Beginning in 1863 Esther Ann and Mary Turpin either took turns living at Mountain Home, their name for the Rush Valley homestead, or they lived there together.22 Depletion of grazing land in the Salt Lake Valley prompted this move,23 and Rush Valley had become “headquarters for both sheep and cattle interests.”24 Once in that first year, they were kept indoors most of the day by two timber wolves in their garden, and they occasionally had unsettling encounters with Paiutes passing through the area.25 The next year they both gave birth to sons, each with only the other woman to help in the delivery.26 John wrote in his journal about walking out to check on the two women, but he did not record concern about their safety or happiness.In 1866, while still at Mountain Home, Esther Ann addressed Mary in a poem: Sometimes we have felt we were banished Mary,And as days and weeks roll byWe look to the Eastern mountainsWith longing, wishful eye.We sometimes feel as if shut outFrom friends and kindred dear.Yet this is but a moment’s thought.Our duty calls us here.27In this poem Esther Ann endeavors to give purpose to their sacrifice. Words that could represent bitterness about her lot—“banished,” “longing,” and “duty”—have been translated into the service of the family dream. She imagines a future when they will remember “the happy days we’ve spent, / In our old log cabin in the hills.” Her aim in writing was to convince her sister wife, and probably herself, that their estrangement and isolation was both temporary and useful. The poem demonstrates her longing for home and her fear of disharmony, and it implies her faith that she and Mary are helping the family both economically and spiritually.Even though Esther Ann and John had a common household during the years of their call to the Muddy Mission, he was often absent, managing the herds of sheep, traveling northward to the main home, and in one instance sailing to Wales for a genealogical mission. In contrast, Esther Ann never left the Muddy Mission and never had the opportunity to travel north and see family. She intensely felt the isolation and physical hardship. Choosing her to accompany him may have indicated some favor, but his decision was also certainly based on the difficult relationship between the two Esthers, and the practical needs that the first wife had to manage the family household and operations in Taylorsville. In addition, Mary was not as strong and healthy as Esther Ann. While in the south, she and John moved five times (Long Valley, West Point, Panaca, Desert Spring, and Eagleville), and she gave birth to three children (Owen, Willard Richards, and Ida).28 For years they lived in a Sibley tent, which had a wooden floor; she didn’t have a bedstead until 1871. John finally built a house, but she had to leave it again after only a few months. During her time in the Muddy, she wrote no poems; she used precious time and candlelight to write letters back home to Taylorsville, generally to Mary. These letters show the growth of themes that she later integrated into her poetry: isolation, physical hardship and sickness, loss of control over her own life, and the sense that her sacrifice was not appreciated.She addressed her first letters home to Esther: “Dear Mother, We are going to be rather lonsome here, so far from any other settlements… . I often look at your likeness and wish we had some more of the folks to look at.”29 She hopes in another letter that those at home “will not forget us in our exile.”30 She admits to her confidante, Mary: “I want to talk to you. I do sometimes in dreams, are you any wiser for that!”31 Another letter complains: “I wonder sometimes if I shall see you all again. I pray that Death may not deprive us of any of the loved ones, I tremble when I open a letter from home.”32Another subject of her letters is the harsh landscape. Of West Point she writes: “This is a strange country to live in, everything has thorns on it which tear our clothes to rags, and the ground is almost covered with little prickles and rocks making it impossible for any to go barefoot except around home, the wear and tear on shoes and clothes is terrible… . Sr Murdock tells me of how they passed the summer here and almost scares me but if others live through I hope I shall.”33Concerning living in the Sibley tent, she writes, “last Saturday came a heavy snow, since then it has been perishing cold. We have no shelter but our tent and only the little sheet-iron stove which makes it tolerable tough for us.”34 Other letters describe the unbearable summer heat, as well as sickness in her own and other children, and death among the settlers from disease. Of Desert Spring, just across the border into Utah, where they moved to avoid paying Nevada taxes, she writes, “’tis a strange place for a home, no grass near for cows or calves, poor sulpherous water and no chance for a bit of garden, sand a foot deep nearly but it is a healthy place and I have quite a comfortable little room.”35She had responsibility for taking care of her babies, a garden, and managing the house. John left for she had to manage the herds he for from She felt that she didn’t have the resources she to manage her She especially from her older “I wish I could be with the and do for them but they are miles from They were often on the in the so they have had to and both the who was and who was be with them leaving me with poor she could not the loss of about their In the same she that Mary will her for this “I have worked hard Mary to and what I could but it has hard for two I did not to much about I have first if I could have had the home and a for them to work She Mary I wish you was here, do not at my you know what a I … this letter to She felt her but did not want Esther Wainwright and the others at home to know she few of her letters show her that her work and her to Esther are not She writes, of me she here after do not you I would to show her that I have one of her kind to at home and to me away of here, and do not you Mary that I shall a little by from she she could show her to the woman who her from the central later she will I look at the side as usual but I do not Mary not I trying to you the a little of Her about the of her implies that the she later in her poems did not her on a and that she used her letters to Mary as an for her feelings about her and In addition, to her for letters from home, she writes about another Juvenile and Exponent us in to the of the day and other these fear of from her children and Mary nearly her of her that her sacrifice was or and she used letters to her sister wife to manage her Her time on the Muddy may have her desire to her own poems that the comfort she received from the After this she to write poems that a family, or church is more when the of all are especially those who or to those in the Salt Lake Valley. Even when settled closer to loved in living Esther Ann’s and feelings were and by this long time of and she and John and their children finally left the two years after those in the on the of the Muddy and had given Esther Ann are We will have a good chance to talk over many which have since I I hope and pray will give me strength to do my duty wherever I may be this time Esther Ann to write a few letters to Mary when one of them was out in Rush Valley making a home for the but she also more to writing the six poems during these two children who each other and good “A the and the of the loving family / where with affection, each other The Bennion a who is a loving of poems comforted others over the loss of a In Esther Ann writes to the to me when I with care / to me of / me that all for the Ann was no to the of a few weeks after the now by a and Esther sister wrote a of to Esther Ann and she wrote my would have been years of I need not you that I sister have also passed through and and know that though we do not as those hope there are days and when we it away when we look and will be do with me as good she had been from for much of their time in the Muddy Mission could only have her at is that her of family Esther two other of a conversation with in the Woman’s describe her for her husband, which she felt she had to from Esther, the first wife, because of the difficult position polygamy had these two women Esther Ann have believed that after five years of Esther Wainwright be more of but in she published in the Woman’s Exponent, the first of these poems about it and it The that a is a one some or I know the poem is because a of it was in her The who the poems for an informal and of Esther Ann’s work may have been at the expression and only it a for a woman to not the in it a to so the old if her with hope her they be in her as a poem that and not be a for could be read as an toward of polygamy that a polygamous wife may her husband, but it may also be an at Esther who the younger woman because it was so clear Esther Ann loved The of the published she be as and she has his to she him and who will she to for loving that received a to her a poem that published in the to have that was not a married woman with children, but a one who is for whether to her feelings to her that is not a or a but because are often of the woman of her for writes, we not in / But us … / not your with a and allowing of man to of issues later, Esther Ann that she that often women and then them but she would be to know that a man the would this I had for a happy and man in his strength and his to be by if are so as to “a or value only She with a that she man and the man who is and a as not as a to an though her first poem may have been prompted by a the conversation has now to a of the relationships between and women in the She doesn’t to see that John may have used her as a to an her and her children to be to his desire for that much of what is there certainly are who hold women as their but the of a man is often of women as “a and they her to the They that made her a to Once more she to be and so that may be with eyes / never This will when own her and then she be safe to Esther Ann may have this as a to their or she may have given on to with her. Either she did not would be to this only to a of Esther Ann’s their go with her own husband help her see the that can do to the harsh life Esther Ann because of what her husband required of left no that she of him as other than a and The only time she close to of him is in one letter to Mary where she that John had one of her to all day and far into the in Esther Ann wrote a which she published in the of the Woman’s Her purpose in life is a common one among the an in the of She from to more to our and marriage, which is to be a to all who are trying to themselves and their both and She that her duties have kept her from there are of my sisters more and more at to out the comfort the the and the and strengthen the by and and of and to the many through the she can she writes, is her children good so they know how to when far from their This her to be more than many of the Exponent writers, and her for her on her own rather than on her sisters in the for of the Mormon faith to or other work for the the March she published another of My My sisters I you you that is a that my extends no than my that in my for my I forget the work so much to be that I all the many of for women for the of herself, and to in the home as if in that was the of and the of her the that in later poems would be all of women are to the “I do not that my of or of my would do I but there are very many of good the of all if they do not in any for the common and She writes that her own family to go to helping others would be by the to at the She the of which a through many to those women who are to the of those who would deprive woman of the to which she has a who and to their sisters to their But the can do her by her to their sisters and to give her a good While on the Muddy and at other Esther Ann that her older were from her while they so her was and deep that her care before or She with the that she may be but it not for our own that we are prompted to do the we her children around her at her own in the may have after living in a tent in the in the Muddy two short a in her she wrote letters the conditions of her life, a few poems, a published to another but after this she published nine poems in the Exponent as well as another couple of poems that or with other she took the of what work she she felt that work in her family had been by Exponent writers, a she often experienced in her polygamous She was by Esther exclusion of and to it a but the is the of the between these sister While on the Muddy, she had that reading the Exponent and other her feel that she was of a other women in she as writes, the poems, and in the Woman’s Exponent women could themselves to sisters all over the She may have decided to the she had felt from in those when she had been of her poems during these years the that the of the and the to the of John’s death in of from a Esther Ann’s life days after the she with her family to Vernon, where she had She had control

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5406/24736031.48.1.03