The Women of Mormondom

In 1877, Edward W. Tullidge undertook an act of historical rescue: gathering the voices of women who built Mormonism from its earliest days, women whose stories had been distorted, dismissed, or simply erased. The Women of Mormondom is not a neutral chronicle but a passionate advocacy, written to restore dignity to women who faced relentless persecution for their faith. Tullidge presents these women not merely as wives or mothers but as spiritual leaders, pioneers, and architects of a religious movement that America both feared and fascination. Through individual narratives and broader portraits, the book captures what it meant to be woman in a community under siege, to find authority in a world that denied you any. The prose carries the moral urgency of its era, but its power endures: here are voices preserved from the margins of history, testimony from those who composed the heart of a faith that refused to die. For readers interested in American religious history, women's studies, or the quiet rebellion of ordinary lives made extraordinary by conviction, this remains a foundational text.