I loved Grandma Louise dearly. I married into her family and she was a grandmother to me when my own grandparents lived far away. While we lived near her home in Bountiful I took my young children for regular weekend visits. Grandma Louise was a reader. Now and then she loaned me one of the wholesome novels she particularly enjoyed. The Irish writer Maeve Binchy was one of her favorite authors. These books were full of small-town drama, romance, and never anything too controversial or negative.
One beautiful Saturday morning in the mid-1990s, I shared one of my books with her for a change. It was something I had stumbled upon accidentally in a local bookstore one day, A Mormon Mother: An Autobiography by Annie Clark Tanner. I had been fascinated by this brutally honest account of a woman who entered a polygamous marriage during the 1880s, and the challenges of her life during this period when polygamy was heavily under attack by the United States government. I handed the book to Grandma Louse, who accepted it with interest. I think she liked the title.
The following Saturday, after I settled Bryan and Nikki with the box of toys in Grandma’s sunroom, Grandma and I sat at the little table in the corner for our weekly chat. She handed the Annie Clark Tanner book to me and said, “You can have this back. I decided I’m not going to read it.”
It was clear she didn’t intend to say anything else about it. I thought it was a little odd, but I thought maybe it just made her uncomfortable. Family members always made it a point to protect Grandma from anything negative in their lives if at all possible. Everyone wanted her affection and approval. But looking back, I think it was also just the way she lived her life. She didn’t want to dwell on uncomfortable things.
During all of our many weekly visits, even when she talked to me about her childhood and her proud family history, she never once mentioned how polygamy played into it. It wasn’t until years later that I discovered that both of her parents were raised in polygamous households. The fact that Grandma never told me this is a testament not only to her unfailingly positive world view, but also to the intense secrecy that necessarily surrounded the practice of polygamy during the last decades of the nineteenth century and beyond. At that point in time, I was not yet really aware of my own polygamous ancestors.
Grandma Louise had told me with pride about her Smoot heritage. She seemed surprised when I said I didn’t know much about the Smoots. After all, I didn’t grow up in Utah. She explained to me that her grandfather Abraham Owen Smoot had been well-respected by everyone in the community. He had helped lead the pioneers across the plains. He had served as mayor in both Salt Lake City and in Provo, and in the state legislature. He was an early and important supporter of Brigham Young Academy, credited with saving it from early financial ruin and making possible the existence of today’s Brigham Young University. He was a dedicated family man. Beyond those surface details, she shared nothing with me. It was up to me to learn more about him later. And boy, was there a lot to learn!
There are so many interesting stories about the Smoots, I will need several posts to cover the highlights. As I add their stories, I will add links below.
Kommentarer