While Others Slept

While Others Slept: Utah's second woman doctor tells her poignant and powerful story, by Ellis R. Shipp, M.D.

I first ran across the name Ellis R. Shipp when I was researching my 3rd great-grandmother Cornelia Mortensen, a midwife in Sanford, Colorado. "Aunt Cornelia" as she was known, was one of three local women who received training from Dr. Shipp. I wanted to know more about Dr. Shipp, so I went to the internet and found that a neighborhood park in Salt Lake City and a community clinic in West Valley, Utah bear her name. I bit more digging and I found a used copy of her autobiography, published by Bookcraft in 1962.

This is a story of faith and romance. It is a rare gem that gives a detailed first-hand account of plural marriage from the woman's point of view. A number of important figures in Utah history play a role in Ellis' story, including Brigham Young, Eliza R. Snow, Zina Huntington, Emmeline B. Wells, and others.

Ellis Reynolds was born in Iowa in1847. Soon after, her parents were baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and they headed for Zion, eventually settling in Pleasant Grove, Utah.

At the age of 12, Ellis was visiting a friend when she saw a photograph of a 23-year-year old young man named Milford Shipp, and she developed a crush. "This is the man I intend to marry," she joked, gazing dreamily at the photo.

When she later met Milford in person, she was terrified that someone would let it slip that she had been fawning over his picture. He was even more wonderful in person. Ellis wrote extensively from a young girl's perspective of her lively social life, which revolved around a wonderful group of young people that sometimes included Milford when he was in town. Milford, being so much older than Ellis, married someone else, and Ellis was determined to turn her attention elsewhere. She threw herself into her friendships and a swirl of parties and dances.

All was not teenage frivolity, however. Her family struggled with poverty and her mother died in 1861, leaving Ellis to look after her four younger siblings until her father remarried a 19-year-old immigrant from Denmark a year later. Ellis, no longer tied to her responsibilities at home, went to live with another family as a household helper to bring in some money for her family. She missed her family terribly when she was away from them. She especially adored her father throughout her life.

Brigham Young danced with Ellis at a dance one night. He was impressed with her and invited her to come to live in his household to be educated with his own children. While in Salt Lake City she brushed shoulders with prominent Utah women including Zina Huntington Jacobs Smith Young, whose son was one of her admirers and briefly, her fiance. But Ellis' heart still belonged to Milford Shipp.

Milford eventually did marry Ellis. He was her first and only love. The strength of her devotion was a source of both joy and heartbreak. She was the fourth of his eight wives and her love for him never dimmed. She fervently believed that plural marriage was her religious duty and that any related suffering, if faced with faith, would earn eternal rewards. She and two other wives shared a household in Salt Lake City and raised their children together. Her journal reflected the emotional ups and downs of her family situation. She wrote, 'We were happy; we experienced joys even in Polygamy that we felt could be obtained in no other situation in life." Three days later, after a visit with a woman who did not share her home with any other wives, she wrote, "Methinks her glory will not be equal that of the poor woman who has few of this worlds goods but has proven herself a true Latter Day Saint by bearing patiently the trials of polygamy."

Ellis admired Milford's inspiring sermons. She was quite self-critical and endeavored always to improve herself and to earn divine approval and her husband's love. Her lofty standards sometimes made her critical of others as well. At the end of a visit to Pleasant Grove, she wrote of her disappointment at the carelessness of the people there: "Women drinking their tea and coffee and opposing Polygamy. Men, who should set the example to their families, using tobacco, drinking whiskey, swearing, and speaking of the authorities in the vilest terms... I wonder how long the Lord will bear with them."

As a young mother, she made it a habit to wake up at 4 o'clock in the morning so that she could read and study a variety of literature and academic books before starting her daily household duties. She doted on her sons and mourned the loss of a baby girl. At times she suffered from severe bouts of depression and even suicidal ideation.

When she was given the opportunity in 1875 to be sponsored by Brigham Young to attend the Women's Medical College of Pennsylvania, she left her children at home in Utah in the care of Milford's other wives. The letters between Ellis and her sister wives show how they supported one another. Sometimes the letters included money. After receiving one such gift of fifty dollars from Milford's wife Lizzie, Ellis wrote, "Oh, I must succeed that I may be able to return the manifold kindnesses of my noble friends. How pure and heavenly is the relationship of sisters in the holy order of Polygamy."

While at medical school, Ellis was exposed to things she would not have seen in 1870's Utah, and her journal showed the lens through which she saw them. One entry recounts a scenic trip into the countryside, where she "went to a darkey Camp Meeting... Here were blacks and whites assembled, the colored to worship God in their peculiar way, the whites doubtless from curiosity and for pleasure. But instead of being amused I felt more to pity them, so earnest and zealous, but yet so far from the truth. For the Indian race there is hope-- but the African, when will he be redeemed? I think it will be in the own due time of the Lord."

Ellis graduated from medical school in March of 1878 at the age of thirty-one, a few weeks after Milford was admitted to the bar in Utah. Ellis returned to Utah and began her medical practice; she was grateful to at last be able to contribute in a significant way to her family's financial well-being.

Throughout her life, she served her community in church and civic roles. She helped to found a school of obstetrics and served in the Relief Society and the Young Ladies Improvement Association. As a representative for the National Council of Women, she presented a national paper on the care and training of children. Among her friends were Susan B. Anthony, Clara Barton, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Motherhood was her greatest joy.

She wrote with compassion about the need for better medical care for women, "Our new colonies in this western growing country were in sore need. There was not one in their midst who could understandingly care for expectant mothers... So oft we heard the pitiful stories of suffering and even death of women and children! Precious life sacrificed for the need of intelligent care."

General Relief Society President Zina Huntington Smith Young urged Ellis to consider taking her knowledge to the outlying areas. After three of her children were grown, Ellis took her two younger daughters and went to Mexico to train midwives there. This trip was followed by similar teaching missions to Latter-day Saint colonies in Canada, Arizona, Idaho, and Colorado.

Ellis' father, William Fletcher Reynolds, had served a short sentence in the Utah Penitentiary for polygamy. Not long after his release in 1889, he relocated to Sanford, Colorado with one of his families. I can only imagine how happy Ellis must have been to be reunited with the father she loved so dearly when she came to the San Luis Valley in 1902 to teach nursing and obstetrics.

Writing was something that Ellis enjoyed. Together with her husband and another of his wives, Margaret, who was also a physician, published a magazine called The Salt Lake Sanitarian: A Monthly Journal of Medicine and Surgery. In 1994 Ellis and other prominent Utah Women gathered in the offices of the Women's Exponent for the initial meeting of the Utah Women's Press Club. The hostess, Emmeline B. Wells, had excitedly prepared for a group of twenty; only three showed. Nevertheless, papers were read, and "refreshments daintily served." The little group persisted and became an important force encouraging women's literary efforts for more than thirty years. Ellis published a book of her own poetry in 1910; nearly all of her poems were centered around her faith.

There are so many things I admire about Ellis Reynolds Shipp-- her lifelong dedication to learning, her devotion to family, her independent spirit, her commitment make a difference in her community, and perhaps most of all, her determination to forge ahead with optimism when life was difficult.

I thoroughly enjoyed learning about the life of this great woman. The book is out of print but used copies are available online if you would like to read it for yourself.