Susa Young Gates Papers

Biography

Susan Amelia Young was born in Salt Lake City, Utah, on March 18, 1856, to Lucy Bigelow and Brigham Young, President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Susa, as she was known throughout her life, married Alma Dunford in 1872. The couple had two children together before divorcing after six years of marriage. Afterward, Susa helped organized the first music department at Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah, before meeting and marrying Jacob F. Gates in 1880.

In early 1885, Jacob was called to serve in the Hawaiian Mission. Susa and their young children accompanied him; they arrived in the islands in November of that year and served until April 1889.

Shortly after her return, Susa founded The Young Woman’s Journal, a monthly magazine published by the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association. She later helped start The Relief Society Magazine in 1914. During her life, Susa participated in the woman’s suffrage movement and associated with other suffrage leaders and officers of the International Council of Women and the National Council of Women. She was also a proponent of genealogy and temple work among the Latter-day Saints.

Susa died in Salt Lake City on May 27, 1933, at the age of 77 after a lifetime of service to her family, her ancestors, her church, and the women of the United States.¹

The Susa Young Gates Papers

The Susa Young Gates papers collection documents Susa’s life and experiences as a wife and mother, Church leader, author, editor, lecturer, teacher, and organizer of Latter-day Saint women’s groups and activities.

The papers are voluminous (101,533 total digitized images) and include examples of the following:

1. Susa’s correspondence with family members, as well as with many other individuals and organizations.
2. Occasional journals and other autobiographical materials kept by Susa and her relatives, as well as other family papers such as patriarchal blessings.
3. Files documenting Susa’s interest in genealogical and temple work (especially genealogy of the Brigham Young family).
4. Files regarding her service on the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association (the precursor to today’s Young Women organization) and Relief Society general boards (1889–1901 and 1911–1922, respectively) and as editor of their official journals, The Young Woman’s Journal and The Relief Society Magazine.
5. Files relating to Susa’s major writings, especially her unpublished History of Women and her biography of her father, The Life Story of Brigham Young (first published in 1930), as well as other books, poems, short stories, and plays.
6. Numerous newspaper clippings about Susa and people and issues of interest to her, many of them reporting about the opera career of her daughter Emma Lucy Gates Bowen.

Correspondence with outside family members includes Church leaders Joseph F. Smith, Heber J. Grant, Abraham H. Cannon, Reed Smoot, John A. Widtsoe, Elmina S. Taylor, and Emmeline B. Wells; half-sister Zina Y. Card; close friend Elizabeth C. McCune; lecturer Lydia M. Mountford; and officers of the National Council of Women and the International Council of Women. This section of over 19,000 letters has been indexed, and the letters provide a rich source of historical Church information for the years 1870–1933. Individual letters will also come up in general searches of the Church History Catalog, but you can narrow your catalog search to Susa’s papers by including the call number (MS 7692) in the advanced search terms.

In addition to the large sections listed above, this collection contains numerous programs and invitations, as well as scrapbooks, financial records, texts of speeches, biographies of Latter-day Saint women, and occasional minutes of meetings. It also contains materials such as the following:

• A list of women who served as missionaries from 1865 to 1919.
  This list features the names of sister missionaries who served from 1865 to 1919; it also contains names of some sisters who served through 1920 and 1921. If you want to verify whether a female Latter-day Saint served as a missionary, you may be able to find her here. (Alternatively, you can search for missionaries in the Church History Biographical Database.) The list also shows the missionaries’ mission assignments and service dates.
• Susa’s journals.
  Susa kept several journals throughout her life, including two from her time in Hawaii and several that cover 1915–1933.
• Materials used to write a life story of her father, Brigham Young.
  First published in 1930, The Story and Life of Brigham Young was written by Susa and her daughter Leah D. Widtsoe. It was an extensive biography of Brigham Young that required extensive research and correspondence with publishers and is contained here along with drafts of the biography.