A few months ago, I was browsing through one of the used book warehouses outside of DC with a friend. She pointed out a sign that said, “Mormon literature” and I was surprised because I’ve never seen such a section anywhere outside of Utah and Idaho. Upon further exploration, we found a small, battered bookshelf. A slim, light-yellow book caught my eye. I slid Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier by Mary Ann Hafen from the shelf and immediately knew that if this was an autobiography, I was taking it home. It was, and I did.
This is not a new book—it was privately published in Denver, Colorado in 1938. (Perhaps you have already read it! If so, I would love to hear your thoughts in the comment section below.) Hafen credits her youngest child, a son, Roy, who she said was “in charge” of the Colorado State Museum at the time of publishing for encouraging her to write this book and publishing the volume. [1] She recalls riding in his automobile reminiscing about her life, and I imagine it was a powerful experience motoring through the same Rocky Mountains she crossed on foot as a 6-year-old girl.
Mary Ann Stucki Hafen “was born May 5, 1854, in the valley of Rotenback, about three miles from the city of Bern, Switzerland.” She lived there until her family left for Utah when she was 6 years old, “early in the year 1860.” When grown, she married polygamously. Her family did not stay long in Salt Lake City, but were sent to help colonize “Fort Clara at Santa Clara Creek” or Santa Clara, Utah in the fall of 1861. She lived two months in St. George in the 1880s, hiding from the U.S. Marshals searching for polygamous men. On May 6, 1891, her husband John Hafen moved Mary Ann and her children to Bunkerville, Nevada “where a settlement had been started and where there was more and cheaper land.” [2] Because her husband was the bishop in Santa Clara, Mary Ann lived and worked the land in Bunkerville basically as a single mother, with the support of her children and a sister wife, Anna. Mary Ann died January 16, 1946 at the age of 91 in Bunkerville, Nevada. [3]
At the very beginning of the book is a photograph of the author, taken 7 years before publishing, at the age of 77. Her curly, white hair and intricate white lace collar frame a face that features sharp, knowing eyes and a small, crooked smile. I could almost see her looking me in the eye and hear her speaking the words she wrote. I am tempted to simply reproduce her account as my review, because I found her unapologetic account of her own pioneer, polygamous life in Southern Utah powerful. Although it’s a short volume, there’s plenty of detail to jumpstart the imagination. Hafen applied her no-nonsense tone both to the miraculous and the horrible, and painted a clear picture about the lives women lived at the time. I wished many times as I read, that each woman in history had a 100-page autobiography. But, Mary Ann’s generously immortalized the stories, names, and words of at least 35 other women in her book. I highlighted (with a healthy portion of direct quotes!) a few topics she recorded that I thought were particularly notable.
I. Mary Ann’s grandmothers’ prophetic words
Mary Ann recorded words of both her grandmothers. She first tells of a prophecy made by her paternal grandmother who “had once foretold that men from the far West would come preaching the true gospel of Christ. She said that she would not live to see them but that her children would and she wanted them to take them in and receive their teachings.”
On the other hand, Mary Ann’s maternal grandmother was very concerned about their family joining the Church. “Just before we left [to journey to Utah], my Grandmother Stettler called and tried to persuade us not to go. She was afraid we would be drowned, and could see no reason why we should leave a comfortable home where my father could make a good living, and go far away to a strange land where we did not even know the language.”
Mary Ann did not comment one way or another about her maternal grandmother’s worries. Perhaps Mary Ann left the comment alone because her life had been full of peril and heartbreak and poverty, but also full of deep spiritual experiences, love, and satisfaction. Perhaps she doesn’t categorize her maternal grandmother’s words as prophecy as she did for her paternal grandmother, since nobody drowned, but they did leave stability for poverty, moved to strange lands multiple times, and had to learn new languages as foretold by her maternal grandmother.
II. Mary Ann’s experience with “Plural Marriage”
Mary Ann was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and a participant in two plural marriages.
She married her first husband, John Reber, in the endowment house in Salt Lake City when she was around 19 years old. Mary Ann’s Aunt Barbara (Mary Ann’s father’s sister) was John’s first wife, so she was marrying her aunt’s husband—her uncle, though not related by blood. Mary Ann said that “none of [the young men] appealed to me as much as [John Reber]” and “when he asked me to marry him I was ready to say yes.” She described him as “kind and jolly and everybody liked him.” Her Aunt Barbara made her wedding dress (blue with little pink flowers) and travelled with her to the sealing in Salt Lake City, which Mary Ann described as happy days of travel
John was the first member of their family to join be baptized in Switzerland. The first story Mary Ann told of him was his baptismal story. John was 20 years old and Mary Ann was 6 years old at the time. John had to use crutches, had a hump back, and misshapen hands due to rheumatism. She remembers that John met the missionaries and introduced her family to them. After he was baptized, he walked out of the icy Swiss river with a straight back, without his crutches, and with healed hands. “Never again in all his life did he use crutches,” Mary Ann remembers.
Mary Ann was widowed with her Aunt Barbara just ten days after being sealed in the endowment house in Salt Lake, when John Reber died in a wagon accident. After the accident, Mary Ann returned to live with her parents, but she said “inasmuch as they were getting old and times were hard, they thought it best that I should marry again.”
The tone of Mary Ann’s description of her second plural marriage, this time to John Hafen, also of Switzerland, was markedly different. She said, “When John [Hafen] asked me to marry him, I hesitated at first. But my parents urged me to consent, saying what a fine man he was and that by waiting I would probably do worse.” John Hafen’s first wife, Susette “was opposed to his marrying again, but the authorities advised him to do so anyway, saying that she would be reconciled.” It is noteworthy that church authorities were urging this man to marry an additional wife over the objections of his first wife. Mary Ann continued, “I did not like to marry him under those circumstances, but being urged on by him and my parents, I consented.” Mary Ann described her second journey to Salt Lake City, just three months after her first wedding, thus: “[it] seemed different from the first one. I cried when I left home, and cried often all the way up and back…somehow I was not happy.” Susette is not recorded as joining them.
Mary’s two marriages are interesting and contrasting experiences of plural marriage/polygamy. She expressed happiness to be the second wife to John Reber, but wholly depressed at the idea of being the plural wife of John Hafen. For Mary Ann, happiness in plural marriage seemed as dependent on the choices and feelings of first wives as on the men’s willingness to listen to and respect the women involved. [4] Considering that the fruits of the Spirit include joy and peace, two women’s feelings of sadness and hesitation should have been enough for all other parties to withdraw their opinions and pressure.
Mary Ann obviously wasn’t opposed to plural marriage, considering that she had had a happy [5] one earlier, so the coercion into the second marriage feels even more out of place in her story. However, it’s not completely out of place with the concept and practice of polygamy in this dispensation. From what I understand, the principle is originally tied to the Old Testament story of Sarah and Abraham, that if a woman is barren, she can give her husband another wife to provide posterity. But in Doctrine and Covenants Section 132’s verses on plural marriage, it seems like a man can bypass his wife’s agency and decide to take another wife without his first wife’s agreement, which doesn’t seem like a recipe for a happy marriage. [6]
Mary Ann shared that her second marriage was not so difficult that she considered divorce. In the beginning, “John [Hafen] would stay at my place one day and at Susette’s the next and we got along pretty well at first. But Susette seemed unable to reconcile herself to my coming into the family. [7] Gradually he began to neglect me. Finally, I told him that if he could not treat us alike I would leave him. But I doubted whether it was right to do so. So I fasted and prayed to find out what would be right to do. After three days of fasting I woke in the night. The indifference and bitterness had gone from my heart and I loved him and forgave him for his neglect…I told him what had happened and said I would stay with him if he would treat me right. He promised to do so, and after that, for several years we lived happy.” Susette is only mentioned once more in Mary Ann’s account, when John assigned Susette’s oldest son (Johnnie) to take care of Mary Ann and their 6 children while he left on a 2-year mission. Mary Ann (perhaps with a small tone of surprise?) said “And Johnnie did it.” After the mission, her husband John Hafen, Sr. married a girl he met on the mission [8], and he also married Mary Ann’s widowed little sister Rosie, bringing the count of his wives up to four. [9]
Mary Ann wrote her thoughts on polygamy in two spots in the book, and she recorded John Hafen’s thoughts as well.
1. Mary Ann: “the authorities recommended that the men who were able to provide for more than one family should marry again. In this way more persons in the spirit world would have the opportunity to come to this earth and have bodies. It would also build up the Church and the country faster. Many did not want to go into polygamy, but felt that it was their religious duty to do so when advised by the Church authorities.”
2. Mary Ann: “Polygamy was hard to live, both for the man and the women. But we went into it in obedience to the Lord’s command and strived to subdue our jealous feelings and live in accord with the spirit of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
3. John Hafen: “I complied with the celestial law of plural marriage in obedience to the Church authorities and because the command was divinely inspired. It cost me much heartache and sorrow and I have shed many tears over it. But I feel that the sacrifices I have made brought great blessings and I am satisfied.’”
This did not seem to be a commandment that Susette, Mary Ann, or John were particularly fond of. I found it interesting that while Mary Ann expressed similar sorrow and faith to John, she did not express the same satisfaction nor mentioned feeling blessed by the practice of plural marriage.
III. Mary Ann: A Dreamer of Dreams
Mary Ann had seven children, and most of her life was spent in providing for, protecting, and nurturing them. She frequently fasted and prayed over her children when they were ill and at least once asked a man to perform what she called a patriarchal blessing when one was particularly sick. But she simply expresses her gift of dreams and her faith in prayer to wrestle and contend with anything or power that seemed to come for her children. These powerful experiences with dreams exhibit her confidence in her authority as a woman, mother, and daughter of God. I grew up hearing about the dreams men had that changed doctrine, policies, and the destinies of generations, so it is always powerful to me to read about a woman’s dreams and the actions she took or did not take in response.
“In 1887 my son Wilford was born—August 12. When he was about two months old, I dreamed that I went to a big celebration at the public square in Santa Clara. Some women were preparing picnic under the trees. I looked up and saw a large, beautiful bird flying around. All at once it came down to where I stood with my baby in my arms. Then it seemed to be a young woman dressed in white. She reached out her arms for my baby, but I said I could not let it go. I had no power to hold it. When I woke I feared that I would not have him long, and I prayed the Lord to lengthen out his stay with us. And He did.” Later, at age 8, Wilford died of the measles. Mary Ann said “Shortly before he died he kept looking up to the corner of the ceiling and saying, ‘I’m coming.’ And then he left us. I felt somewhat reconciled to his going because of the dream I had had when he was a baby. I believed that his time had come; that God wanted him on the other side.”
There are times when tragedy happens and there is little we can do about it. Loss can strike without notice and leave us with no time to attempt to intervene. Our modern prophets and apostles have on numerous occasions elaborated on ideas like faith not to be healed, waiting on the Lord, and being patient in difficulties. Such concepts have brought me peace many times, especially in the face of the consequences of others’ choices. But stories like Mary Ann’s, when women wrestle with what seems inevitable and receive what they ask for, indicate that waiting, accepting, and patience is not always the only acceptable course. Mary Ann reminded me of Enos in that her prayer was not a passive act of immediate submission. The Bible Dictionary says “Prayer is the act by which the will of the Father and the will of the child are brought into correspondence with each other. The object of prayer is not to change the will of God but to secure for ourselves and for others blessings that God is already willing to grant but that are made conditional on our asking for them.” Mary Ann received a revelation perhaps preparing her for the loss of her child. She prayed to God communicating her own will and asked for a blessing on her son. There is no indication of “Thy will be done” in her story, although perhaps her idea of prayer automatically includes such an attitude. But it seems like Mary Ann believed her prayer extended the life of her son.
Mary Ann recorded two other dreams that she treasured, but did not expound upon. I record them here to honor her spiritual gift.
“I had an interesting experience the winter of 1928, when I was living in St. George. My granddaughter Pansy came up to stay with me during her confinement. I was not feeling very well, as the flue had left me with a bad cough, but I tried to take care of her. We slept in the same bed. One morning I woke up sobbing. Pansy asked me what was the matter. At first I could not answer her, I was so overcome with joy. Then I told her I had seen the Saviour in His glorified body and smiling face. It seemed to be more than a dream, a sort of vision. It was such a comfort to me and will be as long as I live.”
“Some time ago I had a sweet dream. I found myself in a large assembly gathered for Sabbath worship. A large choir of singers were on the stage. In the first song the soprano led with a most beautiful, clear voice and the rest followed in a sort of chant, all the parts blending so beautifully. The second song was in march time and was sung with such vigor and enthusiasm that it seemed to shake the whole house, and a light cloud hovered over the singers and I felt that I was in heaven. Then they all moved away in a group, piano and all, singing as they went.”
IV. Mary Ann’s Economic Activity
Mary Ann’s first recorded labor outside the home was as a child, gleaning wheat in the fields with a sibling and her mother. She noted that she did this every summer for years. She described using yucca as soap for laundry and bodies, harvesting a native plant called “secarta” [10] with a hoe to feed livestock, herding cows all day with her brother, [11] and regularly walking 5 miles to St. George in the hot sun to “ask for the watering turn.” As a twelve-year-old girl, Mary Ann also gleaned cotton from the harvested fields, shelled it, dried it in the sun, and traded it for calico fabric that she made into a dress by hand. That same year, she said her father made her a spinning wheel and a loom and she learned to weave, dying her cotton with natural dyes. She learned to make hats out of wheat straw and said “I guess through those years I made enough hats to fill a wagon box. I would trade them to the neighbors for things which we needed…[like] a potato masher and rolling pin out of nice white cottonwood. I have them yet.” She helped her father cut grain with a sickle and bind the sheaves by hand. She would cut an acre a day with her family, and remembered that one year, she and her father sickled 9 acres together.
Before she moved to Bunkerville, while she still lived in Santa Clara near her parents, Mary Ann would still rely on them for some economic support. “During the two years that [John Hafen] was away [on his mission] I dried enough peaches on shares to buy me a sewing machine. My father and I would go to his orchard at daybreak while the children were still sleeping and get a wagonload of peaches. Then I would cut them and put them on board scaffolds to dry in the sun. I got half of all I dried. Peddlers took the dried fruit to Salt Lake City and brought back cash for it. In this way I raised most of the forty-two dollars for the machine…I still have the machine and it runs well to this day. With my new machine I sewed for other people to help support my family while John was away.”
Mary Ann relied on herself and her oldest son to fill the economic role traditionally held by a husband. She farmed, sewed, gleaned, processed food, and started a business just trying to keep her kids afloat and educated while her husband was gone and unable to provide any support. In a context of polygamy and long missions served by husbands, women in the early Church were expected to more or less fully support themselves and their children economically.
Mary Ann listed the crops she and her son cultivated together as wheat, corn, cotton (sold for 12.5 cents/pound), sugar cane, peaches, and tomatoes. In addition, she continued to pick cotton on shares with her baby on her back. She kept a garden—weeding it and watering it twice a week. She had pigs, a cow, and some chickens to keep track of and feed. She cut alfalfa with a scythe to feed the cow. She grew grapes and made raisins and jam and sold fresh grapes to peddlers.
Not all Mary Ann’s economic endeavors were successful. “With the $75 received at mother’s death, I bought some store goods, brought them to Bunkerville, and sold them off and on for the next two years, thinking I could make a little money in that way. Finally I gave up that venture because…I did not make much profit…”
Mary Ann mentioned attending school briefly during her childhood; given her family’s emigration, she first attended was when she was ten years old. That may be why she cared deeply about her own children’s education, and worked so hard so they didn’t have to join her in the fields as often as she had had to as a child. “Throughout the hard years I had managed to keep my children in school, and they had about as good an education as they could get here at home.” She stated the facts plainly enough: “for a while John came down every month or so to help Albert [their oldest son] and to make small improvements around the place. But being Bishop in Santa Clara, and with his other three families, he could not be with us much. So I had to care for my seven children mostly by myself. He had provided us a house, lot, and land and he furnished some supplies. But it was a new country and we had a hard time to make a go of it.”
It is noteworthy to consider that Mary Ann was basically sent as a single mother to settle new land a significant distance away from her husband. Even so, she was very committed to the education of her children, to the point that her youngest son LeRoy eventually got his PhD and became the Colorado State Historian, and taught at Denver University and Brigham Young University.
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After reading Mary Ann Hafen’s short autobiography, I find myself wishing for even the simplest oral history of all the women who ever lived. I know I still would not understand everything that has happened in this world, but I think it would be a big step closer to historical clarity. From Mary Ann, I learned that women can receive prophesies and warnings to prepare and care for their families. Her marriage life showed that polygamy in the early Church could be beneficial or burdensome to the same woman, depending on the man and family she was marrying into. She also reminded me that spiritual gifts aren’t sorted by sex. Finally, Mary Ann showed how the economic role of women in their communities was significant, regardless of how irrelevant some accounting systems may count their production. I have carried Mary Ann as a friend in my mind the last couple of months, more able to overcome the challenges I’ve faced knowing that I can be as strong as she was.
NOTES:
[1] Roy was LeRoy Reuben Hafen, who was a history professor at Denver University and eventually Brigham Young University. He also served as the Colorado State Historian, director of the Colorado State Museum, and editor of Colorado Magazine. He wrote many of his books with his own first wife, Ann. While not a polygamist, after Ann’s death he married her widowed sister, Mary.
https://web.archive.org/web/20110719191242/http://library.du.edu/dupedia/leroy-reuben-hafen ;
https://web.archive.org/web/20110609101304/http://history.utah.gov/findAids/C00404/c0404.html ;
https://books.google.com/books?id=hc35mM0PqSQC&pg=PA604#v=onepage&q&f=false
[Back to manuscript].
[2] The day before was Mary Ann’s birthday, and she notes that they had a combined birthday and farewell party. She also said “I with others shed a few tears. I knew I was going to something of the same hardships I had known in childhood days; that my children were to grow up in a strange land with scarcely a relative near; and that they too would have to share in the hardships of subduing a new country.”
[Back to manuscript].
[3] https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1565&context=sahs_review ;
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/16261608/anna-maria-hafen
[Back to manuscript].
[4] I also want to note that later in the chapter Mary Ann mentioned that her father with his second wife went to try and start a community under the United Order. I don’t know whether her father was already married to the second wife at the time, but I thought it was odd that her father claimed he couldn’t support his widowed daughter for more than three months, but he felt up to supporting a second wife for time and all eternity. [Back to manuscript].
[5] Some may suggest the very short length may have leant to the degree of happiness, but Mary Ann does speak fondly of John Reber in the book, which I think is evidence it’s not so clear cut. [Back to manuscript].
[6] I am no scholar on polygamy or the Doctrine and Covenants so this is simply one woman’s interpretation of the verses. I am open to your insights on this point.
[Back to manuscript].
[7] Recall that Susette tried to tell everyone this before they ignored her and proceeded with the marriage. [Back to manuscript].
[8] She was named Anna, whom he initially sent to live with Mary Ann.
[Back to manuscript].
[9] Mary Ann thus wrote of John Hafen’s death, which was about 10 years before the book was published: “My husband…died on May 4, 1928, in his ninetieth year. In recent years he had seldom come down to Bunkerville to see us. In the first years, when we were getting started down here, he came frequently and helped us a good deal. But afterwards he had his hands full taking care of his other families. My children and I went up to the funeral. He had been living with Anna, his third [and youngest] wife. His first and his fourth wives had passed on before he did, my sister Rosie in 1912 and Susette in 1914. He was a good man, reared fine children, and did the best he could by us all…[H]is descendants…totalled 211—27 children, 131 grandchildren, and 53 great-grandchildren on his 89th birthday.” [Back to manuscript].
[10] I had no luck finding this plant online—the only references of the word I found cited Mary Ann’s book! [Back to manuscript].
[11] She tells a story of a mountain lion attacking the cows she was herding, and the horses grazing around the cows attacking the mountain lion and driving it away.
[Back to manuscript].
Full Citation for this Article: Bell, Emilee Pugh (2024) "Book Review: Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier by Mary Ann Hafen," SquareTwo, Vol. 17 No. 3 (Fall 2024), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleBellHandcartPioneer.html, accessed <give access date>.
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