Emmeline B. Wells

Born in Petersham, Massachusetts, in 1828, Emmeline Blanche Woodward showed promise early in her education with a gift for writing. When she was about 14 years old, her mother and two younger sisters joined The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Emmeline wrestled with her own decision about whether to follow. She was intimidated by the intense opposition to the Church in her community but drawn to the message of the Restoration. She chose to be baptized in a frozen-over brook in March 1842.¹ After finishing her studies and teaching for a term, Emmeline married James Harvey Harris and moved with the Harris family to Nauvoo. When she stepped off the steamboat in Nauvoo in May 1844, Joseph Smith was there to greet the new arrivals. “The one thought that filled my soul,” she later wrote, “was, I have seen the Prophet of God.”²

portrait of Emmeline B. Wells

Portrait of Emmeline B. Wells.

Emmeline’s commitment and strength were sorely tested over the next few months: Joseph Smith was murdered, the Harris family became disaffected from the Church, Emmeline’s first child died shortly after birth, and her husband, James, left Nauvoo to seek employment and never returned. Emmeline found support among the Nauvoo Saints, especially the Newel K. and Elizabeth Ann Whitney family. In 1845 she was sealed as a plural wife to Newel, then crossed the plains with the Whitneys. However, Newel, father of Emmeline’s two oldest daughters, died in 1850. Emmeline showed her independent spirit by proposing to and marrying Daniel H. Wells (later Brigham Young’s counselor in the First Presidency) as his third plural wife.³ Together they had three daughters. She recorded in her journals the challenges of living in plural marriage to a husband who had time-consuming civic and church responsibilities.

In 1873, after years of caring for her family, Emmeline began a career in journalism by submitting an article to the newly-minted Woman’s Exponent. By 1875 she became an associate editor of the Exponent and soon assumed full editorship. Through four decades with the Exponent, publishing editorials, reports, poetry, and biographies of numerous women, Emmeline reached both Latter-day Saints and women of other faiths, advancing both civic and religious causes. She also published her compiled poetry in a volume called Musings and Memories.

Through her work with the Exponent, Emmeline became well-acquainted with leaders of the Relief Society, Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association, and Primary. She traveled with them throughout the territory, teaching and training local leaders. In 1876 Brigham Young called her to lead a Churchwide grain storage program.⁴ She also energetically participated in the national movement for female suffrage, establishing relationships with leaders like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She collaborated with the National and International Councils of Women, representing women’s organizations from the West.⁵ During her public work she met six U.S. presidents.⁶ Emmeline wrote in her diary in 1878, “I desire to do all in my power to help elevate the condition of my own people especially women.”⁷

After the Relief Society central board was organized in 1880, Emmeline served as secretary through three different presidencies. In 1910 she was called as the fifth General President of the Relief Society, and in 1913, under Wells’s leadership, the Relief Society general board established the motto “charity never faileth.”⁸ Emmeline served as president until shortly before her death in 1921.

Emmeline B. Wells portrait

Portrait of Emmeline B. Wells later in life.

Church Resources

Carol Cornwall Madsen, “Emmeline B. Wells: A Fine Soul Who Served,” Ensign, July 2003, 16–23.

“Charity Never Faileth,” in Daughters in My Kingdom: The History and Work of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 2011), 61–80.

Bibliography

The following publications provide further information about this topic. By referring or linking you to these resources, we do not endorse or guarantee the content or the views of the authors.

Carol Cornwall Madsen, An Advocate for Women: The Public Life of Emmeline B. Wells, 1870–1920 (Provo and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Press and Deseret Book, 2006).

Madsen, Emmeline B. Wells: An Intimate History (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2017).

Carol Cornwall Madsen and Cherry B. Silver, “‘I Believe in Women, Especially Thinking Women’: Emmeline Blanche Woodward Wells (1828–1921),” in Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman, eds., Women of Faith in the Latter Days: Volume 2, 1821–1845 (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2012), 384–97.

Related Topics: Relief Society, Young Women Organizations, Primary, Church Periodicals, Women’s Suffrage

Notes

1. Emmeline B. Wells travel diary 1885–1886, Dec. 18, 1885, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

2. Emmeline B. Wells, in “Joseph Smith, the Prophet,” Young Woman’s Journal, vol. 16, no. 12 (Dec. 1905), 555.

3. Emmeline B. Whitney [Wells] letter to Daniel Wells, Mar. 4, 1852, Daniel H. Wells Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.

4. Emmeline B. Wells, “The Mission of Saving Grain,” Relief Society Magazine, vol. 2, no. 2 (Feb. 1915), 47.

5. Emmeline B. Wells, “A Glimpse of Washington: The Woman’s National Council,” Woman’s Exponent, vol 19, no. 17 (Mar. 1, 1891), 132–33; see also Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow, eds., The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2016), 579–88.

6. With her husband, Daniel H. Wells, Emmeline met Ulysses S. Grant and James A. Garfield in 1875 (five years before Garfield’s election to the U.S. presidency). Emmeline had private audiences with Rutherford B. Hayes in 1879, Grover Cleveland in 1886, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1902, and in 1919 Woodrow Wilson visited her at home to commend her war efforts during World War I. She also attended the inauguration of William McKinley in 1901.

7. Emmeline B. Wells diary, January 4, 1878, L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Harold B. Lee Library, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah.

8. Relief Society General Board Minutes, 1842–2007, July 3, 1913, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; Jill Mulvay Derr, Janath Russell Cannon, and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 194.