It's the Maxwell Institute podcast. I'm Blair Hodges. In the last episode, we heard from three

editors of a new book of Relief Society documents published by the LDS Church. Jill Mulvey-Dur,

Kate Holbrook, and Matt Groh talked about the origins of the church's Relief Society, a women's

organization, and how its activities were suspended in 1844.

In this episode, we pick up where we left off as the Latter-day Saints begin to re-establish

Relief Society in the Utah Territory.

We cover issues like polygamy and women's suffrage, and we also discuss the kind of impact

the editors hope this book can have on how Mormons understand their history. We're talking about

the first 50 years of Relief Society key documents in Latter-day Saint Women's History. Questions

and comments about this and other episodes can be sent to MIP Podcast at BYU.edu. Don't forget to

rate and review the show in iTunes and tell your friends.

So the book talks about kind of fills in the gaps between the suspension of the Relief Society and then little fits and starts, where it starts people kind of take their own initiative to start relief society type groups.

Women are still obviously meeting together on the Trek West. They meet together and pray.

And then as the church is becoming established in Utah, women start to get a little bit more serious about the Relief Society. And in Bountiful, Utah, there's a relief society established there,

but it lasts only six months before it peters out. The reasons that it lapses are very

interesting to consider. I thought it would be interesting to hear about that. A lot of these

relief societies were started at Brigham Young's request to, they were called Indian relief

societies. And Native sisters were not members of these relief societies, but the women got

together to, as part of a relief effort, to have clothing and food to give to Native women who'd been displaced and who needed the supplies.

So sometimes there was a temporary aspect because the nature of why they came together was temporary.

But the Utah War was a tremendous interruption to all of the same activities, including Relief Society activity.

So this happened in 1857, the Utah War. And so it's not really until after that that Relief Society really starts going again.

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