To Tell the Tale: Preserving the Lives of Mormon Women

Collecting Areas

The collecting areas of the exhibit highlights how women have preserved their experiences as sisters, mothers, Relief Society members, missionaries, artists, educators, politicians, and writers--at home, in the community, and abroad. These documents and artifacts provide insight into the faith, struggles, triumphs, and daily experiences of these women. These exhibitions represent the vast resources available to better understand our past, our LDS community, and ourselves, and encourages all women to preserve their lives for future generations.

Generational Records

Women have connected with their posterity across time and space by preserving their experiences, their relationships, and their testimonies.

Relief Society

As a record-keeping people, the sisters of the Relief Society have worked to preserve their temporal and spiritual stewardships, including testimony, sisterhood, and service to community.

Sister Missionaries

Eager to share the faith, LDS women have served a variety of Church missions, as single women or accompanying their husbands. Sister missionaires preserve this enriching experience through journals, photographs, and artifacts.

Everyday Life

Women have preserved the daily aspects of their lives in a variety of forms. Food, shelter, clothing, the stuff of life, all demonstrate the common threads of life's experiences.

Travel Accounts

Women traveled as pioneers, as official Relief Society leaders, as temple and family history excursionists, and as tourists. They preserved the new sights and experiences, conquering both outer and inner frontiers.

Education

Education informs the beliefs and thoughts of LDS women. Their collections show commitment to learning and to imparting knowledge as students, teachers, and mothers.

"School teaching was a natural occupation for Mormon women. Their commitment to education was great, and, in the absence of trained personnel, young girls and mothers took on the responsibility of running schools. They saw the teaching role as a holy calling, a surrogate motherhood, by which they helped individuals progress."
(Jill Mulvay Derr, "Zion's Schoolmarms," 1976)

Nursing

For LDS women, the art of healing occurs in a variety of capacities and places. In recording their formal training and work as nurses and administrators, they have preserved a legacy of compassion and dedication.

Community Outreach

Through the years, Mormon women have given service in their communities and abroad. This community involvement, in a variety of ways, documents the importance of charity in their lives.

Politics

Nineteenth-century Mormon women suffragists left a legacy of activism, commitment, and achievement. The vote gave a voice to Utah women, allowing them, through political involvement, to preserve their beliefs in community action. Women participated in local, national, and international affairs.

Published Works

Mormon women found in their writing and publication a forum to preserve thoughts and experiences, to reaffirm beliefs, and to celebrate poetic talent.

Arts

Music, poetry, art, theater--all preserve the soul, the beauty of life. LDS women have recorded their experiences on stage, on canvas and paper, at home, in the studio, and in public.