The Role of Women's Voices in Early Latter-day Saint History

How women's testimonies, writings, and leadership shaped the founding and early growth of the LDS Church—and why their accounts were often edited or sidelined.

By Garret Merkley · Explainer · Jun 4, 2026

Branched from Understanding the Differences Between the 1853 and 1865 Editions of Lucy Mack Smith's Autobiography

Quick take

Early LDS women documented key events, spiritual experiences, and community life that male-authored histories often omitted or minimized.
Lucy Mack Smith's autobiography is a prime example: her 1853 and 1865 editions were altered to emphasize certain narratives while downplaying women's agency and authority.
Women's voices were vital to conversion, healing, missionary work, and family cohesion, yet institutional records frequently erased or reframed their contributions.
Recovering these accounts reveals a richer, more complex picture of early Mormon history than official male-centered narratives alone provide.

In the early decades of the Latter-day Saint movement (1820s–1880s), women were active participants—they converted to the faith, recorded spiritual experiences, led healing circles, raised families in harsh conditions, and shaped community culture. Yet their voices were largely absent from official church histories, which centered on male prophets, apostles, and administrative decisions. The few women's writings that survived, like Lucy Mack Smith's autobiography, were often edited, condensed, or reframed by male editors to fit institutional priorities. Understanding women's roles in early LDS history requires reading between the lines of these edited texts, comparing different editions, and recognizing what was left out.

How Women Documented Early Mormon Life

Women in early Mormonism kept journals, wrote letters, and composed autobiographies that captured daily struggles, spiritual breakthroughs, and community events. Lucy Mack Smith's account of her family's conversion and her son Joseph's early prophetic claims is one of the earliest and most detailed records of Mormon origins. Eliza R. Snow, a prolific poet and later a prominent Relief Society leader, documented her spiritual journey and observations of church life. Zina D. H. Jacobs recorded her experiences in polygamy and her work in the temple. These women wrote not for publication but for family memory and spiritual testimony—yet their accounts often contradicted or complicated the official male narratives that would later dominate church historiography.

What made these writings valuable was their granular detail: accounts of family conversations, neighborhood reactions to Mormon preaching, the emotional toll of persecution, and the role of women's faith in sustaining communities through migration and hardship. Male-authored histories focused on doctrinal developments and institutional milestones; women's writings revealed how doctrine was lived, questioned, and sometimes resisted at the household level.

The Problem of Edited Editions: Lucy Mack Smith as a Case Study

Lucy Mack Smith's autobiography was first published in 1853, then revised and republished in 1865. Comparing the two editions reveals how male editors selectively shaped women's narratives. In the 1853 edition, Lucy presents herself as an active spiritual seeker before her son Joseph's calling—she describes her own religious visions and moral reasoning. The 1865 edition, edited by Orson Pratt under church direction, downplayed Lucy's independent spiritual authority and reframed her primarily as Joseph's devoted mother. Passages where Lucy questioned church decisions or described her own prophetic experiences were condensed or removed. The later edition also softened her critiques of male leadership and emphasized her submission to male authority.

This pattern was not unique to Lucy. Editors, acting in what they believed were the church's interests, trimmed women's accounts to highlight male prophetic authority, remove potentially controversial doctrinal claims by women, and present a unified institutional narrative. The result was a historical record that made women appear more passive and deferential than they actually were. Modern historians comparing original manuscripts to published versions have found that women's agency, theological thinking, and leadership were systematically minimized.

Women's Spiritual and Community Leadership

Beyond writing, early LDS women exercised real authority in spiritual and social spheres. The Relief Society, founded in 1842 by Joseph Smith, became a space where women organized charitable work, conducted healing rituals, and discussed doctrine. Women participated in temple ceremonies and, in some cases, performed ordinances. They served as midwives and healers, roles that gave them status and influence in their communities. Some women, like Zina Jacobs, were sealed to the Prophet and later to other leaders, which positioned them as spiritual insiders with access to esoteric teachings.

Yet institutional records rarely credited women for these roles. When the Relief Society's history was written, it emphasized male oversight and direction. When women's healing work was mentioned, it was often framed as supporting male priesthood authority rather than as an independent spiritual practice. The editing of women's autobiographies reflected and reinforced this institutional bias: by removing women's own accounts of their spiritual experiences and leadership, editors made it easier for future readers to assume women had been passive followers rather than active agents.

Why This Matters and When It Became Visible

The recovery of women's voices in early LDS history matters for three reasons. First, it corrects a distorted historical record: we cannot understand early Mormonism without understanding how women converted, what they believed, and how they sustained the movement through persecution and migration. Second, it reveals the institutional mechanisms by which women's authority was systematically erased—a pattern that continued into the twentieth century and shapes Mormon women's relationship to institutional power today. Third, it provides a richer, more human history: women's accounts show the emotional and spiritual texture of early Mormon life in ways that official histories cannot.

This reexamination became possible in the late twentieth century, when scholars began comparing original manuscripts to published versions, interviewing descendants who held family papers, and recognizing that the absence of women from official histories was itself a historical fact worth investigating. The work of historians like Jill Mulvay Derr, Laurel Thorp, and others in the 1980s and 1990s began systematically recovering and analyzing women's writings. Their scholarship demonstrated that Lucy Mack Smith's 1853 edition, closer to her original voice, offered a different and more complex picture of early Mormonism than the 1865 institutional version.

Key Categories of Women's Writing in Early LDS History

Conversion narratives: accounts of how women came to believe in Joseph Smith's message and what drew them to the movement
Family histories: records of domestic life, childbirth, child-rearing, and family decisions under Mormon belief
Spiritual experiences: visions, healings, and moments of divine communication claimed by women
Persecution accounts: women's experiences of mob violence, expulsion, and hardship during the Missouri and Illinois periods
Temple and ritual participation: women's descriptions of ceremonies and their spiritual significance
Community organizing: Relief Society work, charity, and women's collective decision-making

Why were women's accounts edited in the first place?

Male editors in the nineteenth century believed they were protecting the church's reputation and clarifying doctrine for readers. They removed passages they saw as theologically problematic, emotionally excessive, or contradictory to official narratives. They also assumed that readers wanted a streamlined institutional history rather than personal detail. These edits were not always conscious censorship—they reflected the editorial norms and institutional priorities of their time.

How do we know what was actually removed from women's writings?

Scholars compare original manuscripts (often held in archives or family collections) to published versions. Lucy Mack Smith's case is well-documented because both the 1853 and 1865 editions survive, and researchers have access to earlier drafts. For other women's writings, historians look for gaps in narrative, inconsistencies between versions, and editorial notes that indicate cuts or changes. Sometimes descendants or archivists have preserved notes about what was omitted.

Did women's voices disappear completely from early Mormon history?

No, but they were significantly muted. Some women's writings were published or preserved intact because they fit institutional narratives or because the women had high social status. But the systematic editing of figures like Lucy Mack Smith meant that the general reader encountered a version of early Mormon history in which women appeared more submissive and less intellectually engaged than they actually were. The full picture only emerges when you read multiple sources and compare editions.

What did women in early Mormonism actually believe about their own roles?

Women's writings show a complex range of views. Some embraced the idea of male priesthood authority and saw their role as supporting it. Others claimed direct spiritual authority and resisted male oversight of their work. Some navigated both positions depending on context. Lucy Mack Smith, for example, described her own spiritual experiences as valid and important, yet also expressed devotion to her son's prophetic role. Women were not uniformly passive or uniformly rebellious—they were negotiating their place in a new religious movement with fluid and contested rules.

Has the LDS Church acknowledged this editorial history?

Gradually. The church has made some women's writings more accessible through its Family History Library and digital archives. Scholars affiliated with BYU and other institutions have published detailed studies of women's history. However, the church's official historical narratives still tend to center male leadership. The recovery of women's voices remains primarily a scholarly project rather than a central part of how the church teaches its own history to members.

Sources

Lucy Mack Smith, 'Biographical Sketches of Joseph Smith the Prophet' (1853 and 1865 editions); comparison of textual differences documented in scholarly analyses.
Jill Mulvay Derr and others, 'Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society' (1992) and related archival scholarship on women's institutional roles.
Laurel Thorp and others, 'The Life and Diary of Louisa Barnes Pratt' and similar primary-source editions that preserve women's original voices.