In 1888, Susa Young Gates wrote to several friends from Laie, Hawaii, where she had been living with her missionary husband and three small children for over two years. She asked for ideas about how she might build a literary career. One friend suggested she start a monthly magazine for the YLMIA, in which Gates could “show up to the world the immense & brilliant work that is piling up like a magnificent coral reef of intelligence” and “pouring forth from these associations continually.”¹² A daughter of Brigham Young and Lucy Bigelow, Gates was fourteen when her family members formed the first Young Ladies’ Department of the Ladies’ Cooperative Retrenchment Association in 1870. Since she had been studying shorthand at the time, she was appointed as general reporter at an early meeting and took the minutes.¹³ In the ensuing eighteen years, she had seen the retrenchment associations, and then the Mutual Improvement Associations, grow to the stature mentioned in her friend’s letter.

Enthusiastic about the magazine, Gates initiated a flurry of letters between Laie and Utah, seeking approval for the plan. Drawing on her personal connections to church leadership, she wrote to Joseph F. Smith and Wilford Woodruff of the church’s First Presidency, both of whom responded favorably. Woodruff made it clear that, like other Latter-day Saint publications, the new magazine would have to stand upon its own resources and be independent of any church aid other than moral support.¹⁴ Since the magazine would represent the organization they led, Gates also wrote asking approval of the general presidency of the YLMIA—Elmina Taylor, Maria Young Dougall (Susa’s half sister), and Martha Horne Tingey.¹⁵ Their response is not extant, but apparently it was affirmative. By the time the Gates family returned from Hawaii in the spring of 1889, plans for the magazine were well underway.¹⁶

The first issue of the Young Woman’s Journal appeared in October 1889 and contained thirty-two pages of stories, poetry, recipes, and articles on health and dress. The general presidency of the YLMIA also included a letter in the issue, expressing care for the young women and hope that the magazine would enable them to communicate with local associations.¹⁷ In an editorial, Gates solicited submissions and subscriptions from readers and expressed an ambitious vision for the magazine: “Let its field of usefulness be extended from Canada to Mexico, from London to the Sandwich Islands; and then as the years go by, let us send it forth on its mission of love and peace to every nation under the sun, bearing with it a message of freedom to every daughter of woman.”¹⁸ While the international scope of the young ladies’ organization was still in its infancy, Gates’s global vision for the magazine, undoubtedly shaped by her own missionary experience in Hawaii, expressed broader Latter-day Saint hopes for the spread of the gospel message.

Like other American women’s magazines, which saw exponential growth in the nineteenth century, the Young Woman’s Journal created a public female space for its readers.¹⁹ The Woman’s Exponent, a newspaper closely associated with the Relief Society, had functioned similarly since 1872 to create a forum for adult Latter-day Saint women’s voices and concerns. The magazine format of the Journal was more modern, and its affiliation with the YLMIA positioned it to reflect the dynamic, forward-looking ideas of the times.

The Journal gave voice to the organization and facilitated a new level of mutual awareness among leaders and members throughout the church. Articles, reports of conferences, and letters from the general presidency created a sense of community—local leaders who could not attend the semiannual officers’ meeting in Salt Lake City during the church’s general conference could now read detailed reports of the proceedings, and general leaders could ensure that their instructions were widely disseminated. In this way, the magazine both created and reflected a broader trend at the turn of the century, in the YLMIA and beyond—a shift from localized initiative to centralized organization.

As American society expanded and became more complex, people sought order, organization, and new ways to relate to each other in the face of rapid and bewildering change. By the 1920s, a rise in bureaucratic order regulated by professionalized rules and administrative procedures had woven together communities that had previously been self-contained.²⁰ Within The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a similar process played out as the informal administration of church leaders and a few clerks underwent administrative modernization that brought standardization, classification, and interconnection to church operations and entities.²¹

Leaders of the YLMIA embraced this structural transformation. Throughout the 1880s, the general leadership of the organization consisted of the president, her two counselors, a secretary, and a treasurer. These leaders were called the central board until 1892, when they voted to use the term general board instead.²² Their primary duties were visiting stake conferences, usually in company with the general leaders of the Relief Society and the Primary Association, and hosting meetings for local leaders twice a year in Salt Lake City in conjunction with the church’s general conferences. The new decade brought heavier demands on YLMIA general president Taylor and her counselors. Requests for visits to stakes multiplied at a time when neither counselor could undertake much travel due to health troubles and family demands. Rapid growth in the associations also meant many calls for help, and reviewing content and conducting correspondence for the Journal occupied an increasing portion of Taylor’s time.²³

To meet these needs, in 1890 Taylor appointed four women as aides to the board: Adella Woolley Eardley, Lelia “Lillie” Tuckett Freeze, Agnes Campbell, and Sarah Eddington.²⁴ All these women were part of the frontier generation and in their thirties, younger than the presidency members; Campbell and Eddington were single. All four had significant leadership experience in women’s organizations. The aides were considered part of the board from the time of their assignments,²⁵ but they seem to have been thought of initially as traveling missionaries, perhaps similar to those who had served the YMMIA for years. Their primary function was to visit stake conferences and impart the kind of encouragement and advice dispensed by the presidency. The aides’ importance within the organization grew with their service and paved the way for further growth.²⁶

The expansion of the general board provided a base from which new organizational initiatives could be launched—and those initiatives, in turn, required more oversight and leadership. Simple numbers tell the story. In 1892, the board numbered eleven (including the presidency and secretaries); seven years later, in 1899, it had grown to twenty-two. By the end of the following decade, the board consisted of over thirty women, including a music director and two organists, and it was divided into several subcommittees overseeing every aspect of an increasingly elaborate organization.²⁷ Fanny Rowland’s local leadership experience coincided with these developments. She served as president of the Springville Fourth Ward YLMIA before becoming a stake board member and then president of the Kolob Stake YLMIA, in Springville. In those capacities, she likely consulted personally with visiting general board members, strengthening ties between the local and central organizations.²⁸

The members of the general board also developed strong bonds with one another. They met every few weeks, and the minutes show the leaders took affectionate interest in each other’s lives, often praying and fasting for each other and sometimes speaking in tongues and laying on hands to bless each other.²⁹ At one officers’ meeting, Elmina Taylor said she had asked God to help her know the best women to serve on the board and testified, “I have yet to see the first one called into my Board that He has not called there.”³⁰

By the early 1890s, some stake YLMIA leaders wished to coordinate the work in their wards and began creating outlines and publishing bulletins that gave instructions to ward leaders.³¹ Meanwhile, in 1891, the YMMIA published a manual that outlined a year’s worth of lessons in four areas of study: theology, history, science, and literature.³² Evidently some local YLMIAs began using the manual created by the young men’s organization to structure their weekly work, and some local leaders even urged the YLMIA at the general level to adopt it wholesale.³³ Noting these developments, Susa Gates offered to prepare a guide containing lessons specifically for the young women. After many discussions with the board and much fasting and prayer on her own, Gates completed a manual titled Guide to the First Year’s Course of Study, issued early in 1893, around the same time Fanny Rowland’s sprawling ward was divided into four smaller units.³⁴

The Guide joined spiritual learning with secular and scientific knowledge. With outlines for twelve lessons in each of three subjects, the Guide also revealed what kinds of knowledge leaders felt was foundational for young women’s lives: theology (topical treatment of gospel subjects), history (of Joseph Smith and the founding of the church), and human physiology or “hygiene” (study of the body’s systems).³⁵ A list of recommended reference works included the Bible and Latter-day Saint scriptures, George Q. Cannon’s Life of Joseph Smith, Orson F. Whitney’s History of Utah, and textbooks on physiology and health.³⁶ In contrast to Henrietta Lunt, who had worked without support materials in the 1870s, Fanny and her peers had access to detailed and wide-ranging materials to study.

Perhaps uncertain the Guide would be universally welcomed, Gates wrote in the preface, “It is designed only as an aid in your work, and should not be relied upon to take the place of personal research and study.”³⁷ She offered suggestions for flexible implementation of the new lessons and encouraged leaders to intersperse their lessons with music and literature and allot time for testimony bearing, business, and other activities—all established features of YLMIA meetings.³⁸ The push for uniform lesson material seems to have come from both general and local leaders, but general leaders wanted to tread carefully and not entirely supplant the tradition of local autonomy. Use of the Guide was uneven at first; the board lamented a year later that the lessons were not being used as much as they had hoped, so they established classes to train local leaders in using the manual. Brigham Young Academy, a church-sponsored school in Provo, Utah Territory, later offered similar classes for stake leaders.³⁹ A second Guide was published in 1896; those two manuals were used until 1900, when lessons began to be published in the Young Woman’s Journal.⁴⁰ The lessons in the Guide and the Journal largely maintained the lecture format that had long structured YLMIA meetings, but some changes were intended to elicit more active participation from the young women. “The great object of ‘the Guide,’” Gates said in one board meeting, “is to set the young ladies to thinking.”⁴¹

Lessons in the Guide and the Journal consisted of a brief summary or statement of the subject, followed by review questions.⁴² Theology lessons included scriptural references; history lessons referred to chapters in Cannon’s Life of Joseph Smith. Physiology lessons did not make specific reading assignments but drew on information that could be looked up in any of the suggested textbooks. Many of the questions required memorization of information, as might have been typical in a school setting (“Where and when did the first baptism occur in this dispensation?”⁴³), but others encouraged personal reflection and application. Prompts such as “How may a testimony of the truth be gained?” and “Give personal illustrations of testimonies received from the Lord” offered young women a chance to speak about their own experiences.⁴⁴

Lessons about theology and church history were meant to help young women develop strong testimonies, or personal convictions of the gospel, and commitment to the church. As YLMIA leaders worked to strengthen the organization, their driving purpose was to help young women build individual faith in Jesus Christ and His gospel. Early Latter-day Saints had eagerly sought what they called the gifts of the gospel, charismatic demonstrations of spiritual power such as miraculous healing and speaking in tongues, that evinced the truth and efficacy of the restored gospel, and a strong tradition of seeking and sharing such manifestations developed. In one Young Woman’s Journal article, Zina D. H. Young, then serving as general president of the Relief Society, shared her experience in the 1830s of receiving an instantaneous witness of the Book of Mormon’s truth through a vision, which led to her baptism and experiencing the gift of tongues.⁴⁵ Stories about such gifts remained a part of the church’s youth culture at the turn of the century. One young woman from Pleasant Grove, Utah, for example, testified that she was living proof of God’s power. She had suffered from poor health most of her life, at one point becoming totally blind. “Through the faith and prayers of myself and friends,” she affirmed, “my Heavenly Father has restored my eyesight.” She declared that this miracle would be a testimony to her forever.⁴⁶ Personal testimonies and accounts of manifestations of the Spirit were frequently published and shared in young women’s meetings.⁴⁷

Latter-day Saints in this period also began to emphasize a less spectacular, more private witness of the Holy Ghost as the foundation of testimony. “It is necessary that you shall know, not think nor suppose nor believe, but know that God lives and that He is your Father,” Gates declared to readers of the Young Woman’s Journal.⁴⁸ So important were these spiritual witnesses that church leaders indicated they should be the primary focus of each ward YLMIA president.⁴⁹ “The thing of the utmost and deepest importance,” wrote Gates, “is the obtaining of a testimony.” Not only would it strengthen each girl’s own desire to remain faithful, but it would also make meetings more enjoyable. “The testimonies bourne by the members present will seem like music to her ears, although couched in homely and, perchance, ungrammatical language,” wrote Gates.⁵⁰ In fact, she believed polished speeches would be less effective than the simple, heartfelt sharing of personal experiences. “Do not preach prosy sermons upon the subject,” she advised, “but give occasionally stories of those who have received their testimonies of the truth.” She asserted that the young women would enjoy this more and would more effectively learn true principles.⁵¹

Once young women built up their testimonies, they were encouraged to share them. The general board advised leaders to make such sharing opportunities a regular part of the schedule, and the first meeting of each month became the time usually set aside for testimony meetings.⁵² Such was the practice of the Pleasant View Ward in Provo, Utah. On Monday, 7 February 1898, several leaders and young women met—despite stormy weather—and took turns sharing their feelings. Their testimonies included retellings of experiences that affirmed their beliefs and their faith in Jesus Christ. The association’s president, Louisa Foote, spoke of her abundance of daily blessings, and Mary Peterson shared her gratitude for the goodness of the Lord. Counselor Ann Cluff spoke on achieving a prudent marriage, encouraging the young women to pray to the Lord to lead them in choosing a companion. Others related their experiences of being healed, while still others expressed their love for all the officers and members and the desire to do their duty.⁵³ Stories in the Journal and local YLMIA testimony meetings taught young women how they might develop the kind of faith that would endure any circumstance.

The circumstances young women might expect to encounter in their lives were changing rapidly in the late nineteenth century. In the United States, one of the signal developments of that period was the emergence of the New Woman. The term first came into use in the 1890s, reflecting a phenomenon that was already underway and that would play out over the early decades of the new century. In the popular imagination, the New Woman was young, well-educated (often at college), independent, spirited, athletic, assertive, and seeking to move into the economic, political, and social realms formerly reserved for men. However, laws, customs, and attitudes still circumscribed the spheres within which women operated, often limiting their opportunities. Women still worked in traditionally feminine occupations for little pay, endured unequal conditions at home and in public, and paid a disproportionate price for transgressing social boundaries. Moreover, the opportunities of the New Woman were more available to girls in urban, middle-class settings than to those who lived in rural areas or had no choice but to labor in menial work to support themselves. Nevertheless, American culture showed real change in this era, and the sense of possibility reached Latter-day Saints in Utah.⁵⁴

Many Latter-day Saint women, especially leaders such as Susa Gates whose voices shaped the public discussion, enthusiastically embraced the opportunities represented by the New Woman and used YLMIA channels to encourage young women to do the same. Gates wrote in the Journal, “All these broadening, upward movements made by women, either here or elsewhere in the world, react directly upon you and me. They serve to open new doors of thought, of progress, and of development for women everywhere.”⁵⁵ This feeling of progress vitalized and uplifted both the lives of individual women and the trajectory of the YLMIA in ways that began to reshape the organization itself.⁵⁶

Foremost among the new opportunities for young women was education. Girls were going to school in ever-increasing numbers, with secondary schools seeing an especially dramatic increase. Nationally, the number of public high schools increased 750 percent and attendance increased by 700 percent in the decades around the turn of the century.⁵⁷ By 1900, girls made up 60 percent of the student population in high schools.⁵⁸ In Utah, the last decade of the century was particularly significant for the expansion of public education.⁵⁹ Latter-day Saints established a system of church-sponsored schools for young people, affording another avenue for young women to seize educational opportunities.⁶⁰ When the Brigham Young Academy building opened in Provo in 1892, Gates exhorted her readers to set their sights on obtaining as much education as possible and to pray to God for the power to do it.⁶¹

Whether at a church-run academy or a public high school, attendance and advancement at school had profound effects on the development of young women. Since virtually all schools were coeducational, girls attended and competed alongside boys, showcasing their intellectual, physical, and social abilities. School reoriented young women’s day-to-day lives away from the domestic realm and attuned them to a peer culture in which they could develop and express their individuality.⁶² When a new high school opened in the 1890s and a territorial law made education free for all students, Fanny Rowland was in the first cohort of students to graduate from public high school in Springville. In fact, she represented Springville graduates by giving an address during a larger recognition ceremony held in nearby Provo. Her subject, reflective of the widening horizons of the era, was “An Aim in Life.”⁶³

Opportunities for higher education also expanded. By 1910, 73 percent of colleges and universities in the United States were either coeducational or women’s colleges, and 140,000 women were enrolled in them. This represented 40 percent of the student body overall. In absolute numbers, only 3.8 percent of American women ages eighteen through twenty-one enrolled in higher education, but the numbers had increased significantly over the past four decades and would more than triple in the next twenty years.⁶⁴ A small but visible cohort of young Latter-day Saint women and men traveled to the eastern United States to study in the decades around the turn of the century; in the process, these students modeled a way for others to enter mainstream American life without relinquishing their essential identity and faith commitments.⁶⁵ They even encouraged their peers’ aspirations by writing about their experiences for church periodicals. The Young Woman’s Journal featured one such model in a series written by a medical student at the University of Michigan. Calling herself Cactus, Julia Macdonald wrote vividly of her experiences with enrollment and registration, living arrangements, coursework, and social and religious life on campus, providing encouragement and practical advice for any who wanted to follow.⁶⁶ Even for young women who were not able to attend full-time college at home or in the East, options for women to receive some education were expanding. In Springville, Fanny took correspondence and extension courses in finance, public speaking, and literature, and she qualified for a teaching certificate.⁶⁷

With this increase in educational opportunities came aspiration to professional vocations. Women—especially immigrant women, women of color, and women from the laboring classes—had always worked. Many Latter-day Saint young women in the 1890s had immigrant mothers who helped provide economically for their children in the context of plural families or were involved in farm work or other labor. But the types of work women could pursue were changing. In the late 1890s and early 1900s, white-collar jobs were expanding rapidly, and an increasing number of white, middle-class, native-born young women began spending a period of years in such jobs between school and marriage. Others aspired to professional careers in formerly all-male fields. Their numbers were not large, but they were visible and growing.⁶⁸ A series in the Journal entitled “Professional and Business Opportunities for Women” described various careers—medicine, law, stenography and typewriting, photograph retouching, dentistry, and merchandising—that young women could consider. The articles were long on exhortation and short on practical guidance, but they signaled new aspirations for women.⁶⁹ By 1904, an article in the Journal mentioned that in larger cities, “most of our girls are engaged in office work.”⁷⁰ Fanny was among them: after missing an opportunity to teach because of a yearlong struggle with typhoid fever, she became a clerk for a local department store and soon earned promotions to cashier and bookkeeper, then assistant buyer.⁷¹ Likewise, in 1897, Estelle Neff, recently the top graduate in her class at Brigham Young Academy, was hired to work as the business manager for the Young Woman’s Journal.⁷² From that point forward, the Journal and the YLMIA depended on hired female office staff.

Throughout the country as well as in Utah, these new trends in education and employment led to changing marital patterns for women, many of whom chose to marry later compared to earlier generations, or not at all. The generation of American women born between 1860 and 1882—those in the leading edge of the New Woman cohort—married at a higher average age than women of any other generation until the late twentieth century, and 9 percent remained single.⁷³ To be sure, most women did marry; moreover, prevailing norms and even laws meant that women often had to stop working when they married.

Latter-day Saint women coming of age in the 1890s still married about two years earlier than their national counterparts.⁷⁴ Latter-day Saints considered marriage a fundamental part of their theology and practice. Beginning with Joseph Smith, Latter-day Saint leaders taught that a woman and man must be sealed together in a holy temple, through a sacred ceremony administered by someone with the proper priesthood authority, to attain eternal exaltation. Latter-day Saints also believed that this sealing bound the couple together eternally, beyond death. These beliefs led Latter-day Saints to reverence marriage, particularly marriage in the temple, and this likely influenced their lower participation in larger trends around marriage.⁷⁵

For her part, Fanny Rowland never married.⁷⁶ While many members of Susa Gates’s generation had worried about the reduction in marriage prospects for young women in Fanny’s generation after the end of plural marriage, Fanny’s auto-biography expressed no regret about not having married. “I am happy to have lived, to have worked, to have played, and to have done some things for others,” she wrote.⁷⁷

As the rhythms of young women’s lives changed, a number of Latter-day Saint women received assignments to serve as full-time missionaries. Since the earliest days of the church, full-time proselytizing had been exclusively within the male sphere, though women had served in some limited ways. But after a Latter-day Saint woman visiting Great Britain gave a powerful sermon to a gathered crowd, mission leaders in Europe wrote to Salt Lake City requesting female missionaries.⁷⁸ Initial assignments of young, single “lady missionaries” focused on articulate young women who had taken advantage of new educational opportunities: In March 1898, Inez Knight and Lucy Jane “Jennie” Brimhall of Provo—both graduates of Brigham Young Academy—were appointed as full-time missionaries and set off together to proselytize in Great Britain. Before long, several notable YLMIA leaders at the local and general levels came from the ranks of those who had proved their faith and efficacy in the mission field.⁷⁹

Women who married later or not at all found themselves with a broad window for potential missionary service. In April 1908, after years of experience in local YLMIA leadership, Fanny was asked if she could serve a mission. “It would be perfectly agreeable to my feelings,” she replied, but she noted that she was “a working girl” and asked for a few months more to help support family members before leaving her source of income. From a spiritual perspective, she felt ready. “I have a testimony of the Gospel,” she stated.⁸⁰ Fanny served in Colorado and Nebraska from 1908 to 1910.⁸¹

A strong cohort of young, educated women began to influence YLMIA leadership at all levels. Of the twenty women serving on the general board in 1901, six began serving while in their twenties.⁸² One of these, Ann Mousley Cannon, was at the leading edge of the first generation of New Women in the church. At age twenty-two in 1891, she became YLMIA general secretary. While in her early teens, Cannon had learned business methods from her brother, working in his real estate office for several years during her time off from school. After graduating from the University of Deseret at age seventeen, she began working in the Salt Lake County Recorder’s office, eventually becoming deputy recorder and later working in banking for over twenty years.⁸³ Cannon brought professional perspective to her service on the YLMIA board, which spanned four decades, and she created the first standardized report forms for use at all levels of the organization.⁸⁴ Cannon, who never married,⁸⁵ took care of her parents in their old age and helped raise her sister’s four children, trying out new programs for the young women on the girls.⁸⁶ Cannon was not unique—three other women on the board never married but made careers of office work with church, county, and business entities.⁸⁷ Within a few years, other women with similar backgrounds joined the board; collectively, their education, professional training, and modern outlook contributed significantly to the development of the organization.

Women in the New Woman generation also embraced a range of reforms in their physical lives, insisting that robust physical activity—and clothing that enabled it—was an essential mark of progress. The Journal ran many articles about hygiene (or health) and dress reform, especially the abandonment of the corset. A quarter of a century after the original retrenchment movement, dress reform reemerged as a topic of discussion, but this time in terms of health, freedom, and aesthetics, with less concern for economics and distinctiveness.⁸⁸ Susa Gates had studied physical culture, or gymnastics and calisthenics, at a Harvard summer school. There she recruited a young teacher named Maud May Babcock to come to Utah and establish new initiatives in the field. Reporting on this effort, Gates published a series of articles promoting physical culture—some illustrated with photographs of Babcock in her gymnasium costume, demonstrating various exercises.⁸⁹

One of the most significant effects of the New Woman ethos was women’s participation in the public and political realms, and Latter-day Saint women eagerly embraced these opportunities. In 1888, to commemorate the fortieth anniversary of the landmark Seneca Falls Convention for women’s rights, leaders of the National Woman Suffrage Association had called an eight-day meeting of representatives of women’s organizations from around the world to form an umbrella organization called the International Council of Women. In 1891, the United States’ National Council of Women (NCW) had been formed.⁹⁰ The Relief Society and the YLMIA were charter members of both councils; as such, their presidents and other representatives served as officers of the councils and regularly attended the triennial conventions and other meetings, reporting on Latter-day Saint women’s activities and contributing to discussions of women’s views of issues in education, labor, politics, medicine, social customs, and many other topics. To represent itself as a national organization like the other groups in the NCW, the YLMIA during this period often referred to itself as the Young Ladies’ National Mutual Improvement Association.⁹¹

Susa Gates and other YLMIA leaders relished the visibility and connections their participation in the councils brought. Gates became heavily involved in the NCW and wrote lengthy accounts of the triennials and other meetings for the Journal, drawing young women into awareness of both women’s issues and their leaders’ involvement in addressing them.⁹² When a delegation of leading Latter-day Saint women took part in the women’s congress held in conjunction with the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893, Gates exhorted young women to support their leaders with earnest, mighty prayer on their behalf and suggested that they mark the day with fasting and prayer.⁹³ The Salt Lake Tenth Ward held a special fast for the cause.⁹⁴

Despite their enthusiastic participation in outside organizations, Latter-day Saint women retained a sense of their distinctness.⁹⁵ “My dear girls,” wrote Gates about one meeting, “I heard no one there who could fill you and thrill you with the real eloquence of the Spirit, or who could pour out such a flood of heartfelt words as can our own beloved Sister Taylor. I just longed for an opportunity for her to arise and speak to them under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost.”⁹⁶ As they did in so many other realms during this period, Latter-day Saint women made bold advances into the outside world and sought to build new bridges, but their commitment to their faith and their community remained primary.

The growth of the YLMIA in its third and fourth decades meant a substantial increase in expenses, the bulk of which were used for board members’ travel to visit the stakes. Records do not survive to show details of the organization’s funding before the 1890s.⁹⁷ Stakes and wards evidently raised whatever money they needed on an individual, ad hoc basis through events such as balls, raffles, auctions, bazaars, and confectionary and ice cream sales. Those stakes that could afford it paid travel expenses for the general leaders to visit their conferences.⁹⁸ This meant that there was substantial disparity between wealthier stakes, which tended to be in easier-to-reach locations, and those that had fewer means and were more remote. Yet the poorer, rural stakes needed the encouragement and training of general leaders all the more. At some point, likely around 1890, the general board began requesting that each stake contribute annual dues to help defray the board’s expenses; in 1892, this amount was set at two dollars.⁹⁹ A year later at the officers’ meeting in October 1893, the board requested that each stake give an entertainment—that is, some kind of fair or community celebration—as a fundraiser on behalf of the board. This initiative raised $763, which they invested, using the interest to pay travel costs. But expenses continued to outpace revenues.¹⁰⁰

The following year, Elmina Taylor and Sarah Eddington traveled to a conference in Wyoming with George Goddard and George Reynolds of the Sunday School general board. The men were surprised to learn that the YLMIA operated entirely without help from the church. “Women are always independent if they have half a chance,” Taylor replied. From this conversation came the idea that the young women themselves should be asked to make an individual contribution to YLMIA funds. Since 1891, children who attended the church’s Sunday Schools had been asked to pay five cents on an annual “Nickel Day,” but that seemed too little to ask of the older girls. “By doing without chewing gum for a month,” Reynolds suggested, the young women ought to be able to pay ten cents each once a year.¹⁰¹ Upon their return, Taylor and Eddington discussed this idea with the board, and they formulated a plan to establish an Annual Day—also known as Dime Day—on or near the twelfth of September to honor Taylor’s birthday.¹⁰² This would be a day of celebration, when new officers might be appointed and a special effort made to invite all young women to participate. It would also be the day for each girl to bring her dime and contribute to funding the organization. Ward YLMIAs had sometimes held annual celebrations on the anniversary of their founding; the designation of a single day for all associations to gather and support the general organization was another step in the move toward centralization and standardization.¹⁰³ This annual contribution from young women would remain a backbone of the organization’s funding for many decades.

The other major financial problem confronting the YLMIA in the 1890s was the Young Woman’s Journal, of which the organization had become part owner in the early 1890s. Gates had founded the magazine with the hope that it would provide an income for her and also help support the organization. Neither of these hopes was realized for many years.¹⁰⁴ Two thousand copies of each issue were published each year, even though subscriptions fell considerably below this number. By 1897, despite YLMIA membership surpassing sixteen thousand, subscriptions to the journal still numbered less than three thousand. At an annual price of two dollars—equivalent in 2020 to just over sixty dollars—subscriptions to the magazine were likely out of reach for many girls and their families. In some cases, associations might pool their resources to pay for a single subscription and then pass the magazine around for members to take turns reading. Unsold volumes piled up on the publisher’s shelves, and the low subscription numbers meant that the magazine was heavily in debt.¹⁰⁵ Meanwhile, the country was experiencing the most severe economic depression in its history, exacerbating financial difficulties all around.

In summer 1896, tragedy struck with the unexpected death of Abraham Cannon, the Journal’s publisher. Cannon had managed the publishing business and other enterprises in his family’s financial portfolio and had also served as an apostle in the church’s leadership. He had patiently supported the magazine and encouraged Gates and Taylor even when its prospects seemed bleak, subordinating financial concerns in the service of a community enterprise. Upon his death, his successors began pressing for payment, no doubt prompted by the dire financial situation of the times. “What shall we do? Must we abandon the Journal?” Taylor wrote despairingly to Gates in October.¹⁰⁶

YLMIA leaders mounted an ambitious plan to travel to the stakes throughout the church, selling off the back issues and recruiting new subscribers and advertisers. Gates, by this time a member of the general board, took the first trip herself, traveling for several weeks to northern Utah communities. Soon other board members followed suit. This effort yielded thousands of dollars, and together with an amicable settlement offer from the publisher, it enabled the Journal to essentially start over on a new, more prosperous basis.¹⁰⁷ In 1898, the magazine was redesigned with more attractive formatting. When a new Guide department was added in 1900, replacing the separate lesson manuals that had been published earlier, the journal became an indispensable part of the organization. The subscription price was reduced by one-half. By 1901, circulation had increased to ten thousand and continued to climb, providing a steady source of revenue and a continued voice for the organization for another thirty years.¹⁰⁸

Meanwhile, Cannon’s death brought about the demise of the YMMIA’s Contributor. He had become the editor of that magazine in 1892, and it ceased production almost immediately after his passing. One year later, leaders of the young men’s organization launched a new publication, the Improvement Era, which debuted in November 1897.¹⁰⁹ Although the magazine retained its identity as the YMMIA magazine, the Era quickly expanded in scope to become the leading venue for discussion of doctrinal, social, political, and general church matters.¹¹⁰

Early in April 1896, YLMIA president Elmina Taylor called her board members together to discuss a special invitation. Thomas Hull and George Pyper, secretaries of the YMMIA, had approached YLMIA secretary Ann Cannon about the possibility of the young women and their leaders joining the YMMIA’s annual conference in June. Board members generally supported the idea, thinking that cooperation would be productive and promote harmonious relations. Taylor also supported the initiative, though she had some concerns about logistics. Still, in light of the potential benefits, a motion to accept the invitation passed easily. Soon planning was underway, with a committee of two women and two men from each organization making arrangements.¹¹¹

The invitation to work together on the Conjoint Conference, as it was called, was significant. Questions about the relationship of the young men’s and young women’s associations had lingered almost from their founding. Conjoint meetings were already taking place in many wards and stakes. On the general level, leaders and members of the YLMIA were sometimes invited to participate in the YMMIA’s general conferences, but those events were planned and conducted solely by YMMIA leaders. The YLMIA had held its own annual conferences in 1890 and 1891, and officers’ meetings for stake leaders occurred every six months in conjunction with the church’s general conferences.¹¹² These were all-female gatherings. The conference of 1896, which became a yearly tradition, was the first truly joint effort on the general level, setting a precedent for cooperation and parity.

The YMMIA’s request came out of a sense that the organization was in crisis. In contrast to the growth of the YLMIA, young men’s attendance at MIA meetings was dwindling, with one report estimating the attendance of young women at ten to one compared with the young men.¹¹³ Even energetic efforts to systematize the curriculum and send out missionaries to boost enthusiasm in the stakes failed to drive up participation. So concerned were the leaders of the Salt Lake Stake YMMIA that they began meeting monthly to discuss ways they might resuscitate the organization.¹¹⁴ In some areas, the YMMIA leaders regularly asked the young women to meet with them, claiming “they could not get along without them.”¹¹⁵

The first annual Conjoint Conference of the YLMIA and YMMIA took place on Saturday and Sunday, 30 and 31 May 1896. Officers and general leaders of the YLMIA and the YMMIA gathered in the Tabernacle at Temple Square in Salt Lake City. Shaped from the beginning as a joint effort between the two organizations, the conference represented a new direction in gender dynamics, and its program and structure would set the precedent for future conferences. The conference opened with a joint session in which both Joseph F. Smith, a counselor in the First Presidency and the assistant superintendent of the YMMIA, and Elmina Taylor, president of the YLMIA, gave addresses. In all the joint sessions, both men and women spoke in roughly equal numbers. In the Saturday afternoon joint session, the officers of both organizations were presented to the congregation for a sustaining vote. Susa Gates appeared on the Sunday evening program alongside prominent church authority B. H. Roberts, and various women also spoke to the combined groups. These included Luisina “Lucy” Hoving of the Cache Stake in northern Utah, renowned as a magnificent speaker, and Elizabeth “Libbie” Noall, who spoke on “Woman in the Missionary Field,” based on her well-known missionary work in the South Pacific with her husband.¹¹⁶ In separate officers’ meetings, each association gave instruction to its own officers, whereas during the joint sessions men and women came together to instruct and be edified by each other.

While most women’s speaking opportunities had previously come in local, informal, single-gender settings, the Conjoint Conference represented a prominent church setting for female speaking in an era when public speaking by women was rising as a norm.¹¹⁷ George Q. Cannon of the First Presidency congratulated female participants on their strength in speaking and giving prayers.¹¹⁸ Their performance represented a noteworthy step forward in women’s opportunities to address mixed-gender audiences.

The Conjoint Conference was considered a great success. As they reflected on the conference, YLMIA leaders were pleased, believing the combined efforts would produce much good in the mutual improvement cause.¹¹⁹ The conference did, indeed, mark the beginning of an important development; thereafter, the annual Conjoint Conference became a significant focal point and vibrant tradition for both organizations. It also brought them into a closer relationship with one another.

Local conferences, such as the one held by the Utah Stake in Provo in November 1896, included a similar kind of parity.¹²⁰ After separate officers’ meetings on Saturday, the three sessions on Sunday were combined, with the YLMIA and the YMMIA taking turns conducting each meeting. General leaders from both the YLMIA and YMMIA sat on the stand alongside general and stake priesthood leaders. In his address, church apostle John Henry Smith said he “did not think the labors of the sisters are appreciated by the brethren as they should be,” and Lillie Freeze remarked that the organizations had “lived too far apart in our Mutual Improvement work.”¹²¹ Conjoint conferences (or conjoint sessions at conferences) were not entirely new, but these remarks suggest that participants perceived something new was happening. The conjoint movement was bringing a new sense of appreciation and cooperation.¹²²

By 1897, the boards of both organizations had taken several steps toward even closer working relationships. In January of that year, the YLMIA’s general leaders sponsored a sociable, or informal social gathering, for the YMMIA board with the hope that better acquaintance would lead to better cooperation.¹²³ Later, in March, the two general boards began meeting together regularly, forming committees with equal membership from each board to plan for the second annual general Conjoint Conference.¹²⁴

Amid this new level of collaboration, at least one YMMIA leader proposed the union of the YMMIA and YLMIA. In a letter published in the Young Woman’s Journal, Thomas Hull, then the acting general secretary of the YMMIA, presented the idea as the only way to revive the young men’s organization.¹²⁵ His primary rationale was that the young men needed the good influence of the young women to improve both attendance and behavior. Implicit in Hull’s proposal was the perception that the young women’s associations were more vigorous and effective than the young men’s. Knowing that YLMIA leaders might be reluctant to fully join with the young men, he framed the proposal as an opportunity for young women to become more confident at speaking in front of men.¹²⁶ Even as he acknowledged that a union of the associations was liable to create the flirtatious “sparking meetings” denounced by Brigham Young, he insisted, “For my own part, I would much rather see a young man sitting in a mutual improvement meeting, indulging in a little harmless ‘sparking,’ than to see him standing on the street corner with a cigar or cigarette in his mouth, or to find him in a still worse place.” If problems arose, he argued, they could be appropriately addressed.¹²⁷

Taylor and the YLMIA leaders refused Hull’s proposal, which Gates had published in the Journal without Taylor’s approval.¹²⁸ At an officers’ meeting, Taylor discouraged talk about merging the associations, arguing that no one with authority had instructed them to do so. “Our prophet has said we should hold conjoint meetings once a month,” she explained, adding that separate organizations were essential in order to study subjects particular to each group.¹²⁹ While invoking prophetic authority, Taylor’s reasoning may have also reflected a desire to preserve the autonomy the YLMIA had so far enjoyed.

Even without merging the organizations, collaboration raised urgent questions concerning gender, hierarchy, and precedence. The YLMIA, like the church’s other organizations, patterned its leadership structure after that of the priesthood quorums, with a presidency (a president and two counselors) at the general, stake, and local levels.¹³⁰ The YLMIA was subject to priesthood governance by bishops, stake presidents, and general authorities, and female leaders readily acknowledged this order. In practice, however, YLMIA organizations, like the other organizations run by women, operated autonomously. They launched initiatives, planned their own programs, and presided at their own meetings with minimal input from male leaders.

The relationship of the YMMIA to the priesthood in this period, however, was more complex. Most adult males were ordained to the church’s lay priesthood, which was organized in two orders—the Melchizedek Priesthood and the Aaronic Priesthood—and further subdivided into quorums. In the late nineteenth century, it became more common to ordain teenage boys to the Aaronic Priesthood.¹³¹ The YMMIA thus became tightly interwoven with Aaronic Priesthood quorums and their activities, though the two would never become synonymous. The YMMIA was not a priesthood quorum, and membership was not based upon priesthood ordination, though Melchizedek Priesthood office was seen as a prerequisite for some leadership positions. At the stake and general levels, these leaders were called superintendents; at the ward level, they were known as presidents. At the general level, it was customary for the president of the church to serve as superintendent of the YMMIA.¹³²

At the first joint meeting of the general boards in 1897, Joseph F. Smith addressed questions of gender and hierarchy using principles that he would continue to emphasize after becoming president of the church four years later. “There can’t be two heads,” he declared. “Where Priesthood is, they have the authority to preside.” Even though both the YMMIA and YLMIA had presidents and officers, they were not equal in authority. Smith taught that since the male YMMIA leaders also held priesthood office, they should be considered the presiding authority when the two organizations met together, though he did not explicitly define what it meant to preside.¹³³ In practice, presiding at a joint meeting primarily meant having the prerogative to conduct the proceedings oneself or delegate that responsibility to someone else. On multiple occasions, Smith insisted that while a YMMIA officer always presided when the organizations met together, the YLMIA leaders should be given equal chances to conduct.¹³⁴ These principles were codified in the pamphlet Instructions to the Y. L. M. I. A. Officers and remained in YLMIA handbooks through the 1926 edition.¹³⁵

YLMIA leaders accepted this instruction, but they focused on the sense of companionship and cooperation offered by their relationship with the YMMIA. Comparing the organizations’ partnership to a marriage, Elmina Taylor explained, “The interests of husband and wife ar[e] best served when they are made one, and so it will be in this society.”¹³⁶ Susa Gates, in an editorial, also referenced spousal dynamics, emphasizing harmony and unity in the relationship: “It was the unity which always exists in a perfect home. The man quietly at the head, because he is worthy and ordained, the woman close at his side, perfectly independent in her sphere, and acting harmoniously with her companion.”¹³⁷ In this view, unity was based on priesthood order.

For YLMIA leaders, then, the conjoint movement raised both hopes and fears. Joining with the men meant new opportunities for leadership and recognition, which they celebrated. Gates asserted that the joint work of the YLMIA and YMMIA was “the only place or portion, in the Church organization, outside of Temple work, where women possess an actual equality of work and interest with the brethren.”¹³⁸ But leaders also worried that the close collaboration could lead to the subordination of women and loss of their gender-specific priorities. “Let them [the YLMIA] retain the individuality and autonomy of their own organization, and its work,” Gates wrote, “for absorption means loss of power and finally of existence, except as an echo.”¹³⁹

Despite its complexities, the conjoint movement broadened at all levels and helped shape a period of rapid development in the first decade of the twentieth century, bringing the YLMIA and the YMMIA closer together and invigorating them both. Stake conventions—a practice first introduced by the Sunday Schools—became a key event on the YLMIA and YMMIA calendars.¹⁴⁰ The YMMIA held its first stake conventions in 1900; by 1902 the YLMIA joined in a plan to make conventions a joint affair to be held each fall at the beginning of the “Mutual season,” which ran parallel to the American school year from fall to spring.¹⁴¹ During these annual meetings of all stake leaders, visiting general board members conducted leadership training and introduced the centrally prescribed program for the upcoming year. Conventions provided practical training in procedures, record keeping, splitting the associations into age-specific groups, and similar matters; they also sometimes included model classes to demonstrate effective teaching methods. General sessions featured spiritual messages and encouragement. Just as general board leaders visited the stakes and offered training and assistance, stake leaders did the same for the wards in their stewardship. Conventions helped prepare them for these duties.¹⁴²

Conventions facilitated standardization of stake and ward programs, raised the quality of leadership, and created important relationships between general and stake leaders within each organization and across gender lines. They also represented significant expansion of general board duties, since board members were now expected to visit the stakes for conventions, held in August and September, and for stake conferences, held in the winter and spring. In 1903, for example, YLMIA board members visited at least forty-five stake conventions and fifty-one stake conferences in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona, Canada, and Mexico.¹⁴³ Even with the availability of train travel, this was an ambitious and taxing undertaking for the board. As it became increasingly difficult to meet these demands, they gave preference to the conventions.¹⁴⁴

The Utah Stake in Provo provides one robust example of what stake conventions looked like. Their fourth annual convention on Sunday, 23 September 1906, was an all-day affair with three separate sessions. Elen Wallace and George Brimhall represented the YLMIA and YMMIA general boards; church apostles Francis M. Lyman and Anthon H. Lund attended the evening conjoint meeting. In the morning and afternoon, stake and local officers of the YLMIA and the YMMIA met separately in sessions geared toward practical discussion of methods and suggestions in their respective organizations; YLMIA leaders considered ways to present the season’s work. Three bishops made congratulatory remarks, as did the stake Relief Society president. The afternoon session unfolded in a similar format, with discussions titled “Example of Officers” and “What shall we do with our leisure moments[?]” According to the minutes, Wallace punctuated the local leaders’ discussions “with timely and fitting suggestions.” Many musical numbers were interspersed between the talks. The evening session was a devotional meeting. Wallace, Lyman, Lund, and stake YMMIA leader Bryant Hinckley addressed the large congregation, which included many stake and local officers. Music was provided by the Provo tabernacle choir and a well-known local soloist.¹⁴⁵

As programs became more standardized, monthly conjoint officers’ meetings became increasingly important.¹⁴⁶ For example, officers of the Utah Stake YLMIA and YMMIA met conjointly on the third Sunday of each month. They listened to reports of leaders’ visits to wards in the stake, planned visits for the upcoming month, and discussed other matters of concern. After the conjoint session, the YLMIA leaders met separately to discuss their particular business, primarily more visits to ward associations; they also met with the ward leaders on the third Sunday of each month.¹⁴⁷ On occasion, the conjoint officers’ meetings took up special topics. In December 1906, for example, a special session was held to discuss the subjects of reverence, order, and punctuality, resulting in a renewed and determined effort to help the associations improve along these lines.¹⁴⁸

As mixed-gender interactions increasingly shaped leaders’ service at the turn of the century, the dynamics of conjoint activities also became a more regular part of individual members’ experience. Ward associations conducted a monthly conjoint meeting on a Sunday evening, and stake-level YLMIA and YMMIA associations sponsored a conjoint meeting on the Sunday evening of each quarterly stake conference.¹⁴⁹ The young women’s and young men’s organizations also started meeting together for preliminary programs at the beginning of their weekly meetings. These programs were an innovation introduced in the 1901–1902 YMMIA manual to include recreation along with musical and literary instruction, similar to popular literary societies and clubs of the time, and similar to the content of the monthly conjoint meetings that MIAs had held since the 1870s.¹⁵⁰ Each weekly program featured prayer and singing, followed by three short items: a five-minute talk about current events, ten minutes of extemporaneous talks or literary recitations, and a five-minute musical number.¹⁵¹ These programs gave young people opportunities to develop musical, literary, and public-speaking abilities and became a popular and long-lasting element of weekly MIA meetings.

Meanwhile, the size of the church was expanding, and the organization was changing. Around the turn of the century, wards and stakes were divided and organized to create smaller units that would serve as members’ spiritual and social bastions against the encroachments of the world, and many wards and stakes developed strong, cohesive identities with an attendant sense of loyalty and belonging among the members. Institutional activity likewise became more important and more extensive, such that, in the words of one study, “hardly a night went by when the lights of the meetinghouse were not ablaze,” and ward-centered activities filled the free time of many members. The intensive focus on church commitments set apart the Saints in the Intermountain West from their neighbors at a time when they were coming to resemble their fellow Americans in many other ways. The YLMIA and YMMIA played prominent roles in the calendars of Latter-day Saints, providing regular opportunities for them to come together.¹⁵²

The conjoint movement not only filled young people’s time with wholesome activities, but it also helped define them as a discrete group. While gender differences remained important, the young in “young people” was a unifying characteristic of girls and boys that served to bring them together in a single category—one that was receiving increasing scrutiny and definition in American culture at the time.

Most famously, in 1904 G. Stanley Hall published his watershed study, Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education. Based on more than a decade of his own study as well as earlier work from other researchers, Hall characterized adolescence—the years from puberty to adulthood—as a time of inner stress and conflict, with rapid physical and emotional change brought on by biological forces.¹⁵³ People had long known that the years from puberty to adulthood were prone to turbulence, but Hall offered extensive scientific analysis to identify this period as a distinct biological and psychological life stage. Since adolescents could be volatile and vulnerable, Hall argued, they needed unhurried time to grow up in controlled environments, such as school, where adults could monitor and direct their growth.¹⁵⁴

Such notions appeared in the work of YLMIA and YMMIA leaders of the time as well. In the annual conference of 1904, Josiah Hickman, superintendent of the Utah Stake YMMIA in Provo, Utah, spoke to officers of both organizations about their weighty responsibility to guide the youth. As a longtime teacher, Hickman knew well the coalescing discourse about this newly recognized life stage. Youth was, he explained, a dangerous time when people could easily be lured from safe paths, but it was also a precious period when they shaped their character and established their lives’ directions. Hickman asserted, “It is the period when the young receive with greatest readiness, if rightly presented, their deepest religious convictions.”¹⁵⁵

The idea that adolescents often experience intense religious awakening extended back centuries, but many social scientists, including Hall, were exploring the idea around the turn of the century. Hickman specifically cited the work of George A. Coe, a professor at Northwestern University near Chicago, who was then publishing influential research about adolescents and the psychology of religion.¹⁵⁶ Coe had found, Hickman noted, that 80 percent of young people experienced religious conversion between ages twelve and twenty, and a full 50 percent between ages sixteen and eighteen. “This would indicate,” he summarized, “that youth, early man-hood and woman-hood, are the periods of life when we get our religious impressions.”¹⁵⁷ For Hickman, and Latter-day Saint leaders of youth generally, the implications were clear: the unique needs of young people should shape the structure and content of the church’s youth organizations.

In part as a result of conversations about these ideas, leaders grew increasingly aware of the distinctions between young women of different ages in the YLMIA. The age range for “young ladies” eligible to participate in YLMIA was not rigidly defined in the nineteenth century. Hall’s definition, however, specified that adolescence comprised the years from fourteen to twenty-four years old.¹⁵⁸ While he offered little explanation for or analysis of these boundaries, they show that in the prevailing view, “youth” extended into the early twenties. From early on, girls were considered old enough to enter the YLMIA around age fourteen, a boundary solidified and reiterated in the 1890s by Elmina Taylor in her responses to repeated inquiries from local leaders.¹⁵⁹ An upper age limit remained undefined but clearly extended into the years when young women might be attending college, working, and marrying. Young women of a considerable age span, therefore, might assemble for a YLMIA meeting. In 1903, YLMIA leaders began recommending that local associations grade, or subdivide, their ranks into junior and senior classes—juniors being ages fourteen to sixteen and seniors ages seventeen and older.¹⁶⁰ Junior lessons began to be published in a special Guide for the Junior Department, but senior lessons continued to appear in the Young Woman’s Journal. Since, as the first Guide noted, younger girls were often timid in meetings with the older ones, leaders hoped that everyone would benefit from smaller, peer-group classes in which they could actively participate.¹⁶¹

As with the appointments of members of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, and Relief Society general presidents at the time, Elmina Taylor’s appointment as YLMIA general president lasted until her death on 6 December 1904.¹⁶² During the twenty-four years of her presidency, she expanded the organization’s structure and helped a collection of largely autonomous local units develop a stronger shared identity. Amid the organization’s growth, she worked to maintain a spiritual core for young women’s lived experience in the YLMIA. “We should have a reverence for everything that is sacred,” she taught, urging young women to address such subjects in their meetings. For Taylor, spiritual purposes connected with the aim of individual and mutual improvement. “Everyone of us should be an angel of charity, every kind act we do will come home to us in blessings, not only in after life but in this life; it will have a sanctified influence upon our character,” she said.¹⁶³

Taylor’s death marked the end of an era in more than one sense. She was typical of the church’s pioneer generation: she was born in 1830, joined the church after profound spiritual experience despite disapproval in her community, and migrated west before the completion of the railroad.¹⁶⁴ Forty-seven-year-old Martha Horne Tingey became the organization’s next general president.¹⁶⁵ A daughter of Mary Isabella Horne, retrenchment and Relief Society leader, Tingey was a precocious learner. At age sixteen, she took up the trade of typesetting, in which she worked expertly until her marriage, four years after her appointment as counselor to Taylor in 1880. A spiritually minded young woman, she joined her local young ladies’ association, taught in Sunday School and Primary, and sang in the Tabernacle Choir. She was also known for her talent in giving public readings. Having grown up among the Saints in Salt Lake City, Tingey represented the frontier generation, taking up the torch from her convert-pioneer forebears.¹⁶⁶

Tingey chose for her counselors Ruth May Fox and Mae Taylor Nystrom, both of whom had served on the YLMIA general board, were proponents of women’s suffrage, and were active in other women’s organizations. Nystrom, in fact, was a daughter of Elmina Taylor and something of a New Woman herself, having graduated from the LDS College and worked as director of a school for physical culture.¹⁶⁷ When the new presidency began their service, the YLMIA had a well-defined organizational structure, a standardized calendar of lessons and meetings, and the expectation of conjoint work with the young men. For local organizations such as the Springville Fourth Ward, where Fanny Rowland served as president, the transition to a new general presidency brought little change in their week-to-week experience. The minutes of the Fourth Ward for the 1906–1907 season provide rich illustration of what those local meetings looked like.

In this small community fifty miles south of Salt Lake City, young ladies’ associations had been organized for at least thirty years by 1906 and were woven into the fabric of the community. That year, the Fourth Ward had over forty young women attending YLMIA meetings.¹⁶⁸ Born between 1874 and 1892, most of the girls grew up in the dawning age of the New Woman, and their lives reflected it. Nearly half attended high school, and most of those graduated; eight went to college.¹⁶⁹ Others worked, before or after marriage, and a few enjoyed distinguished professional careers. Four of the women never married, and the rest married on average at age twenty-three, a full four years older than the average age of their mothers when they married.¹⁷⁰

During the Mutual season, the Fourth Ward YLMIA gathered each Tuesday evening, with an average attendance of thirty-three. At thirty years old, Fanny Rowland presided over nineteen junior and twenty senior girls. One of Fanny’s counselors, Melvina Tew, was two years her senior, but the other, Lola White, was only twenty-two—well within the age range of the senior class over whom she had charge. Other members of the association’s leadership were likewise young women themselves, the youngest being Vida Houtz at fifteen.¹⁷¹

In late August 1906, as another Mutual season was approaching, the young women of Springville had a special visit from Tingey, Fox, and Nystrom, along with general board member May Booth Talmage.¹⁷² The ward had invited the general leaders, and Tingey, who had been encouraging such visits, obliged.¹⁷³ In keeping with the concerns of the time, Tingey cautioned the girls against what she called “the evils of familiarity with boys” and counseled them on how they dressed. Fox explained the young women’s responsibilities as daughters of Zion, while Nystrom and Talmage got straight to business, discussing the plan of work for the upcoming Mutual season.¹⁷⁴

That plan went into effect the third Tuesday of September, when the Springville YLMIA launched the first of their regular meetings for the season. Each week was dedicated to a specific focus: they held testimony meetings on the first week of the month, the senior class studied literary subjects and the junior class ethical subjects on the second week, and both classes held theological lessons on the third and fourth weeks. The theological lessons were essentially a New Testament course on the teachings of the Savior. The senior class occasionally also enjoyed a lecture, even though this was not part of the official outlines.¹⁷⁵

Each week the young women first met together with the young men for a preliminary program before separating for their classes. When they met at the ward meetinghouse at seven o’clock in the evening on 22 January 1907, Alva Zabriskie, president of the YMMIA, presided, and Fanny Rowland conducted. After an opening song and prayer, they sang another hymn, “For the Strength of the Hills.” Next, a seventeen-year-old young man gave a reading, followed by a young woman, age eighteen, singing a solo. After this brief preliminary program, the young men left for their classes, but they would return after their lessons for a joint closing hymn and prayer. Meanwhile, the young women remained and held their own opening exercises—something that seems to have been customary—which consisted of roll call and approval of the last meeting’s minutes. This was followed by another literary selection that was read aloud by Melvina Tew.¹⁷⁶ The junior and senior young women studied the same lesson: “How Jesus taught by parables No. 2,” covering several parables about treasures. The lesson period included time for class members to discuss questions such as “How do these parables inspire hope in the final outcome of God’s work?”¹⁷⁷

The association followed this meeting pattern for the rest of the regular YLMIA season, which lasted through May for the young women (the young men adjourned on 1 April). When the season ended, leaders faced a perennial question: What to do during the summer? Summer was seen as a time of extra temptations for young people, with school out and long, pleasant evenings to fill. But it was also a time for relaxation, sociability, and a change of pace from the rest of the year. Sometimes the YLMIA general board published outlines for summer work, but recently they had relinquished the decision about summer activities to stake and local officers, recommending only that they meet at least monthly and do what they could to maintain an influence on the girls.¹⁷⁸

In summer 1907, the Springville young women continued to meet weekly. They held monthly testimony meetings and often presented recitations and musical numbers; some weeks they had literary lessons or discussed business matters. A major segment of each meeting was taken up by reading aloud from the Journal. The girls seem to have taken turns doing the reading; the others possibly tied a quilt as they listened, as they had the previous summer.¹⁷⁹ The first reading selection that summer, which occupied most weeks from May to July, was a serialized novel, The Western Boom.¹⁸⁰ It told of a young Latter-day Saint woman who married a man who was not a member of the church and moved with him to California, where she experienced suffering and tragedy because of her unwise choice. The Western Boom was published in the first volume of the magazine, 1889–1890, making it almost two decades old by this time.¹⁸¹ The Springville Fourth Ward’s use of it suggests that the back issues of the magazine continued to be valued.

The Springville young women also enjoyed a few special events throughout the summer. On the fourth Tuesdays of June and July, all the young women of the four wards in town met together, and on 20 August they took an excursion to Sumsion’s Grove, a local picnic spot.¹⁸² In mid-July, the Fourth Ward girls hosted an event for the women of their ward Relief Society, which included many of their mothers, presenting for them a model lesson and the subjects for the next season’s study, before sharing the musical numbers and refreshments they had prepared.¹⁸³

By early September 1907, it was time to kick off another season. On 10 September, the four Springville wards again met together for their Annual Day. The following week, on 17 September, the Fourth Ward YLMIA leadership was reorganized. Fanny Rowland had been assigned to the stake YLMIA board. She was replaced as president by her sister Louisa. The new president, counselors, and secretary were set apart by their bishop in the meeting. One week later, on 24 September, the Fourth Ward YLMIA resumed its regular meetings and lessons, although the first conjoint session did not take place until 15 October, when the young men’s season began.¹⁸⁴

Believing that the YLMIA had reached a point of development that warranted recognition, Susa Gates spent much of the first decade of the twentieth century writing the History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association—a 488-page volume, generously illustrated, that was published in 1911.¹⁸⁵ The History gave a unified identity to the organization, celebrating its origins, landmarks, and formative leaders. Most consequentially, the History gave the YLMIA an origin story, a past rooted in prophetic leadership that could be used to shape the future.

Up to this point, there had been little discussion of the founding of the young women’s organization. In 1892, Gates had published a “Historical Sketch of the Y. L. M. I. A.” in the Young Woman’s Journal, in which she described an iconic scene recounting her father’s instruction to his wives and daughters. “All Israel were looking to his family and watching the example set by his wives and children,” she reported Brigham Young explaining. He proclaimed that “our daughters are following the vain and foolish fashions of the world” and then exhorted his wives and daughters to make their garments plain and to set the styles for the rest of the world to follow and further to simplify their food and avoid light-mindedness in speech and thought. He called for his family to organize a retrenchment association, which, in this telling, was effected immediately.¹⁸⁶

When Gates published the official History almost two decades later, she inserted much of the 1892 account into the book, but she also made two consequential additions. First, she dated the founding meeting in the Lion House to 28 November 1869. While this date cannot be corroborated from contemporary sources, it nonetheless became the generally recognized anniversary because it appeared in the official history.¹⁸⁷ Second, in the middle of Young’s speech to his family, Gates added this statement, “There is need for the young daughters of Israel to get a living testimony of the truth. Young men obtain this while on missions, but this way is not opened to the girls. More testimonies are obtained on the feet than on the knees. I wish our girls to obtain a knowledge of the Gospel for themselves.”¹⁸⁸

It appears that Gates adapted this statement at least in part from an account of the founding of the YMMIA given by Junius Wells, which Gates included later in the History. Wells reported that Young told him, “We want to get our boys into the habit of trying to say something in the name of the Lord. More people have received testimonies on their feet than down on their knees praying for them.”¹⁸⁹ Gates may have wished to give the young women’s organization a charge parallel to the one given to the young men.

These words entered the YLMIA with great force, giving the organization a founding purpose that transcended the retrenchment movement. The young women’s organization was to impart a living testimony and knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ to young Latter-day Saint women. Its purpose was fundamentally spiritual, reflecting the YLMIA’s emphasis on building a personal witness of truth. Attributing the importance of testimony to a prophet and making it part of the organization’s founding story gave it added weight and staying power.

No matter where the statement attributed to Young originated, it certainly expressed an idea that resonated deeply. Leaders began to use the History almost immediately to invoke the founding account in teaching about the organization’s purpose.¹⁹⁰ The account figured prominently as the organization observed its fiftieth anniversary in 1919 (based on the 28 November 1869 date in the History). In her commemorative article, May Talmage recounted the founding meeting and quoted Young’s exhortation about testimony; Ruth May Fox incorporated it into a short fictional story.¹⁹¹ The excerpt from the History quoting Young was republished in handbooks and manuals for decades and became part of the organization’s fundamental self-definition.¹⁹² The YLMIA would consistently strive to keep young women on their feet and on their knees, seeking spiritual knowledge through service and study.

The History was an important marker of the development of the YLMIA over the preceding two decades. Against the backdrop of turbulent transitions in the Latter-day Saint community—notably the end of plural marriage, which raised urgent concerns about young women’s marital prospects—the organization had established a bedrock emphasis on helping girls find their own spiritual witness that would motivate them to remain firmly in the community and make good choices for their lives. Both the leadership and the young members of the organization increasingly reflected the ethos of the New Woman in their lives and service. From a loose confederation of localized groups organized under the same banner, the YLMIA had become a centrally directed organization, with its own magazine and standardized lessons, calendars, and leadership structures.

At the 1909 annual Conjoint Conference of the MIAs—increasingly known simply as the June Conference—longtime YMMIA leader George Q. Morris expressed a fundamental conceptual shift that was taking place in Latter-day Saints’ thinking about the MIAs. “In all my work in this cause,” Morris declared, “I have assumed that it is one organization—the Mutual Improvement Association—and that the Young Men’s association is but one department of that work; that the Young Ladies’ is another.” While recognizing that they were, in fact, individual organizations, he insisted, “If we work upon this basis, and keep this principle in mind, we can not help but co-operate, because we are one, and we act and work and plan together.”¹⁹³

YLMIA leaders embraced this vision and gladly joined in close cooperation with the YMMIA. At the same time, they recognized the need to maintain their distinctness and keep sight of the particular needs of young women. For the time being, leaders struck a successful balance between cooperation and autonomy, and Morris’s comments captured a dynamic that would shape the young women’s and young men’s organizations for another sixty years. They were becoming known simply as the MIA.