Emma Lee

The author, born in 1898, grew up in Southern Nevada in a polygamous family within an isolated Mormon community. She became a historian and writer with a focus on Mormon history, numbering renowned author Wallace Stegner among her friends. The author's view of Mormon history is uncompromising. Here, she chooses to tell the story of Emma Lee, one of the nineteen wives of John D. Lee, who was convicted and executed for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre of September 1857. It is the author's position that John D. Lee was a scapegoat for one of the darkest moments in Mormon history. The massacre saw the ambush of a company of approximately one hundred and twenty emigrants en route by wagon train to California. Mormon settlers slaughtered all but seventeen children under the age of seven, who were spared and ultimately adopted by Mormon families. The author tells Emma Lee's story in austere, clear, crisp prose without flourishes. Born Emma Batchelor in England in 1836, as a young woman she fell under the sway of Mormon missionaries in England, as did one of her friends. Together they would convert to Mormonism and emigrate to America, bound for Utah. In December of 1857, Sister Emma would meet John D. Lee, and it would seem that it was love at first sight for the twenty-one year old Emma and John, who was old enough to be her father and had a daughter Emma's age. Within two weeks, Emma and John were married. Thus, Emma became a sister wife. The book details Emma's life as a pioneer sister wife and the hardships and happiness she would experience as wife to a man who was initially well-respected within his insular community and was on a first name basis with Brigham Young himself. He would eventually become a pariah within that very same community and would move his wife Emma to Lonely Dell in Arizona, where they would establish a ferry service across the Colorado River, which would help with the general Mormon plan for colonization in Arizona. In 1876, however, John D. Lee was offered up to the authorities by the church hierarchy to expiate the sins of the Mormon community nearly twenty years after the fact for the atrocity of the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Throughout her entire married life to John D. Lee, Emma would remain steadfast and true to her husband, no matter what difficulties would present themselves. The author paints a picture of what Emma's life was like on the western frontier. To her would be left the entire responsibility of the household, including giving birth without the help of another adult, so isolated and lonely would be some of the places in which she and her children would live, as her husband's luck began running out. After her husband's conviction and execution for his participation in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, the church hierarchy dealt with Emma by ousting her from her home in Lonely Dell, Arizona and reneging on the promised payment. She would rebuild her life with her children in Winslow, Ari

One cannot visit Lee's Ferry without becoming curious about Emma Lee, John D. Lee's courageous and lonely wife, who lived alone at the Ferry while her husband was off fraternizing with Mormon bishops and ending up taking the fall for church leaders in the Mountain Meadow Massacre. Reading her life story, including giving birth alone in the rude cabin on the bank of the Colorado River, her dealings with Lee's other wives, and her steadfast and unswering loyalty to her husband, is a sobering look at the demands of a pioneer, and a Mormon wife.