1856 MORMON TALE
AIRED: Season 6, Episode 1
THE DETECTIVE: Tukufu Zuberi
THE PLACE: Ithaca and New York City
THE CASE:
The tattered pages of an 1856 anonymously authored book titled “Female Life Among the Mormons” claim to be the personal memoirs of a New York woman who married a Mormon elder at a time when polygamy was openly practiced yet characterized by some abolitionists as the “enslavement of white women.”
In it, the author says she traveled with her husband as the Mormons were chased out of New York and Illinois, eventually settling in the Utah Territory. Throughout her journey, the author claims to have witnessed a shocking, immoral culture of violence, polygamy, sexual depravity and brainwashing.
Our contributor from Stanfordville, New York wants to know who wrote the book and if it is in fact a true account of Mormon life.
Our search to find the author takes us into a mystery that has haunted bibliographers for nearly 150 years.
Feature: Female Life Among the Mormons
Read an excerpt from Female Life Among the Mormons; A Narrative of Many Years' Personal Experience by the Wife of a Mormon Elder, recently from Utah.
Think you have a case for the History Detectives? Send us your mystery here. 