Nurturing LDS Primaries: Louie Felt and May Anderson, 1880-1940

Nurturing LDS Primaries: Louie Felt and May Anderson, 1880-1940

BY SUSAN STAKER OMAN

DURING THE SUMMER OF 1883 A TRAIN westbound for Salt Lake City stopped to take on passengers at Morgan, Utah. Completing the last leg of a journey begun that spring on the ship Nevada out of Liverpool harbor was the large family of Scott and Mary Bruce Anderson, originally of Shetland, Scotland. Boarding at Morgan to welcome family members returning from the East were Mr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Felt and two of Mr. Felt's young daughters. Nineteen-year-old Mary Anderson, eldest daughter in the immigrant family, was introduced to the young matron, Louie Bouton Felt, who at age thirty-three had presided for three years as general president of the fledgling Primary Association, the children's auxiliary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

This chance meeting was the beginning of a life-long friendship between the two women who at first glance appeared disparate in background and temperament. Gentle, emotional Louie Felt and blunt, pragmatic May Anderson, as Mary came to be known, were to weld a personal bond that would have a lasting and productive impact upon the organization over which together and separately they would preside for the next fifty-seven years. As the charismatic leader, Louie inspired the loyalty necessary to the survival of any organization and was the mediator of difficulties; as the realistic organizer, May sponsored the programs that enabled the Primary to negotiate the changes that came in the 1890s as the church relinquished old practices and moved into the mainstream of American society. The programs and practices established at this critical juncture characterized the Primary for decades as it slowly expanded from its Utah roots to become a worldwide religious organization for children.

The Mary Anderson on the train that day in 1883 was inexperienced in the highly organized church her family had joined a few years earlier in England. Her world was the large and close family that demanded her full time and energies. Before her father, Bruce Anderson, converted to Mormonism, he was a temperance lecturer traveling throughout Ireland and England. As a child, Mary often recited such pieces as "The Lips that Touch Liquor Shall Never Touch Mine" during her father's public meetings. Since the Andersons moved quite often, they formed few ties outside of the fourteen family members. Mary tended the younger children and did much of the cleaning, cooking, and sewing.

The Felts, whose path crossed that of the immigrant family, were in contrast one of the leading families in the LDS Eleventh Ward in Salt hake City. Gregarious and fun-loving, Louie was popular in the ward and since she had no children devoted much time to church work. Not only was she general president of the Primary, but she was also ward Primary president, counselor in the Salt Lake Stake Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association (the renamed Retrenchment groups for young girls), treasurer in the Eleventh Ward Mutual Improvement Association, Sunday School teacher, and participant in ward dramatic activities. Her husband, to whom she had been married for seventeen years, was stake president of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association and counselor in the bishopric.

Louie had been born a Latter-day Saint but away from the Utah center. Both of her parents were early converts, acquainted with such leaders as Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, but for years they had chosen to remain in their ancestral home at Norwalk, Connecticut, where Louie was raised. When the family finally came to Utah in 1866 sixteenyear-old Louie met her future husband, Joseph H. Felt, who was returning from a mission to Europe in the same wagon train; he was ten years her senior. The couple married that fall, spent some years in the unsuccessful Muddy Mission in Nevada, and returned to Salt Lake City where they built a house on the corner of First South and Seventh East streets. Louie was never able to have children and apparently encouraged her husband to take his plural wives, two young women active in the Eleventh Ward who between them bore Joseph Felt thirteen children.

The Primary Association, over which Louie Felt and May Anderson presided for so many years, was actually the brain child of Aurelia Spencer Rogers from Farmington, Utah. She had enlisted the support of Eliza R. Snow, acknowledged leader of the Latter-day Saint women, and through her John Taylor, president of the church, in organizing the first group of children in Farmington on August 25, 1878. Louie Felt was chosen by Eliza to organize the second such group in the Eleventh Ward which began meeting in September 1878. All age groups met together, giving recitations and listening to the admonitions of the women in the presidency. Fairs, entertainments, and other projects were sponsored at the discretion of the local leaders. In such a setting, according to a coworker, Louie was an immediate success: "There were Christmas trees and baskets, the Maypole dances and games for in and out of doors. Louie B. Felt was a graceful dancer and had the spirit of play. She joined with them, a child among the children, happy in the things she and they loved."

In 1880 Eliza chose Louie as the first general president of the Primary Association. Louie recounted her call:

Then Sister Eliza said, "Sister Felt we have chosen you for this place." I was so surprised and alarmed that I immediately replied, "I am not worthy and am so ignorant. I could not fill that position. I'm sure I could not." Sister Eliza said, "If you thought you could we would not want you." Sister Precindia [Kimball] said, "Sister Felt, it has been decided that we want you." After tiiat we talked some time about the matter and when the sisters saw how I felt they gathered around me and Sister Eliza gave me a grand blessing. She also blessed me in tongues.

In spite of the call that placed Louie at the head of the organization, she was not thrust into the limelight of leadership since Eliza Snow directed the activities of the Primary on the practical level. It was Eliza and other leaders of the Relief Society who traveled throughout the territory and organized associations, not Louie. Eliza taught that the Primary and the Young Ladies' were satellite groups of the Relief Society and could be organized only under its direction or that of the priesthood. Eliza also prepared a hymn book, a catechism of Bible questions, and two books of recitations for use in the Primaries.

Louie visited only those associations that invited her and arranged for her fare since there were no general Primary funds. She rarely ventured from the northern Wasatch Front, however, and her counselors took no active part. She continued as president in her local association and until 1884 also worked with her husband and Mary Ann Freeze in the Salt Lake Stake Mutual Improvement Association.

When Eliza R. Snow died in 1887 Louie "lost her good support and council." The Edmunds-Tucker Act, passed that same year, signaled the intensified prosecution of polygamists and thus meant further unsettling for Louie and the Primary organization. Because Joseph H. Felt had two plural wives he was forced to go on the "underground," and Louie went to the East on at least two occasions to avoid testifying against him. "Then trying times began for allof us," recalled a coworker. "The raid began and we all scattered for nearly 4 years . . . but nothing much could be done, only as the stakes and wards kept the work going— and they did marvelous work." In 1889 Louie suffered a long, severe illness; so by 1890, after presiding over the Primary organization for ten years, she had yet to assume a controlling leadership role.

Meanwhile, during the 1880s the Anderson family settled in Salt Lake City, and Mary secured employment as a clerk in the dry goods store of R. K. Thomas & Co. She and her mother called on the Felts soon after their arrival in the valley and during the next seven years the friendship of Louie and Mary grew. During this time Mary changed her name to May because Louie thought it would avoid confusion with such close friends as Mary Freeze. May began occasionally to stay overnight at the Felt residence which was closer to her work than was her parents' home. Louie had not recovered completely from her long illness when Joseph Felt received notice of a business trip that would take him out of town for at least six weeks, and so he asked May if she would stay with Louie. Thereafter, the two women lived together for nearly three decades. "Those who watched their devotion to each other declare that there never were more ardent lovers than these two. . . .," commented a lesson prepared for the Primary children about the two years later. "These two have never been separated unless duty called them away from each other and many have been the long and difficult trips they have taken together for the Primary work."

This personal association led naturally to May's call to the general board of the Primary as secretary in 1890, related as follows in the Children's Friend:

As Sister Felt was about to make a trip to Springville to visit the Primaries there, May said, "I really wish I could go too." Brother Felt said, "You may. I'll buy you both a ticket." So they started on their trip. Sister Felt was a little worried about accommodation when they arrived. She knew the Primary workers would be prepared to entertain her, but she wondered whether the presence of two visitors would inconvenience them. As she was wondering about this, the thought came to her, "Why not make May a Primary worker. She would be a good one." So the next day on the train she said to her, "May why couldn't you be a worker on the General Board?" May laughed and laughed and said, "What do I know about your work? And if you should call upon me to pray in public I would die." Sister Felt said, "I believe it is your calling," and May responded, "I would like to think that I would always be with you.

This coming together of the two women in the interest of the Primary was significant because 1890 was a watershed year for the church. The Manifesto, halting the practice of plural marriage, signaled a new willingness by the church to move into the mainstream of American, society. Also in 1890 the Free Public School Act was passed by the Utah Territorial Legislature after years of opposition by the church. With the establishing of tax-supported public schools, Latter-day Saint doctrine could not be included in the secular curriculum, and the thought of "godless" education worried many. "If there was a time when it was important to attend to the spiritual education of our children," Louie warned a convention of Primary workers in Salt Lake City that year, "it is now when so many of our little ones attend the district school, where religion is forbidden to be taught." She concluded that it was therefore "necessary to take a more general interest in the welfare of the souls of our little children." Primary leaders were forced to examine their program further when, in response to secular education, weekly religion classes were established by edict from the First Presidency and were perceived by some as competing with the Primary.

In addition to these new problems, the Primary continued to face challenges endemic since the founding. "Counselor . . . told the children she thought they might try to be orderly for one hour and that these societies were for their especial benefit and they should pay attention," was the often repeated entry in the minutes of most associations as the local presidencies tried to cope with as many as a hundred children ranging from age four to fourteen in a single room for an hour or more. Leaders constantly complained that few boys attended, and as one stake leader bluntly related in a Primary convention in Salt Lake, she "found that the work in some associations appeared to be growing monotonous."

Thus, the time was ripe for change and Louie had auspiciously gained a capable partner in her friend May. "With May's efficient help Louie seemed to take new interest," recalled a coworker. The direction they would follow was determined to a large extent in 1894 when the two took a class in kindergarten principles and practices from a visiting teacher through the University of Utah. The experience clearly influenced their ideas about the education of children, "and from that time the Primary began to take on definite and steady growth."

By Christmas of 1895 the Deseret Evening News reported a party for the private kindergarten the two were operating in the basement of the Eleventh Ward meetinghouse.

One of the most pleasant entertainments of recent occurrence was given last evening at the Eleventh Ward meetinghouse by the private kindergarten of that ward, conducted by Mrs. Louie Felt and Mary Anderson. The class consisted of thirty-one children, from three to six years of age. Joseph H. Felt then gave a brief description of the kindergarten work and the remarkable progress. An interesting program was then rendered, the children being questioned by Mrs. Felt, making their own choice of what should be done.

The joint venture continued for two years, and May operated the kindergarten for two years on her own; she then worked for four years at the University of Utah in the kindergarten attached to the normal school.

In 1895 as the two women were opening their kindergarten, Louie was still president of the Primary in her own ward, a position she had held since 1878 except for five years during the difficulties with polygamy when she had gone east; May was second counselor. That year, no doubt influenced by their work through the university and educational developments in the Sunday School, they had a number of young women called as aids or assistant secretaries so that the children in the ward Primary could be divided by age into three classes and taught in separate rooms. Schools in Utah had been graded beginning in the 1870s, and the Sunday School auxiliary had also begun grading its classes in the 1870s and 1880s. Perhaps in response to limited physical facilities the Primary, organizing at the same period, had followed a more conservative approach, paralleled by the Mutual Improvement Association which did not grade until 1902.

The experiment in the Eleventh Ward must have been successful, for in that same year the members of the Primary general board were encouraging Primaries to grade their associations into three groups. By 1896 a stake worker could report to the board that she "had found the associations in excellent order more particularly in the wards where the associations were graded." In that year the board also presented a suggested outline for work to the stake leaders for the first time, and they began to lobby for their own publication, an idea of May's first mentioned as early as 1893 but becoming an increasing necessity if the general board was to provide detailed direction and standardized lessons geared to the various grades.

On the eve of the new century Louie was asked, along with other prominent Utah women, to express her sentiments on the old and new for the Woman's Exponent. The feelings of excitement she must have shared with May as they directed the innovations in the Primary come through clearly in her optimistic reply:

So many changes have come to pass in our actions toward children and in our methods in rearing and training, that much might be said or written about them.

We have much to be grateful for to Pestalozzi and Froebel and many others who have filled our own and our children's lives with pleasures and experiences of object lessons, and the Kindergarten. . . .

And as the care of children is woman's special charge, the new century will see much advancement and many things which today are in the experimental stage will be proven and tested, and whatever is unworthy will be cast out. . . . With the possibilities of the newer education added to those long inherited qualities, the race of men will grow and increase in the virtues and grace of life, as well as in intelligence and power.

The newer education—kindergarten, Pestalozzi, Froebel, and later Hall and Dewey—which came to be known as progressive education provided the framework in which the Primary developed. Louie and May and the women they called to serve with them on the general board clearly supported the assumptions of this approach: Sound lessons must be appropriate to a child's mental development, and a child's emotional and physical development affects his ability to learn and must be addressed in any educational scheme.

Three specific Primary projects grew out of this philosophy and characterized the Primary for several decades thereafter: continual planning and shifting of curriculum to reflect assumptions about how children learn, editing a magazine to bring the information to teachers and gradually to speak directly to children, and evolving programs such as a hospital to address the physical as well as intellectual needs of children.

In 1901 the Primary finally received approval to publish a magazine, unanimously christened the Children's Friend, provided the women could keep it out of debt. Symbolic of their joint commitment, Louie pledged her house as collateral on the venture and May quit her job at the university normal school to work full-time in the Primary office. The two women worked full-time together on Primary business for the next twenty-four years until Louie was released as president; May continued as president herself for fourteen additional years. The magazine was successful, financially and otherwise, and continues today as the Friend with nearly 200,000 subscribers in many different countries far from its Utah birthplace.

The working relationship that had been growing with their friendship matured during these years into a symbiotic partnership with each compensating for the weaknesses and complementing the strengths of the other. May, no longer a shy and inexperienced girl, was a self-confident and efficient professional who filled for the Primary the organizational gap left by Eliza R. Snow's death. Louie remained the spiritual and charismatic leader and the arbiter of difficulties among board members, some sparked by May's blunt and candid personality.

Their letters reflect their differing temperaments. "We are always so pleased to get a letter or card from you even though we are so slow in responding. But but! the same old story, too much to do, and the doers in a constant state of being too tired," wrote May to an old friend in 1917. The next paragraph of the friendly epistle reveals the characteristic flair for the somewhat tactless, if honest, comment: "Your flowers came too late for the conference and too wilted to do anything with, but we did appreciate the loving thoughtfulness that prepared and sent them." May's blunt style stands out all the more boldly when compared to Louie's glowing greetings in a letter written to the same friend the day before:

Your card, letter, pictures and kind wishes all here before me. And I can't tell you how pleased I was to receive them. I had many letters, telegrams, and various other things on my birthday, but none so dear to me as yours. . . . God bless and keep you, sweetheart, and return you in safety when you are ready to return to us once more.

Such differences in temperament and manner of communicating sparked occasional disagreement even between Louie and May. When a young clerk working in the Primary office was offered an increase of salary from sixty to eighty-five dollars a month if she would join a city firm, Louie's immediate response, undoubtedly influenced by her own sense of loyalty and kindness, was to encourage the young woman to stay with the Primary by offering her a raise of ten dollars per month—a raise that nevertheless fell short of that offered by the other firm. May, with a characteristic blend of justness and pragmatism, stated that

she did not approve of holding a girl back when she had opportunity to advance and recommended that [the girl] be permitted to take the new position. Stated that she was sure the services of another girl equally fitted for the work in the office could be procured for fifty or sixty dollars.

The majority of the board responded to Louie's more empathic recommendation and voted to keep the girl with them.

Such overt differences between the two were, however, extremely rare, though Louie undoubtedly soothed the feelings of others who encountered difficulty in dealing with May's abrupt candor. When Louie retired in 1925 some members of the general board could not adjust to the change and eventually left in dissatisfaction. Most who worked with May, however, came to admire her. "Now that I knew her and understood how her mind worked, I found it a real pleasure to serve with her," explained one board member who at first had expected to encounter a very "dictatorial and unbending 'old maid.' "

She no longer offended me with her blunt remarks; in fact, I enjoyed her utter frankness. . . . Her first thought was always for the welfare of the children of the Church. It bothered her not at all if her plan was inconvenient for the teachers or difficult for the parents.

Whatever the source of disagreement among board members, Louie was the peacemaker. "All that I am God has made me. He blesses me, but I have never felt need of sympathy so much as to-day," she confessed on one such occasion. She said

that no one realized how she had suffered through the trouble which had recently come into the Board. . . . Said that she felt that if she had choice between everything in the world and her work she would choose her work and her sisters.

Such pleas for unity were characteristic. A coworker called Louie "a wonderful arbiter of difficulties and ours never lasted very long."

Louie and May often traveled together when they visited the stakes. Louie's engaging personality inspired frequent expressions of admiration:

President Felt, who visited this stake also,. . . was specially honored by being crowned queen of the Primary Association, the children placing a wreath of flowers on her head with appropriate original sentiments.

On another occasion:

A special float had been prepared in honor of Sister Felt and officers were very disappointed on account of her not being in attendance.

Her warm manner as well as her acknowledged spiritual gifts, nurtured by association with such women as Eliza R. Snow, Zina H. Young, and Mary Ann Freeze, endeared Louie to coworkers. She would often bless board members before they visited the wards and stakes, and prayer meetings for board members in distress were held. When the Primary moved into new offices in 1902 the rooms were dedicated by one of the women. On one occasion, while visiting a stake with May, she received a note during the meeting, asking her to call at a particular home. Stopping there she found a gravely ill baby and, at the mother's request, knelt and prayed for the child, promising recovery. As she traveled home she was disturbed at her promise, for she feared the child would die. Several months later she received a letter of gratitude from the mother enclosed with a picture of a healthy child.

Loyalties to the Primary were thus molded and strengthened. Louie remarked on one occasion that "when she resigned it should be when the spiritual condition of the Board was equal to the financial condition." Her personal and spiritual presence was central to the Primary organization, though she characteristically remarked that "she felt very humble in the part she had been able to play in the Primary work and would like to remain in the background."

Organizationally, Louie did remain in the background, preferring a supporting rather than an initiating role. Both women had exhibited their commitment to the magazine, and Louie as well as May continued to spend hours on the endeavor—soliciting subscriptions, collecting paper and string, wrapping and personally addressing and mailing hundreds of copies. May became the editor and continued as such until she was released from the general board in 1939.

May was also centrally involved in the planning of curriculum. From 1902 until 1916 she wrote all of the lessons that appeared in the magazine, relinquishing the writing only because of a doctor's order forcing her to curtail activities. After 1920 she was again in charge of the committees that prepared the lessons, personally spearheading the activity-oriented Seagull program for the older girls begun in the early 1920s. Louie, as she preferred, remained in the background.

The working relationship of the two women is perhaps best exhibited by their joint efforts on behalf of what became the Primary Children's Hospital—May as organizer, Louie as emotional supporter. Louie and May had apparently been moved by the plight of a crippled boy they had seen trying to cross a street, and May had conceived the idea of a children's ward in the LDS Hospital to be sponsored by the Primary. Such a ward was opened in 1911. Louie often visited the children, rarely exceeding two or three in number, kept the board apprised of the project's development, and urged board members to "visit the children at the Hospital as often as possible."

May was the Primary representative on the Correlation Committee and the Social Advisory Committee—churchwide planning committees with representatives from various auxiliaries and priesthood groups— which assigned specific social welfare functions to the various organizations within the church in 1920. The Primary in particular was given responsibility for providing a day nursery for children as well as private care of dependent orphans and neglected children, preadolescent recreation, and training for community service. May and Louie, who had dreamed of expanding the children's ward in the LDS hospital into a convalescent hospital, saw in the articulated assignment for the social welfare of the children new life for the idea of a hospital. In July 1921 they traveled east to visit children's homes and hospitals. On their return, May oversaw the formulation of plans for a new institution, implemented in 1922 with the opening of the LDS Children's Convalescent Home and Day Nursery in the remodeled Hyde home on North Temple. Later, May began planning a new hospital to replace the converted home, an idea not finally realized until 1952 after the deaths of both women. The Primary Children's Hospital would eventually become a leading center for pediatric medicine in the Intermountain West, with children from all over the world using its services, many paid for with Primary money.

Ironically, May Anderson, the shy and inexperienced immigrant girl on the Salt Lake-bound train that day in 1883, had become the efficient organizer of a religious program for children that eventually expanded far beyond the confines of Utah where it was born and nurtured. Louie Bouton Felt, the prominent and experienced church member, continued to soothe difficulties and inspire confidence in the expanding Primary. This working partnership, buttressed by an enduring personal friendship, fashioned ultimately the unique contours of the Primary Association.

The decade of the 1890s was a period of crisis and change, and the Primary, along with other auxiliaries of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, was impelled to adopt reforms to address pressing needs. Though the general trends were common to all auxiliaries, the specific articulation of these trends can be traced in the Primary to concerns and experiences shared and responded to by Louie Felt and May Anderson at this critical juncture. Their decisions still affect the Primary, now in its 103d year with a half-million members worldwide and a hundred thousand officers and teachers. Each contributed her unique strengths. Writing to a friend, Louie concluded with a phrase that aptly describes these joint contributions: "you in your small corner, me in my small corner, doing the best we are equal to."

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