"Hid and Seek": Children on the Underground

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 51, 1983, No. 2

"Hide and Seek": Children on the Underground

BY MARTHA SONNTAG BRADLEY

Then came the days when the Edmunds Law was in evidence . . . and the polygamous families were hounded till their lives were a weary drag to many of them.

THE EDMUNDS AND EDMUNDS-TUCKER ACTS OPENED a long season of trouble for polygamous men and their wives that fell with equal force upon the heads of their children. The Congress of the United States had by 1890 passed a series of bills designed to destroy the institution of plural marriage among the Mormons. The cumulative result of these bills was the disincorporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the escheatment of church properties, the disfranchisement of its polygamist members and their disqualification from holding public office, and numerous other violations of basic rights provided by the Bill of Rights to the Constitution of the United States.

Although it is possible to observe violations of basic constitutional rights during the 1870s and '80s, it is more difficult to evaluate the effects of the conflict on the children involved, the "innocent bystanders" who were raised in the atmosphere of persecution, secrecy, and hatred of the crusade to end polygamy.

Mormon historiography has often ignored young Saints as objects of interest and study. This article, however, proposes to center its attention on this forgotten minority and direct certain questions to their story, such as: What were the effects of antipolygamy legislation, in particular the Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker acts, upon the children of polygamous unions? Did their legal and social position change during the interim? And finally, what enduring changes did this experience cause in their lives?

Orson Pratt publicly announced the Mormon doctrine and practice of plural marriage on the morning of August 29, 1852, before a conference of the church in Salt Lake City. Acknowledging that members of the church, particularly church leaders, both believed in and practiced plural marriage as early as the 1840s, Elder Pratt elaborately defended polygamy as grounded in both Biblical and moral practice. He told the Saints that in celestial marriage, male members — when approved by the prophet — were called upon by God to prove their faith through the selection of additional wives. Brigham Young reminded the Saints: "The revelation which God gave to Joseph, was for the express purpose of providing a channel for the organization of tabernacles for those spirits to occupy who have been reserved to come forth in the Kingdom of God."

Despite its seeming incongruity in American monogamous culture, plural marriage was officially preached and practiced by the Mormons for a decade before any legislation attempted to limit its practice. During the three decades after its announcement U.S. citizen groups mobilized against the church; in 1856 polygamy was coupled with slavery as the "twin relics of barbarism" and was singled out for attack by the Republican party.

Gentile opposition to plural marriage focused on issues of a religious, moral, and social nature. The Mormon polygamist lived in what seemed to be a deliberate affront to traditional monogamous standards. Although the question of the morality of the marriage union itself became the focal point of debate and discussion, beneath the surface lay other potentially inflammatory issues among which the fear of limitless reproduction of potential polygamists was paramount.

The first antibigamy act Congress passed, the Morrill Act of July 1862, was generally ineffective in its attempt to put an end to polygamy among the Mormons, although it did prescribe punishment for any offenders. The law was motivated by sentiment in Congress to "punish and prevent the practice of polygamy in the Territories of the United States and to disapprove and annul certain acts of the territorial legislature of Utah." The latter clause immediately referred to those laws in Utah that incorporated the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and gave it power to perform marriages. Ultimately, however, the act anticipated eliminating the control of public offices by church leaders and members which prevented the enforcement in Utah of legislation unfavorable to the church. Finally, with the passage of the Morrill Act in 1862, Congress acknowledged that the question of Mormon polygamy was federal in nature and therefore within its constitutional jurisdiction.

Church leaders felt that the practice of polygamy was protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution, which provides that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." The limits of this argument were tried in 1875 by the test case Reynolds v. United States, which forced the Supreme Court to interpret the First Amendment. The court's decision that "Laws are made for the government of actions and while they cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices" reflected the opinion that when religious belief resulted in actions that threatened society, those beliefs could be subjected to governmental regulation. Although the court's decision of 1879 created little difference in the legal climate within Utah, it did provide a precedent for the prosecution of polygamists and gave new fuel to the battle between Saints and the Gentile world.

The court based its decision on the assumption that polygamous Mormonism threatened the basic moral and social order of American society. The potential for the growth of the practice of polygamy beyond the borders of Utah threatened the country at large. Therefore, children were an important consideration. In his closing remarks the original trial judge of Reynolds v. United States had instructed the jury:

I think it not improper in the discharge of your duties in this case, that you should consider what are to be the consequences to the innocent victims of this delusion. As the contest goes on they multiply, and there are innocent children — innocent in a sense even beyond the degree of innocence of childhood itself. These are to be the sufferers, and as jurors fail to do their duty, and as these cases come up in the Territory, just so do these victims multiply and spread themselves over the land.

By the 1880s national indignation at polygamist practices had increased to such a degree that it prompted legislation strengthening the Morrill Act. The Edmunds Act of 1882 improved both the spirit and the fact of earlier laws by establishing both polygamy and cohabitation as crimes and determining that such unions were not legally binding. Section 7 addressed the products of polygamist unions, legitimizing children born prior to January 1, 1883, which allowed for children already conceived. Thereafter, all children of plural marriages were declared illegitimate.

Even as public sentiment grew in support of further measures to strengthen the Edmunds law, the federal courts in Utah were readied for action. With polygamists or believers in the doctrine of plural marriage kept from jury duty, federal judges and district attorneys prepared for what eventually would be called the "judicial crusade," which determined the ultimate effectiveness of the legislation.

When, on August 23, 1884, Charles S. Zane arrived in Utah Territory to begin his tenure as chief justice, the war against polygamy in the courts began in earnest. By the end of 1885 eightysix polygamists had been indicted, twenty-six had been sent to prison, and others awaited their trials. There were few acquittals.

Many church leaders responded to this added pressure by making token accommodations to the law, such as providing separate homes for their different families or living openly with only one family; but hundreds of men went into hiding to avoid prosecution, establishing a policy of "passive resistance." Church leaders directed polygamists to avoid arrest and conviction rather than seek active confrontation. In a circular of March 5, 1885, official policy was delineated:

We do not think it advisable for brethren to go into court and plead guilty. . . . Every case should be defended with all the zeal and energy possible. The families of these brethren who are imprisoned, and those who have been compelled to flee, should be looked after.

Many responded by going on the "underground," as it was known among the Saints, or disappearing in cleverly conceived hideouts in barns, behind secret doors, or under floors, or retreating to cornfields or canyon caves. One child of a polygamous family later described it as "the greatest game of hide-and-seek ever played, certainly the most serious." Many fugitives fled to neighboring homes and communities, some traveling as far away as Mexico and Canada. Mormon colonies were eventually established in these two neighboring countries to provide for polygamous families. This cautious hiding out totally disrupted family life, causing men to leave their wives and children for years at a time and compelling them to provide for themselves. Many mothers and children also went into hiding to avoid being called into court to testify against their husbands and fathers.

In 1887 Congress passed the Edmunds-Tucker Act which contained further provisions intended to dilute the power of the church. Many elements of the bill facilitated the prosecution of men for cohabitation, such as women being forced to testify against their husbands. Most stringent, however, were those sections that severely limited the power of the church in Utah, such as the dissolution of the Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Section 11 of the law hit directly at the question of the legitimacy of polygamous children and discontinued their protection under estate law. It specified

that the laws enacted by the Territory of Utah, which provide for or recognize the capacity of illegitimate children to inherit or to be entitled to any distributive share in the estate of the father of such illegitimate child are hereby disapproved and annulled; and no illegitimate child shall here after be entitled to inherit from his or her father or to receive any distributive share in the estate of his or her father: Provided that this section shall not apply to any illegitimate child born previous to the passage of this act.

As early as 1851 it was recognized that neither common nor statute law acknowledged plural marriages as legal entities. It was clear, however, that despite their legal situation plural wives and their children needed to be protected in the matter of property inheritance. The Mormon-controlled territorial legislature of 1852 passed the first law providing guidelines for the inheritance of property by polygamous families. This statute stated that if a father died without a will (children of plural unions could always inherit shares in their father's estates if provided for through a will) that

Illegitimate children and their mothers inherit in like manner from the father, whether acknowledged by him or not, provided it shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court that he was the father of such illegitimate child or children.

This act recognized that polygamous children and their mothers were on an equal legal footing with other family units, reflecting the conservative Mormon viewpoint toward these marriages. On the other hand, however, the 1852 law also reflected the Gentile opinion that the offspring of plural marriages were illegitimate.

The Morrill Act cancelled this measure with an all-embracing clause that eliminated any law that facilitated the practice of polygamy. The proviso attempted to

annul all acts and laws which establish, maintain, protect, or countenance the practice of polygamy, evasively called spiritual marriage, however disguised by legal or ecclesiastical solemnities, sacraments, ceremonies, consecrations or other contrivances.

This was interpreted as applying to the inheritance by illegitimate children of part of their father's estate.

In territorial Utah code law rather than common law was in use. Under the Utah Code, children had distinct rights and were protected in areas other than rights of inheritance. Domestic relations were clearly a primary concern of the territorial legislature and were carefully delineated through law. Minor children were the responsibility of their parents until marriage or until they reached their majority, which was for male children twenty-one years of age and for females eighteen years of age. In the event of the death of his parents or the determination of their unsuitability, guardians appointed for the child assumed duties of parents.

Many of the provisions that defined the relationship between parents and children were quality-of-life considerations that prescribed a child's right to a good life. Every child had the right to be properly supported and to receive health care, food, and education. One law instructed that parents, guardians, or masters should

send the said minor child to school between the ages of six and sixteen, three months in each year if there be a school in the district or vicinity; and at all times, and in all cases the master shall clothe the minor child in a comfortable and becoming manner.

Children were to be provided for through their father's estate by right of law and ideally would experience a reasonably stable place of residence.

Parents were obligated to raise responsible citizens and disciplined moral individuals. The duty of parents or masters with their apprentices was "to correct and teach each minor child to observe the principles of good order and industry, and train him or her to some useful avocation."

The Edmunds and Edmunds-Tucker acts caused minor changes in the Utah Code in the area of estate transference. In other areas, obstructions to the rights of children were the direct result of the prosecution of their polygamist fathers. Basic rights under the Utah Code were violated, resulting in the subsequent violation of children's rights.

When fathers or mothers, sometimes both, went on the underground, the child's principal means of support was taken away. Not only was the quality of his health, education, and physical surroundings threatened but also his potential for survival itself. Left on isolated farmsteads, often with several brothers and sisters, each child and his family had to scramble for food and shelter.

With the influence of the father taken away, many children developed close relationships with their mothers but had no similar chance to do so with their fathers. Mothers were often so overburdened by every aspect of running both the farm and the family that they did not have time to give personalized attention to each child. The quality of instruction from the child's parents was severely limited as fathers no longer exercised an influence and mothers rarely had time for more than the most basic teaching. Although code law made a strict determination of unsuitable parenting in terms of violent cruelty, physical abuse, or abandonment, forced separation of a child from his parents — whether because of the underground or a prison term — created a new legion of negligent parents, most of whom, ironically, wanted to remain with rather than forsake or deny their families. In one strange twist of federal law, which considered imprisonment as abandonment of the child, parents could have lost control of their children forever. Fortunately, no polygamist cases focused on this particular issue.

Matters of custody and child support were complicated ones before the court. Because plural marriages were not legally binding and because illegitimate children could not inherit from their fathers, the question of their support during prison terms was confusing and often ignored.

Certain features of court proceedings foreshadowed an uncomfortable future for polygamists: all-Gentile trial juries, imprisonment of wives who refused to testify against their husbands, extreme sentences, and the denial of bail. Children were also affected by this hedging of justice. Abraham H. Cannon, whose father (Apostle George Q. Cannon) was in hiding, described in his journal on February 7, 1886, the objective of a raid on one Cannon home of putting his Aunt Emily (his plural stepmother) and her daughters Mary, Ella, and Georgia under bonds of $2,000 and $500, respectively. However, it was not only the children of important church authorities who were summoned to testify in court. The four daughters of Charles L. Walker, a St. George polygamist, were called, along with their mother, to Beaver to testify against their father.

The practice of sending women to prison for refusing to testify against their husbands had tremendous implications for their children who would then most likely be left without either parent. In some extreme cases, pregnant women or women with small infants were sent to prison. In 1885 one plural wife, Mrs. Harris, received a contempt citation for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury about the nature of her relationship with her polygamous husband. As a result, she spent three months in the overcrowded Utah penitentiary with her baby. In 1889 another plural wife, Lucy Devereau, spent six weeks imprisoned with a small child.

Rather than face prosecution and an inevitable prison sentence, most polygamists left their families and went into hiding; communities were turned upside down as families scattered for safety and neighbors generously assisted those on the run. Mormon communities, which had always been marked by a high degree of cooperation, became tightly knit enclaves in which strangers were suspiciously avoided.

Often, federal marshals chose church meeting time to ride into town in pursuit of indicted polygamists. Anticipating that these men would be worshiping with their families, deputies interrupted virtually any public assemblage, whether church meetings or town gatherings, with the single objective of capturing fugitives. When Saints were gathered in worship or for recreation and federal marshals came, church authorities scattered, polygamists were warned off or smuggled to safety, and the community united to protect its own. The father of Ellis Day Coombs, a child during the raid period, was often on the run, usually hiding in the surrounding hills until signaled to return. Ellis recounted the support town members gave to one another.

Many times when I was sent to town, I saw strangers and, being sure they were "Deputy Marshals," I would rush home to tell my father to go and hide. The entire community stood together against those who came to arrest our men who were wanted for polygamy. I remember one Sunday afternoon, we gathered at the church in Sacrament meeting. Two marshals, who were known to be after some of our brethren, walked into the church. The whole congregation arose and the marshals were surrounded while two of the wanted men escaped through a window and got away safely. It was very difficult for strangers, who were always suspected of being marshals to get any information from the townspeople. This situation led to some humorous episodes.

The Mormons felt justified in their use of extralegal measures in their defense of the "principle." The conviction that plural marriage was of God and that it ensured blessings in the hereafter seemed to justify obstruction of the law. Indeed, Mormons responded to the strengthened antipolygamy legislation with a resurgence in the number of polygamous marriages during 1884-85. This enthusiasm, wrought by persecution, was a curious expression of the Mormon reaction to pressure.

Church leaders felt justified in their policy of subterfuge because of methods used by federal officials that they felt blatantly ignored both common practice and constitutional law. LDS President John Taylor, on February 1, 1885, protested the methods of federal officials when he said:

When little children are set in array against their fathers and mothers, and women and children are badgered before courts and made to submit, unprotected, to the jibes of libertines and corrupt men; when wives and husbands are pitted against each other and threatened with pains, penalties and imprisonment, if they do not disclose that which among all decent people is considered sacred, and which no man of delicacy, whose sensibilities have not been blunted by low associates, would ever ask; when such a condition of affairs exist, it is no longer a land of liberty, and no longer a land of equal rights, and we must take care of ourselves as best we may, and avoid being caught in any of their snares.

Believers in the "principle" also felt that federal officials were attempting to interfere with the Lord's work.

Public meetings were not the only scene of attack; deputies burst into private homes at any time of the day or night. The home of Thomas Billington Nelson, who was hunted for over four years, was searched more than a hundred times. At one time Nelson stayed in a single room for forty days, never daring even to part the shade to see the sunlight.

Night raids by groups of deputies were a terrifying experience for the children of polygamous households. Meeting strange men who wanted to take their fathers away, even in the daytime, was difficult and demanded that even the smallest children keep silent in response to questions about family relations. One daughter remembered the tense atmosphere of the underground period when her family was always in danger.

I had a very happy childhood except for the years of the underground. That was terrible. The officers sometimes came at three in the morning to search the house. At night, if we opened the door, people would go scurrying — people who had been looking in the windows to see if father was there. I wouldn't go out at night alone. We never knew where father was, so if the officers asked us we couldn't tell them.

Families remained in a constantly unsettled condition as they responded to the danger presented by the federal marshals. It was impossible for life to proceed with any degree of normality when even the simplest activities of childhood had to be cautiously adapted to raid conditions. The joys of Christmas and birthdays were overshadowed by the constant threat of losing one's parents to the strange invaders of their homes. Ellis Day Coombs described one Valentine's Day that was utterly ruined by the presence of the deputy marshals:

When I was five years of age we had an experience in the family which I have never forgotten. It was Valentine night, 1889. Estella and I had been out with most of our valentines and were warming up by the fireplace ready to go one more place, when there was a knock on the door. We rushed to open the door, expecting more valentines, but instead there stood two strange men. They did not wait to be asked in, but came boldly into the room. They were the U.S. Deputy Marshals and informed mother that she and Estella, only nine years old, were subpoenaed to appear in court, at some future date, in Provo, to give testimony against father. Mother was very angry and told the men what she thought of them in no uncertain terms. Father was serving a sentence in the State Prison at the time —

We were all so frightened we could not control ourselves. Estella was crying as hard as she could and jumping up and down saying over and over "I don't want to go." This frightened me more than ever and I was crying too.

As a child, Ellis was possessed by a gripping fear at the sight of the marshals that was extended to all strangers. Every outsider seemed to threaten the security of her family: "The first thing I remember being afraid of was strange men. Every stranger I saw was a 'deputy marshal' to me and I was constantly in fear of their finding my father and taking him away to prison."

Although they represented the federal government, many of the deputies were unsavory characters. Some enforcement officers were orderly in the execution of their duties, but among them were other men who attempted to create more trouble and to capitalize on the misfortunes of the Mormons. Often whole communities were terrorized by these ruffians whose tactics of violence, threats, and boastful disregard of legal methods of search and seizure kept every family member in constant fear for his safety. Joseph Smith Black described a typical experience in which family members were abruptly brought out of their night's sleep while strangers pushed through their homes:

When all was quiet during the small hours in the morning a loud rap would be heard at the door. The family would spring from their beds and in sudden tones would whisper the word, and some one of the family would ask, "Who is there?" and they would say, "Marshals, Open the door or we will bunt it down," and if the Father happened to be in the house he would meet them at the door and admit them, and with cocked revolvers they would demand his surrender. ... In case the husband was not at home, the wife with almost frantic fear, would admit the deputies to the house and sometimes by threats and abusive language she would be compelled to show them through the house, while the children would nestle close together in their beds, being almost overcome with fright and anxiety for the safety of their Father and protector.

Secrecy and deception were necessary tactics to protect fathers from arrest by the marshals. Children who had previously been taught to be truthful, honest people were instructed to be evasive when questioned, to misinform, and to lie if necessary. They were taught, through experience, the paradoxical nature of good and that unorthodox methods were often needed to resolve unusual situations.

It was sometimes necessary to rely upon children as a shield against intruders. Children were easy to believe and difficult to intimidate. But to rely on a child's handling of a difficult situation was risky at best. Many children botched their commissions and suffered the tremendous guilt of feeling responsible for the parent's troubles.

The obvious presence of a baby in a household forced many young mothers onto the underground. Pregnancies or infants were often living proof of involvement in polygamous unions. Annie Clark Tanner told of the end of her days at home when it became obvious that she was no longer a single maid.

I spent the last free day at home in Farmington. I felt a little sad to have to leave, not that I regretted my situation, for I was happy at the prospect of being a mother, but because of the natural affection I felt for the loved ones home and the uncertainty of the future. However, the morning of the eleventh of April, 1888, about five months before the birth of my first child, I bade farewell to my family and took a last look at the dear old homes. I could no longer pass as Miss Clark.

Babies were carefully hidden when strangers came through town. One young mother, Martha Cragun Cox, said that if need be she would "snatch up my baby and run to the fields, the hills, sleep on the ground, under the bushes, anywhere." These little babies lay with their mothers in the night air, under the stars, covered with heavy quilts, even in their infancy protecting their fathers.

Mothers could not indulge little babies with bright toys and games but had to struggle to keep them ever quiet, hidden and secret, instead of proudly exhibiting them before the world. One second wife found the first year of infancy to be the most difficult. She remembered:

When my babies were young I couldn't live like a normal human being. I had to hide in the granary out there all day long and when my baby cried, I had to feed it and try to cover its head. At night I had to lie in that little bedroom and stifle my baby's cries when the Lord's teachers called. And that was a Mormon community. . . .

Often older sisters and brothers were responsible for hiding the babies of the family. Nettie Parkinson Smoot remembered the many times she had to secrete her baby sister away, filling her mouth with "sugar tits" to satisfy her wiggling demands, each time the officers approached the house. Many of the older sisters in Nettie's father's families would claim new babies as their own to disprove their father's occasional but fruitful visits home. As the identity and parentage of these babies could be used as evidence against their parents in court, many children were raised with false names, never really knowing their proper last names until they were nearly grown. Family members and neighbors were courteously discreet in avoiding the issue of parentage; what they did not know could not be used as evidence in court. No one was above this rule, as is evident from an excerpt from Annie Clark Tanner's story that illustrates her caution even with the highest authority of the church:

President Woodruff, who was then President of the Church, noticed my attention to my little girl who was then playing on the floor. He asked if the little one belonged to me. When I answered in the affirmative, he said, "And who is the happy father?" I hesitated a little and Brother Cannon, who had married us, came to my rescue by saying, "That is hardly a fair question, is it, Brother Woodruff?

This secrecy extended to virtually all discussion of family relationships. If strangers probed into private family living arrangements or situations, they were suspected of being involved in the crusade. Children were carefully taught to avoid being questioned, but when cornered they were told to create confusion, to misinform, and then to hide themselves. Much of the crafty artifice necessary in the conflict was great fun for its young participants. In one case, an elaborate plot evolved to prevent the arrest of Rudger Clawson.

One of the Clawson boys tricked out in a gown, bonnet and shawl hastily left the house by a side entrance and in great apparent trepidation got into a carriage and was driven rapidly away. Half a dozen deputies, till then in concealment made a wild dash for the receding vehicle, and kept up the vain pursuit until the carriage with its funconvulsed occupant, vanished into the darkness.

Children, particularly young boys, were active participants in the elaborate warning system that was part of the machinery of the underground. Code names and signals were memorized by young and old alike to permit noteworthy community members to travel unharmed through the area. Used to relay messages, to transmit warnings, and to assume active parts in the underground efforts, children played a vital role in the movement of polygamists to safety. Often children were used to confuse the deputies and to gain time for the fleeing men.

The terror of confrontation was a recurring theme in nightmares. Often dreams dealt with the confusion of complicated instructions. Lucy Fenn's twelve-year-old daughter related a dream about her little brother's part in a scheme to protect her father that resulted in his capture. The constant pressure of performing successfully, of avoiding trouble themselves, and of worrying about their fathers' and neighbors' safety weighed heavily on the young and was a constant and dreary presence in their lives.

Other techniques were used to reduce the chance of arrest. Many men sent their several families to different localities and maintained not only separate households but separate farms. Splitting up the family was often a complicated and painful endeavor in which mothers and at times brothers and sisters were separated from other family members. Thomas Jeffery's plural wife was much younger than his childless first wife. When it became necessary to divide his family, practical considerations outweighed sentiment.

... he was obliged to move the mother far away, of course the children had to go with her as the first wife was now too far advanced in life and too feeble to take care of them. This good wife said, "Pa, go with Elizabeth. The Lord will sustain me in my loneliness. I am willing to pay the price for the blessing of children in your house."

This was a painful price to pay for the "principle." Hannibal Lowman took two wives to Idaho to farm, leaving the children of wife number five with number four. The Isaac Strong family's second mother hid for years while two of her children were raised by the first wife. In a particularly tragic example, upon the death of their mother Ezra Francis Martin put his children out into homes for service or education because of the refusal of his second wife to assist in their care.

In the plural family of Martha Cragun Cox work was systematized and well ordered, marked by cooperation in daily household activities. Children were raised together. When the family split up, Martha suffered a painful separation from her daughter Rose. Martha had grasped at the opportunity to teach in the Muddy Valley to help the family finances. In her husband's absence she turned to his son Isaiah Cox, Jr., for advice.

He made such a picture of my life as it might be there that I acceded to his word and consented to leave her [Rose]. She had stood by and heard our conversation with a troubled heart. I took her brothers, Ed and Frank with me to Pioche, but left her home. . . . When she heard the decision of our counsel she turned without a word and went up into the orchard and grieved her disappointment out alone and came back in an hour or two with a smiling face and assisted me in getting my things ready for my journey.

The trials and disappointment of holidays ill-spent were nothing compared to the pain caused by the wrenching apart of loved ones, particularly when small children were taken from their parents. Little Rose and others like her sacrificed enormously, searching their minds for self-control and strength. Annie Clark Tanner left home five months before the birth of her first daughter, Jennie. The two spent the next six years in traveling exile, moving every couple of months to avoid detection. Living in extra rooms, on back roads, or with strangers, this little family was deprived of the stability of a permanent home until after the official end of polygamy. The daily struggle for secrecy took a great toll on her and her small child:

We were among strangers and baby and I were very tired of traveling. I felt so tired that I thought that another year would not find me moving from one place to another with no home. It was very cold weather and neither of us were well, but then I thought of the satisfaction I had in such a sweet little companion. When I felt to complain, almost at the same moment I felt to reproach myself at seeing her innocent trusting ways. She has indeed been a comfort to me. . . .

Here again a child was a source of strength and support to her frustrated and lonely mother.

This constant moving from place to place gave many children a permanent sense of uprootedness, a lack of connection with a larger community. Although it can be argued that the children of polygamous families were part of a small community composed of relatives by marriage, this often extended only to the doors of their own homes. The isolation and secrecy required of these children prevented them from association with the outside world in which strangers and many nonpolygamous families lived. The peculiar problems that these families confronted each day commanded a certain remoteness as a matter of self-protection.

In the development of the concept of self, the child moves from an identification with his nuclear family — parents, brothers, and sisters — to a sense of his immediate community, therein seeing himself reflected against different life-styles and relationships.

Families that continually moved denied children the opportunity to form this vital identification. One young girl remembered her life on the underground as one of constant uprooting, insecurity, and a confused sense of identity.

We moved from place to place; as soon as people learned who we were, mother moved on! We went to school and church, but we weren't allowed to associate with other children for fear we would give ourselves away. Mother took in washings and did everything she could to help. Father used to come to see us whenever he could. We thought his name was Winslow and that he was away all the time because his work called him. He did his best to support us, but he couldn't do everything. Sometimes my half-brothers and sisters came to see us, and we loved to have them come. We thought they were our cousins.

Many men were called on missions to foreign countries or the southern states during the raid period which increased the strain on their families. While their fathers were gone preaching the gospel, children worked as adults. There was little time for play when all energies were spent making a living. One polygamist's daughter remembered the family's isolated efforts at survival during her father's mission to the southern states:

This left Mother with four small children to take care of beside all the chores in the house as well as ours to do. Their oldest daughter was then only ten years old. In the cold winter it would snow until things would be buried underneath. No one in town ever offered to help her, not even to chop an armful of wood.

Older children were treated as responsible adults, depended upon for support. George Dunford, while serving a term in prison for cohabitation, grieved about an accident to his oldest son Lorenzo who, at eight years old, was the key support of his mother. Dunford wrote in his prison diary:

He is my oldest-son in my Plural Family we needed him so much to helpe his poor Mother as I am deprived by the cruel Edmonds Tucker Law so it is nearly three years that I have put my foot on the Lot ware they live so we do hope so much from this our son.

Children were rarely allowed the luxury of childhood but were forced to accept a set of worries and duties of the adult world.

Every time fathers left, children feared for their safety. When life was disrupted and confusingly without rules or predictable

structure, each separation seemed like the last. Farewells were particularly poignant when fathers left for prison, fear of which seemed to be the ultimate cause of all the trouble. One father, George Dunford, wrote in his journal:

As I left the door of the house all four of our children held me around the neck and they and me we all weept together and as I left in the dark I could hear them saying angels watch over you Papa and — didn't know if they would see each other again.

Ellis Day Coombs remembered how her severed relationship with her father clouded her memory of him, making of him a veritable saint. Children were inevitably confused and surprised as their faintly remembered fathers returned home as strangers. Mrs. Coombs described the experience:

Late in the fall I was playing in the yard one day when a strange man wearing a full beard drove into the yard with a load of wood. I ran into the house to tell mother. She went out to see who it was and when I came out there was my mother held in the stranger's arms and being heartily kissed. I was very surprised but soon overjoyed to see our dear father once more.

Nettie Smoot remembered her father's return visits home as periods of intense discipline as her father reimposed his sense of order on the home and pulled the family back into shape. His visits were brief and infrequent. Nettie retained few sweet memories of her father as his occasional presence in the home had represented only a scrambling for control.

After the summer of 1888 the court began to assume a more conciliatory posture towards the polygamists. Many leaders who had been in hiding for years came out, pleading guilty to charges and serving moderate prison sentences. By the 1890s, when virtually all prosecutions had ceased, over 1,000 Mormons in Utah had been fined and/or imprisoned.

Part of the new climate of accommodation and relative calm was created by the church. In 1889 authority for plural marriages was taken from the Endowment House, and in 1890 President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto which put an official end to polygamy by forbidding any further plural marriages. President Benjamin Harrison responded in 1893 by granting amnesty to any with outstanding charges of cohabitation. Then, following statehood, the first state legislature removed the sting of illegitimacy from children of polygamous unions by passing a law stating

That the issue of bigamous and polygamous marriages, heretofore contracted between members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, born on or prior to the fourth day of January, A.D. eighteen hundred and ninety-six are hereby legitimated; and such issue are entitled to inherit from both parents, and to have and enjoy all rights and privileges to the same extent and in the same manner as though born in lawful wedlock.

The greatest irony surrounding the underground period was that the most significant change in quality of life for children was brought about by polygamy itself, rather than the legislation designed to quash it. The results of the Edmunds and Edmunds- Tucker acts were specific and limited in scope. The clauses concerning illegitimacy and inheritance dealt polygamy only a small blow. The disruption of home life was the result of fathers serving or seeking to avoid prison terms or of mothers trying to avoid being called into court to testify.

It is necessary, however, to also subject the principle of plural marriage, a doctrine that appeared to threaten the basic structure of society, to equally strict scrutiny and to attempt to evaluate the causal relationship between the institution itself and the problems of the raid period. Although antipolygamy legislation and the court's methods of enforcement created a system of laws and practices that seriously challenged the LDS church, it was above all else the Mormon reaction to this body of legislation that delineated and created the atmosphere of the underground; indeed, the underground itself represented an adaptation to laws the Saints felt hindered the work of the Lord. Mormons throughout the period had the option either to obey the law, to refuse to react, or to react in ways that the government considered appropriate. They chose overwhelmingly to act in faith.

It was, then, a complicated matter of choice and priorities. When Mormons married in the Endowment House, outside of legal jurisdiction, they risked having children that were by law bastards. When these same parents refused to discontinue their marriage relationships because they believed God wanted them to refuse, they chose to deal with the consequences, namely: arraignment and indictment or prosecution for polygamy, which the Gentiles and the government considered a crime against society.

Many of the children of the underground resembled self-rising flour, depending only on themselves. Considering the obvious importance of early dependency relationships, the key role of socializing with others, consistency and stability as prime factors in the normal development of a child, one is faced with the Mormon polygamous society's apparently deep inability to cope with the needs of young children, the "principle" often taking precedence over them.

Clearly, a number of questions remain to be asked; not enough is known about these children. Were they really so different? Did they handle stress and responsibility more readily than children of today? Does the situation appear worse in hindsight? Everyone is shaped by early feelings or memories; they follow us through life, remaining in the index file of our minds. The measure of the power of the underground experience over a child's mind was presumably expressed in his abilities as an adult and deserves serious attention.

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