Person

Zina Huntington Young

Zina Diantha Huntington, an early convert to the Mormon faith and wife to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young, was born in Watertown, New York, on the last day of January 1821. The Huntingtons belonged to the Presbyterian faith and spent most evenings reading from the Bible. After encountering Mormon missionaries in 1835, however, the entire family (excepting the eldest brother) joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints movement. Fourteen-year-old Zina Diantha was baptized by Hyrum Smith on 1 August 1835.

The Huntingtons later moved to Kirtland, Ohio, and then to the Mormon encampment at Far West, Missouri. After Missouri’s governor ordered all Mormons to leave the state in 1838, Zina’s father helped organize their exodus to Illinois. Not long after their April 1839 departure from Missouri, Zina and her mother took ill—most likely cholera; Zina recovered, but her mother succumbed, leaving her eldest daughter to manage the household. That winter, Emma Smith—the wife of the movement’s leader, Joseph Smith—nursed Zina back to health.

It was during this time Joseph Smith taught Zina about plural marriage. Smith proposed that she become his plural wife. Zina avoided answering him, later marrying Henry Bailey Jacobs—a popular preacher and missionary with the church—on 7 March 1841. Despite her civil marriage, however, Zina felt that her rejection of Smith’s proposal might be akin to rejecting the will of the Lord. While Henry was away on a church mission, Smith continued to pressure Zina to join him in what he termed “celestial marriage,” and in late October 1841, at age eighteen, she acquiesced, becoming his fifth wife. Henry evidently accepted the spiritual marriage of his wife to Smith, who passed away in 1844.

Zina was seven months pregnant with her and Henry’s second child when she was sealed (married) on 2 February 1846 to Brigham Young, who had assumed a number of Smith’s spiritual wives along with leadership of the church. Henry witnessed the ceremony, which— from the church’s perspective—dissolved his union with Zina (although Henry may not have understood that at the time). Two weeks later, Zina, Henry, and their son Zebulon left Nauvoo to join the Mormons who had started to gather in Iowa in preparation for their mass migration to the Salt Lake Valley.

Twenty miles from Nauvoo, at the crossing of the Chariton River, Zina gave birth to Henry’s son, Henry Chariton. They moved on two days later, with Zina and her two sons riding inside the family wagon. While in Iowa, Young sent Henry to England to do missionary work, and—although Henry continued to profess his love for Zina—they never lived together again. From that point forward, Zina lived with Young and his other plural wives in an open polygamous relationship. In September 1848, Zina arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, where she would raise Zebulon, Henry, and her daughter Zina (born to her and Young in 1850). She also raised four other children, the products of Young’s marriage to his deceased plural wife Clara Ross.

Zina became increasingly involved in public service. She became a schoolteacher, organized a nursing school, and studied obstetrics—even using midwifery skills gleaned from her mother to deliver babies. In 1872, Young established Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City. In 1876 she was appointed president of the Deseret Silk Association for her tireless attempts to cultivate silkworms and mulberry trees to aid local cloth production. She was also active in the temperance and woman suffrage movements, attending the Women’s Conference in Buffalo and the National Woman Suffrage Association convention in New York. She became the first counselor of the LDS Church’s Relief Society in 1880 and served as the right hand of the organization’s president; in 1888, she became the Relief Society’s third president. Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young later became vice-president of the Utah National Council for Women and Matron of the Salt Lake Temple, positions she held until her death on 28 August 1901 at age 80.

(Special thanks to UNM PhD candidate Angela Reiniche for compiling this information)

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