Within the pages of this issue, women raise children, spin cloth, found hospitals, operate hotels, homestead ranches, advocate for rights, and much else—an amount of effort that attests to the fact that whatever the venue or the capacity, women have always worked. Women's opportunities for education, remuneration, public engagement, personal fulfillment, or even physical comfort, on the other hand, depend in part on the societies in which they live. This issue of Utah Historical Quarterly focuses on women in nineteenth-century Utah and illustrates a few of the laws, community ties, money-making options, and institutions that affected their business and personal lives.
In 1870s Utah, Latter-day Saint and Catholic leaders separately called on women to expand their traditional healing roles; and in Salt Lake City, two sets of women responded by founding Deseret Hospital and Holy Cross Hospital. Deseret Hospital closed just over a decade after its opening, while Holy Cross...
