Phrenology was extremely valuable to early Mormon leaders and I think Joseph Smith and all the original 12 had the bumps on their heads read and made into phrenological charts. Brigham Young and Wilford Woodruff used their charts throughout their lives. Note that I have never heard of a female phrenologist in the 1800s.

Spiritualist mediums (usually but not always women) were quite prevalent in Utah in the 1850s and 1860s. Charlotte Ives Cobb Godbe was a medium that the Godbeites consulted in founding the Church of Zion. Some apostles embraced spiritualism (including Orson Pratt I believe). The Union Vedette (out of Ft. Douglas) opined in 1864, “The extent to which belief in spiritualism has spread through the State [sic – territory] and the pecuniary success which attends the performances of the so-called mediums, is at last eliciting some examination from incredulous persons with a view to detect the imposition…” (June 14, 1864, p. 2)

Fortune tellers were used by church members but it was generally frowned on during the 19th century. Elder John Sanderson was a fortune teller and astrologer in Springville, Utah in the 1860s. He was quite popular, although there were some Mormons who were disturbed by his methods.

A. Milton Musser complained in the Deseret News of March 25, 1868, “Oh how humiliating it is to see a person holding the priesthood of God going to astrologers, necromancers and soothsayers for information respecting gold mines, lost stock [i.e. cattle], grasshoppers, &c.”

Isaac signed off on Jane’s petition for a divorce on March 23, 1870. Elias Smith was the judge, and his holographic journals are at the Chili (Church History Library). I just spent the morning reading the entries for March but didn’t find anything on the divorce.

But the divorce decree (Series 373, Reel 19, Box 14, Folder 046, Utah State Archives, Salt Lake County Probate Court records) clearly states “that the said parties could not live together in peace and union in the marital relations, and their welfare and happiness required that they should be separated from each other.” It was extremely difficult back then to get a divorce just on those grounds and I’m rather surprised Judge Smith allowed it. Usually a divorce required alcoholism, abandonment for a lengthy period, and/or “crim. con.” (criminal conversation, meaning adultery). Had Isaac James already met the white fortune teller in Salt Lake, I think Jane would have used that as a more sure way of divorcing him.

Jane’s complaint four years after her divorce from Isaac rings a little hollow – but she’s obviously giving Partridge a laundry list of her grievances since 1847, and not in any chronological order.

What were Mormon attitudes toward fortune tellers in the 19th century? Anyone?

Connell, thanks for your kind words. (It’s so interesting how we have apparently no trouble recognizing Jane James’s agency in haunting, speaking, etc. now that she has died, isn’t it?)

Jane came into my life in 1979 when Brent Metcalfe told me about her, Elijah Abel, and Walker Lewis. This led me to become a volunteer researcher at the then “Church History Department” under the supervision of Jim Kimball. He arranged for me to be able to hold and read the manuscript of her dictated autobiography. I was deeply moved by her narrative of Joseph’s reception of her to “Zion” (Nauvoo). I took that story with me to Brasil in 1980 and shared her story in every congregation where I served as a missionary. Or at least HALF the story. I always ended her tale with Joseph’s “Welcome to Zion…we dry up all tears here.” THAT is what I looked, prayed, hoped for. A place of refuge for my tortured soul, where I could find rest and turn all my tears of anger into tears of joy.

Then I came out of the closet in the late 1980s and I finally acknowledged to myself the ugliest parts of Jane’s story. How awfully she was treated by fellow Saints on her way to Nauvoo, and all the heart ache and insults to her afterwards. Her tears weren’t dried up in Nauvoo or Utah, as Joseph had promised. Instead, for me, she became an invaluable example of one of the deeply faithful who was alienated, misunderstood, despised, feared, begrudingly appreciated, and discriminated against.

Although I had to leave Mormonism to find and love my Self, she is still active in my life, bringing me into a community of “the Friends of Jane” – those of us who have found that she speaks quietly but firmly to us throughout our lives. Because of her I have met and come to love INCREDIBLE people, like Margaret Young, Darius Gray, and Jane’s descendant, Louis Duffy.

I like to think that all of this attention focused on her is a karmic return for her years of patience, courage, and longsuffering faith.

Long live Jane Elizabeth Manning James!

In the first instance, although Cora Keate Williams Hartman (a Piute) was baptized, her two husbands were not members of the Church and she died young, so her temple work was not done during her lifetime.

The other case is Sarah Maraboots Dyson (Piute-Navajo), the wife of Ira Hatch. She went through the temple and was sealed to her husband during her lifetime.

And, strange to tell, as much St. George history as I’ve read, I’ve never seen the question of the religious inclusion of the native Americans addressed, even though one of the stated purposes of the St. George Temple was for the use of the Lamanites. Hopefully the new history of the temple (Yorgason, Schmutz, Adler) will address the subject.

That may be true for African American Saints, but it’s not for other racial groups (which is what I was gesturing towards). We have the diaries of a nineteenth-century native Hawaiian missionary, which run to three or four volumes, and Jonathan Napela’s life is VERY well documented. Although Hannah Kaaepa never produced any documentation herself, there’s lots of information about her in the Young Woman’s Journal, contemporary newspapers, and in the Book of Remembrances her husband produced about her life. I’m not sure if the same is true for Native American or Latin@ Saints but Jared T. or David G. might know.