[Illustration: Faithfully, yours, Fanny Stenhouse] AN ENGLISHWOMAN IN UTAH: THE STORY OF _A Life’s Experience in Mormonism_. An Autobiography: BY MRS. T. B. H. STENHOUSE, OF SALT LAKE CITY, FOR MORE THAN TWENTY-FIVE YEARS THE WIFE OF A MORMON MISSIONARY AND ELDER. WITH INTRODUCTORY PREFACE BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. INCLUDING A FULL ACCOUNT OF THE MOUNTAIN MEADOWS MASSACRE, AND OF THE LIFE, CONFESSION, AND EXECUTION OF BISHOP JOHN D. LEE. FULLY ILLUSTRATED. London: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1880. [_All rights reserved._] TO MY CHILDREN; WITH ALL A MOTHER’S LOVE AND TENDERNESS, THIS VOLUME, THE STORY OF MY LIFE’S EXPERIENCE, IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED. PREFACE BY MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. In these pages, a woman, a wife and mother, speaks the sorrows and oppressions of which she has been the witness and the victim. It is because her sorrows and her oppressions are those of thousands, who, suffering like her, cannot or dare not speak for themselves, that she thus gives this history to the public. It is no sensational story, but a plain, unvarnished tale of truth, stranger and sadder than fiction. Our day has seen a glorious breaking of fetters. The slave-pens of the South have become a nightmare of the past; the auction-block and whipping-post have given place to the church and school-house; and the songs of emancipated millions are heard through our land. May we not then hope that the hour is come to loose the bonds of a cruel slavery whose chains have cut into the very hearts of thousands of our sisters—a slavery which debases and degrades womanhood, motherhood, and the family? Let every happy wife and mother who reads these lines give her their sympathy, prayers, and aid to free her sisters from this degrading bondage. Let all the womanhood of the country stand united for them. There is a power in combined enlightened sentiment and sympathy before which every form of injustice and cruelty _must_ finally go down. May He who came to break every yoke hasten this deliverance! HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. PREFACE.