More than Petticoats by Christy Karras

Author:Christy Karras
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461747581
Publisher: Globe Pequot

MARTHA HUGHES CANNON

(1857–1932)

DOCTOR AND POLITICAL LEADER

When traveling British sociologist and reformer Beatrice Webb arrived in Salt Lake City in 1898, there was one female resident she most wanted to meet: the woman famous for beating her husband in a race for the Utah state senate. When she went to the woman’s house, she found “a sprightly pleasant-looking little person with energetic gait and decided manner,” who recounted the story, recalling how her husband had asked her the day before the race: “Now how do you expect to come out, my girl?”

Obviously, she came out well: Martha Hughes Cannon not only beat her husband but was elected the nation’s first female state senator in the process.

The visitor couldn’t help but ask about one of the other things that had defined Martha Cannon’s life: the practice of polygamy. The answer, Webb wrote: “It was an enormous advantage, she asserted, for a woman to be able to select a really good man to father her children instead of putting up with any miserable fellow who might be left over by other women.” The energetic little woman went on, saying, “It gave the women more real physical freedom: if they chose, they could have had an independent life; they were not completely absorbed as one wife is by her husband.”

Webb was impressed, recalling in her memoirs that “We left our vivacious frank little senator with regret; she was such a self-respectful and vigorous pure-minded little soul: sensitive yet unself-conscious, indiscreet yet loyal.”

Martha Hughes Cannon is one of the most respected women in Utah history. She became a doctor when few women did. Like many Mormon women of her time, she practiced polygamy and publicly defended the practice, even as she had private reservations. As the fourth wife of a Mormon church official, she had to flee the state and then the country to avoid prosecution. But she is most famous as the first woman elected to a state senate, winning an election against several contestants including her own husband. Later, she served on the Utah State Board of Health and drafted some of the state’s first health regulations.

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