Ida Hunt Udall

Ida Hunt Udall
Black-and-white portrait photograph of Ida Hunt Udall in 1905, in a high-collared top and her hair done up. She looks forward, into the camera.
Udall in 1905[1]
Born
Ida Frances Hunt

(1858-03-08)March 8, 1858
DiedApril 26, 1915(1915-04-26) (aged 57)
Burial placeSaint Johns Cemetery, St. Johns, Arizona
Known for
Notable workPersonal diary (compiled in Mormon Odyssey: The Story of Ida Hunt Udall, Plural Wife)
Spouses

Ida Frances Hunt Udall (March 8, 1858 – April 26, 1915) was an American diarist, homesteader, and teacher in territorial Utah and Arizona. A lifelong member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church), Udall participated in the church's historical practice of plural marriage as the second wife of Latter-day Saint bishop David King Udall and co-wife of former telegraphist Ella Stewart Udall and of Mary Ann Linton Morgan Udall, a widow of John Hamilton Morgan.

During the height of the United States' prosecutorial campaign against polygamy in the 1880s, Udall went into hiding as a fugitive on the "Mormon Underground", or the practice of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) going into hiding to evade arrest or subpoena for antipolygamy prosecution. From 1882 to 1886, she authored a diary of her life in plural marriage and then on the Underground. This diary, considered a "major contribution to Mormon pioneer literature" by biographer Maria Ellsworth,[2] later became the core of a posthumous biography that won the Mormon History Association's Best Biography Award.

Called a "serene intellectual" by historian Leonard J. Arrington,[3] Udall spent much of her adulthood homesteading in eastern Arizona while she raised six children, several of whom went on to have influential political careers.

  1. ^ Ellsworth 1992, p. 203.
  2. ^ Ellsworth 1992, p. x.
  3. ^ Arrington 1974, p. 47.