She Who Shall Be Nameless (February 1965 | Volume: 16, Issue: 2)

She Who Shall Be Nameless

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Authors: Mary Cable

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February 1965 | Volume 16, Issue 2


I was about twelve years old when I discovered, to my great pleasure, that our family had a skeleton in its closet. In our case, the skeleton was represented by a dim daguerreotype showing an old lady in a cap. Framed in red velvet, the picture inhabited the upper left-hand drawer of our breakfront and came to light every once in a while, when one was rummaging through the drawer for a paper clip or an eraser. Attached to the frame was a bit of yellowed paper with a verse written on it in a spidery hand:


Hundreds of stars in the heavenly shy. Hundreds of shells on the shore together Hundreds of birds that go singing by Hundreds of birds in the sunny weather. Hundreds of dewdrops to greet the dawn Hundreds of bees in the purple clover Hundreds of butterflies on the lawn But only one Mother the Wide World over.

“Who is she?” I once asked, and my mother said, “Oh, she’s some old ancestor. She lived ever so long ago.”

“But whose mother ? And when did she live?” I persisted.

“She was your father’s mother’s mother’s mother,” said my mother, and sent me off on an errand. I asked about this lady on several occasions, and always had a funny feeling that I was getting short answers. Then, one day, a year or two later, Life Magazine arrived at our house with pictures in it of most of the twenty-seven wives of Brigham Young. There, right in the top row, and labelled “Augusta Adams” was this same little old lady in a cap. I confronted my mother at once, Life in one hand, the daguerreotype in the other.

“Yes, it’s true,” my mother admitted. “It was a great scandal in the old days and no one in your father’s family ever spoke of it. You see, Augusta Adams was first married to your great-great-grandfather, Henry Cobb, of Boston, and they had seven children. Then, so the story goes, Brigham Young came to Boston, Augusta heard him give a lecture, and what does she do but leave her husband and five of the children and take oft for Salt Lake City to marry Brigham Young. Packed a valise, took the two youngest children, and just walked out of the house, so we always were told. Jumped into a cab and off she went.”

“You mean, she took a cab all the way to Salt Lake City?” I asked, fascinated.

“It wouldn’t surprise me. That side of your father’s family was known for its extravagance. Now run along. I suppose it’s silly of me-after all, this happened way back in the eighteen-forties—but I really don’t