Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
February 1965 | Volume 16, Issue 2
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
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: “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