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Utah pioneer life through oral histories

Writing Themselves Into History
UPR
/
UPR
Writing Themselves Into History

Author, editor and retired teacher Kim Bancroft writes from her off-grid cabin tucked away in the northern California redwood forest. She is the great, great granddaughter of Hubert Howe Bancroft, a historian and collector in the 19th century.

“He just had this big vision and I give him lots of credit for having this imagination to see that the whole west was really this rapidly changing place and that included Utah,” said Kim Bancroft.

His collections at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley total 60,000 and include maps, books, pamphlets.

“Church records, personal histories of bull and bear fights,” said Bancroft.

With help writing up all of his documents, Bancroft published 39 volumes of the history of the West. Kim Bancroft edited his autobiography titled Literary Industriesin 2014. For her latest book, Writing Themselves Into History published this past November by Heyday books, Kim scoured the journals and letters of H.H. Bancroft’s first wife Emily and his second Matilda, who also helped H.H. collect oral histories during their travels, which included a trip to the Beehive state.

“In telling the story of Utah, one tells the story of the Latter-Day Saints that arrived and how they arrived, what they were leaving behind, what they encountered along the way,” said Bancroft.

It was not appropriate for a man to interview a polygamous woman, but it was different for Matilda.

“You just get the sense that it was the two of them in the room talking and she could ask, 'how did you feel when your husband took a second wife?' said Bancroft.

Kim said Matilda’s writings and interviews show how the women worked through it and became to cherish each other. Matilda interviewed Jane Snyder Richards, the first wife of a church elder.

“And Jane said here, in polygamy and man marries again from a sense of religious duty. He consults with his wife and with her consent and perhaps recommendation takes to himself another wife, his religion demands it and all three enter polygamy with earnest convictions of it being done in the sight of God at his command. And that comes through very strongly in these oral histories. And they relied on their faith to cope with whatever feelings arose in the process,” said Bancroft.

Another purpose for polygamy revealed in the oral histories was to provide a husband to women who had been widowed.

“It made sense, men could encounter any number of fatalities,” said Bancroft.

In fact, Jane had her husband marry her widowed sister.

'Now we were able to do much more for her comfort.' "So, there is a real loving desire there in sharing your husband in this case, her actual sister," said Bancroft.

Kim said some of the details Matilda captured were also humorous. For example, Jane taught her husband to give them each more personalized gifts instead of giving them all the scarves.

“In essence she shows how her husband was kind of a dunderhead at helping the other wives adjust to the marriage as well,” said Bancroft.

There are also stories in Matilda’s writings of women who were not happy with polygamy.

“And then in writing about it I had to wonder, ok, these are the women who left the church who were not pleased with having to share their husband, wanted to get out of the situation,” said Bancroft.

Then there are the stories told by these women about the wagon train journeys from Kansas to Utah.

“There were stories of staying in somebody’s barn and the rats crawling on them and their children as they were making their way across the country, children dying on the way, terrible stories,” said Bancroft.

Other stories document what happened when they arrived in the Beehive state and encountered Federal officials who tried to force them to obey the federal laws.

“And they felt like we came all the way out here to Salt Lake away from you, ‘why are you trying to harass us. So, all of that is in these documents, these oral histories,” said Bancroft.

Gathering these stories and many others from her great, great grandfather’s enormous archive have inspired Kim to not only write and edit books in a larger historical context, but to also teach workshopsabout how to gather one’s own treasure chest of archives and create a narrative or album both tangible and digital.

“What do you have in your attic, in your basement and in your trunk. Here are a few things that have worked for me,” said Bancroft.

Sheri's career in radio began at 7 years old in Los Angeles, California with a secret little radio tucked under her bed that she'd fall asleep with, while listening to The Dr. Demento Radio Show. She went on to produce the first science radio show in Utah in 1999 and has been reporting local, national and international stories ever since. After a stint as news director at KZYX on northern California's Lost Coast, she landed back at UPR in 2021.