SALT LAKE CITY—The first extended scholarly history of the Young Women organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is available now from the Church Historian’s Press. Titled Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024, this volume advances the growing body of scholarship on Latter-day Saint women’s history and on women, religion, youth, and childhood generally.

Carry On traces the growth of Young Women—originally called the Young Ladies’ Department of the Ladies’ Cooperative Retrenchment Association—from a small group of Brigham Young’s daughters into today’s global organization. Drawing on the Church History Library’s wealth of correspondence, minutes, oral histories, and other records, the book chronicles the organization’s commitment to its religious mission over 150 years of social change.

Readers will follow celebrated leaders like Ruth May Fox, Ardeth G. Kapp, and Emily Belle Freeman as they shape familiar programs—including Bee-Hive Girls, Personal Progress, and Young Women camp—to engage young women in an increasingly global church. Personal stories from individual young women complement the institutional narrative, showing the organization’s influence in the lives of Latter-day Saint women throughout its history.

“Carry On is a landmark publication for the Church History Department,” said Lisa Olsen Tait, one of the book’s authors and the department’s managing historian for women’s history. “It provides a new perspective on church history through lenses such as generational dynamics, female leadership, institutional development, and cultural change. Joining the department’s growing body of work on the Relief Society and the diaries and sermons of women over time, Carry On deepens and extends our commitment to women’s history.”

Carry On: The Latter-day Saint Young Women Organization, 1870–2024 is available at Deseret Book, Amazon, and other retail outlets. Visit the Church Historian’s Press website for more information, including some excerpts from the volume.

About the Church Historian’s Press

The Church Historian’s Press publishes high-quality scholarship on Latter-day Saint history, such as The Joseph Smith Papers, The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, and At the Pulpit. The Church Historian’s Press was announced by the Church History Department of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2008.