Jill Mulvay Derr is a retired senior research historian for the Church History Department, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Carol Cornwall Madsen is a professor emerita of history at Brigham Young University. Kate Holbrook is a specialist in women’s history for the Church History Department. Matthew J. Grow is the director of publications for the Church History Department.

This collection of original documents explores the largely unknown nineteenth-century history of the Relief Society, the women’s organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Founded in 1842 in Nauvoo, Illinois, the Relief Society was initially led by Emma Smith, wife of church president Joseph Smith. The substantial minutes of the organization’s proceedings from 1842 to 1844, published unabridged herein for the first time in print, document the women’s priorities, contributions, and teachings. The Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book also contains six sermons Joseph Smith delivered to the society, the only recorded words he directed exclusively to the women of the church. 

The organization was suspended from 1845 until the mid-1850s, when attempts were made to organize the Relief Society on a congregational level in some areas of Utah Territory after the emigration of the Latter-day Saints to the American West. A more general and permanent reorganization began in 1867, under the leadership of Eliza R. Snow, and the Relief Society’s roles within the church structure and within women’s lives expanded over the succeeding decades. 

The example of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minute Book helped create a record-keeping sensibility among Latter-day Saint women, who conscientiously created thousands of official and private records during the nineteenth century. The seventy-eight key documents in this collection include minutes of meetings, sermons by both women and men, annual reports from local Relief Societies, newspaper articles and editorials, political petitions and speeches, poetry, letters, journal entries, and reminiscences. They were produced not only near church headquarters but in far-flung settlements in the Mountain West and in areas as remote as Hawaii and England.

These records from the first fifty years of Relief Society give insight not only into the spiritual and ecclesiastical dimensions of Latter-day Saint women’s lives but also into their political, temporal, and social pursuits. Relief Society women cared for their families and the poor. They manufactured and sold goods, worked as midwives and doctors, gave healing blessings, appointed and set apart Relief Society officers, stored grain, built assembly halls, fought for woman suffrage, founded a hospital, defended the practice of plural marriage, and started the church organizations for children and young women.

Prominent in the documents are the towering figures of Latter-day Saint women’s history from this period—Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, Sarah M. Kimball, Mary Isabella Horne, Emmeline B. Wells, Zina D. H. Young, and many others. In addition, some two thousand lesser-known Latter-day Saints appear in these records. Each document is meticulously transcribed and placed in historical context with an introduction and annotation. Taken together, the accounts featured here allow readers to study this founding period in Latter-day Saint women’s history and to situate it within broader themes in nineteenth-century American religious history.

“This remarkable collection is not only a landmark in Mormon historical editing—it is a signal contribution to religious studies, women’s history, and the economic and social history of the American west. In my view it is the most important work to emerge from the Mormon press in the last fifty years. With quiet authority and without special pleading it offers an accessible foundation for assessing the position of Latter-day Saint women in the nineteenth century and today.”
—Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Harvard University

“Scholarship on Mormon women’s history continues to burgeon, and this outstanding volume on the early history of the Relief Society is possibly the most significant and exciting contribution of its kind. The editors have done a superb job of pairing richly detailed primary sources with accessible scholarly commentary on Mormon women’s history, making the volume suitable for historical specialists and curious newcomers alike. More broadly, this collection reminds us of the many ways that women have worked to make male-led traditions their own.  The book is a genuine treasure for scholars and students of American religious history.”
―R. Marie Griffith, Washington University in St. Louis

“[First Fifty Years] is a fantastic resource for historians and students alike. The text is both well researched and artfully compiled. This volume will surely become a staple for those interested in the history of the Church and the role of women in the formative years of the organization.”
—Cristina Rosetti, Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 3 (July 2017): 175.

“This work gathers in one useful volume documents pivotal to understanding the early history of Mormon women. Adding to its value is the wealth of knowledge contributed by its editorial team. . . . What results is an insightful and thought-provoking collection that illuminates and explains the high points of the first half century of the Relief Society. . . . Each page reveals careful scholarship and thoughtful, nuanced interpretation.”
—Dave Hall, “Review Panel,” Mormon Studies Review 4 (2017): 80.

“This volume is a laudable and impressive achievement. The editors have selected many important and illuminating documents from a rich goldmine of the Relief Society’s historical records. They have written concise and clear introductory sections and footnotes that provide context and background information necessary to better understand the selected documents. In so doing, they effectively illuminate in high relief the institutional footprint that women made on the early church.”
—Susanna Morrill, “Review Panel,” Mormon Studies Review 4 (2017): 85.

“The editors of this collection should be commended for their painstaking labor in assembling such a treasure trove of documents. Although there have been many excellent studies of early Mormon women, this volume represents a major contribution to our understanding of the Relief Society, an essential Mormon institution and one of the oldest women’s organizations in the United States.”
—Catherine A. Brekus, “Review Panel,” Mormon Studies Review 4 (2017): 95.

“The First Fifty Years of Relief Society is a fascinating and unique collection. . . . The collection provides a compelling glimpse of not only the spiritual lives of early Latter-Day Saint women, but also their political and social interests, their family lives, and their daily activities. Readers will be intrigued by reading appeals for women’s suffrage, as well as accounts of healing blessings and internal conflict around the issue of plural marriage. . . . Highly recommended.”
—M. Y. Spomer, CHOICE 54, no. 2 (Oct. 2016): 189. Reprinted with permission from CHOICE. http://www.choicereviews.org, copyright by the American Library Association.

The First Fifty Years of Relief Society has been honored with the following awards:

• LDS Publishing Professionals Association, 2017 Praiseworthy Award, Best Text Compilation
• Utah State Historical Society, 2017 Smith-Pettit Foundation Best Documentary Book Award
• Western History Association, 2017 Dwight L. Smith (ABC-CLIO) Award for Significant Bibliography or Research Tool
• Mormon History Association, 2018 Best Documentary Editing Award