Houseworth, Thomas, 1829-1915, photographer — via Wikimedia Commons · Public domain
No. 52 on Johnson's list — but this page is hers
Ann Eliza Webb
1844–?
Sealed to Brigham Young 7 Apr 1868 — she was 24, he was 67.
This was a sealing, not a marriage in law — plural marriage had no legal standing. What that meant.
Utah
Who she was, and what happened
'WIFE NO. 19' - by far the most consequential departure. Brigham had personally helped her obtain a divorce from James Dee on grounds of 'abusive treatment' in December 1865, then married her himself in 1868 when she was twenty-three and he was sixty-six. She sued him for divorce in 1873, and the case became a national spectacle; she left the church, went on the anti-polygamy lecture circuit across the United States, and published 'Wife No. 19' (1875), which did more than any other single book to shape the American image of Brigham Young as a domestic tyrant. Johnson supplies the documentary spine: she applied for a CIVIL divorce in 1873, the case came to trial in 1875, the court ordered Brigham to pay $500 a month plus $3,000 costs, and when he refused he was fined $25 and served ONE DAY in prison for contempt. There is no record of an application for a CHURCH divorce - she was excommunicated on 10 October 1874. Johnson also disposes of her book's title: she was neither the last wife nor the nineteenth, but the FIFTY-SECOND. Turner uses her testimony carefully - she is vivid and unreliable in roughly equal measure.
Key dates
- 1868 Sealed to him 7 Apr 1868 A sealing, not a marriage in law: plural marriage had no legal standing.
- 1873 Divorce or separation Sued 1873; divorced 1875
- 1874 Left the church LEFT THE CHURCH - excommunicated 10 Oct 1874 (Johnson p. 63)
Nothing here is inferred. Johnson's Table 1 has one date column, so where an event is documented but undated it is shown as "no date" rather than given a spurious one — the missing date is itself a fact about how these records were kept. Only two of the fifty-five have a civil marriage date; for the other fifty-three the single date records a sealing, because plural marriage had no standing in law.
What survives in her own words
She left words of her own.
A FULL-LENGTH PUBLISHED AUTOBIOGRAPHY, the only one by any wife - and a hostile one. Plus a later popular biography.
Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19 (Hartford: Dustin, Gilman, 1876); Irving Wallace, The Twenty-seventh Wife (1961)
15 of the fifty-five left words of their own. The rest are known only through other people's papers. What that silence means.
The record
- Born
- 1844
- Died
- Not known - Johnson records no death date
- Died at
- Not known - she disappears from the record
- Outlived Brigham Young?
- Unknown - no death year recorded
- Marriage or sealing
- 7 Apr 1868
- Her age at the marriage
- 24
- His age at the marriage
- 67
- Age gap
- 43 years
- Phase of his life
- Utah, 1860s
- Type of sealing
- Time & eternity ?
- Already married to another man?
- No - BY helped her divorce Dee in 1865, three years before ?
- Her other husbands
- (1) James L. Dee (3) Moses R. Deming
- Widow of Joseph Smith?
- No
- Sexual relationship?
- Probable
- Children by Brigham Young
- 0
- Lived with him?
- Briefly - then a farmhouse she resented
- Divorce or separation
- SUED FOR DIVORCE 1873; divorced 1875
- Named in his will?
- No
- Sealed to him as an adopted daughter first?
- No ?
- Kin tie to him or another wife
- Daughter of Chauncey Webb, a stalwart church member
- Left the church?
- LEFT THE CHURCH - excommunicated 10 Oct 1874 (Johnson p. 63)
- Remarried after Brigham Young?
- YES - after Brigham's death
- Her later husband(s)
- Moses R. Deming
Source and confidence: Johnson Table 1, pp. 57, 63 (excommunication 10 Oct 1874; 'She was actually number fifty-two'); Turner p. 375; Quinn App. 6 ('no ch, divorced 1875')
A blank or “not established here” means the fact was not documented in the sources behind this table. It does not mean zero, and it does not mean no. We leave it empty rather than guessing, because inventing a detail of her life would be another way of not listening to her. The size of that gap is the argument for the book she never got.