In 1883 Augusta Joyce Crocheron created the picture entitled “Representative Women of Deseret” as a tribute to leaders of various women’s organizations in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The engraving contains photographs of twenty women, as well as illustrations of LDS cultural and religious motifs. A book by the same name contains biographies of each of the women pictured.
If the eyes of the stranger may thereby be opened to a knowledge of their purity, integrity and faith in God, their heroic firmness and the trials they have endured without wavering in allegiance to their cause; if any may be convinced that this people are in earnest and in the right, and that God is with them; it will prove a joy and delight, a sweet return for my humble but earnest efforts.
Crocheran published the book and the poster in 1884, a time of intense persecution against Latter-day Saints in Utah because of their practice of plural marriage. While the LDS Church viewed polygamy as a restoration of an ancient patriarchal order as found in the Old Testament, crucial to their concept of salvation, most Americans at the time believed polygamy to be a heinous system that encouraged lusty and unfaithful husbands and jealous and oppressed wives. Anti-Mormon literature portrayed Mormon women as weak and crude, oppressed and ignorant. Crocheron depicts the women as saints, with great intelligence, talent, and social contribution.
Looking it all over, the thought rises--how little I have done after all! I have scarcely more than furnished the thread on which their gems were strung.
Crocheron (1844-1915) was born in Boston. At the age of two, she and her family traveled via ship for California and on to Utah in 1867. Crocheron was an active participant in church activities and held many leadership positions. She married George Crocheron as a second plural wife in 1870 and they settled in St. George, Utah. She mothered three sons and two daughters. Her most consuming interest outside of her family and church was her writing. She wrote extensively for Mormon journals and she published an 1881 book of poetry, Wild Flowers of Deseret.
