Utah Women of the 19th Amendment Series Part 4: Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Young

Zina Diantha Huntington comes from strong beginnings. The Huntington Family is one of the first European Puritan families to come to America in 1633. Her father, William Huntington Jr. fights in the War of 1812; her grandfather is a soldier in the Revolutionary War; and her great uncle, Samuel Huntington signs the Declaration of Independence. Perhaps because of the patriotic legacy she is born into in 1821, Zina grows up valuing the right to one’s independence, including that of women.

Zina’s family hears Joseph Smith’s message in New York and is baptized by Hyrum Smith. Thereafter they follow the body of the Saints. But Zina’s mother dies in the Missouri expulsion, and her father later dies in the expulsion from Nauvoo. However, at age 20, Zina presses on, accompanied by her husband, Henry Bailey Jacobs, even giving birth to her second son in a wagon along the route to Council Bluffs.

By all accounts, Zina is known as a gentle, kind, sympathetic woman who “drew people after her by reason of that tenderness,” writes Susa Young Gates. Arriving in Salt Lake City in 1848, Zina starts a school because she sees many children running around without anything to do. After Zina’s marriage fails, she marries Brigham Young and bears him one daughter. Zina raises her three children as well as four children of a deceased sister-wife.

Zina and her friend, Eliza Snow, who has also been part of the first Relief Society in Nauvoo, are anxious to re-establish the Society to empower women. In 1866, Eliza calls Zina to be the Treasurer of the General Relief Society, and they travel thousands of miles through much of Utah “assisting in encouraging and strengthening the various organizations.” Already zealous about women’s right to vote, many times they hold Women’s Suffrage Society meetings after church meetings are over. Zina is a passionate advocate for the women’s right to vote and constantly inspires women to be better. “Sisters, it is for us to be wide awake to our duties,” she says. “The kingdom will roll on, and we have nothing to fear but our own imperfections.”

In 1872, she helps establish Deseret Hospital in Salt Lake City, serving on its board of directors and for twelve years as president. She also organizes a nursing school with courses in obstetrics, and encourages women to sustain it. She herself delivers over 1,000 babies in her lifetime.

President Young asks Zina to establish a silk culture in the territory and appoints her president of the Deseret Silk Association in 1876, a group which cultivates silk worms and mulberry trees for the local production of cloth for 30 years. At the first general conference of the Relief Society in 1889, she reminds women to avidly seek to produce silk to create income for themselves.

She says, “It is our duty to be self-sustaining, and to foster and encourage home industries.” Following Zina’s directive, the Utah women become known among silk weavers as the makers of “the best fibered silk they had ever seen.”

Zina continues to be active in the national temperance and women's suffrage movements and, in

Designated as one of Utah's leading women, 
Zina sits 2nd from the right, middle row.

the winter of 1881, is sent by the First Presidency of the Church to the East to advocate women's suffrage and dispel misinformation about the Church. She attends the Women's Congress in Buffalo and the National Woman Suffrage Association (NWSA) Convention in New York. She also addresses many temperance societies.

In March 1886, the Deseret Evening News announces a mass meeting “for the purpose of making known the grievances of the women of Utah, and protesting against the indignities that have been heaped upon them in the present anti-‘Mormon’ crusade.” About 2,000 people, including Zina, assemble in the Salt Lake Theatre. The meeting adopts nine resolutions that object to the Edmunds-Tucker Bill, which threatens to repeal Utah women’s right to vote (a long-settled law in Utah), enact more drastic antipolygamy laws, and require wives to testify against their husbands in legal proceedings.

Regardless of the resolutions, the offensive bill becomes law in 1887, disenfranchising all Utah women irrespective of their religion or marital status. It is into this fraught political climate than Zina is called as General Relief Society President, following Eliza Snow’s death that year. 

Zina continues to further the mission of the suffrage movement. Friends of both Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony of the NWSA, Zina arranges for Stanton to address an audience in the Mormon Tabernacle, although Stanton scandalizes the community by speaking not only on suffrage but also on birth control. Zina becomes the Vice President of the National Council of Women (NCW) in 1891 at age 70. Just prior to the first triennial NCW convention, Zina asks all stake Relief Society presidents to collect donations to help send delegates. In 1893 Zina represents the women of Utah at the World’s Fair.

In her lifetime, in part due to her tireless efforts, the Utah chapter of the NWSA is created, Utah women are again granted the state right to vote, and Utah becomes a state. 

(Researched and written by Kathryn Latour, member of the JRCLS WIL and Media Committees)