The Doctrine and Covenants very rarely mentions women. In fact, it only mentions two contemporary women by name: Emma Hale Smith and Vienna Jaques. The former is by far the better known of the two, but Vienna Jaques is remarkable, for a few reasons. In a recent interview at the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, biographer Brent Rogers discussed her life and role in the Church’s history. What follows here is a copost to the full interview

Who Was Vienna Jaques?

 

Why was Vienna mentioned in Doctrine and Covenants 90? Brent Rogers explained:

The Church needed capital to purchase land on which to build the House of the Lord in Kirtland. Vienna Jaques had the means to help. Through hard work and frugality, Vienna had accumulated wealth and properties. Before she moved from Boston to Kirtland, she appears to have liquidated at least some, if not all, of her assets, bringing with her to Ohio a significant amount of liquid capital. …

Her contribution came at an advantageous time. In March 1833, Church leaders were in the midst of contracting to purchase several parcels of land in Kirtland, including the Peter French Farm. The Church needed additional funds to finalize these agreements. Vienna’s infusion of cash helped.

Jaques’s contribution, as Joseph Smith wrote in a later letter, “proved a Savior of life as pertaining to [the Church’s] pecunary concern.” Her donation helped Church leaders purchase the very land on which the Kirtland Temple would be built. Her donation propelled progress on this sacred building project.

Largely in response to this contribution, “Joseph Smith dictated a revelation on March 8, 1833, regarding particulars of Church administration, a portion of which mentioned Vienna Jaques by name … [and] declared the will of the Lord that Vienna should receive money to gather to Zion, and she would receive an inheritance in the “land of Zion.””

Rogers mentioned, however, something which motivated his work to create her biography:

I was surprised and disappointed to find that few parts of Vienna’s life story had been mentioned in the writing of Doctrine and Covenants commentaries or in the telling of Church history. They usually told the same simplistic story that Vienna, a wealthy woman, had been commanded to consecrate her means to the Church, and she went on to live a long, faithful life.

While true, there is more to the story. For example, she was witness to the first baptism for the dead:

Vienna Jaques was deeply interested in her ancestors’ eternal salvation. On September 12, 1840, she learned that Jane Neyman was going with Harvey Olmstead to the Mississippi River to be baptized for her deceased son. Vienna mounted a horse and rode to the river to observe this ordinance. …

Following this event, Vienna participated in baptisms for the dead. She served as proxy for more than fifty baptisms of the dead while she lived in Nauvoo. Vienna became captivated by the doctrine and practice of ritual work for the deceased. She dedicated time to this critical aspect of gathering Zion for the rest of her life.

This is another significant moment that Vienna was involved in. (And, as a side note, Rogers’s comment about Doctrine and Covenants commentaries makes me grateful that I decided to write a full chapter about Vienna in Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine and Covenants.)

Still, part of the reason so little has been said about Vienna is that there are limitations to what we know about her story:

Few truly get attention in history. People are drawn to big names and big events, and historians are drawn to sources. The combination of the two comprises the majority of written history.

Vienna Jaques was neither a big name nor did she leave behind a collection of documents. Her life in the records of the past is often elusive, though she was a part of some momentous events. More importantly, though, I think she has remained relatively anonymous in history because she was a woman, and a well-behaved woman at that. …

Women’s historians have done some amazing work over the last fifty years, not just to include women in the stories of the past, but to bring them front and center. Doing so is really arduous work. Women’s experiences can be difficult to find. These historians often have to read between the lines and search in hard-to-find places for the source materials needed to write history.

It makes it difficult to write a biography about Jaques. By way of extending that observation, Rogers spoke about Joseph Smith’s letter to her on September 4, 1833, noting that “It is the earliest surviving letter from Smith addressed specifically to a woman (other than his wife Emma Smith).” He makes the statement, “It provides evidence of Joseph Smith’s egalitarian and inclusionary nature regarding women,” but that is relative to other men in his time. The fact that no letters addressed from Joseph Smith to women other than Emma before 1833 and that only two contemporary women were addressed in the revelations is an indication that Joseph still had something of a blind spot towards women, at least when it came to managing the Church’s affairs. But again, that was probably largely due to his culture and upbringing.

Anyway, for more on Vienna Jaques, head on over to the Latter-day Saint history blog From the Desk, to read the full interview with Brent Rogers.