Martha Hughes Cannon

The story of an ambitious and successful young woman who lived in polygamy.

In the late nineteenth century, Mormons in Utah practiced polygamy, an institution seen as barbaric by the rest of the country. One polygamous wife found plural marriage both difficult and freeing. Martha Hughes Cannon was an intelligent and ambitious woman who grew up in Utah with a deep desire to become a doctor. In 1878, with the blessing of the LDS Church President, she attended medical school at the University of Michigan and the University of Pennsylvania. She returned to Salt Lake City and went to work at the Deseret Hospital, where she met Angus M. Cannon, who was on the hospital board. Soon after, she became his fourth wife, and a year later, she gave birth to a daughter. Because of the active pursuit of polygamists by federal authorities, the union had been a secret one, and Martha was forced to live away from her husband throughout their marriage. She even had to go into temporary exile in England, Michigan, and elsewhere after the birth of each of her three children. During the times she was in Utah, she set up a medical practice and became an active advocate of public health. In 1896, she was elected the first woman state senator in the country. She was one of five Democrats who, along with five Republicans, including her husband, ran for five at-large seats. All the Democrats won. In her term as a senator, Martha Hughes Cannon sponsored a variety of public health measures, including one establishing the state board of health. She later served on that board and helped create its policies.

Martha famously told a writer for the San Francisco Examiner that if a woman’s husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every month. But in her letters to Angus, Martha revealed how she struggled with the institution of polygamy. She lived it because she believed it was a commandment from God.

In her later years, Martha moved to California to be near her children. She worked at the Graves Clinic in Los Angeles and died in 1932.

Image: Martha Hughes Cannon. 1917. Cannon (1857-1932) was a physician and state senator. She was also the fourth wife of Angus M. Cannon. Courtesy of Utah State Historical Society.
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See Vicky Burgess-Olson, Sister Saints (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1978); and Constance L. Lieber and John Sillito, eds., Letters from Exile: The Correspondence of Martha Hughes Cannon and Angus M. Cannon, 1886-1888 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books in association with Smith Research Associates, 1989)