How pleasing it would be to you and your children, thirty, fifty, or eighty years hence, to sit down and read what took place around you in your childhood and youth!…But the object is not so much to get you to keep a journal while you are young, as it is to get you to continue it after you become men and women, even through your whole lives.[2]

This first imperative for journal writing was directly related toward the theological importance of recording family history. Secondly, journal writing was linked to the creation of scripture: ?If men had not kept a journal in former days, we should not now have any Bible, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants or any other book.?[3] Not only was keeping a journal necessary for later generations to read about their ancestors but it was also necessary to continue the written religious record.  Both of these reasons point to the idea that journals should and would be written for potential readers.

Young women also recounted that their parents urged them to keep a diary.  In 1886, Martha T. Cannon, plural wife of George Q. Cannon, gave their sixteen-year-old daughter Amelia a new diary and advised her to write ?nothing foolish in it.?[4]  Eleven-year-old Mary Bennion of Taylorsville Utah started a blank diary?a gift from her father?in January 1901.  Nearly fifty years later, she wrote in the cover page of the same journal: ?He said we should write in them every day, all the work we did, and all the meetings we attended, and the church duties we had.? [5]  These parental and church urgings to keep a diary were not that far from mainstream American trends concerning young women and diaries in the late-nineteenth century. Historian Jane Hunter comments that parents and other authoritative figures promoted diary writing for young women as a method to avoid selfishness and conform to the family and society. [6]  Diaries were not supposed to be strictly private musing meant only for the eyes of the diarist but as a record that parents, other family members, and acquaintances may read.

Parents of young women supposedly grew concerned that young women would use a journal to embellish details or create an imaginary world. Two stories in the late-nineteenth children?s publication St. Nicholas featured young women, who after misusing their diaries, renounced them and stopped using them altogether.  In one story by Margaret Eckerson, the father of a twelve-year-old girl claims ??there is a vast difference between jotting and doing.?[7]  The words of this fictional father did not fall too far from Martha T. Cannon?s exhortations to her daughter Amelia against writing something ?foolish? in her journal. It is unclear whether Martha T. Cannon was concerned that Amelia?s diary would not be fit for reading or that she would use her diaries to make up stories about her life. Nonetheless, it is highly suggested that Mormon parents, like their mainstream American counterparts, wanted their daughters to keep journals to improve self-discipline.

Many young women used their journal as a space to develop their own voices. Jane Hunter surmises that young women did not use dairies to completely retaliate against their parents? best efforts ?but as a way of discovering?or constructing?the self within? their families.[8]  Passages from seventeen-year-old Amelia Cannon?s diary reveal how she balanced her identity as an individual and as a family member. In 1887, she and her sister Hester stopped attending public school and took up work in the Juvenile Instructor office, which was then owned and edited by George Q. Cannon. About this decision, Amelia wrote: ?We shall start to earn money next Spring?Oh, I shall be so glad. I don?t like to be dependent upon my parents.?[9]  Even though she was in effect working for her father, her Juvenile Instructor position allowed her some semblance of independence from her parents and her family. Later in 1887, while her father was forced into hiding on the underground, Amelia recounted how her family would meet in secret on Sundays for prayers. After prayers, she would play music for him until a guard would come to escort him back to his hiding place fifty miles away. She wrote: ?I always have to play on the piano for him in the evenings. Papa is so found of music. I have had to perform so much on Sabbath evenings that I have used up all of my prettiest pieces.?[10] Looking at these two anecdotes side by side illuminates how young women like Amelia Cannon attempted to define herself as an individual outside of her family while simultaneously sustaining her position as beloved daughter and family member.

Extending from Jane Hunter?s assessments, I wonder how Mormon adolescent women like Amelia Cannon used their diaries as a space to formulate their religious identities.  References to church attendance, Mutual Improvement Association (MIA) meetings,  and family prayers amongst other rituals and traditions fill the pages of young Mormon women?s diaries. In an 1886 entry, then sixteen-year-old Amelia Cannon confessed that during mutual meetings at the Farmer?s Ward that when she and the young women were supposed to be reading the Bible ?we would all put our heads together and tell ghost stories.?[11] She admitted that it had a ?demoralizing effect? on her and resolved to preserve Sunday as a holy day and refrain from amusements.  Mary Bennion?s diary was less introspective than Amelia Cannon?s and some days read as an iteration of her daily chores. However, her diary takes a slight turn when she reaches nineteen and finally graduates from the Relief Society Nurse Program. At the commencement exercises for the program, each graduate received a blessing.  Mary recalled ?I stayed and listened to the blessings given to a number of the girls. Each one was so appropriate that I was strengthened in my faith by hearing them.?[12] This passage reveals a rare glimpse into Mary Bennion?s thoughts about her religion. While she may have mostly used her diary as a space to recount her and her family?s daily activities, she also relied?albeit in rare occasions?on it to express some of her feelings of faith.

Considering young women?s diaries as a space for religious development is not without problems. The various reasons for beginning and continuing a journal influenced not only what and how a young women wrote about her religion but also how she wrote about her day-to-day activities. If the journal was intended for a reader or not also affected how a young woman wrote. Yet, to disregard a young woman?s diary is to undermine a significant source for the way that young women approached and cultivated their religiosity.