In February of 1892, Twenty-two year old Amelia Cannon mentioned the upcoming Valentine?s Day in her journal: ?Valentine?s Eve. I expect none of the fruits of this holiday. Two years ago this winter was the last time I was the recipient of a love token on Valentine?s Day.?[1]  It was not that Amelia was lacking in male attention?as her schedule was full of social engagements with various young men?yet her mentioning of the holiday references the weight that Valentine?s Day, a holiday centered upon romantic love and courtship, carried and still carries. Of course, Valentine?s Day seems no better time to ponder how the actual practice of courtship (and later dating) has changed in the United States. As a historian of American gender history, I have spent a lot of time reading and reviewing Beth L. Bailey?s aptly titled 1988 monograph From Front Porch to Back Seat: Courtship in Twentieth-Century America.  Bailey surmises that due to changes in consumption, the economy, and gender roles between men and women courtship began to occur more in public places instead of the ?sheltering and controlling contexts of home and local community.? [2] Socializing in public spaces afforded courting couples more anonymity and privacy then they previously held. As I have delved further and further into my research, I have wondered how the example of Mormon courtship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century fit with other trends which affected the way men and women courted? Did Mormon courtship in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries evolve into a private practice in a public world?

The function of dances within Mormon courtship practices reveals how unmarried LDS couples did not necessarily follow more mainstream patterns and trends. A church dance fit within the social spaces of a local/private community and the realm of a more public world surrounded by people. For a Mormon couple in a smaller community, it was nearly impossible for courtship to remain anonymous and separate from church activities.  Church officials used activities like dances as a space for adolescent Mormon men and women to socialize with each other in a controlled setting monitored by adults.  In many instances, the church would only condone dances if those attending abided by a curfew and there were strict admittance rules that often barred non-Mormons from attending.[3] Despite the stringent rules surrounding church dances, they became a constant and popular event for church youth. In fact, attending numerous dances could be tiring for young women and men. In 1892, Amelia Cannon noted in her diary that she would ?heartily welcome a rest? from dances and parties. As a single twenty-two year old woman of well-known family in Salt Lake City, she was regularly invited to attend dances in various wards throughout the city and in Provo. She also wrote in her diary: ?I used to long intensely for cavaliers. Now that I have an abundance, I don?t appreciate them.?[4] She even insisted that she was done with dances for the season only to be back at them a few days later.

As Amelia Cannon?s words indicate courtship could be a busy and exhausting task for young Mormon women in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century. Earlier courtships between polygamous men and women had to be private affairs out of necessity to avoid legal prosecution. Even though scholars estimate that a smaller percentage of Mormons, between twenty to thirty percent, engaged in polygamist marriages, the practice arguably offered a unique dynamic centered on secrecy that affected how both monogamists and polygamists approached courtship and potential marriage.[5] Ever since the first Manifesto calling for the end of plural marriage was released in 1890, church leadership feared that without the avenue of polygamy finding a suitable husband and eternal partner would become trickier for young women.[6]

The relationship between Mormonism, dancing, and the social event of a church dance was already fraught with tension before the end of polygamy. Many Mormons looked to dancing as both a viable form of exercise and enjoyment. According to his daughter Susa Young Gates, Brigham Young hosted communal dancing parties and even encouraged some of his children to take dance lessons in addition to gymnastics as part of their ?physical culture regime.?[7] However, Young also held an uneasy attitude toward the role of dance and often offered conflicting edicts on the appropriate time for the activity to occur.[8] Specific styles of dance also caused issues for Mormon leaders.  Amelia Cannon?s father George  Q. Cannon, influential magazine publisher and member of the LDS Church?s first presidency, claimed that round dancing was not good for one?s health in 1876.[9] Discussions over the impropriety of round dancing continued well into the twentieth century and was prominently featured in the Young Woman?s Journal, edited by Susa Young Gates, and Young Ladies? Mutual Improvement Association guidebooks.

Juanita Brooks? account of her younger life in Quicksand and Cactus: A Memoir of the Southern Mormon Frontier offers a lively picture of how the social world of a rural Mormon town was ordered by church dances.  The rural setting of Brooks? hometown Bunkerville, Nevada was markedly different from the more cosmopolitan world of Salt Lake City. Brooks who was born in 1898 describes the typical dance in Bunkerville as a central space for married couples to enjoy a night out, women to notice new fashions and catch up on gossip, and church members to discover a possible romance between younger unmarried church members. Church dances were ultimately intended to serve as sites of wholesome recreation for church members only. In early twentieth-century Bunkerville, there was an incident in which non-Mormon traveling salesmen snuck into a dance. The next day during church, a leader claimed ?there is one thing which I would like to call your attention, and that is how our young girls take up with these strange drummers who come here, men of the world who would only lead them astray.?[10]  Anxiety about outsiders was directly tied to fears young women would be motivated to marry non-Mormon men, leaving the future of the religion in jeopardy.

Even though strict supervision at Mormon dances did not always offer couples a chance at privacy, many Mormon couples were able to seek out other avenues of privacy for courtship. A teenager in 1880s Salt Lake City Minerva Richards wrote as an older woman in her life sketch that ?although only fifteen years of age my mother permitted Maille and myself to have the use of the parlor and to receive callers.?[11] On one New Years Day, when she and her sister received callers, she had an opportunity to meet Dick W. Young, a grandson of Brigham Young. Later when Minerva and Dick were left unattended she sang for him, an action that she credited as being ?largely responsible for the eventual winning of my husband.?[12]  Amelia Cannon recorded in her journal one evening  that she and her sister made a promise to each other to ?conduct themselves with proper decorum? if they did receive any callers.[13] These two anecdotes reveal that some parents allowed their daughters some semblance of privacy and minimal supervision while receiving male callers and fit in with the courtship patterns of other non-Mormon couples in the late nineteenth century.[14] Additionally, both anecdotes suggest that the young women?s parents trusted their individual daughter?s taste and approved of their (assumed) Mormon suitors.

This brief treatment of Mormon courtship leaves a lot to consider and  even more questions than conclusions at this point in my research:

• How did the legacy of polygamy?taking into consideration the amount of Mormons who actually engaged in the marital practice?affect how Mormon courtship developed after the first Manifesto?
• Was Mormon courtship markedly different than that of other couples, religiously affiliated or not?
• How do we treat social functions like Mormon dances that held characteristics of both public and private spaces?

The public/private framework for courtship is helpful for understanding several elements about the history of courtship and the LDS Church. First, it illuminates how the church helped create private worlds for couples within seemingly public settings. Brooks recounts how one couples would steal away a few seconds during sacrament meeting to decide where and how to meet up privately later in the day.[15]  Secondly, ?public? and ?private? lacked fixed meanings within the context of church events and activities. All at once, the church attempted to create an event public to its members but private to the outside world. Third and finally, my reading of secondary literature sheds light on the lack of scholarly attention paid toward how one?s religious identity affected their courtship behavior. The Mormon example provides a fruitful context of how one religious group, including the leadership and membership, envisioned the expectations and practice of courtship within the wake of transformative cultural, regional, and national change.