Susa Young Gates

Who was Susa Young Gates?

Susa Young Gates was a writer, periodical editor, and women's rights advocate in Utah.

Susa Young was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory to Lucy Bigelow, LDS Church president Brigham Young's twenty-second wife. She entered the University of Deseret at age 13 and became the editor of the student newspaper. In 1872, she married Alma B. Dunford and had two children, but the couple divorced in 1877 while he was serving an LDS Church mission. One of these children was Leah Dunford, who later became the wife of John A. Widtsoe.

In 1878, Young entered Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Utah, where she founded the music department. In 1880, she married Jacob F. Gates. She had 13 children with him, seven of which did not survive to adulthood. Her son Bailey Dunford, from her first marriage, also died young. One of her daughters was Emma Lucy Gates Bowen.

Gates and her husband served as church missionaries to the Kingdom of Hawaii in the late 1880s. During this time tow of her children died of diphtheria. She would later recount her experiences here in a novel The Little Missionary. In 1889, she founded the Young Woman's Journal, a periodical targeted to adolescent Latter-day Saint females. In 1897, the church's Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association adopted the Young Women's Journal as its official organ. Gates stepped down as editor of the Journal in 1900, but continued to contribute occasionally until it ceased publication in 1929.