Susa Young Gates

Susa Young Gates married Jacob Forsberry Gates. That marriage linked our family lines. Susa became my great-aunt as Jacob was the brother of my great-grandfather, Wellington Forsberry Gates. While perusing a book of pioneer women recently at BYU I came across this brief history of her. I found it fascinating and thought others in the family might enjoy it as well.

"Mrs. Susa Young Gates:--The first child born in the Lion House, March 18, 1856, Susa Young, daughter of Brigham Young and Lucy Bigelow, was a studious and imaginative child. She was taught dancing by Sarah Alexander, and for several years was a child danseuse at the Salt Lake Theatre. She was a natural musician, studied telegraphy and graduated as a star pupil. (in “shorthand”) of David Evans, the Church stenographer, in 1870. Removing to St. George with her mother’s family, she was a popular actress in that pioneer Dixie city; taught music and organized the Union Club there in 1876. She attended the B.Y.Academy in 1878 and there organized the Music Department under the direction of her beloved teacher, Prof. Karl G. Maeser, with two choral bodies an excellent choir. She organized and taught the Domestic Science Department in 1896 in the same school. Since 1894 she has been a Trustee of that institution. For two terms, 1905-1911, she was Trustee of the Utah Agricultural College. Married Jacob F. Gates in 1880, she has borne thirteen children five of them living. Mrs. Gates was a member of the General Board of the Y.I.M.I.A. for over twenty years, and founded and edited, during that time the Young Woman’s Journal, presenting the magazine to the Association when it became an assured success in its eighth year. Placed on the General Board of the Relief Society in May 1911, by President Joseph F. Smith, she was chosen Corresponding Secretary in September, 1913, and appointed editor of the new Relief Society Magazine in the fall of 1913. She is the Historian of the Society and is not engaged in writing the history of the Society and of the Mormon women. She was the first person baptized in the St. George Temple, President Woodruff officiating with her father, President Young, confirming her for the dead. She was a worker there at the opening of the Temple and three years thereafter, chiefly acting as a recorder. She was the official stenographer for bot St. George Temple dedications, as also for those in the Logan and Salt Lake Temples, and is still faithful to that calling. Mrs. Gates has lived seven years in St. George, was 29 years in Provo, one year in New York and has been to the Sandwich Islands twice, the last time on a mission with her husband, where three sons were born and two died; to Europe three times, and many times East, in the interests of women’s organized work. She was a speaker at the great London International Congress of Women in 1899, was the United States delegate to Copenhagen in 1901, and was a United States delegate and a speaker at the late Woman’s Congress in Rome in 1914. Organized the Utah Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and associated with Senator Reed Smoot and John Caltrin of Provo, organized the first Utah Pioneer Society—The Sons and Daughters of Utah Pioneers in 1894; served a term as Director of the National Household Economic Association and was the United States delegate of that Association to Canada in 1898. She was Ward President of the Y.I.M.I.A. in Provo; and taught a class of over one hundred Sunday School girls in the B.Y.U. for over twelve years, also giving semi-weekly lectures on Special Physiology for girls at the same time and place. Her writings are voluminous, and besides editing two magazines she has written many short stories, some verse and three books: “The Life of Lydia Knight,” “The History of the Y.I.M.I.A.” and “John Stevens’ Courtship”. She has written for the local magazines and papers since she was fourteen years of age and for ten years has edited the Genealogical Department of the Saturday Evening News and the Sunday Morning Herald Republican. Her greatest work outside of her home life has been the creative efforts put into the cause of genealogy and in the assisting of that work both in the Genealogical Society of Utah and in the General Board of the Relief Society. She wrote the Genealogical Lesson Book now in use, developed the class work and has been of great assistance to the General Bard of the Genealogical Society and to the women of the Church in this line of endeavor. She is also Genealogist for her father’s family and has secured over 16,000 Young names from the Utah books and other sources, all properly recorded and indexed. She was made President of the Daughters of the Pioneers in 1904 and served several years in that capacity, founded the Relic Department and made a feature of the old-fashioned balls for that Society. Her genealogical work has begun there and after some years the sisters were invited to transfer their activities to the Genealogical Society itself. Mrs. Gates is eminently a pioneer and is said to inherit much of her father’s initiative and executive ability in many of the lines of activity which have engaged her attention. She is orderly and systematic in all her ways, and very practical. She has been a public speaker, organizer, traveler, writer, musician and temple worker from her youth up, not forgetting her activities in the political field as she is an ardent Republican and has been a leader and organizer in that party for twenty years. With all her public work, however, Mrs. Gates has been devoted to her husband, home ad children, and they are her most adoring lovers and fastest friends. She is an excellent cook and loves to entertain her friends in a social capacity. It is said of her that she is a human dynamo; growth, activity, development, progress—all these are the ruling forces of a busy and conscientious life. Her father’s ancestors came from Boston, and later Hopkinton, Mass.; his grandfather, Dr. Joseph Young, was a physician and surgeon in the French and English wars, while his father, John, and two of his uncles were in the Revolutionary War, John serving directly in two engagements under General Washington. On the mother’s side, the Bigelows, are a famous old New England family, running back to 1630, in Plymouth." Transcribed from the book “Daughters of the Utah Pioneers and their Mothers” by Shauna O. Robins on 29 Sept 2012. This book is located at the Harold B. Lee Library at Brigham Young University.