Horne, Mary Isabella

From The Encyclopedia of Mormonism

See this page in the original 1992 publication.

Author: Madsen, Susan Arrington

From 1870 to 1904 Mary Isabella Hales Horne (1818-1905) was president of the Senior Cooperative retrenchment association, an organization that spearheaded a number of women's activities, including a Churchwide retrenchment from "worldly," or materialistic, pursuits in the 1870s, and a movement in support of plural marriage in the 1880s. During most of the three decades, she was also president of the Salt Lake Stake Relief Society and treasurer of the Central (later General) Board of Relief Society.

Mary Isabella Hales was born on November 20, 1818, in Rainham, Kent County, England. She was the oldest of seven children born to Stephen and Mary Ann Hales. Her father was a shoemaker and her mother a seamstress.

The Hales family immigrated to York (now Toronto), Canada, where Isabella met Joseph Horne at a Methodist camp meeting in 1834. They were married on May 9, 1836, and were baptized members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in July 1836 by Orson Hyde, an apostle. The newlyweds became friends of the Prophet Joseph Smith, and both had a firm testimony of his prophetic calling. In 1838, they gathered with the Saints to Far West, Missouri, and subsequently suffered through the violent expulsion of the Saints from Missouri. They moved to Quincy and Nauvoo, Illinois, and then crossed the plains to the Salt Lake Valley in 1847. The Hornes had fifteen children, including three sets of twins.

In 1869 President Brigham Young challenged Isabella Horne to encourage the women of the Church to spend less time preparing elegant meals and sewing fancy clothing, and more time nurturing their spiritual development. On February 10, 1870, the Senior Cooperative Retrenchment Association was formally organized, with Mary Isabella Horne as president. Under her direction, the association also supported local Relief Society, primary, and young women's organizations; the woman's exponent; the 1876 centennial fair; and the United Order. It also supported mass meetings in which resolutions were drafted in strong support of woman suffrage.

In December 1877, Isabella Horne was called to preside over the Salt Lake Stake Relief Society. She served twenty-six years, directing a total of sixty-five ward Relief Society presidencies. She presided over Relief Society sessions of the women's conferences of the stake, which were attended by many women from throughout the territory until the first general auxiliary conferences were inaugurated in 1889. She also instituted a nurse training program in the stake that was later adopted by Relief Society's general officers. In 1880 the Central Board of the Relief Society was organized and she was appointed treasurer, a position she held until 1901.

In addition to these assignments, Isabella Horne served as a member of the Deseret hospital committee (1882-1894); as a counselor to Zina D. H. Young in the presidency of the Deseret Silk Association, established in 1876; and as president of the Women's Cooperative Mercantile and Manufacturing Institution from 1890 to 1905.

She died on August 25, 1905, at the age of eighty-six. At her death, Emmeline B. wells, another prominent leader among Utah women, said of her that she "was a born leader, a sort of General among women and indeed in this respect might surpass most men, of extraordinary ability…. A woman of great force of character, and wonderful ability, such a one as might stand at the head of a great institution and carry it on successfully…. Sister Horne can appropriately be called a stalwart, a champion for the rights of her own sex, and indeed for all mankind" [Woman's Exponent 36 (Apr. 1908):58].

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