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Show 193 Islands were planned by Brigham Young for his wives. Susa, in 1879, accompanied "Aunt Zina" on one of these. In 1880, having matured considerably, Susa married a bookkeeper, Jacob Forsberry Gates. He was then 26 and had not previously been married. Susa would be his only wife in a union which produced eleven children-nine sons and two daughters.24 If Susa did not feel the Refiner's fire through a plural marriage experience, she certainly paid her dues in the infant mortality department, for seven of her eleven children did not live past early childhood. Susa's first Gates child, Emma Lucy, later gained considerable renown for her musical abilities and the fact that she married Albert E. Bowen who became an apostle. Emma Lucy's younger brother, B. Cecil Gates, became a noted composer. The children's birth places show that the Gates family lived first in St. George, then Provo, then for a 3-year period in Laie, Hawaii, where three sons began their lives. The last four children made their appearance later in Provo. Susa took Maeser's advice, publishing literally tomes of material throughout her lifetime and becoming one of Utah's most prolific women writers. She wrote several novels, a biography of her famous father, and numerous poems and stories "for local publication," besides founding and editing the Young Woman's Journal and editing The Relief Society Magazine. Susa seven times represented the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Associations of Utah at the National Council of Women in Washington, D.C. |
