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John Q. Cannon, Frank J. Cannon, and Abraham H. Cannon were the three eldest sons of George Q. Cannon, the man viewed by historians as second only to Brigham Young in prominence in late nineteenth-century Mormon Utah. George Q. Cannon was a man of unusual talents and skills, whose far-flung influence extended to ecclesiastical, political, literary, journalistic, and business matters in Utah and the West, and each of the three sons inherited much of their father’s brilliance, culture, and charisma. Although he was often absent from home as they grew up, George Q. Can non devotedly urged them on, pressured them, provided formal and practical education for each, and made sure each received unusual opportunities for advancement, all in a careful attempt to cultivate the skills and experience to permit them to succeed in church, state, publishing, and business. 

The three sons were born within two years of each other: John Q., the eldest, was born in April 1857, Franklin J. (he always went by Frank) was born in January 1859, and Abraham H., known as Abram, was born in March 1859. John Q. and Abram were the sons of George Q. Cannon’s first wife, Elizabeth Hoagland, while Frank J. was the oldest son of second wife Sarah Jane Jenne. Until 1867, they were the only children of George Q. Cannon who survived more than a year or two beyond birth, and they were always perceived in the family and by the outside world as the “older sons” and the “older brothers.”All three showed unusual promise and each rose to prominence at an early age. All shared their father’s gifts for the written and spoken word and all served as editors of newspapers or other periodicals. All participated at least for a time in family businesses (one named George Q. Cannon & Sons and another Cannon Brothers) and managed or were expected eventually to manage those businesses. John Q. and Abram served as LDS General Authorities (George Q. had blessed both of them as young boys that they would become important leaders in the Church “if [they would] only remain faithful to God”), and Frank J. served as one of Utah’s first two U.S. Senators. Each stood out from his contemporaries and likely would have been successful in his own right; but as the oldest sons of George Q. Cannon, they were expected to excel. 

Although they grew up in the same extended household in a prominent family, were near the same age, were given similar educational, political, and cultural opportunities, and were business associates, close friends, and often confidants of each other, the three brothers’ lives ultimately turned out very differently.Their experiences with love, sex, and marriage profoundly affected them, and many of the differences in their lives are traceable almost directly to these varied experiences. John Q., Frank, and Abram Can non all married accomplished daughters of prominent Mormon families between April 1878 and March 1880. After that, the brothers’ experiences with love, sex, and marriage diverged. 

John Q. Cannon, the eldest, was married for a total of almost fifty years to one woman who bore him twelve children, but that marriage was punctuated briefly, by mutual consent, by a divorce in September 1886 which followed his public confession of an extramarital relationship and the public excommunication that followed. John Q. likely had contemplated a polygamous marriage to the woman with whom he committed adultery, but either the times or higher-ranking Church officials did not permit it. Although his marriage to his first wife’s lovely and talented younger sister (who turned out to be his unidentified adulterous partner) the day after the divorce was short-lived because of her death eight months later from complications of childbirth, and even though he quickly remarried his first wife and was permitted back into the Church fold, the adulterous episode derailed his promise of extraordinary prominence in Church and political affairs. 

Second son Frank J. Cannon was, like John Q., married serially to two lovely and bright sisters, wedding the second after his first wife’s death in 1908. But over a period of decades, Frank demonstrated a periodic inability to maintain marital fidelity, which unraveled his career (particularly after his father’s death in 1901) as an important advisor and agent to the LDS Church’s highest-ranking leaders and the heady political career into which his extraordinary gifts had vaulted him in his mid-thirties. The embarrassment of at least one illegitimate child and his long-term propensity when stressed or bored to go on drunken sprees, often with prostitutes, contributed to his estrangement and excommunication from the LDS Church and ended Church backing for any high political position or business prominence. The mutual contempt that Frank and Church President Joseph F. Smith had for each other also contributed to Frank’s downfall. Once displaced in Mormon society, Frank J. Cannon used his considerable talents, first, in attacking the Church locally and, later, in gaining significant national prominence as an anti-Mormon campaigner in the 1910s. 

Abram, the disciplined and dutiful third son, was the lone polygamist among the three and the only one not to marry sisters. Abram was an example of a man who was permitted to enter “the Principle” because of his discipline and commitment to duty, thereby proving the lie of the libidinous Mormon polygamist.He married his second wife a year and a day after his first marriage and eventually married four women (the last one infamously six years after the Woodruff Manifesto). At the same time, Abram was called to high Church office, ultimately as a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Although he often confessed to his diary that life seemed “dull” and he had a sometimes stormy relationship with at least one of his wives, Abram steadfastly tried to treat each of his wives fairly and equitably and, unlike his brothers, was always faithful to his marital vows (albeit to four of them). 

John Q. Cannon’s Fall from Grace: “So Good and So Able, Yet So Weak” 

Initially, the most was expected from the eldest son, John Q. Cannon. John’s name reflected the important position he held in the family.John was groomed from an early age to be a journalist, publisher, and politician. He learned shorthand in his early teens so he could report Brigham Young’s discourses. He studied classical languages and served for a time as his father’s personal secretary in Washington, D.C., where George Q. was serving as Utah’s sole territorial representative in the U.S. House of Representatives. Heber J. Grant later mused: “There probably is not a young man in the whole church who has had more opportunities and advantages extended to him educationally, spiritually, and every other way than John Q. Cannon.” 

Though the eldest, John Q. was the last of the three to marry. He was sealed to Elizabeth Anne (“Annie”) Wells on March 17, 1880, in the Endowment House. Annie was the second daughter of Emmeline B. Wells, prominent Mormon women’s rights leader and editor of the Woman’s Exponent. Her father, Daniel H. Wells, served as a member of the LDS Church’s First Presidency under Brigham Young and was also mayor of Salt Lake City and general of the Nauvoo Legion. President Wells performed the ceremony, which was no doubt the marriage of the year among prominent young Mormons. After their marriage, John Q. and Annie lived with Emmeline and with Annie’s beautiful and gifted younger sister, Louie, in Emmeline’s home for almost a year. After Annie bore their first child, named George Q. after his grandfather, the young family moved to their own home on a farm located southwest of downtown Salt Lake City, near the Jordan River and George Q. Cannon’s farm. When John Q. left on a mission in August 1881, Annie and the baby returned to live with her mother and sister. 

John Q. was made president of the Swiss Mission at age twenty-six; and near the end of his mission, Annie joined him for several months, leaving baby George Q. with Emmeline and Louie. In addition to missionary work, John Q. and Annie visited the great cities of Europe. Annie also wrote a history of the Relief Society that was published in several European LDS periodicals and travel letters published in the Woman’s Exponent. While John Q. was serving this mission, he was nominated as a new apostle but was not appointed by his great-uncle, President John Taylor. John Q. and Annie returned to Salt Lake City in June 1884 and, for a time, lived again in the Wells household. Soon thereafter, Annie bore the couple’s second child, a daughter, Louise. 

John Q. Cannon ran for and was elected to the Salt Lake City Council and the Utah Territorial Legislature. He was one of three men appointed to go to Washington, D.C., to present President Grover Cleveland with a proposal for Utah’s statehood. In October 1884, he was sustained as second counselor to Presiding Bishop William B. Preston, thus becoming an LDS General Authority, the first of George Q.’s sons to achieve that status. At the same time, he was appointed a member of the Council of Fifty, a secret political group of Mormon leaders, and was suggested as a possible candidate for Utah’s territorial delegate in 1884. John Q. was well liked by his siblings and well regarded by his peers. In mid-1884, John Q. Cannon seemed poised for success in many different ways. 

Then in early November 1884, the Salt Lake Tribune published a sensationalized report whose source was the “son of a Mormon high up in authority in the Mormon Church,” accusing John Q. Cannon of having married his wife’s younger sister, Louie Wells, in the recently completed Logan Temple. Louie was unusually talented and attractive, and the Tribune, in saucy nineteenth-century newspaper prose, accused George Q. Cannon of pushing John Q. to achieve “Celestial glory” by marrying Louie in the “Principle.” A nastier allegation in the story was that John Q.’s father had cleared the way to Louie’s heart for his son by calling her boyfriend, Salt Lake Herald reporter and budding entrepreneur and intellectual, Robert W. Sloan, on a mission to Great Britain.The allegations and counter-allegations in the journalistic firestorm among the Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, and Salt Lake Herald no doubt took a toll on John Q. Cannon and his relatives as well as on Louie, Annie, and other members of the Wells family. 

While it is not clear that John Q. Cannon and Louie Wells had a romantic relationship when the Tribune published its infamous article in November 1884 (although it would not be surprising if they had thought about a future plural marriage), it is evident that, by late 1885, John Q. and Louie were intimately involved. Annie Wells Cannon later testified that she believed her husband and her younger sister had been in love for some time and that she wished John to marry Louie as a plural wife so they all could share eternal blessings together. She also testified, however, that he consistently denied having such feelings. Martha Hughes Cannon, one of the plural wives of George Q.’s brother Angus, wrote that John Q. had “twice asked to marry the woman he loved,” referring to Louie Wells, but had been denied permission.A third child, Margaret, was born to Annie and John Q. in April 1886. 

Five months later, in early September 1886, John Q. Cannon confessed to his brother Abram that he had earlier “given” himself to Louie (a nineteenth-century euphemism for sexual relations) and that she had suffered a miscarriage. He was prepared to take whatever punishment would be imposed for this violation of his marriage vows.Abram was shocked, even though he probably had known earlier of some of his older brother’s other faults, including drinking and gambling. Abram could not understand why John Q. and Louie had not married and, in anguish, wondered how John Q. “could so far forget himself as to fall when he might long ago have been joined to Louie in honorable wedlock.” Abram also confided to his journal that news of John Q.’s death would have been more welcome. He worried that the news “will nearly kill Father.” Abram “felt sick at heart” and mourned inconsolably. He had looked up to his older brother as the example for the whole family and believed John Q. the least likely of all George Q. Cannon’s children to experience such a fall. He feared that “pride is what caused the temptation to first enter into John’s mind.” 

Abram consulted with their father. George Q. went to his brother, Angus M. Cannon, the long-serving president of Salt Lake Stake, on the morning of Sunday, September 5. George Q. told Angus, with “the greatest emotion,” that “‘a great calamity has befallen our house.’ I [Angus] enquired its nature when he [George] explained that his son John Q . . . had written him a letter acknowledging that he had fallen into transgression and committed himself.” In a candid statement exhibiting his view of John Q.’s character, Angus emotionally recorded: “I could only say so good and so able, yet so weak! I am moved to the depths of my soul for . . . the most brilliant of my father’s house.” Angus had been keeping a low profile for some time to avoid federal marshals who were seeking to arrest him for unlawful cohabitation. George Q. instructed him to attend the regular meeting in the tabernacle that afternoon. John Q. planned to “go before the assembled people that afternoon and confess his wrong doing in the Tabernacle and . . . should he do so, it was my [Angus’s] duty as President of Stake to be present and propose to the Saints to cut him off from the Church. I was asked if I could think of anything better to do be done and answered I could not.” 

So, at George Q. Cannon’s direction, on September 5, 1886, John Q. Cannon confessed to a packed house in the tabernacle that he had “dishonored his priesthood” by committing adultery (although he did not disclose his partner’s name). Angus M. Can non then proposed that his nephew be cut off from the Church for adultery. The congregation unanimously voted to excommunicate John Q.John Nicholson, whose address had been interrupted by the confession and excommunication, then resumed the speaker’s podium and counseled that John Q. Cannon’s “fall” should be taken as a solemn warning to all.Extensive reports of the September 5, 1886, services in the tabernacle were published in all three of the local newspapers. The Tribune had a field day. It expressed pseudo-concern that every “lady acquaintance” of John Q. Cannon would be the subject of gossip. 

Also at George Q. Cannon’s direction, Annie Wells Cannon then obtained an uncontested divorce on September 9, 1886, from Elias Smith, Salt Lake probate judge and LDS bishop. Prosecutors later argued that the divorce was not valid because the judge was overly involved, may have prepared some of the papers, and handled the entire matter by himself without the help of court staff. John Q. immediately asked Louie to marry him (she later testified that she had told him she “would think of it”) and, on September 10, 1886, just five days after the extraordinary events in the tabernacle, John Q. and Louie Wells were married by Abram Cannon. It is probable that Louie was once again pregnant by the time they married. 

Ironically (in light of the divorce), on October 7, 1886, federal deputies arrested John Q. Cannon on the charge of polygamy. At the two-day preliminary hearing that took place on the next two days, prosecutors presented two theories for the charge that John Q. Cannon was a polygamist: either he and Louie Wells had been married for some time, perhaps since sometime in the fall of 1884 as the Tribune had reported in November 1884, or the quickie divorce that Annie Wells Cannon had received from a local probate judge was improperly ordered and, therefore, of no legal effect. In either case, the prosecutors argued, Cannon was married to both Wells sisters and had, therefore, violated the Edmunds Act’s prohibition against polygamy. The testimony given at the hearing by the three Wells women (Emmeline, Annie, and Louie) must have been agonizing and humiliating. No witness identified Louie Wells as John Q.’s paramour, and several stated directly that Louie was not the “other woman,” even though they knew better. 

Cannon was bound over for further proceedings on the finding that there was sufficient evidence to give to the grand jury. Bail was set at $11,000, $8,000 on the polygamy charge and $3,000 on the unlawful cohabitation charge, which was added to the original polygamy charge.In December 1886, the grand jury returned an indictment against John for polygamy. Louie Wells, five months pregnant and recognizing that she would be the star witness at the trial, left for San Francisco where she found shelter with her half-sister, Belle Whitney Sears. On April 5, 1887, she gave birth to a stillborn son and died six weeks later from complications associated with childbirth. 

John Q. Cannon was released from the Presiding Bishopric at the time of his excommunication. He did not run for reelection to the Salt Lake City Council or to the territorial legislature. His name was no longer mentioned as one who might be appointed to the Quorum of the Twelve or be elected as territorial delegate to Congress. At Louie Wells’s funeral, President Angus M. Cannon, again at George Q.’s instruction, implicated Louie for the first time publicly as John Q. Cannon’s partner in adultery. Angus’s disclosure was the talk of Salt Lake City Mormon society for some time to come, though it was never reported in the media. 

As Church leaders watched the events of late 1886 and 1887, the “John Q. Cannon matter” seemed to grow worse as more information came to light. In the spring of 1887, Apostle Francis M. Lyman wrote to Joseph F. Smith, then second counselor in the First Presidency, that John Q. had not only committed adultery but had also embezzled Church funds: “[John Q’.s] peculations from Church and Temple funds have reached over 11000$ the last I heard the amount and still many receipts to be heard from.” John also admitted to “gambling on hor[s]es, drinking strong drink, smoking cigars, and playing billiards at the Walker House.” George Q. Cannon knew of his son’s inclinations and worried about the effects that the stresses from the excommunication, the criminal charges, and, no doubt, Louie’s pregnancy and death were having on his son. George Q. vowed that John Q. “must not despair” or “take refuge in stimulants.” 

In May 1887, at the same time Louie Wells Cannon was agonizingly (and unsuccessfully) fighting death, an unfounded rumor circulated that Annie had become pregnant after her divorce from John Q. In another letter to Joseph F. Smith, Francis M. Lyman confided that “these terrible things will, I fear, prove a death blow to Bro. D. H. Wells and bring his silver locks in sorrow to his grave. There is universal horror felt throughout Israel at the developments in that case.” Lyman reported “general sympathy for Prest. Cannon and all the innocent and injured parties” but felt concern that “mortal enmity” between the Wells and Cannon families might erupt. According to Lyman, “John Q’s doings” had shocked “all Israel” and things were getting worse. “Nothing turns up to mitigate his offenses but . . . every new rumor seems to blacken the record.” Rumors circulating among Wells family members increased animosity toward some of the Cannon clan. 

The handling of the John Q. Cannon affair was controversial in the presiding quorums of the Church for a number of years after the excommunication in September 1886. In 1887, both before and after Louie Wells’s death and funeral, several members of the Church hierarchy expressed a lack of confidence in George Q. Cannon, in part because of his handling of John Q.’s “fall.” Daniel H. Wells, Louie’s father, told the assembled Quorum of the Twelve that he had earlier dreamed about a black rattlesnake. One young woman was standing near its head and another young woman was standing near its tail. Wells held a strong hoe in his hands but did not think he could kill the snake with one stroke. He needed to get the girls away, then kill it. He had awakened at this point and had subsequently forgotten about the dream; but when the apostles were discussing John Q., he realized that John Q. Cannon was the snake and the two girls in the dream were his daughters, Annie and Louie. President Wells’s concerns were not allayed when George Q. Cannon expressed his view (though the evidence to the contrary was strong) that John Q.’s “fall” had occurred in “an unguarded moment.” President Cannon also asserted that other allegations against John Q. were false, even though the father had personally repaid the Church $11,000 for the embezzled funds. George Q. Cannon believed that John Q. had properly repented and deserved to be received back into the Church. 

Daniel Wells’s dream of the black snake notwithstanding, he eventually came to terms with John Q. Cannon at Emmeline’s insistence, who in May 1888 made “every arrangement” to facilitate the reconciliation. After Daniel and John Q. met in Emmeline’s parlor on May 10, 1888, things were “different to what they were before.” On May 11, 1888, George Q. Cannon rebaptized John Q. Cannon and reordained him to the office of elder. The senior Cannon and President Wilford Woodruff also restored all of John Q.’s priesthood and temple blessings. Finally, on May 13, 1888, John Q. and Annie were “sealed again” in the Endowment House, with Daniel H. Wells officiating a second time. Immediately thereafter, they were also married civilly in a ceremony performed by Judge Elias Smith, who had earlier granted Annie’s overnight divorce. 

Although John Q. was quietly sealed to Louie Wells in a vicarious marriage in the Manti Temple in 1892 (with Annie standing as proxy for her sister), it appears that there was little or no mention in the family of John’s marriage to Louie (or the affair that preceded it). Genealogical records do not note either John and Annie’s divorce or their remarriage. 

John Q. Cannon moved to Ogden after his excommunication to work with his brother Frank on the Ogden Standard. George Q. Cannon for years had published many of the quasi-official LDS periodicals and had served in earlier years as editor of the Deseret News. In 1892, he and two sons, John Q. and Abram, leased the News from the financially distressed Church. John Q. was appointed editor-in-chief, and he and Annie moved their family back to Salt Lake City. As editor of the Church’s newspaper, John Q. could gain a certain amount of public redemption. Abram Cannon was appointed business manager of the paper at the same time.Some high-ranking Church leaders found John Q.’s appointment inappropriate, among them Brigham Young Jr., who found “fault” in a quorum meeting, according to Heber J. Grant’s diary, with Cannon’s appointment as “the Editor of the Church paper, and . . . many [other members of the Quorum] felt it was all wrong for a man like John Q. to stand as the editor of a paper rep resenting the mouth piece of the Lord.” 

In 1894, John Q. Cannon became “prominently connected with military affairs in Utah.” Thereafter, he was appointed to lead an investigation into “Indian troubles” in the San Juan areas of Utah Territory in January 1895. In 1898, John volunteered for service in the Spanish-American War. He was commissioned as a lieutenant-colonel in the cavalry and was assigned a contingent of cavalry from the Intermountain West subsequently known as “Torrey’s Rough Riders.” When Colonel Jay L. Torrey fell ill, John Q. Cannon took command. Although he and his troops languished through a hot summer in Florida and never saw action, Colonel Cannon showed the spark that many had seen in him in earlier days. Idaho’s U.S. Senator George Laird Shoup, reviewing the Rough Riders, described Cannon as “one of the most striking military figures that I have ever seen and the men who followed him were well worthy of their commander.” 

Not long after his father died in 1901, John Q. Cannon and his family moved into George Q.’s “big house,” a large Victorian house on Ninth West that was the centerpiece of the Cannon farm. This move reflected his continuing standing in the family. He was accused of and arrested in 1905 for embezzling funds from the Utah delegation, which he chaired, to the Louisiana Purchase Exposition held in St. Louis. He was never tried or convicted. John Q. worked as an editor (usually managing editor but sometimes editor-in-chief) of the Deseret News for most of the remainder of his life, proudly watching Annie attain prominence as a state legislator, as a civic leader, as an editor, and as a member of the general board of the Relief Society.After their remarriage in May 1888, John Q. and Annie had nine more children—a total of twelve—and apparently had a loving and faithful marriage for the rest of their lives. 

In 1930, John Q. and Annie Wells Cannon publicly celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, dating from their original marriage. In fact, they had not been married for fifty years because of the divorce between September 1886 and May 1888.After his death in 1931, John Q.’s good friend, Les Goates, sports editor for the News, wrote a loving tribute to his colleague and boss. Goates noted that Cannon was 

[a] staunch friend and a sporting foe, a born leader, a tactician, . . . [who] had to fight his way for existence in the early days. His life was a triumph over obstacles. By overcoming these he won the success that raised him to the top rating in his profession. …A charming conversationalist, a wit of no small boundary, a good friend to young men, and a splendid boss. . . . John Q. Cannon was no paragon of virtue. He never set himself up as one. 

The principal obstacles John Q. had to overcome were of his own making—his adulterous relationship with Louie Wells and at least two serious embezzlements. He appears to have transcended these “obstacles” by settling into what was, by outward appearances, a happy and full life. John Q. Cannon was a good and loving father and an able newspaperman, but he never reached the unusual heights that he might have and which were expected of him. 

Talented, Charismatic, but Flawed: Frank J. Cannon

Probably the most naturally gifted of George Q. Cannon’s sons, Frank Jenne Cannon faced the demon of alcoholism much of his life. His infidelity was related in substantial part to his periodic binge drinking, which appears, in turn, to be associated with stress, inactivity, uncertainty, and/or depression. The two challenges, alcohol abuse and infidelity, indirectly led to his alienation from the Church and culture of his youth. 

Frank was living in Ogden, Utah, working for his cousin, Franklin S. Richards, the Weber County recorder, and also reading law with Richards when he met Martha (“Mattie”) Anderson Brown, the daughter of prominent Ogden parents. Nineteen-year old Frank married the lovely and lively twenty-year-old Mattie in the Salt Lake Endowment House on April 8, 1878, shortly before he graduated from the University of Deseret. Their daughter Jenne was born in February 1879, but died a few weeks later. 

According to Orson F. Whitney, George Q. Cannon took Brigham Young’s disdain for lawyers to heart and discouraged Frank from pursuing his childhood dream of becoming a lawyer. After Frank served briefly as a reporter for the Deseret News, he and Mattie returned to Ogden where he began reporting for the Ogden Junction. They moved to Logan in August 1879 where Frank edited and managed the Logan Leader, which was published by the Junction Printing Association. In January 1880, Mattie bore their second daughter, Dorothy (“Dot”). 

In Logan, Frank and Mattie employed a young Englishwoman, Maud Baugh, to help Mattie with the house and the baby. By early summer 1880, twenty-one-year-old Frank began an adulterous relationship with twenty-year-old Maud. In mid-October 1880, Maud’s father, George T. Baugh, a Logan painter and father of seventeen, approached William B. Preston, Cache Valley Stake president. As President Preston related the meeting to George Q. Cannon, “Bro Baugh” is “the father of the girl who lived at Franks for 6 or 7 months past.” Baugh informed President Preston “that his daughter is encienta [sic; he meant “encinta,” Spanish for “pregnant”] and charges Frank with it, he having overcome her during the absence of his wife on a visit in Ogden some 3 or 4 months since.” When Maud “told him [Frank] her situation, before he left, he said to her ‘he was not Mormon enough to marry two wives yet’ so she says.” Frank had also left town. 

George Q. Cannon quickly investigated the allegations. Over the next several days, he received telegrams from William B. Preston in Logan indicating that “diligent enquiry” had not yet yielded further information and that Frank, although he had promised to return to Logan, had not done so. Mattie, no doubt worried about Frank, likely took their baby, Dot, and went to Ogden to stay with her mother. Finally, Frank sent his parents separate letters about the matter. Frank’s letter to his father, dated October 27, 1880, survives. The son pleaded with his father: “Don’t proceed in relation to that terrible affair. All that may be done will be accomplished without any action on your part.” Frank also confessed that he had purchased some goods at the “Co-op” on George Q.’s account because he had no money and sadly concluded: “God bless you, Father, and give you yet many years of joy with your dutiful children, is my earnest prayer.” He signed the letter “Franklin,” his christened name but one he never used. The furious George Q. sent Frank’s mother, Sarah Jane, and John Q. Cannon to Ogden and Logan searching for Frank. 

Abram’s wife Sarah wrote her husband, then in Germany on a mission, that his brother Frank had “been too intimate” with a woman from Logan and that George Q. had angrily told family members that “he did not care if Frank never came near him again.”Though Frank returned to Logan briefly, he soon relocated to San Francisco to take a job with the San Francisco Chronicle. George Q., who had edited the Church’s Western Standard in San Francisco, may have facilitated Frank’s obtaining this position. Mattie and Dot went with him. 

Nor did George Q. heed his son’s plea to take no action. At some point within the next few months, the pregnant Maud Baugh was brought to the Cannon farm southwest of Salt Lake City. There, on April 24, 1881, she gave birth to a son. Frank’s mother, Sarah Jane Jenne Cannon, had delivered her last child, Preston J., just twelve days earlier. She and George Q. took in Frank’s illegitimate child, named him Karl Q., and raised him as the twin of their own infant. This act indicates both the Cannons’ genuine concern for their grandchild and their desire to treat him as their own. 

Frank’s intimate relationship, the birth of an illegitimate son, and the reactions to it—from his father, from Logan residents, from his brothers, and perhaps from Mattie—may have left lasting psychological scars. By most accounts, he was extremely sensitive from childhood and intensely emotional.He responded to most experiences feelingly. His younger brother, Joseph J., years later observed: “Unfortunately, there were certain conditions in his [Frank’s] own life that barred him, or he felt that they barred him, and had done from early youth from full enjoyment of the spiritual blessings of the gospel.”Perhaps the sad episode in Logan was one of these “conditions,” perhaps the condition, that kept Frank from certain experiences such as serving a proselytizing mission, that John Q. and Abram (and most of their younger brothers), had, and which contributed in some small part to Frank’s periodic unhappiness and his resulting drinking and infidelity. 

When Frank and Mattie returned to Utah in 1882, the Logan community’s negative feelings had not abated, especially since he had quickly left town instead of staying to—in the parlance of the times—face the music like a man. Confronting consequences squarely was obviously George Q.’s preferred mode. In June 1882, George Q. Cannon instructed Frank to “go to Logan, and clear up, as far as possible, the disgrace which was still attached to his name.” Frank promised to do so, and requested Abram, recently back from his mission, to accompany him. 

When Frank and Abram arrived in Logan, they first met with Apostle Moses Thatcher, who was ailing but offered to provide whatever help he could. They then visited the stake president, William Preston, who told Frank that “a public confession before the saints of the ward in which the sin of adultery was committed would be necessary and he (Frank) could then ask forgiveness for the same. He also advised Frank to see the parents of the injured girl, and make matters right with them.” Frank was willing to see the parents, “but he argued that a public confession was unnecessary as the revelations of God did not require it. He considered the sin a private one, and should not therefore be made public.” Abram noted in his diary that he disagreed with his brother and agreed with the local leaders that a public confession was in order. A “Bishop’s court” was scheduled for that evening. According to Abram, he and Frank then visited Benjamin Lewis, bishop of the Logan First Ward who, with “his councilors also demanded a public confession of Frank, and said that nothing less than this would satisfy them.” Abram was “called upon to express my ideas, and in doing so was forced by the Spirit to coincide with the views of the authorities. Frank demurred to comply with these requests at present; three months time was then given him in which to put matters in order.” The bishop and his counselors determined that, if Frank “did not do so within the allotted time he will be excommunicated.” Abram unhappily concluded that “Frank is apparently not humble enough.” 

Abram returned to Ogden and recorded nothing more in his diary about the matter until the following September, when Frank told him he had “made his affair in Logan right and now has a good recommend.”What had happened in the interim was that Apostle Franklin D. Richards had traveled to Logan and intervened in the local Church proceedings involving Frank Cannon. It was unusual, perhaps extraordinary, for an apostle to intervene in this way. He likely did so at the request of George Q. and Sarah Jane Cannon, though he may have initiated the action himself, since his first wife, Jane Snyder Richards, was Sarah Jane Cannon’s aunt, and Richards later married Sarah Jane’s mother, Sarah Snyder Jenne, as a plural wife after she had divorced Sarah Jane Cannon’s father, Benjamin Jenne. Franklin D. Richards was thus not only an associate and close friend of George Q. in the Quorum of the Twelve, but also Frank J. Cannon’s great-uncle and, through the sometimes-convoluted relationships associated with plural marriages, Frank’s step-grandfather. It is likely that Frank was named for Franklin D. Richards. Furthermore, the Richardses lived in Ogden and knew Frank and Mattie Cannon and Mattie’s parents well.Franklin D. Richards sometimes recorded in his diary during this period that he had had long conversations with George Q. Cannon; or that he and his wife, Jane, and George Q. and his wife, Sarah Jane, had had confidential discussions regarding Frank. 

On July 20, 1882, Elder Richards took the train to Logan, where he stayed at the home of President Preston, future LDS Presiding Bishop.Richards recorded in his diary the following plea: “O Lord help me I pray thee to . . . bring about benefit and blessings to all by obtaining an adjustment of Frank J. Cannon’s unpleasant affair in accordance with principles of righteousness & salvation as I feel rather strained & feeble.” The next day, Richards consulted with Preston and Bishop Lewis. Finally, the three Church leaders, together with Frank Cannon, who had arrived in Logan by train, called priesthood holders from the First Ward, where the young woman had lived, to consider how to deal with Frank. Seventeen men from the ward gathered. Under Elder Richards’s direction, this unusual assemblage decided that Frank would not be required to make a public confession. Rather, as Richards recorded in his diary, “The brethren voted unanimously to forgive [Frank] & admit him to membership by rebaptism which was administered by Br. Peter O. Petersen. Preston Card and I confirmed him & then Bp. Lewis gave him a certificate of membership & standing & we returned with rejoicing & gratitude to God.”(Frank had not been excommunicated; his rebaptism was intended to symbolize recommitment to gospel principles.) 

Moses Thatcher, who lived in Logan and, like Franklin D. Richards, was an apostle, and was also William Preston’s brother-in-law, later expressed a very different view of this July 1882 action. During a meeting of the Twelve held shortly after John Taylor’s death in July 1887, while George Q. Cannon was explaining his handling of the “John Q.” case, “brother Moses Thatcher denounced in strong terms the course of Apostle Franklin D. Richards when he came to Logan and covered up the crimes of Frank Cannon.” After Elder Thatcher made this accusation, “some warm feelings were manifest by Bros Thatcher and Richards.” Apostle Heber J. Grant confided to his diary that “I felt in my feelings to sustain the position taken by Moses.” 

Frank appears to have suffered some remorse about his actions in Logan (much to Abram’s relief) and apparently tried to improve his relationship with Mattie. Abram sometimes chronicled Frank’s cycle of errant behavior followed by periods of remorse and repentance.However, it was not long before Abram began receiving troubling reports that Frank had failed to come home in the evening and sometimes was gone for a day or two. Almost unquestionably, he would be on one of his “drunks,” as his brothers and father invariably called them. Even more troubling, Abram learned the “horrible information” that, when he would go “on drunks,” Frank was “spending money very lavishly with fast women,” that he was spending time “in Kate Flint’s establishment and that his associations with that notorious prostitute are well know[n] to several police officers.” Several days later, Abram was in Ogden checking on the brothers’ book and stationery store, which Frank was neglecting. He had dinner with Mattie, who admitted that she had not seen Frank for several days. On the train home, he “found Frank, who had received permission from the conductor to sit in the baggage car, as he was so intoxicated that he wished to avoid seeing” Abram. To Abram’s aggravation, “Mary Weld, Kate Flint and another prostitute were on the train and I was reliably informed that Frank has been in their company since yesterday and is now accompanying them to the city.” Frank denied “the truth of the assertions that he has been guilty of committing adultery,” but to add insult to injury, Abram “found a letter. . . from Kate Flint which stated that Frank was in debt to her and that unless he paid her, she designed suing him. She desired me to intercede and save Frank the disgrace of a suit.”Even four years later, John Q. told Abram that Frank had “been seen walking on the streets of Ogden in the company of two prostitutes the parasol of one of which he was carrying.” 

Perhaps not surprisingly, the rather lenient Church discipline in Logan in 1882 was not Frank’s last. Abram noted in his diary in June 1885 that “Frank made confession of his follies before the evening meeting at Ogden on Sunday and was forgiven. He will be rebaptized.” It was shortly thereafter that Frank reported having a “good recommend from his bishop.” It is not clear if this 1885 episode involved Frank’s patronage of prostitutes or other “follies” on his part. 

In October 1892, David H. Cannon, a younger brother of John Q., Frank, and Abram, died while serving a mission in Switzerland. In 1894, George Q. Cannon sought to have one of David’s brothers marry Lillian Hamlin, a beautiful and intelligent young woman, with whom David had a romantic understanding although the two were not formally engaged. In this way, George Q. explained to his sons, by the levirate principle, they could “raise children” to David.Frank reportedly eagerly volunteered to marry the lovely Lillian. As historian D. Michael Quinn has observed, however, George Q. Cannon “could entrust [Frank J.] with diplomatic missions on behalf of the Church but not with ‘the Principle.’” Eventually, at George Q.’s request, dutiful Abram courted and married Lillian Hamlin. 

Rumors of Frank’s infidelity, both with prostitutes and in adulterous relationships, continued through the remainder of his years in Utah. According to a local political newspaper, after his election to the U.S. Senate in 1896, “his immorality was so gross and notorious that he was asked by a multitude of his constituents to resign his seat.” During state legislative deliberations in 1899, when Frank was seeking reelection to the Senate, he reportedly “disappeared from public view, but was soon located in a house in the tenderloin district [of Salt Lake City] which he refused to leave for about a week.” In 1905, near the time of his excommunication from the LDS Church, Frank was accused of being a “wrecker of homes and a despoiler of women.”Although Frank was excommunicated for two particularly vicious editorials he published in the Salt Lake Tribune against the Church and its prophet, Joseph F. Smith, in March 1905, Joseph F. was also acutely aware of Frank’s sexual peccadilloes and noted in private correspondence that the Salt Lake Tribune had been presented with a “bill of some magnitude from the . . . ‘red light district’ to pay for Frank’s activities there.” In 1911, several years after Frank left Utah, the Salt Lake Herald-Republican, a paper controlled by Reed Smoot’s “Federal bunch,” described Frank as a “libertine” and as “a man who preaches on morality and has illegitimate children in the streets of Salt Lake at the present time, a man who preaches morality and is a despoiler of homes.” 

It is apparent that Frank’s challenges with marital fidelity were exacerbated by his heavy drinking. Almost all descriptions of his encounters with prostitutes included the mention that he had been drinking at the time, which probably reduced his inclination or ability to maintain marital fidelity. The binges he would sometimes go on may have been in response to boredom or insecurity. Frank could be very focused and unusually hard-working when he had a cause to pursue, particularly when he was leading the charge, calling forces to action, and actively working for an important result. 

In spite of her husband’s frequent (and sometimes extended) absences and errant behavior, Mattie stayed married to him and, as far as is known, stayed in the marital home in Ogden, during her relatively short life and, despite what must have been periods of intense personal turmoil and sorrow, raised their four children. She served with her sister-in-law Annie Wells Cannon, and her mother-in-law, Sarah Jane Jenne Cannon, on the general board of the LDS Church’s Relief Society organization for years (even after Frank began publishing vicious attacks in the early twentieth century against the Church, President Joseph F. Smith, and Reed Smoot), and was virtually legendary in Ogden for her charitable works. In fact, the prominent Ogden Charity Society renamed itself the “Martha Society” in her honor after her death in 1908. Almost twenty years later, the Martha Society was still going strong and continued to remember the woman for whom the society had been renamed. Mattie was described as “being loved by all who knew her. Hers was a loving, kindly nature, filled with sympathy for all mankind. She will be mourned by thousands . . . for she was a humanitarian of the truest type, devoted to the uplifting of the races.” 

It is not clear that Frank and Mattie always lived together. Frank kept rooms in the Alta Club in Salt Lake City at the time he was editing the Salt Lake Tribune while she lived in their home in Ogden, and he would sometimes leave the state for extended periods of time.Some of Frank and Mattie’s children attended the Weber Stake Academy and Frank Q. (“Que”), their only son, served an LDS mission in Germany (January 1903–January 1906), a period that coincided with his father’s vitriolic editorial attacks against the LDS Church and his excommunication.It is difficult to understand why someone like Mattie would stay with Frank, given his drinking and infidelity. Her unusual loyalty, and Frank’s considerable charm, charisma, and prominence in Utah society likely all played a part. He may have been very caring and attentive when he was not drinking. Furthermore, after Mattie died in 1908 at age fifty, Frank married her younger sister, May, who likely would not have accepted his proposal had she felt him completely lacking in any redeeming qualities. May remained married to Frank until his death in July 1933. 

During the 1880s and ’90s, while George Q. was still alive, Frank Cannon maintained a high profile in Church and political circles. He worked in Washington, D.C., for John T. Caine, who served as Utah’s Congressional delegate after George Q. Cannon. Frank asserted that he had been very involved in the negotiations with members of Congress and with the Grover Cleveland administration that resulted in the official end of plural marriage in 1890. He then edited the Ogden Standard (named after the Western Standard, the Church newspaper his father had published and edited in San Francisco in the mid-1850s), he ran as a Republican for territorial delegate to Congress twice (once successfully), and he was elected as one of Utah’s first two U.S. Senators. He was widely known as one of the greatest orators in the United States. He acted sometimes as a lobbyist and as a financial agent for the LDS Church and its First Presidency in New York City and Washington, D.C., as the Church struggled with the double financial effects of the Edmunds-Tucker Act and the financial Panic of 1893. He also induced the Church (no doubt through his father) to provide financial support for his Pioneer Electric Company in the mid-1890s. 

Not surprisingly, when Frank J. ran for office, he had to combat rumors of alcohol abuse and infidelity. For example, in 1892, when Frank ran unsuccessfully for the office of territorial delegate to Congress, it was reported that Ben E. Rich, his campaign manager, “carries a bishop’s recommend vouching for Frank Cannon’s good record.”Actually, what Rich was carrying was a letter from Frank’s bishop, Thomas J. Stevens of the Ogden Fifth Ward, which had been written in response to a request by Joseph F. Smith, who was concerned that “certain influential persons have, in public and private, attacked the moral character of Brother Frank J. Cannon, the Republican candidate for Delegate to Congress, for the purpose of defeating him.” Bishop Stevens, himself a Weber County Republican office holder, stated that a Church “charge” had been preferred against Frank years before based on his confession of serious transgression, that Frank had confessed publicly, and that the bishop had not “witnessed in any person” a “more humble, penitent spirit” than Frank had exhibited on the occasion of his public confession. Stevens had been a counselor in the bishopric in June 1885 when this serious transgression was considered. He had been made bishop in 1887 and during the four years since, while Bishop Stevens had been Frank’s local ecclesiastical leader, Frank had “manifested upon many occasions his devotion to the work of the Lord,” was a liberal tithe payer, and had donated a great deal to help the poor. Stevens did acknowledge, however, that Frank had confessed twice during that period of “being guilty of taking too much strong drink and being intoxicated,” but Frank had “been working hard to overcome his appetite for strong drink, and I fully believe that he has finally succeeded.”Joseph F. Smith sent Bishop Stevens’s rather extraordinary letter to bishops in the Church and asked them, “in the interest of fairness, [to] give it proper publicity leaving the people to judge as to the worthiness of Brother Cannon to be Utah’s Representative in the Congress of the United States.”Apparently, Frank neglected to mention to his bishop his interactions with Ogden and Salt Lake City prostitutes in the late 1880s. It is doubtful that one with Frank’s history could have obtained such a letter from a bishop without urging from a high-ranking Church authority such as Joseph F. Smith. George Q. Cannon may have also requested the positive letter from Frank’s bishop and the elder Cannon otherwise vigorously defended his son during the 1892 campaign. George Q. threatened to “withdraw fellowship” from William H. Seegmiller, Sevier Stake president, a “‘rock-ribbed’ democrat,” for spreading rumors “against Frank’s character” when Seegmiller refused to tell President Cannon where “he got his information concerning Frank’s character.” Seegmiller also told Cannon “that he intended to do all in his power to defeat Frank.” 

Several years later, some LDS apostles, already concerned about John Q.’s visibility given shadows on his reputation, found equally inappropriate Frank’s involvement in Church affairs and Church support for some of his business enterprises. Joseph F. Smith, Lorenzo Snow, Brigham Young Jr., and Heber J. Grant all expressed concern and doubt about Frank’s serving as agent for the Church with potential lenders in the East in the mid- to late 1890s. Heber J. Grant, after recording a number of negative references by his fellow Church leaders in 1897 and early 1898, confided to his diary on January 4, 1898, that he 

did not feel that it was right for men like Frank J. Cannon to be selected to represent the Church. Felt it was an outrage that Frank was used as he was. …I expressed it as my opinion that we should ask the Presidency in a respectful manner for a knowledge of the affairs of the Church, and protest against such men as Frank Cannon being employed [by the Church and First Presidency], and then if the Presidency did not wish to make any changes . . . I was in for sustaining the Presidency. I explained that there was no malice in my heart and that I did not want to injure any man, but neither did I want any man to have the honor of the Church intrusted [sic] to him that was not worthy. 

Brigham Young Jr. agreed: he “[f]elt outraged in his feeling to have a drunkard representing the Church as its agent in the east. I believe that it is the duty of the twelve apostles to ask the Presidency to correct these mistakes.” Joseph F. Smith, second counselor in Wilford Woodruff’s First Presidency, and Lorenzo Snow, president of the Quorum of the Twelve, intimated that they shared the same feelings about Frank. 

Frank achieved election to high office, acted as financial and political agent for the Church, and worked successfully as a journalist in spite of rumors and reports of his errant behavior in no small part because George Q. Cannon knew his second son’s many talents and actively aided Frank’s career. Frank did not need too much help because of his own abilities. Although father and son clashed somewhat over which of them should be elected as one of Utah’s first U.S. Senators in 1896 (most Church leaders supported George Q. Cannon for the position), the elder Cannon eventually provided at least tacit support for his son’s election. 

The major shift in Frank Cannon’s fortunes in the LDS Church and culture began with Wilford Woodruff’s death in September 1898 and became final with his father’s death in 1901. Shortly thereafter, Joseph F. Smith became president of the Church. President Smith and Frank had tangled in the late 1890s over marketing bonds to raise money for the Church and over businesses for which Cannon sought Church investment. Smith was an ardent Republican, while Frank had switched from Republican to Silver Republican while serving as U.S. Senator and to Democrat and American Party thereafter. Smith thought Frank was both greedy and lacking in business acumen. Perhaps most important, President Smith found Frank’s personal life revolting. He was unwilling to provide financial or other support for Cannon’s business ventures. Frank did not like Joseph F. Smith any better than the new Church president liked him and began making his views known. Thomas Kearns, a Catholic who had made a fortune in Park City mines, blamed the LDS Church for blocking his reelection to the Senate in 1905. He had quietly purchased the Salt Lake Tribune in late 1901 and now hired Frank J. Cannon as editor of the popular morning paper to wage war on those he blamed for ending his Senate career. Frank began publishing vitriolic editorials that became increasingly critical of the Church and its president. The attacks were sufficiently aggressive that Cannon was excommunicated by a high council court in Ogden in March 1905. Frank widely publicized both the allegations against him and his responses. After that, Joseph F. Smith often referred to Frank J. as “Furious Judas.” 

In early 1908, Mattie Cannon became ill with pneumonia and died shortly thereafter. Frank J. Cannon moved to Denver and somehow renewed friendships with Thomas M. Patterson and Judge Ben Lindsey, prominent politicians and Progressive reformers who were residents of that city. Frank soon was employed as an editor of the Denver Times, one of two Denver newspapers that Patterson owned. In June 1909, fifty-year-old Frank married Mattie’s younger sister, thirty-four-year-old May, in a ceremony performed in the Colorado State Capitol by Colorado Chief Justice R. W. Steele. Tom Patterson, like Frank a former U.S. Senator, was an honored guest. Soon thereafter, Patterson moved Frank to his flagship newspaper, the Rocky Mountain News, and in January 1910 made Frank managing editor. 

Frank and May moved into the Logan Court apartments directly behind the Colorado State Capitol building. In December 1910, Frank began publishing “Under the Prophet in Utah,” serialized in nine installments in Everybody’s Magazine.In 1911, Frank parlayed the success of the magazine articles into lecturing nationally on the Chautauqua and Lyceum circuits, spending at least nine months a year giving five or six lectures a week and staying in a different hotel virtually every night. Occasionally, May would accompany Frank; but most of the time, she remained in Denver. Frank and May never had children together and his children with Mattie were adults, although Que did live and work in Denver near his father for a few years. Although there is no clear evidence to settle the question, it is intriguing to speculate whether Frank remained faithful to May during these years of extended separation as he experienced constant train travel, hotel stays, and regular meetings with well-to-do women with an antipathy for Mormon polygamy from whom Frank was seeking contributions for his anti-polygamy “Crusade.”Nor have I found any firm historical evidence that Frank drank heavily during these extended absences. There is no indication in the Redpath Chautauqua Collection of Frank missing lectures, arriving tardily, or blundering as he delivered them. Possibly he was sufficiently absorbed in his anti-Mormon crusade that he controlled his drinking habit. 

From 1908 until his death in 1933, Frank J. Cannon generally resided in Denver, edited several newspapers, published anti Mormon articles and books that were read by hundreds of thousands of Americans, spent 1911 to 1917 on the road giving hundreds of impassioned anti-Mormon lectures a year around the country, fed the anti-polygamy frenzy which helped groups such as the National Reform Association almost succeed in pushing through a Constitutional amendment prohibiting polygamy, continued to be active in other political issues he believed in such as the remonetization of silver, and invested in mining properties. May Brown Cannon, like her older sister, stayed with Frank through thick and thin until he died in 1933. 

Dutiful Son: Abram H. Cannon 

Abram, the youngest of the three brothers (though by less than two months), showed from an early time a dutiful disposition and close adherence to LDS practices. He was sealed to Sarah Ann Jenkins on October 16, 1878, in the Endowment House. Almost exactly a year after that, he was sealed in the Endowment House to his cousin Wilhelmina Mousley Cannon, on October 15, 1879. His entry into the Principle at the age of twenty is indicative both of his devotion to Church responsibility and of Church leaders’ perception that he was worthy to assume such responsibility. Six days after his second marriage, he left on a mission for Europe, first serving in Great Britain and eventually being assigned to Switzerland. 

Abram was careful in virtually every way. His unusually consistent and detailed diary kept in a beautiful hand is representative of how he lived his life. He regularly wrote letters to both wives from the mission field. Upon his return to Utah in mid-1882, he alternated spending nights with his wives, first Sarah, then Mina, and carefully recorded that he had done so. He took music lessons with Mina, attended church with Sarah, and sometimes took both to the theater together.At one point, in September 1886, Mina exchanged her furnished downtown house for Sarah’s unfurnished house on the outskirts of town. Abram vowed, “I told them I then consider them equal financially and would hereafter divide the means I might acquire equally between them.” 

In spite of his care, there were sometimes rifts with his wives. Mina was the more volatile and vocal in complaining to Abram. Abram provided a stabilizing influence on his wives and siblings and was periodically called upon to help his brothers, even acting occasionally as the family banker. George Q. Cannon confided in him more than the other sons, had Abram coordinate hiding places for him on the Mormon Underground while George Q. was avoiding arrest, and had him oversee family businesses. 

In April 1885, at the same time that Abram was worrying about his brother Frank’s associations with prostitutes, Abram was arrested and charged with unlawfully cohabiting with Sarah and Mina. Tried ten months later, he was given the opportunity to plead guilty for a light sentence. Instead, he pled not guilty, took the stand in his own defense, and when asked if both Sarah and Mina were his wives, replied, “They are, thank God.” Abram served five months in the Utah Territorial Penitentiary (March– August 1886), meeting with dignitaries, including Governor Caleb West, conducting business, and writing articles from his jail cell. 

Abram confessed quite often to his diary that many things seemed “dull” to him.He looked forward to new experiences and developed interests in popular cultural activities such as the theater and “baseball.” He attended an “able” lecture by Wad-el Ward on “Mohammedan customs.” He worked hard to develop his singing voice.Sometime within the first few months after his release from prison, he began courting Mary (“Mame” or “Mamie”) Croxall, a relationship that obviously provided him with the type of excitement that his complaints about “dullness” revealed a need for: “M. is a girl whom to know is to love, and the more I see her the better I like her.” Abram received his father’s permission to marry Mamie, instructed her to be endowed at the Logan Temple, and wrote to Erastus Snow, then living in Mexico, inquiring about the best route for him and Mamie to travel there for a certain “purpose.” Abram recorded many days in which he would have “supper” with Sarah or Mina, visit Mamie, then spend the night with one of the first two wives. 

In January 1887, Abram, Mamie, architect Don Carlos Young, and Marion Penelope Hardy traveled together to Mexico, where, on January 11, 1887, Apostle Erastus Snow sealed both couples, with Apostle Moses Thatcher acting as witness. Abram was twenty seven, Mamie was twenty. They spent their wedding night in “Bro. Snow’s light wagon which was made quite comfortable with a feather bed and the curtains being all fastened down.” Abram mused: “Altogether our union has been rather romantic.” 

Abram worked very hard to continue to spend equivalent time with his three wives; but not surprisingly, Abram’s new marriage to a woman a number of years younger than Sarah and Mina created some resentment and friction, particularly with Mina, who sometimes exhibited “a very wrong spirit” and often “felt badly” toward him. Mina also met with “Madam Mispah,” a psychic who allegedly had “double sight.” She told Mina that she would eventually divorce Abram, move to California, and become wealthy. Abram and Mina were able to work through these periodic flareups, and Abram often wrote of how well they were getting along inspite of the challenges of integrating a new “sister wife” into the family. 

Although Abram was shy and reserved—or at least viewed himself that way, and expressed concern about speaking publicly to large groups—he rose quickly in LDS Church leadership positions. He was called to the First Council of the Seventy at age twenty-three and to the Quorum of the Twelve at thirty. He also increasingly took over more responsibilities in the family businesses as John Q. and Frank proved unreliable. When he and John Q. assumed control of the Deseret News in 1892, or when he took over control of the Contributor, or as he edited and published the Juvenile Instructor, none of his fellow Church leaders felt the same reservations that they expressed about John Q. No doubt one reason that Heber J. Grant, Brigham Young Jr., Joseph F. Smith, and others known to have misgivings about John were willing to let the Cannons lease the Deseret News was because they knew that Abram, who was universally liked and respected, would manage the business. 

Abram was unusually hard-working and his detailed diaries carefully record the time he spent on his duties: reviewing and proofreading magazine and newspaper articles, meeting with other Church leaders, attending professional meetings, and overseeing a number of family businesses. Wilford Woodruff described him as a “peculiar man. . . . He has been willing to take a great load upon him, and to do all that he could for the benefit of [the] Church and of his brethren wherever he has been.”By the 1890s, he had little time to spend with his three wives and growing number of children (there were eventually eighteen, though three died in early childhood). 

No doubt because of Abram’s devotion to spiritual, business, and family matters, George Q. Cannon relied heavily on his third son. Abram was aware of his father’s reluctance to face the end of new plural marriages after the 1890 Manifesto. When John Q. and Abram’s full brother, David H., died on October 17, 1892, in Germany, the family was devastated.George Q. was particularly concerned that David had died without children. President Can non knew that Mary Davis, a young woman in Salt Lake City’s Nineteenth Ward, had been infatuated with Abram and had decided she would never marry anyone else. The elder Cannon suggested her when he talked to Abram “about taking some good girl and raising up seed by her for my brother David.” Abram responded somewhat evasively that he “knew but little of her character.” According to George Q., President Wilford Woodruff had decided that new plural marriages could occur in Mexico. Ten days later, Abram visited his father in the “President’s office” and suggested that his cousin Annie Cannon (Mina’s younger half-sister)would be a “good person” for David to be sealed to “for eternity.” The suggestion “pleased Father very much”; and Angus, Annie’s father, agreed, “providing Annie is willing.” Wilford Woodruff and Joseph F. Smith, the other members of the First Presidency, “were willing for such a ceremony to occur, if done in Mexico, and President Woodruff promised the Lord’s blessing to follow such an act.” 

Unfortunately, parts of Abram’s diary that may have recorded Annie’s answer have been excised.Thereafter, Abram and Annie attended lectures, went to the theater, and sometimes had a meal, both alone and with other family members. Abram was undoubtedly fond of Annie and may have courted her briefly but there is no indication that Abram visited Mexico during this period with Annie Mousley Cannon (or anyone else), and family genealogical records give no indication that she ever married. Possibly Annie was sealed to David for eternity but not married to Abram for time, although such a step would have defeated George Q.’s purpose of providing mortal children for David. 

While Abram did not marry Annie, it is clear that he did eventually marry his younger brother David’s former girlfriend, Lillian Hamlin, with the intent of raising children to David. On June 17, 1896, Lillian was sealed to David “for eternity” in the Salt Lake Temple, with Abram presumably acting as proxy for his deceased younger brother. As Michael Quinn has persuasively argued, Abram and Lillian were probably married in the same ceremony for time. The person officiating in the sealing and marriage was likely Joseph F. Smith, though in testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Privileges and Elections, which was hearing protests to the seating of Reed Smoot in the U.S. Senate, President Smith denied performing the sealing, although he carefully chose his words in phrasing that denial. In 1911, Lillian Hamlin also denied that Joseph F. Smith had performed her marriage to Abram, although she was also careful to use language that did not preclude the possibility that President Smith had performed her marriage to David. 

According to a widely circulated story, Abram and Lillian were married by Joseph F. Smith on a boat bound for Santa Catalina Island, off the coast of Los Angeles, in late June or early July 1896 when they were all in southern California on a “business trip.” One of the people who circulated this story was Abram’s cousin, Angus M. Cannon Jr. Angus Jr.’s story seemed somewhat credible because he and Abram were first cousins, near the same age, and relatively close friends; and in fact, Abram and Lillian did take a business/pleasure trip with Joseph F. Smith and one of his plural wives, Edna, in late June 1896 that included a boat trip to Catalina. 

However, Abram fell ill in California, and his condition worsened even before he arrived back in Salt Lake City from what amounted to a honeymoon with Lillian. Within days, he was confined to bed with intense headaches and earaches. Seymour B. Young, a close friend and a medical doctor, diagnosed Abram’s ailment as meningitis of the brain. On July 19, 1896, Abram died at age thirty-seven. Mina later testified that Abram’s decision to marry in a post-Manifesto polygamous union had created substantial tensions in his life, and she attributed his death to the stresses that he must have felt. 

At the time of his death, Abram was a well-respected apostle, family member, publisher, and business leader. He was almost universally well-liked. He was consistent and was a peacemaker in presiding Church quorums and in family matters. His death must have come as a terrible blow to his father, his four wives, his children, his many brothers and sisters, and members of the Church in general. He was eulogized as one of the great men in the Territory of Utah whose untimely passing had taken one from whom so much more had been expected. Several of the high-ranking Church leaders who spoke at his funeral worried that he had worked too hard, contributing to his demise. The Deseret Weekly News “conservatively” estimated at 30,000 the number of people who thronged the tabernacle for Abram’s funeral, visited Temple Square during the services, and crowded the cortege as it went up South Temple Street. Church President Wilford Woodruff was sufficiently concerned about Abram’s death that he prayed for and received a vision that Abram had been called to more important missions in the hereafter. President Woodruff went so far as to relate his vision in October general conference. 

Abram faced none of the embarrassing personal controversies that had troubled his brothers John Q. and Frank. Abram’s most infamous act was to be convicted of unlawful cohabitation in March 1886, for which he spent five busy months in the territorial “pen.” Fellow church members lionized rather than criticized him for his courageous willingness to accept the punishment related to his adherence to Church teachings.Only Abram’s post-Manifesto marriage to Lillian Hamlin created notoriety for Abram, and that was after his death, when it contributed significantly to the controversy over Reed Smoot’s keeping his seat in the U.S. Senate. 

At the time of Abram Cannon’s death in 1896, all three members of the Church’s First Presidency and at least seven members of the Quorum of the Twelve strongly supported the continued solemnization of new plural marriages on a limited, secretive ba sis. Virtually all of the apostles opposed the abandonment of plural wives and children from pre-Manifesto plural marriages, but most did not oppose a broader continuation of the practice, particularly if it could be done without generating serious criticism against the Church. Generally, performing the ceremony in Mexico was considered enough of a buffer to maintain secrecy.At least six apostles—Marriner W. Merrill, George Teasdale, John W. Taylor, Matthias F. Cowley, Abram Cannon, and Abraham Owen Woodruff, and perhaps more—entered into polygamous marriages after the Manifesto.Abram Cannon’s late marriage became the best known of these marriages and was made the more controversial because it was allegedly performed by Joseph F. Smith. 

Within a few years of Abram’s death, however, the leadership of the Church had changed substantially and his post-Manifesto polygamous marriage to Lillian Hamlin became an important element for hearings by the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Privileges and Elections to consider whether Reed Smoot, a monogamous apostle who had been elected senator by the Utah State Legislature in January 1903, could retain his seat. At issue were claims that the Church had failed to honor its pledges to formally abandon plural marriage in 1890 and to avoid controlling the political views and activities of its members. The Salt Lake Ministerial Association and a number of Gentiles and estranged Mormons in Utah objected to Smoot’s seating because of the Church’s alleged duplicity and his acting, essentially, as the Church’s representative in the U.S. Senate. Many Senators and more Americans believed Smoot knew of the Church’s duplicity and was sent to Washington to protect the Church. 

Ironically, a leader in the campaign against Smoot was Frank J. Cannon, who was the same age as Abram and probably Abram’s best friend growing up.The Senate committee heard accusations of a young apostle marrying six years after Wilford Woodruff’s Manifesto in a ceremony performed by a member of the First Presidency—who was now Church president—as evidence that the LDS Church had failed to abandon polygamy as it had promised. Nineteen witnesses were eventually grilled about Ab ram Cannon’s last marriage, including Joseph F. Smith, four apostles, relatives of Cannon and Hamlin, and others. 

Joseph F. Smith was the first witness at the hearings when they opened in January 1904. Following his somewhat evasive testimony, President Smith returned to Salt Lake City and, three months later, read the “Second Manifesto,” in April 1904 general conference. In this formal statement, the LDS Church reiterated an official end to new plural marriages. 

Had Abram been alive in 1904, he would likely have been near the top of the Senate committee’s list of witnesses. He might have moved out of the country (as Apostles John W. Taylor, Matthias F. Cowley, and George Teasdale did) to avoid testifying, he might have been called on a foreign mission (as Heber J. Grant was and as Abraham Owen Woodruff was preparing for at the time of his death), or he may have otherwise avoided testifying (as Marriner W. Merrill did by asserting ill health). 

By April 1904, the makeup of the presiding quorums of the Mormon Church had changed dramatically from 1896, when Abram died. While a large majority of senior Church leaders supported (or at least did not oppose) continued new plural marriages in 1896, by 1904, many of the old guard had passed away and most Church leaders recognized the need at least to stop solemnizing new plural marriages. New members of the Quorum of the Twelve were all monogamists. 

Joseph F. Smith was easily the most enigmatic LDS Church leader in the context of post-Manifesto polygamy because of his strong support for it in the 1890s and early 1900s, his sometimes misleading public denials, and his apparent failure to pursue for a number of years those who continued to solemnize new marriages. But the scorching experience of his public testimony in Washington and the general attention directed at the Church during the Smoot hearings apparently brought him to accept the necessity of a more formal distancing from the practice of plural marriage. By the time the full senate overturned the committee’s negative recommendation and voted to retain Senator Smoot on a 42–28 vote on February 20, 1907, the member of the Church’s highest councils who had had the most significant close involve ment with post-Manifesto polygamy was Joseph F. Smith, and he appears to have found a way to reconcile himself to the genuine, official cessation of new polygamy. 

Where would Abram Cannon have found himself? The U.S. Senate would have tried very hard to compel his attendance and testimony regarding his marriage to Lillian Hamlin. Like others, he may have avoided testifying; but more likely, I believe that his ability to accommodate would likely have served him (and perhaps the Church) well. Abram would have remained in the good graces of Joseph F. Smith and the Church, acting as Smith’s close ally in making the difficult transition from polygamy.Nevertheless, the notoriety surrounding his union to Lillian Hamlin would have complicated his life and made his public involvement in Church and business somewhat challenging. 

Conclusions 

The Cannon brothers had the same background and the same unusual opportunities for education and advancement. All were gifted and were expected to rise to great heights in a number of pursuits, and all three gained extraordinary prominence at an early age—John Q. in Church, state, and journalistic affairs, Frank J. in political, financial, and journalistic matters, and Abram in Church, business, and publishing. 

John Q. Cannon, the heir apparent, was groomed for greatness. From all accounts, he had the abilities but not the inner drive to attain it. His meteoric rise was halted by his adulterous relationship with Louie Wells. Unlike Frank’s moral transgressions, though, John and Louie appear to have truly loved each other and likely contemplated a polygamous marriage, with Annie’s blessing. Their inability to accomplish such a union remains mysterious. While they were awaiting or anticipating such a union, however, they succumbed to temptation. Most of Salt Lake City loved Louie Wells, and no one was surprised that John Q. Cannon did as well. However, Louie’s position as sister-in-law and John and Louie’s premarital sexual relationship were problematic, and Louie’s early and agonized demise made the entire affair distasteful; but observers, even Mormon observers, had some understanding of what had happened. 

Frank’s fall from grace in Mormondom was accelerated by his adultery, but his infidelity was harder for family and fellow Church members to understand. His adultery was substantively different from John Q.’s—an illicit relationship with a young woman living in his home who gave birth to his illegitimate son, rumors of other adulterous relationships, and his ongoing associations with prostitutes—were extremely unsavory. Although only a small group of people, including some family members and close associates, were fully aware of Frank’s actions, rumors of his sexual activities were persistent; and when credible public allegations were made, they must have been quite shocking, particularly to Church members. True to his better nature, Frank sometimes experienced dramatic periods of genuine contrition and humble penitence for his actions in the 1880s and 1890s, during which he sought and received formal absolution from Church officials. In spite of his erratic extramarital sexual behavior, Frank’s abilities and charismatic personality meant that he always had many friends and admirers within Mormon culture, particularly before he declared open warfare on the Church and its leaders. Perhaps the strongest point in his favor is the continuing loyalty of his two wives. 

John Q. Cannon experienced an abrupt downward shift in status after the disclosure of his adultery; but even the absence of the affair would probably not have compensated for the equally shocking facts that he embezzled funds twice, both from organizations in which he served in positions of trust. This pattern suggests that the roles for which he was groomed were not what he really wanted in life. An amiable relative and friend, he was popular company but exhibited little interest in holding high Church office. He also showed little interest in status, except for the trappings of material wealth such as living in a large ornate house. 

Frank’s change in status developed more gradually, and it was his sexual peccadilloes that first created questions about his character. Those questions were resoundingly answered by Joseph F. Smith after the deaths of Abram Cannon, Wilford Woodruff, Franklin D. Richards, and George Q. Cannon when the Church president withdrew all Church support for business ventures proposed by Frank and also refused to give Frank any political and financial responsibilities for the Church. 

Notwithstanding these shifts in status experienced by both John Q. and Frank, both benefited significantly from their place in the Cannon family. John Q. spent most of his life as a senior editor at the Deseret News, reflecting his talents but also reflecting his important place in a powerful family. He and Annie raised their large family in the Cannon mansion on the farm. He received commendation as a military leader, but this evidence of natural leadership was again coupled with an apparent lack of ambition in using it as a springboard for higher position. Frank, in contrast, parlayed his position as a favored older son of George Q. Cannon, Mormon insider, and former U.S. Senator to prominence on the national lecture platform and in the publishing world, although as a militant anti-Mormon agitator. His attacks on the Church and Joseph F. Smith were credible because of his position and because he was a master at presenting his allegations in a believable matter. 

Like his brothers, Abram gained the prominence expected of him, serving as an apostle, prominent journalist, and rising businessman. He never lost status, but his life was cut short at age thirty-seven, curtailing what he might have built on such a foundation. He was the product of his upbringing and labored diligently to meet what was expected of him. His virtues cannot be gain said—he was stalwart, steady, and hard-working. He believed in treating wives, children, friends, and even employees equitably. He was generally as talented as his brothers, but he was intent on utilizing those talents in fulfillment of the aspirations his father had for him (and for his brothers). He fearlessly represented his Church and, when faced with choices such as seeking a lighter sentence for unlawful cohabitation, proudly acknowledged his two wives and served a prison sentence. The controversies that grew around Abram came after his death so there is no certain way of knowing how he would have dealt with them. One suspects, however, that he would have found a way to successfully weather them. 

Perhaps the most intriguing question on which to speculate is whether Abram could have found a way to reconcile Frank J. Can non and Joseph F. Smith. Could he have convinced the Church president to find a place in which Frank could continue to contribute to the progress of Mormon society and thereby avoid the destructive animosity between the two? Could he have had a calming influence on Frank that would have kept him from attacking the Church president so viciously? A related question is whether Abram could have maintained the family’s business enterprises and found a continuing place for John Q. and Frank in those enterprises. No one will ever know. 

John Q. Cannon found peace in work he liked and a family he loved. He was probably happier in the life he led than in the life he was raised for. He was revered as a patriarch by his children and younger siblings. Frank gained the fame he craved, but at a cost. He remained surprisingly close to his extended family—surprising because his activities were so hurtful to many in the family, including his mother, who died in 1928. Still, he broke most of his other ties to Mormondom. His religious alienation and dissolute personal life stood in stark contrast to the pattern of his father’s values; and given his idolization of his father, this discrepancy suggests psychological issues that can only be guessed at. He remained as courageous in maturity as in his youth, but he also remained intensely sensitive and emotional. Such unbridled emotions led to his difficulties with Joseph F. Smith and his estrangement from his former culture. 

Abram in some respects represents the best of both his older brothers. He dutifully attained what was expected of him, thereby earning his father’s unqualified approval; but like most unusually successful people, he was probably forced to neglect many in his far-flung family, perhaps even among his own children, who would have preferred closer contact as he worked hard to fulfill his responsibilities. That he so often found his life “dull” makes his dedication to responsibility the more laudable. 

Each of the three Cannon sons and brothers was critically affected by his varied experiences with love, sex, and marriage. Their father’s careful hopes and plans for all three went awry in some respects, in no small part because of these experiences.