Marianne T. Watson
MARIANNE T. WATSON works as a freelance genealogist and family historian. She resides in South Jordan, Utah, and is the mother of nine and the grandmother of six. She was born and raised in plural marriage within a fundamentalist Mormon community (the "Allred" group) where she learned a love of Mormon hisrory. When she was eighteen, her grandmother asked her to transcribe the journals of her grandfather, a twentieth-century polygamist, which sparked her interest in early fundamentalist Mormon history and ultimately led to a history degree at the University of Utah. She is also a graduate of the LDS Business College and Salt Lake Community College. She is a co-author with Anne Wilde and Mary Batchelor of Voices in Harmony: Contemporary Women Celebrate Plural Marriage (Salt Lake City: Principle Voices, 2000). She presented earlier versions of this paper at the Western History Association Conference, October 14, 2005, Scottsdale, Arizona, and at the Mormon History Association annual meeting, May 27, 2006, Casper, Wyoming.