Decades before there was a wing of Mormon studies dedicated to female leaders in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, a handful of pioneering historians mined the archives for records of and stories about prominent women in the faith.
Maureen Ursenbach Beecher was one of those trailblazers.
Under the leadership of church historian Leonard J. Arrington, Beecher, who died Nov. 18 at home in Ottawa, Canada, at age 90, was hired as the faith’s expert on Eliza R. Snow, the poet, preacher and plural wife of church founder Joseph Smith and his immediate successor, Brigham Young.
(Church History Library) Eliza R. Snow photograph by Edward Martin.
It was Beecher, for instance, who first recognized the importance of the unpublished 1842 minutes of the women’s Relief Society founding in Nauvoo, Illinois, and shared them with the General Relief Society Presidency 150 years later.
“Because of those documents, we (the Elaine Jack administration) were blessed to base the worldwide guidelines for the 1992 Relief Society sesquicentennial on the words of our early sisters and instructions from Joseph Smith,” says Carol Lee Hawkins, who was on the organization’s board. “These documents were our foundation and inspiration for all we did. In turn, they were a great gift to the sisters of the Relief Society worldwide.”
A 1987 volume of essays, “Sisters in Spirit,” co-edited by Beecher and Lavina Fielding Anderson, Hawkins says, “was a landmark and contributed greatly to Mormon history and established the study of Mormon women’s history in the infancy of the field.”
The rest of Beecher’s career was “peppered with grand achievements,” the family’s obituary says. “...She was founder and president of the Association for Mormon Letters, president of the Mormon History Association, served on the editorial board of Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, and brought her knowledge and skill to bear as a member of many advisory boards and organizations.”
After teaching at Brigham Young University, Beecher — who went by “Maura” — retired in 1997 and returned to Canada.
Afflicted with cancer, she chose to have “a medically assisted death,” the obituary says, “surrounded in her home by beloved friends and family.” This practice is legally permissible, in certain circumstances, in Canada.
“It has been deeply gratifying to see so many people come forward to say how mom’s life and work touched them,” says son Daniel Beecher. “Depending on how you knew her, she was a scholar, a teacher, a mentor or a leader, but I just knew her as a loving mother.”
(Beecher family) Maureen Ursenbach Beecher.
Beecher’s life was marked “by curiosity, courage, and kindness,” says the obit. “She leaves behind a legacy of scholarship and love that will continue to bless all whose lives and work she touched.”
Her idea of heaven was a “perpetual” graduate school, they say, concluding the obit with: “Now, back to grad school, Maura. You’ve earned it.”