The history of Louisa Barnes Pratt

by Louisa Barnes Pratt

Louisa Barnes Pratt narrates a remarkable frontier odyssey filled with adventure, trial, personal conflict, and forced independence. In her memoir, which she finished in the 1870s by revising her long-time journal and diary, she tells of childhood in Massachusetts and Canada during the War of 1812, an independent career as a teacher and seamstress in New England, her marriage to the Boston seaman Addison Pratt, and their home life in New York. Converting to the LDS Church, they moved to Nauvoo, Illinois, from where Brigham Young sent Addison on the first of the long missions to the Society Islands that would leave Louisa on her own. A single parent, she hauled her children west to Winter Quarters after the Mormons abandoned Nauvoo and on to Utah in 1848. In fact, she did most of it without help from a man: crossed the plains and mountains, provided for four daughters and a son, remained devoted to her religion, and built and left seven homes.