Biography

After Thomas Holiday and Harriet Elnora Burchard Church arrived in Utah Territory with their eight children, they settled in Deseret in Millard County, where they farmed. Harriet gave birth to three more children after arriving in Deseret. A daughter, who was named after her mother, was the second child born in Utah. Harriet Gertrude Church joined the family on August 25, 1881, and was called “Hattie.”[1] In many ways, Hattie’s life paralleled the life of her elder sister, Arizona Church Hawley. She married a local boy, lived her entire life in Millard County on a farm, survived into her eighties, and encountered no impediments to full participation in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints despite having Black African ancestry.

Hattie’s mother had been born in slavery in Tennessee and had been enslaved to Hattie’s father, Thomas. Her biracial mother had two or three children with Thomas before the Civil War, and the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment put an end to slavery. Sometime after Hattie’s mother was freed, she and Thomas married. Thomas and many of his family members were Mormon converts. His father’s home was a place where Southern missionaries could find support and encouragement. In this atmosphere, Hattie’s mother had also converted to the Church a year or so before the family left Tennessee for good.

A few months after Hattie’s birth in Deseret, her parents brought her to be named and blessed by the elders of their church. This ordinance was performed by Hyrum Topham Dewsnup on December 18, 1881.[2]

On her eighth birthday, August 15, 1889, the first day she was eligible for an LDS baptism, Hattie, like her older siblings, was baptized and confirmed. Joshua Bennett performed both rituals, making Hattie an official member of the Church and the Deseret Ward.[3]

Hattie’s early life on the farm must have been full of chores, but not without fun. Hattie and her friends picked currants, went to dances, and made homemade ice cream at parties. Her daughter recalled that Hattie’s parents were poor. Hattie had only one dress that she wore to school and to church on Sunday. She had to make sure she washed it on Saturday night, so it would be ready to wear the next week.[4]

When Hattie was eighteen, she went to stay with her eldest sister, Laura Church Oldfield to help at her sister’s boarding house in Osceola, Nevada. Hattie had a good time there with her cousin, Fred. She loved to dance and attend dance parties that often lasted all night. It was the first time she had ventured out of her small Mormon community, and she was shocked to hear Nevadans call ZCMI “Zion Crazy Mormon Idiots.”[5]

After Hattie returned to Utah, she began to date Hyrum (Hyde) Stiles Cahoon. By this time, the Churches had moved to Oasis, and Hyde lived in Deseret, where he had been born. Without telephones, Hyde had to make the effort to walk or ride a couple of miles each way to go out with Hattie. He did that for two years while he and Hattie “went steady.” The couple married on January 8, 1902, at the home of Hyde’s parents, with an elder or Melchizedek Priesthood holder officiating.[6] A family story suggests that it was not because of Hattie’s racial lineage that they did not marry in a temple where they could be sealed for eternity, but because Hyde had not paid tithing in his own name. He worked for his father on the family farm, so his father paid tithing for the entirety of what the farm produced rather than Hyde paying an individual tithe. Paying one-tenth of one’s income to the Church as a tithe was and still is a requirement to receive a temple recommend, or permission to receive temple ordinances.[7]

If race indeed was not a factor in barring Hattie from temple admission in 1902, it seems that local leaders in Deseret and Oasis had moved in a different direction than two years earlier, when leaders in Salt Lake City had prevented Hattie’s older brother, John Taylor Church, from priesthood ordination because of his racial ancestry.[8] In fact, Hattie’s mother and father were sealed together in the Salt Lake Temple in 1903, and Hattie and Hyde would receive the same rituals the following year.[9] Even though local and central leaders grappled with questions about those of mixed racial ancestry in the nineteenth century, they were inconsistent in the application of racial restrictions in some cases and may not have been aware of some people’s ancestry in other cases.[10] The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints did not officially announce a policy for people of mixed racial ancestry until 1907, when the First Presidency, the Church’s highest governing body, declared that “The descendants of Ham [who they understood to be people of Black African ancestry] may receive baptism and confirmation but no one known to have in his veins negro blood, (it matters not how remote a degree) can either have the Priesthood in any degree or the blessings of the Temple of God; no matter how otherwise worthy he may be.”[11] This “one drop policy” attempted to bar people like Hattie and her mother and siblings from temple admission and priesthood ordination but as the Church family demonstrates, it was a policy difficult to police. Century of Black Mormons chronicles a variety of examples, both before and after 1907, in which people of mixed racial ancestry received priesthood ordination and temple admission.[12]Hattie’s sister Zona, for example, received temple admission in 1909, two years after the First Presidency announced a “one drop” policy.[13] In the case of the Church family, local leaders in Oasis and Deseret seemed willing to allow them temple admission “provided the white blood predominates,” even though leaders in Salt Lake City had insisted otherwise in 1900 in the case of Hattie’s brother John.[14]

Surviving sources do not indicate if questions over Hattie’s racial ancestry became a topic of concern for Hattie and Hyde following their marriage. In any case, they settled into married life in Deseret, where they lived and farmed. They had their first child, a son, on June 21, 1903. They named him Newel Spencer. Evidently, Hyde and Hattie began to pay tithing faithfully after their marriage, and they were able to travel to the newly completed Salt Lake Temple on October 11, 1904. They took one-year-old Newel with them to seal the family together. First, Hattie and Hyde participated in the initiatory ordinances, followed by the endowment ritual. They were then sealed together in a marital ceremony after which the officiator sealed Newel, their son, to them for eternity.[15] There is no surviving indication that racial concerns factored into the family’s temple experience.

During the fifteen years after they were married, Hattie gave birth to four children. After Newel, Elpha was born in 1905, Stella Ann in 1908, and ten years later, their last child, Nayon, was born in 1918. Elpha was born with a disability or sustained an injury that caused the Cahoons to eventually commit her to the Utah State Hospital in Provo, Utah, when she was a young adult. She remained there for over twenty-eight years until she died in 1956.[16]

The Cahoons lived and farmed in Deseret for the rest of their lives. They continued to serve as involved members of the Church and contributed to their local congregation or ward in a variety of ways. In fact, Hyrum was called to be the ecclesiastical leader or bishop of the Deseret Ward in 1903, a position he filled until 1908.[17] Hattie served in the Church women’s organization, the Relief Society, and taught classes in the children’s auxiliary, the Primary.[18] The Cahoon family appears in each of the Church censuses taken between 1914 and 1960.[19] All the Cahoon children were baptized and confirmed as members of the Church. Hattie’s son, Newel, served a mission for the Church (the grandson of a formerly enslaved grandmother). All their children, except Elpha, received temple endowments and sealings during their lifetimes. After her death, on the anniversary of her baptism, vicarious initiatory and endowment rituals were performed on Elpha’s behalf in the Salt Lake Temple.[20]

In 1924, Hattie and her sister, Arizona (Zona), went to the Salt Lake Temple to be sealed to their deceased parents by proxy. Later in life, one of Hattie’s daughters told a background story about this event. She related that Thomas Holiday Church asked Hattie to do some temple work for his family. He died soon after the request, but Hattie and Zona nonetheless followed through and performed the temple rituals that Thomas had specified. Thomas then appeared to Hattie in a dream to tell her there was one more person who needed vicarious temple ordinances. She and Zona dutifully found one more child whom they had previously neglected and then completed the missing child’s temple work.[21]

Hattie was fortunate enough to be able to celebrate her sixtieth wedding anniversary with Hyde in 1962.[22] On October 7, 1963, Hattie, the grandma who always had a bowl of candy on top of her piano, died of a gastric hemorrhage and was laid to rest in the Deseret City Cemetery.[23] Hattie was survived by Hyde, two of her daughters, her son, her brother, John T. Church, nine grandchildren, and fifteen great-grandchildren. As a committed member of the Church, her funeral was held in the Deseret Ward chapel.[24]

Despite Hattie’s racial lineage, she enjoyed full access to the ordinances of the temple. Her husband’s and her children’s lives in the Church were likewise not hampered in any way. Even though she spent her entire life in the small towns of Deseret and Oasis where her mother’s racial ancestry was known at least by 1900, she passed as white in every aspect of her life. Hattie thus slipped past the racial barriers designed to prevent people with even “one drop” of African ancestry from priesthood ordination or temple admittance, and her hundreds of Latter-day Saint descendants did too.

By Tonya S. Reiter

[1] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah; Harriet appeared as “Hattie” on census records and her marriage record.

[2] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[3] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Deseret Ward, microfilm 25,885, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[4] Nayon Cahoon Young, “The Life Story of Hyde and Hattie Church Cahoon,” Hyrum Stiles Cahoon (KWZQ-K9X), FamlySearch, Family Tree Memories Page (accessed 17 September 2025).

[5] Nayon Cahoon Young, “The Life Story of Hyde and Hattie Church Cahoon,” Hyrum Stiles Cahoon (KWZQ-K9X), FamlySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, (accessed 17 September 2025); ZCMI, a department store in Salt Lake City, was actually named Zion’s Co-operative Mercantile Institution, founded by Brigham Young in 1868. Members of the Church were strongly encouraged to shop there rather than stores owned by non-Mormons.

[6] Utah, County Marriages, 1871-1941, Entry for Hyrum S. Cahoon and Hattie Church, 08 January 1902.

[7] Nayon Cahoon Young, “The Life Story of Hyde and Hattie Church Cahoon,” Hyrum Stiles Cahoon (KWZQ-K9X), FamlySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, (accessed 17 September 2025).

[8] Tonya S. Reiter, “John Taylor Church,” Century of Black Mormons.

[9] Tonya S. Reiter, “Harriet Elnora Burchard Church,” Century of Black Mormons.

[10] W. Paul Reeve, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book, 2023), chapter 13.

[11] Extract from George F. Richards, Record of Decisions by the Council of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles (no date given but the next decision in order is dated 8 February 1907), in George A. Smith Family Papers, MS 36, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriot Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[12] See for example: Jenny Pulsipher, “James Brown Jr.” Century of Black Mormons; Tonya S. Reiter, “Rebecca Henrietta Foscue Bentley Meads,” Century of Black Mormons; W. Paul Reeve, “Sarah Ann Mode Hofheintz,” Century of Black Mormons; W. Paul Reeve, “Russell Dewey Ritchie,” Century of Black Mormons.

[13] Tonya S. Reiter, “Arizona Church Hawley,” Century of Black Mormons.

[14] George A. Smith Family Papers, 1931-1969, MS 36, box 78, folder 8, Council Meeting, 11 March 1900, Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[15] Harriet Gertrude Church (KWZQ-K9F), FamilySearch, Family Tree Ordinance Page (accessed 17 September 2025).

[16] Utah, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, File No. 56 25 0213, Registrar’s No. 128, Elpha Cahoon, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[17] Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Publishing Company, 1941), 192.

[18] Nayon Cahoon Young, “The Life Story of Hyde and Hattie Church Cahoon,” Hyrum Stiles Cahoon (KWZQ-K9X), FamlySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, (accessed 17 September 2025).

[19] “Cahoon,” Presiding Bishopric, stake and mission census, 1914-1940, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah; “Cahoon,” Presiding Bishopric, stake and mission census, 1950, 1955, 1960, 1962, Desert Stake, Deseret Ward, CR 4 316, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[20] Newel Spencer Cahoon (KWZW-3FW), Elpha Cahoon (KWJ4-LFP), Stella Ann Cahoon (KWCV-93W), Nayon Cahoon (KWCQ-ZTP), FamilySearch, Family Tree, Ordinance Pages, (accessed 18 September 2025).

[21] Nayon Cahoon Young, “The Life Story of Hyde and Hattie Church Cahoon,” Hyrum Stiles Cahoon (KWZQ-K9X), FamlySearch, Family Tree Memories Page, (accessed 18 September 2025).

[22] “To Mark 69^th Wedding Date . . .” Millard County Chronicle Progress (Delta, Utah), 4 January 1962, 1.

[23] Utah, State Board of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, File No. 63 14 5025, Registrar’s No. 29, Harriet Gertrude Church Cahoon, Utah Division of Archives and Record Services, Salt Lake City, Utah; Harrriett [sic] Gertrude ChurchCahoon, Findagrave.com.

[24] “Deseret Matron Dies Monday,” Millard County Chronicle Progress (Delta, Utah), 10 October 1963, 1.

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