Biography

Florence Evidence Able Reed was the granddaughter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saint’s most well documented Black priesthood holder, Elijah Able (sometimes Abel, Abels, or Ables). Her father, Enoch Able, lived a hardscrabble life on the economic margins and eventually worked as a butcher in Logan, Utah, where Florence was raised. He died young, at age 49, from pneumonia when Florence was 15. The Logan Journal newspaper announced his death in 1901 and then noted that “Able left a wife and large family in destitute circumstances.”[1] That destitution shaped the rest of Florence’s teenage years. She spent time at the State Industrial School for troubled youth after which she married Samuel Reed, a white man, and they then moved to Boise, Idaho, together. In Boise Florence passed as white and raised her family outside of the faith of her youth. She and her husband worked a variety of blue-collar jobs and managed to forge a sense of economic stability that was missing from her adolescence.

Florence’s story represents the challenges of being of mixed racial ancestry in the Jim Crow era of racial segregation in the United States. During the same time period, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints entrenched around segregated priesthood and temples which added an additional layer of prejudice for Florence and other Latter-day Saints of African ancestry to navigate.[2] Florence thus offers a personal glimpse—through scant public records—into one woman’s response to such challenging circumstances.

At some point in the 1880s Florence’s father Enoch met Mary Jordi, a white, French-speaking-immigrant from Switzerland and they married in Salt Lake County in 1883. Utah did not pass an anti-miscegenation law barring marriages between white and Black people until 1888. Enoch and Mary’s mixed-race marriage was thus legal, although likely not socially acceptable.[3] Census records repeatedly describe Mary as white.[4] Enoch, in contrast, was consistently recorded as mulatto, except in 1900.[5] Both Enoch’s mother and father were of mixed racial descent which made “mulatto” a description in harmony with what is known about his parents’ racial heritage.[6] The 1900 census, however, listed Enoch and all of the children in his family, including Florence, as Black.[7] The 1910 census described Florence and her siblings as mulatto but that is the last time that public records list her as anything other than white.[8] Every subsequent census, from 1920 to 1950, enumerated Florence as white, designations that offer evidence of her eventual racial passage.[9]

Florence’s family moved from Salt Lake County to Logan, Utah, in the northern corner of the state sometime before Florence’s birth in 1886. Florence was the second of her parents’ seven children and the first born in Logan. (Her mother gave birth to an eighth child in 1902, almost two years after her father had passed away). The family moved into the Logan Fifth Ward of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This became the Able family’s religious community, a congregation located geographically close to Utah State Agricultural College, a school that would eventually become known as Utah State University.[10] The Fifth Ward membership record lists Florence’s birth on 15 August 1886 and then notes that her parents brought her before their Latter-day Saint congregation for a blessing and naming ritual on 2 December 1886, when Florence was less than four months old.[11]

Little is known about Florence’s childhood and youth other than the fact that roughly every two years after Florence’s birth her mother gave birth to another sibling who joined a growing and no doubt busy household. On 6 August 1896, when Florence was just shy of her tenth birthday, C. L. Olsen, a man from her congregation, baptized her and Niels Christian Edlefsren, another man in her congregation confirmed her a member of the Church.[12]

There is no surviving evidence to indicate what life may have been like for Florence between her baptism and her teenage years, but her father’s death in February 1901, must have been a turning point in her life and that of her family. By October of that year the Logan Nation newspaper described Florence’s mother Mary Able as “indigent” and the County Court allowed her $7.50 in public aid.[13] In early 1902, Florence’s older sister Emma and her younger sister Nora, both joined the Young Ladies Mutual Improvement Association (the LDS Church’s youth group for teenaged girls) in the Fifth Ward, but Florence did not.[14]

The death of her father and the family’s destitute circumstances must have taken its toll on Florence and she soon began to search for solace in ways that put her at odds with her mother, Mary. In December 1902, Mary gave birth to a son who she named John Glen Able and the family grew to include eight children under 18 years of age.[15] Mary certainly had her hands full as she struggled to manage the family’s finances as well as to parent her teenage daughters, Florence and Nora, born just fourteen months apart.[16]

On 5 August 1903 Mary appeared before district court judge Charles H. Hart and testified that “the incorrigible and vicious conduct” of Florence and Nora rendered them beyond her control. The court heard other testimony from unnamed witnesses before the judge ordered the girls “confined in the State Industrial School of Utah located at Ogden,” a railroad town over fifty miles south of Logan. The judge stipulated that Florence and Nora would be “subject to the rules and regulations of said school and to the law in that behalf, each until she shall arrive at the age of twenty-one years.”[17]

The following day, the Logan Journal announced on its front page that Florence and Nora Able had been charged with “incorrigibility” and appeared before Judge Hart. “The evidence given,” the newspaper declared, “showed the girls to be vicious and depraved to an extreme degree, and they were accordingly committed to the Reform School.” It also noted that the sheriff would deliver them to the school in Ogden later that day.[18]

In 1888 territorial legislators had passed a Reform School bill designed to help rehabilitate juvenile delinquents. By the end of 1889 the Utah Territorial Reform School opened its doors in Ogden and welcomed students from across the state. Its curriculum included basic reading, writing, and math but focused more on teaching vocational skills to the youth so that they could find gainful employment once released. Boys learned things like carpentry, barbering, and shoe repair, while girls were offered cooking, hygiene, sewing, music, and housekeeping classes. In 1891, a fire destroyed much of the original building and the school then moved to an abandoned facility which formerly housed the Ogden Military Academy.[19] The former academy building lacked indoor plumbing which eventually led to concerns about the school’s water supply. In fact, investigators attributed a typhoid fever outbreak at the school to “an infected water supply” in the year preceding Florence and Nora’s admission. Press reports in early 1903, suggested that teachers at the school used unnecessary cruelty in disciplining the students and that conditions at the school were crowded and unsanitary.[20]

The state legislature appointed a review board to investigate. The resulting report exonerated school officials from the accusations of cruelty but not so regarding the water supply and overcrowding. “Regarding the charge of unsanitary conditions of the institution,” investigators wrote, “we feel that there is a measure of just complaint.” They agreed that the school was overcrowded and that it lacked “a pure and wholesome water supply.” They recommended connecting the school to the Ogden waterworks system and urged the legislature to take “immediate steps” to “provide an adequate supply of pure water for culinary and domestic purposes.”[21]

As for overcrowding, investigators noted that there were then 71 students in confinement and another 150 on parole who might be “subject to return and confinement at any time.” They stated, “as forcibly and emphatically as possible, that the buildings, equipment and number of employees are altogether inadequate to the needs and requirements of the institution” and urged construction of new buildings.[22]

Despite such recommendations the legislature failed to take action. The investigators presented their report to the school’s governing board on 13 March 1903, just five months before Florence and Nora Able arrived at the facility. Cache County Sheriff, George C. Rigbee, delivered Florence and Nora to the Industrial School on 6 August that same year with no evidence that conditions had improved prior to their arrival.[23]

School officials filled out the required paperwork and registered Florence at the school. They designated her “Color” as “Mulatto” and described her as being five feet six inches tall, weighing 135 pounds, having a “yellow complexion” with “hair straight and black” and having a half inch scar on her right wrist.[24] “Yellow” was a color sometimes used in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to define people of mixed racial ancestry, as it was here with Florence.

Evidence suggests that Florence was enrolled in cooking and other domestic type courses. When she applied for parole over one year later the school superintendent marked her conduct as “Excellent,” and gave her a 95% rating on the school’s credit and merit system. He said her progress in the school room was “Fair” and then noted that “Florence has done excellent work in the kitchen and in fact in any department she has been called upon to work.” He further noted that Florence had been at the school “sufficient time to have seen the folly of her conduct and to have found better habits.”[25]The school board granted her parole in September 1904 and she was allowed to visit her home in Logan the following month. By June 1905, the school board agreed to parole her into the custody of her uncle, Elijah Able Jr., who lived in Salt Lake City. It seemed for a time at least that Florence was moving in a positive direction.[26]

In August 1905, however, while visiting her home in Logan, she was again taken into custody, this time with two of her sisters, Nora and Ardell, and sent back to the reform school in Ogden. The charge this time was “delinquency” and failure to “fully observe the terms of her probation.”[27] The Logan Republican newspaper reported that it was Florence and Nora’s probation officers who made eight arrests at the Able home between midnight and one a.m. on 31 August 1905. Five of those arrested “were boys ranging from 16 to 25 years of age,” as well as Florence, Nora, and their younger sister Ardell. “The five boys received a severe lecture” from the district judge. “It is stated that he has a complete list of the names of men and boys that have visited that place,” the newspaper declared but did not specify any such names. “If reports are true more stringent measures should be used at the Abel place in the northern part of the city,” the newspaper prodded.[28]

The newspaper report implies sexual impropriety but does not explicitly state that that was the case. It further suggests that the Able house was a known location for such activity and encourages “more stringent measures,” but uses inuendo rather than direct language to prod public officials to take action. In any case, the five boys who were arrested only received a “severe lecture” from the judge, while the three Able girls were held accountable with more severe consequences.[29]

The judge charged Florence, Nora, and Ardell with “delinquency” without specifying its exact nature and ordered Florence and Nora to be returned to the State Industrial School, this time joined by Ardell.[30] Within two months, the Logan Republican reported that Ardell was in fact pregnant when she arrived at the reform school.[31] She gave birth at age 15 to a baby girl on 14 April 1906 and promptly gave it up for adoption.[32] The birth certificate listed the father as “unknown.”[33]

It is not clear how long Florence spent at the industrial school this time before she was again paroled. Her reform school record is silent on the matter. Tragically, Florence’s sister Ardell died of typhoid fever at the school on 6 September 1908, over two years after being sent there with Florence and Nora. Nora was paroled one week after Ardell’s death and Florence likely was too.[34] The Industrial School held a memorial service for Ardell after which her body was taken to Logan for a funeral in the Logan Fifth Ward; her body was then laid to rest in the Logan City cemetery.[35] On behalf of her family, Florence published a short “Card of Thanks,” in the Logan Journal four days after Ardell passed away. She expressed gratitude to “all those who assisted us in our recent bereavement or who ministered in any way to our departed relative.”[36]

By 1909, the Logan City Directory listed Florence living at home in Logan with her mother Mary, and her brother Elijah.[37] On 3 January of that year she gave birth to a son, Eugene Wallace Reed, whose father was Samuel Reed, a young man who had grown up a Latter-day Saint in Burrville, in central Utah, but who now lived in Logan. A year and a half later, a pastor of the First Methodist Episcopal Church of Ogden married Florence to Samuel Reed. Florence was 23 at the time and Samuel was 29.[38] Florence gave birth to their second son, Delbert Samuel Reed (sometimes called Calvin Reed) on 22 January 1911, seven months after they wed. In April, they took their new baby boy to the Logan Fifth Ward where he was blessed and named before the Latter-day Saint congregation.[39] That baby blessing is the last evidence of Florence’s affiliation with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She moved in a different religious direction after that. There is no record of any of her other children receiving blessings or baptisms into the Latter-day Saint faith.

The couple had one more child together, Clyde Louis Reed, also born in Logan on 9 June 1912.[40] Two years later, the young family moved to Boise, Idaho, where Samuel worked as a lumberman for the Boise-Payette Lumber Company and then as a laborer for the railroad. Florence worked as a servant for a local family and the couple settled into a working-class life in Boise.[41]

No one in Boise likely knew of Florence’s mixed racial heritage. In fact, all public documents after their arrival in Idaho counted the family as white. The move to Boise, no doubt, allowed Florence to start fresh with neighbors and coworkers who were not aware of her racial heritage, her religious upbringing, or her challenging teenage years. Geographic movement is in fact an important factor in racial passing, especially as people move away from communities who understand them to be of mixed racial ancestry to new communities who have no prior knowledge of their racial history. Florence’s move to Boise thus helped to facilitate her passage as white.

By 1930 Samuel worked for the Boise Water Department and Florence stayed home to raise their three sons. All three boys were single and still lived at home that year.[42] At some point thereafter Delbert may have exhibited mental health challenges and was admitted to the state mental hospital in Orofino, 250 miles north of Boise. He died there in 1932 of Pulmonary Tuberculosis with “mental deficiency” listed as a contributory cause of death on his death certificate.[43]

In 1940, Florence and Samuel’s youngest son, Clyde, was 27, still single, and continued to live at home. He worked at a fruit cannery while Samuel remained as a laborer for the Boise water company. Florence meanwhile returned to doing housework in private homes to earn money and later that decade she took a job at the Elk’s Convalescent Center.[44] By 1950, Clyde had moved out and Florence and Samuel were alone together for the first time since they had married forty years earlier. Samuel was 69 and was no longer able to work. Florence took a job as a janitor at a local hospital to help support them both in their retirement years.[45]

Samuel passed away on 11 November 1959 at the couple’s home in Boise at age 79. Florence lived nearly seventeen more years before she died in a nursing home in Boise on 21 June 1976, just two months shy of her ninetieth birthday. David Waggoner of the First Christian Church in Boise presided over her funeral. She was laid to rest in Dry Creek Cemetery in Boise, Idaho.[46] Likely no one involved in her funeral services was aware that they were commemorating the granddaughter of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ most well documented Black priesthood holder from the nineteenth century when they offered their tributes to Florence on a summer day in Boise in 1976.

By W. Paul Reeve

[1] “Local Points,” The Journal (Logan, Utah), 23 February 1901, 8.

[2] W. Paul Reeve, Let’s Talk About Race and Priesthood (Deseret Book, 1923), chapters 12-14.

[3] On evidence for an 1883 marriage see Enoch and Mary Jordi Able in United States, 1900 Census, Utah Territory, Cache County, Logan 5^th Ward; on Utah’s anti-miscegenation law see Patrick Q. Mason, “The Prohibition of Interracial Marriage in Utah, 1888-1963,” Utah Historical Quarterly 76 (Spring 2008): 108-131. The “Act in Relation to Service,” passed by the Utah territorial legislature in 1852 prohibited sex between black and white people but that law no longer appeared in Utah code after 1866 (see W. Paul Reeve, Christopher B. Rich Jr., and LaJean Purcell Carruth, This Abominable Slavery: Race, Religion, and the Battle over Human Bondage in Antebellum Utah (Oxford University Press, 2024), 229).

[4] United States, 1880 Census, Utah Territory, Cache County, Logan; United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan; United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan; United States, 1920 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan; United States, 1930 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan.

[5] United States, 1860 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, 13th Ward; United States, 1870 Census, Utah Territory, Weber County, Ogden; United States, 1880 Census, Utah Territory, Salt Lake County, Salt Lake City, 13^th Ward; United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan.

[6] W. Paul Reeve, “Elijah Able,” Century of Black Mormons; W. Paul Reeve, “Mary Ann Adams Able,” Century of Black Mormons.

[7] United States, 1900 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan.

[8] United States, 1910 Census, Utah, Cache County, Logan.

[9] United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise; United States, 1930 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise; United States, 1940 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise; United States, 1950 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise.

[10] Logan Fifth Ward Manuscript History, LR 4967 2, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[11] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Logan Fifth Ward, CR 375 8, box 3748, folder 1, image 124, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[12] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Logan Fifth Ward, CR 375 8, box 3748, folder 1, image 124, Church History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[13] “Logan Briefs,” Logan Nation (Logan, Utah), 5 October 1901, 8.

[14] Logan Fifth Ward, Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association minutes and records, 1878-1973, LR 4967 17, 15 January 1902, 134, Church History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[15] Utah, State Board of Health, Certificate of Death, File No. 145, Registered No. 108, Johnnie Ables, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[16] On Mary’s financial struggles see, “Local Briefs,” Logan Nation (Logan, Utah), 5 October 1901, 8; “Commissioners Proceedings,” Logan Republican (Logan, Utah), 4 January 1908, 8.

[17] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[18] “Florence and Nora Able,” The Journal (Logan, Utah) 6 August 1903, 1.

[19] Yvette D. Ison, “Juvenile Delinquency Posed Problems for Utahns a Century Ago,” History Blazer, June 1995; Martha Sonntag Bradley, “Reclamation of Young Citizens: Reform of Utah’s Juvenile Legal System, 1888-1910,” Utah Historical Quarterly 51, no. 4 (Fall 1983): 328-345.

[20] Industrial School Minute Books, 1894-1912, Series 2592, 13 March 1903, 17-18, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[21] Industrial School Minute Books, 1894-1912, Series 2592, 13 March 1903, 17-18, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[22] Industrial School Minute Books, 1894-1912, Series 2592, 13 March 1903, 17-18, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[23] Industrial School Minute Books, 1894-1912, Series 2592, 13 March 1903, 17-18, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah; State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[24] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[25] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[26] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[27] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[28] “A Lively Raid,” Logan Republican (Logan, Utah) 2 September 1905, 4.

[29] “A Lively Raid,” Logan Republican (Logan, Utah) 2 September 1905, 4.

[30] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[31] “Aaron Richardson,” Logan Republican (Logan, Utah) 22 October 1905, 5.

[32] Mary Doe Ables, Adoption, Second District Court, Weber County, Probate Case Files, Series 6874, Reel 86, Case 1418, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[33] Utah, State Board of Health, Certificate of Birth, File No. 204, Registered No. 242, Unnamed Child, 14 April 1906, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[34] State Industrial School, Youth Development Center, Inmate Case Files, Series 03371, Reel 1992, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[35] “Remains of Ardelle Able shipped to Logan,” Ogden Weekly Standard, 11 September 1908, 8.

[36] “Card of Thanks,” The Journal (Logan, Utah) 10 September 1908, 5.

[37] R. L. Polk & Co., Logan City and Cache County Directory, 1909-1910, 27.

[38] Utah, Weber County, Marriages, Samuel Reed and Florence Evidence Able, 14 June 1910, microfilm 1,324,680, Family History Library, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[39] Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Record of Members Collection, Logan Fifth Ward, microfilm 26,084, Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Delbert’s birth certificate lists his name as Calvin Reed, rather than Delbert, leading to some family history confusion. In contrast, his LDS blessing record lists his name as Delbert Reed. Both records list the date of birth as 22 January 1911. The birth certificate does NOT list him as a twin and describes him as the couple’s second child. It is possible that there was some disagreement between Samuel and Florence over the name of their son. At the hospital they listed Calvin as the name for the birth certificate, which was his father’s middle name, and by the time they had him blessed in the Logan Fifth Ward they had settled on Delbert Samuel Reed as his full name. In any case, he seems to have gone by Delbert throughout his life. See Utah, State Board of Health, Certificate of Birth, File No. 39, Registered No. 4, Calvin Reid, 22 January 1911, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[40] Utah, State Board of Health, Certificate of Birth, File No. 266, Registered No. 52, [Clyde Louis Reed], 9 June 1912, Utah Division of Archives and Records Services, Salt Lake City, Utah.

[41] United States, 1920 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise; United States, Idaho, Boise City, World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Samuel Calvin Reed, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, DC.

[42] United States, 1930 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise.

[43] Idaho, Department of Public Welfare, Bureau of Vital Statistics, Certificate of Death, File No. 80973, Registered No. 70, Delbert Reed, Idaho State Archives, Boise, Idaho.

[44] United States, 1940 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise; “Florence E. Reed,” Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) 22 June 1976, B2.

[45] United States, 1950 Census, Idaho, Ada County, Boise.

[46] “Florence E. Reed,” Idaho Statesman (Boise, Idaho) 22 June 1976, B2; Florence Evidence Able Reed, FindAGrave.com.

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