USU Folklore graduate student Millie Tullis recently published her essay “Polygamy and Revelation in Magical Mormonism: Four Peepstone Bride Narratives” in the collection DNA Mormon: Perspectives on the Legacy of Historian D. Michael Quinn edited by Benjamin E. Park. 

This collection is “a rigorous and riveting assessment” of the legacy of renowned Mormon historical D. Michael Quinn and how his life and work sheds light on modern Mormonism. Examining Quinn as both historical figure and historian, the book reflects on how as “a gay Chicano historian dissenter [Quinn] emulated” the ways Mormonism evolved during his life. 

Millie’s contribution looks at the story of the "peepstone brides" that Austin and Alta Fife recounted in their 1956 book on Mormon folklore, Saints of Sage and Saddle. In this story, a Mormon pioneer, Samuel Rose Parkinson, and his first wife, Arabella Chandler Parkinson, go to a person with a peepstone [also called a seer stone] and share a vision of Samuel's second and third wives. Samuel and Arabella see these two young women at church years later (sisters Charlotte and Maria Smart) and Samuel later marries both. Millie’s essay considers four written versions of this story (the Fife's composite narrative, two family accounts, and one local story) to better understand how different storytellers and contexts shaped this story in the twentieth century when polygamy and peepstones were no longer part of mainstream Mormon practice. Examining the variations between these four stories “illuminates how the intersection of gender, divine revelation, spiritual authority, magical practices, and polygamy are negotiated by the storytellers who sought to trivialize or sanctify their narratives at the different points throughout the twentieth century.” 

On January 19, Millie participated in a recorded Signature Books' roundtable on DNA Mormon with several of her fellow authors, and the editor, Benjamin E. Park. The DNA Mormon book trailer is also available on YouTube.