Margaret McNeil Ballard: A Pioneer Woman's Recorded Sacrifice and Faithful Obedience

Margaret McNeil Ballard was a Latter-day Saint pioneer woman whose journal, preserved and quoted by her great-grandson Elder M. Russell Ballard, records both the sacrifices of the pioneer gathering and the faithful obedience of a bishop's wife. As a girl of nine to eleven, she recorded a pioneer experience of sacrifice on the westward journey. Later, as the wife of Bishop Henry Ballard of Logan, she wrote of her husband's obedience in entering plural marriage by the counsel of the authorities: 'My husband, being a Bishop, had been counseled by the authorities to set the example of obedience by entering into this law.' Her journal is a faith-promoting witness of a generation of pioneer women whose quiet, costly obedience helped establish the Church in the West.