This image shows my great-grandmother Sarah Day Hall standing at her front gate in Manti, Utah, in the 1930s. In her workaday clothes, behind her sagging fence, the life of this Mormon matriarch would seem not to have changed much from her earlier sharecropper’s life in Alabama. The second image, though taken in her inelegant back pasture, shows how far she has really come from those earlier times: She can wear her best dress on Sundays to meet with the Saints, in the shadow of the House of the Lord.
Submitted by Ardis Parshall of Keepapitchinin.
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This photograph is part of our ongoing series highlighting Mormon images. Comments to the post are welcome. In addition we invite you to submit your own images to the Mormon Image series. Other photos in the series can be found here. Rules and instructions, including submissions guidelines, can be found here.
I think the pictures are out of order? The picture with her in front of her fence is the second picture as I look at the post.
This is a great set of photographs, though, with the accompanying comparative gloss. And Manti is a beautiful setting.
Thank you for posting these, Ardis. In the picture with the temple, I imagine the sounds of Utah in the summer, the colors of the field, and the brush of the breeze on a warm morning.
This is probably a threadjack, but when I see pictures like this, I wonder, “Was she happy? Can I find happiness in my mundane (and hopefully sacred) life?”