Vienna Jaques was an early Latter-day Saint convert who consecrated her wealth to build Zion. Although largely anonymous today, Jaques witnessed the first baptism for the dead, donated money to purchase the Kirtland Temple site, and received a personal letter from Joseph Smith. She is one of only two women mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants, alongside Emma Smith. Biographer Brent Rogers shares her story in this interview and explains how Jaques received the peace promised her in D&C 90.
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Introduction to Vienna Jaques
How did you become interested in the life of Vienna Jaques?
Back in the summer of 2012, I was hard at work on Documents Volume 3 of the Joseph Smith Papers. One of the documents I studied was a letter from Joseph Smith to a Church member in Missouri dated 4 September 1833. I became captivated by its contents and was particularly interested in the recipient.
It was addressed to Vienna Jaques, a single woman baptized in the faith just over a year earlier.
I was surprised and disappointed to find that few parts of Vienna’s life story had been mentioned in the writing of Doctrine and Covenants commentaries or in the telling of Church history. They usually told the same simplistic story that Vienna, a wealthy woman, had been commanded to consecrate her means to the Church, and she went on to live a long, faithful life.
As I researched the many facets of that September 1833 letter and uncovered sources I hadn’t seen cited elsewhere, I knew there was much more to say about Vienna and her history. Thus began more than a decade of sleuthing to learn as much as I could about Vienna Jaques.
Vienna Jaques: Early Life and Conversion
What do we know about her early life?
Little is known of Vienna’s first forty years of life. On June 10, 1787, Vienna Jaques was born in Beverly, Massachusetts. She moved to Boston in the 1820s. She was an industrious woman who became an experienced midwife and operated a boardinghouse, among her many enterprises.
She was also a spiritual seeker. During her residence in Boston, she found a spiritual home at the Bromfield Street Methodist Episcopal Church and became disappointed with its worship services. She found the commitment to divine healing and revelatory power at this Methodist church lacking for her taste.
Vienna had read something in a newspaper about a new faith and its “golden bible.” Upon hearing of Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon, the new scripture he brought forth, Jaques wanted to peruse a copy of the book. She procured a copy of the new religious text, a sacred record claiming to contain “the fullness of the Gospel.”
Here’s how I write about her interaction with the Book of Mormon:
When she received it, however, she was not immediately drawn to the book. Holding this new scripture in her hand, Vienna quickly flipped through some of its pages but did not seriously engage with the text. She did not fully comprehend the importance of the book when she first read it, and she set it aside for a time.
After a brief time passed, Vienna felt impressed to reconsider the Book of Mormon. Then she prayed. She asked God to ‘impress her mind in regard to its truthfulness.’
She felt prompted to read the book again and to read it more closely this time. As she read, her mind became ‘illuminated.’
After reading the book, she prayed again. She prayed about the claims of this prophet and this new scripture. In an answer to her seeking, Vienna Jaques then had a ‘vision of the Book of Mormon’ after which ‘she was firmly convinced of its divine authenticity.’ She was completely satisfied that the Book of Mormon was a revelation from God.”
Brent M. Rogers, The Lord Spoke Her Name: The Remarkable Life of Vienna Jaques in the Restoration.
Vienna soon traveled from Boston to Kirtland, Ohio, to learn more about the new faith. There she was baptized and from thenceforth converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ.
How did she become one of two women mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants?
The Church needed capital to purchase land on which to build the House of the Lord in Kirtland. Vienna Jaques had the means to help. Through hard work and frugality, Vienna had accumulated wealth and properties. Before she moved from Boston to Kirtland, she appears to have liquidated at least some, if not all, of her assets, bringing with her to Ohio a significant amount of liquid capital.
Joseph Smith dictated a revelation on March 8, 1833, regarding particulars of Church administration, a portion of which mentioned Vienna Jaques by name.
She decided to consecrate her means for her faith.
The revelation (now canonized as Doctrine and Covenants section 90) declared the will of the Lord that Vienna should receive money to gather to Zion, and she would receive an inheritance in the “land of Zion.” By the time of the March 8, 1833, revelation, Jaques had given the Church a substantial financial offering. She decided to consecrate her means for her faith. That the Lord spoke her name and called her to go on to Zion would have been worth all the money in the world to Vienna.
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Her contribution came at an advantageous time. In March 1833, Church leaders were in the midst of contracting to purchase several parcels of land in Kirtland, including the Peter French Farm. The Church needed additional funds to finalize these agreements. Vienna’s infusion of cash helped.
Jaques’s contribution, as Joseph Smith wrote in a later letter, “proved a Savior of life as pertaining to [the Church’s] pecunary concern.” Her donation helped Church leaders purchase the very land on which the Kirtland Temple would be built. Her donation propelled progress on this sacred building project.
Vienna Jaques and Joseph Smith
What do we know about the relationship between Vienna Jaques and Joseph Smith?
I would characterize the relationship between Vienna Jaques and Joseph Smith as a friendship of mutual respect.
There are only a few documented moments of interaction between Joseph Smith and Vienna Jaques. After learning of the new faith and reading the Book of Mormon, Vienna left Boston for Kirtland, Ohio. There she was baptized into the new church and had the opportunity to meet Joseph Smith, who taught Vienna about the concept of gathering.
When Vienna gathered with the Saints the following year, Joseph gifted Vienna a Book of Mormon with a personal inscription, an artifact she held dear thereafter.
Joseph trusted Jaques.
As was noted, Vienna worked with Joseph to donate her wealth to support the Church. A whole chapter is dedicated to Joseph Smith’s letter to her on September 4, 1833. It is the earliest surviving letter from Smith addressed specifically to a woman (other than his wife Emma Smith).
The letter provides a glimpse into an important moment in Church history, into the lives of people in the Church, but specifically into the lives and character of Vienna and Joseph. It provides evidence of Joseph Smith’s egalitarian and inclusionary nature regarding women. He trusted Jaques with information. He also reminded her that God is no respecter of persons and that He hears and answers prayers.
Vienna Jaques and Early Latter-day Saint Doctrine
How is she connected with the first baptism for the dead?
Vienna Jaques was deeply interested in her ancestors’ eternal salvation. On September 12, 1840, she learned that Jane Neyman was going with Harvey Olmstead to the Mississippi River to be baptized for her deceased son. Vienna mounted a horse and rode to the river to observe this ordinance.
Here’s an excerpt from the book about this momentous event:
Harvey grasped Jane, the grieving widow and mother, by her right wrist and raised his right arm to the square and said aloud a baptismal prayer. There was no set prayer, no precedence for this ordinance.
Vienna listened to the ceremonial prayer and observed the ordinance as Harvey then dipped Jane into the river, submerging her under the cloudy water. The faithful Jane Neyman emerged feeling that she had been reborn, baptized for her son in the open waters of the Mississippi River.
Vienna Jaques was a witness as the ritual practice of vicarious baptisms was born. That evening, Joseph Smith learned that this baptismal ceremony had taken place. He enquired about the ‘form of words’ Harvey Olmstead used for the baptism. Upon hearing the report from Olmstead, Smith approved the ceremony and stated that ‘it was proved that father Olmstead had it right.’ Vienna Jaques, the witness, was also consulted. Vienna confirmed to the Prophet what she had observed and heard, reassuring him that it was done as described.
She later testified that the words Olmstead used during that first vicarious baptismal prayer were “preceisely the same as was afterward used by the Elders.
Brent M. Rogers, The Lord Spoke Her Name: The Remarkable Life of Vienna Jaques in the Restoration, emphasis added.
Following this event, Vienna participated in baptisms for the dead. She served as proxy for more than fifty baptisms of the dead while she lived in Nauvoo. Vienna became captivated by the doctrine and practice of ritual work for the deceased. She dedicated time to this critical aspect of gathering Zion for the rest of her life.
Personal Life
What do we know about her marriage?
Not much. The circumstances surrounding Vienna Jaques’s courtship and marriage are not known. Sometime between 1835 and May 7, 1839, she married Daniel Shearer, a widower with a son who was a whip maker and blacksmith.
On May 7, 1839, Shearer, who had relocated to Illinois with Jaques, made an affidavit recording financial losses for himself and Jaques, having been driven from Missouri. Altogether, Shearer petitioned the federal government for $3,129.50 for the trauma experienced in Missouri.
The two had separated before 1846. The circumstances of their separation are not known. They had no children. They did not get sealed to each other in the Nauvoo Temple and went for their endowments on different days. They did not travel together in the same wagon company across the plains, suggesting they had separated before 1846. Vienna did not marry again, although Daniel did.
When did Vienna Jaques come to the Salt Lake Valley?
She drove her own wagon team among the 126 individuals of the Charles C. Rich Company, which left the Elkhorn River area west of Winter Quarters, near present-day Omaha, Nebraska, on June 21, 1847. Just eleven days earlier, Vienna celebrated her sixtieth birthday.
Vienna Jaques and the members of the Charles C. Rich Company arrived in the Salt Lake Valley on October 2, 1847. In all, they traveled more than 1,000 miles from the Elkhorn River to Great Salt Lake City. Vienna was among the first fifteen companies to depart the Nebraska plains for the Great Basin in the first year of immigration and among the first 1,800 Latter-day Saints to arrive in Salt Lake City that year.
Why was she so fiercely independent?
I just think that was who she was, that was her personality. She was a strong, self-reliant individual who sought truth and went about doing good.
Legacy of Vienna Jaques in Church History
Did Vienna Jaques receive the peace promised in D&C 90?
In Doctrine and Covenants section 90 verses 30-31, it states that Vienna “should go up to unto the land of Zion, and receive an inheritance … that she may settle down in peace inasmuch as she is faithful, and not be idle in her days from thenceforth.”
Vienna remained faithful and was never idle. Following the revelation, she moved to Missouri but was not able to settle down in peace. She then moved to Illinois but was not able to settle down in peace. She moved to Winter Quarters, where lasting peace still evaded her.
She drove her own wagon from eastern Nebraska to the Salt Lake Valley. Her first year in the valley, she lived in that wagon. It became so tattered that she worried she wouldn’t be able to live in it another winter. She had remained faithful and not idle. She wrote to Brigham Young of her plight and soon obtained a lot of land in Salt Lake City, where she would build a permanent residence. The parcel was on Third East Street between First and Second South in Salt Lake City’s Twelfth Ward.
She finally found the place to settle down in peace as she had been promised by revelation in 1833.
With the help of some laborers, she built a modest adobe house that a neighbor described as a “pretty little house” that had “shutters and was quite up to date.” She resided in this house for the rest of her life. In that home, Vienna Jaques finally found the place to settle down in peace as she had been promised by revelation in 1833.
She had endured many trials with patience, but saw the promise of revelation as she lived and worked on her land of inheritance for over thirty years. Her Salt Lake City home was her place of peace. In it, she remained faithful and did not idle.
Why do so few people know about Vienna Jaques?
Few truly get attention in history. People are drawn to big names and big events, and historians are drawn to sources. The combination of the two comprises the majority of written history.
Vienna Jaques was neither a big name nor did she leave behind a collection of documents. Her life in the records of the past is often elusive, though she was a part of some momentous events. More importantly, though, I think she has remained relatively anonymous in history because she was a woman, and a well-behaved woman at that.
There has long been an entrenched bias toward male figures and accomplishments in the writing of history. More was written by and about men, and therefore, more was kept in historical archives about and by men. Women’s historians have done some amazing work over the last fifty years, not just to include women in the stories of the past, but to bring them front and center.
Doing so is really arduous work. Women’s experiences can be difficult to find. These historians often have to read between the lines and search in hard-to-find places for the source materials needed to write history.
The historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich said, “Well-behaved women seldom make history.” The women who do make history are usually the ones who break barriers, step into the public sphere with resonant voices, and drive societal change.
But ordinary women are just as deserving of historical inquiry. In an article in the Harvard Gazette, Ulrich noted that well-behaved women should also make history. In the article, “Ulrich points out that histories of ‘ordinary’ women have not been widely known because historians have not looked carefully at their lives, adding that by exploring this facet of our past, we gain a richer understanding of history.”
I am in awe of these women’s historians and their work. I have tried to emulate their efforts in carefully studying the life of Vienna Jaques, a woman who was ordinary but, to me, also extraordinary. By thoroughly studying her life, I have gained a richer understanding of the first fifty years of Latter-day Saint history.
What did you learn researching the Vienna Jaques biography?
Vienna Jaques’s life can teach readers many life lessons. I learned lessons on the power of seeking truth, the power of faith and fortitude, the power of overcoming, and the power of being resourceful, self-reliant, and generous.
After writing this book, I also think everyone has a story worth telling and a story worth listening to.
Finally, Vienna Jaques’s life teaches that everyone can display the leadership principles of Christian discipleship. As I write in my book about her:
All can be leaders in their own sphere of influence: in organizing and conducting charitable acts and in building Zion in everyday life. It is, after all, the everyday living of faith that is truly heroic. It is the everyday contributions that build toward the extraordinary.
Brent M. Rogers, The Lord Spoke Her Name: The Remarkable Life of Vienna Jaques in the Restoration.
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About the Scholar
Brent M. Rogers is the author of the first book-length biography of Vienna Jaques, one of only two women mentioned by name in the Doctrine and Covenants. He is a Managing Historian with the Church History Department in Salt Lake City and holds a PhD in History from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Rogers is the author of several related works, including Buffalo Bill and the Mormons, The Brigham Young Journals: Volume 1, and Joseph Smith and His First Vision: Context, Place, and Meaning.
Further Reading
- What Does Latter-day Saint History Look Like in Records Kept by Women?
- Why Did Susa Young Gates Get Divorced?
- How Did Emma Smith Influence D&C 25?
- Who Were Joseph Smith’s Wives?
- What Did Brigham Young Write About in His Journal?
- How Has Temple Worship Evolved Since Joseph Smith’s Time?
Vienna Jaques in Latter-day Saint History
- The Lord Spoke Her Name: The Remarkable Life of Vienna Jaques in the Restoration (Deseret Book)
- 5 Facts About Vienna Jaques, a Faithful Woman Mentioned in Doctrine and Covenants (Church News)
- Letter to Vienna Jaques, 4 September 1833 (Joseph Smith Papers)
- Vienna Jaques: Woman of Faith (Ensign)
- Fragments of Revelation: Exploring the Book of Doctrine and Covenants (BCC Press)
Citation Information
This post was originally published on May 4, 2025. The most recent update on August 22, 2025, includes updated images, resources, relevant links, and an improved online reading experience.
