Hyrum City Museum honors Martha Hughes Cannon with exhibit

Hyrum City Museum Director Jami Van Huss talks about the traveling Martha Hughes Cannon Legacy of Leadership Exhibit on Thursday Nov. 17, 2022.

HYRUM – The Hyrum City Museum has the traveling exhibit of Martha Hughes Cannon Legacy of Leadership on display. The traveling exhibit honors the frontier doctor, suffragist, public health reformer and the nation’s first female state senator.

A smaller version of the Martha Hughes Cannon Legacy of Leadership Exhibit now in display at the Hyrum City Museum to honor the trailblazer of Women’s rights in Utah.

Cannon’s statue is going to Washington D.C. to replace Philo Farnsworth, the inventor of television. Utah is allowed two statues in the National Statuary Hall inside of the U.S. Capital and the Utah State Legislature decided Philo was out and Cannon should be there instead.

The other statue is Brigham Young, an early leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and colonizer of the West. There are 100 statues in the U. S. Capitol.

“She was an extraordinary woman,” said Jami Van Huss, the Hyrum City Museum director. “I think if I had known her, we would have been friends.”

Cannon was a polygamist wife and most people thought polygamist wives were mindless sheep.

Brigham Young was trying to get more women to gain medical skills as midwives, but Cannon went to medical school and became a doctor.”

Cannon was not only a medical doctor and the first person to be elected as a state senator in the country, but she was also a mother of three.

“While in the legislature she pushed for a woman’s right to vote and although Wyoming was the first state to let women vote, Cannon was the first woman in the country to vote,” Van Huss said. “Utah women were voting 20 years before the 19th Amendment was passed giving all women the right to vote.”

Cannon did a lot of walking as a doctor, so she wore boots and had short hair, both of which were unusual for women at that time. Being the first woman in the country as a state legislator, the rest of the country was watching Utah to see how a woman faired in state government.

“She got pregnant while serving in the legislature and resigned because people found out she was still a practicing polygamist,” she said. “After leaving the legislature she moved to California.”

She is burried in the Salt Lake Cemetery.

There is a lot to learn about Cannon and her roll in Utah. The Legacy of Leadership is traveling throughout the state and will be in Hyrum until Thursday, Dec. 15. The display also has several other historic women’s pictures displayed that made history in Utah.

Cannon’s statue will be one of 20 notable women in the National Statuary Hall inside of the U.S. Capital.

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