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Between 1830 and 1898 more than 220 women served as missionaries. Many of these were wives of missionary elders, nine were single women called to “assist the elders,” some were teachers, some were assigned to genealogical research, others were foreign travelers, visitors, or students.9

I have not found recorded cases where women themselves have claimed ordination to priesthood office. There are, however, accounts of women being “ordained” to specific callings and of women who exercised powers and spiritual gifts now assigned only to men who hold the priesthood. These practices and their endorsement by such church leaders as Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Heber J. Grant, and others, have left the unanswered question of [24] what authority women are intended to hold.

Initially there was little difference between women and men as recipients of spiritual gifts. In an early revelation Joseph Smith formalized practices already manifest in the church (see D&C 46)1, identifying “differences of administration, the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, faith to be healed, faith to heal, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, tongues and the interpretation of tongues.” These gifts came ungendered. They were gifts of the household of faith, given to “the children of God,” male and female. For instance, women were as likely to heal or be healed as were men. But during the early twentieth century, healing was increasingly regarded as the exclusive prerogative of men.

It was in Kirtland, Ohio (1832-37), that these gifts first flourished. At no time were they more in evidence than at the completion of the Kirtland Temple. The women of the church had worked to build the temple and they attended public gatherings, but they were not yet allowed to participate in the promised endowment ordinance. George A. Smith, reminiscing later as a member of the First Presidency, recalled that some of the women were “right huffy” as a consequence.

Kirtland was where “blessing meetings” were instituted. These were evening gatherings where Joseph Smith's father as patriarch to the church pronounced prophecies and blessings on the heads of the faithful. Caroline Barnes Crosby wrote of her and her husband Jonathan receiving their patriarchal blessings: “These blessings cheered and rejoiced our hearts exceedingly … Mother [Lucy Mack] Smith was in the room. She added her blessing or confirmed what we had already received.”

Sarah Studevant Leavitt remembered a spiritual blessing of another sort during this period. Praying to the Lord for her seriously ill daughter Louisa, she saw an angel who told her to get the girl out of bed, lay “hands upon her head in the name of Jesus Christ and administer to her and she should recover.” Sarah awakened her husband and told him to prepare Louisa for the blessing. After her mother blessed her, Louisa was soon “up and about.”

Sarah's experience may be the first recorded instance in the church of a healing blessing by a woman, but Joseph Smith, Sr., church patriarch, gave Eda Rogers a blessing in 1837 that clearly endorsed such powers: “In the absence of thy husband thou must pray with thy family. When they are sick thou shalt lay hands on them, and they shall recover. Sickness shall stand back.”