Anna Collier Autobiography - "The Critic"

Two copies of Anna Collier's autobiography. The manuscript was originally written by Anna Collier between June 30 and August 12, 1926. It was handwritten on lined paper and in 1978 a typed transcript was made by her grandson Alex M. Cole, Jr. The manuscript describes her childhood in Sweden and her years in Utah, growing up in the midst of the establishment of the Mormon community in Utah, her married life, her life as a single mother, and her later years caring for her family.

Biographical Note

Anna Collier was born near Malmö, Sweden, on November 20, 1853. Her father was a farmer and had converted from Lutheranism (with a strong measure of traditional Swedish folk belief) to Mormonism. She recalls her mother hiding in a back room to drink her coffee, although all the adults drank beer with their meals. Her father threatened to take two of the children with him to "Zion" (Utah) and leave her mother behind with the other two if she refused to convert, so she finally consented to be baptised into the Mormon church. However, she claimed that a big black dog accompanied them to the place where she was baptised. Not long after they moved to Utah, Anna's mother died, and her father remarried several times. He continued to work as a farmer, and could rarely spare Anna from farm work to allow her to go to school.

Anna's recollections include life with her stepmothers and the tragic spring when her younger sister fell on a knitting needle, dying a few days later. She provides insight about what it was like growing up in a Mormon community, including polygamous marriages, the battles over temperance, town scandals, and Church politics when the institution was led by Bringham Young. Young Anna got tired of doing the equivalent of a man's work on the farm and left home at an early age. She was a strong-willed girl and was determined that, if she ever married, her husband would have only one wife. She eventually married Thomas Collier, a man four years younger than herself. He was shot to death August 5, 1894, by a man named Campbell, who was later tried and acquitted. Anna's comment was that: "The Campbells were so religious that they would not work on Sunday, but he killed my husband on Sunday." She was so upset when her husband was killed that she felt like throwing herself into the nearby St. Joe River (in Idaho), but she knew that her daughters needed her. She promised to be both a mother and father to them, and was committed to ensuring that her daughters would continue to receive an education until they married.

For a time Anna ran a rooming house in Spokane, Washington, and later homesteaded 160 acres in Oregon. After that she divided her time between Oregon and Spokane, where her daughter Laura lived with her family. She then moved to California, and eventually cared for her aging father until his death. Along with losing a newborn grandchild, Anna eventually lost both of her daughters and her last living full sister. At the time she wrote her memoir she was working as a housekeeper and companion for an older woman named Mrs.Howison. She continued to work there until she was past eighty years old, when Mrs. Howison died. Anna herself passed away on July 17, 1934.