Early Life
Alison Oram (sometimes spelled "Orrum"), commonly called Eilley, was born into a farming family on September 6, 1826 in Forfar, Scotland, one of ten children. Although she had little interest in religion, she was dissatisfied with her prospects should she remain in Scotland, and joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to gain the means to move to the United States.
Accompanied by her sister Betty, Eilley arrived in Nauvoo, Illinois, then the hub of the Latter Day Saints movement, in 1841. In 1842 Eilley married Scottish widower and missionary Stephen Hunter, at 45 years old thirty years her senior. Following the assassination of Joseph Smith, Jr. the couple joined the migration of the Mormon pioneers to the Salt Lake Valley, settling in Salt Lake City.
As Hunter believed Eilley to be unable to conceive children, he took a second wife, polygamy at this point being legal in the Utah Territory and socially acceptable within the Mormon community. Unwilling to share a husband, in 1850 Eilley paid $15 (approximately $419 today) to divorce Hunter, supporting herself by working in a Salt Lake City general store.
Read more about this topic: Eilley Bowers
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