Romania B. Pratt Penrose

Dr. Esther Romania Bunnell Pratt Penrose (August 8, 1839 – November 9, 1932) was a leading figure in Latter-day Saint (LDS) and Utah culture during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. She is widely known for being the first LDS woman to receive an MD degree and for being the first woman to be a medical doctor in the state of Utah.

Early life

Romania Bunnell was born in Washington Township, Indiana to Luther B. Bunnell and his wife Esther Mendenhall. Romania's parents joined the LDS church sometime before 1845 and within a year her family had moved from Indiana to Nauvoo, Illinois in order to join with others of the LDS community. After hearing stories of gold in California, Luther Bunnell went west in 1849, where he worked in gold diggings but died of typhoid fever in the process. Romania Bunnell and family then moved to Crawfordsville, Indiana. From the ages of ten to sixteen, Romania attended the Quaker-sponsored Western Agricultural School in Ohio and then the Female Seminary in Crawfordsville, Indiana. Romania Bunnell was baptized in Atchison, Kansas on May 31, 1855, shortly before moving to Utah Territory. She went west with her mother, sister, and two brothers in the John Hindley company. They traveled for four long months before arriving in the Salt Lake Valley.

Marriage and family

On February 23, 1859, she married her first husband, Parley P. Pratt Jr., the eldest son of Parley P. Pratt. Over the next several years Romania and Parley had seven children, five of whom lived to adulthood.

In 1881 Romania and Pratt were divorced. She was his third wife. Romania served as general secretary of the Relief Society on the Relief Society Central Board for more than 30 years. In 1889 when Susa Young Gates started the Young Woman's Journal she recruited Penrose to write a column for it on health and hygiene.

From 1906 to 1910, Penrose accompanied her husband as he presided over the European Mission. She became the first wife of the mission president to be the president of the relief society in the European mission, as she oversaw the organization of LDS relief societies for the first time in Europe.

Women's suffrage

Romania was involved in the women's suffrage movement. Early in 1882, Romania accompanied two Relief Society sisters, Zina D. H. Young and Ellen B. Ferguson, to New York in order to attend a Woman's Suffrage Convention. Prior to her attendance at the suffrage convention in New York, Romania published many articles in the Women's Exponent regarding the need for woman's suffrage.