I’ve written more than 50 monthly columns and features on Utah history for the Salt Lake Tribune over the past four years. I like it – it’s fun, and profitable, and I’d write every week if they hadn’t decided to rotate among four history columnists. There is no shortage of stories, most of which have ended up here at Keepa, and a few of which started out here.

The stories I tell tend to be upbeat ones, celebrating what it means to be a Utahn. I’ve written about Polynesians, and Catholics, and Jews, and Blacks, and Chinese, and Mormons; about actors, and archaeologists and avalanches, about parades, and ghosts, and runaway elephants. Even when the subject was a train robbery, it was upbeat, focusing on the heroics of a the Wells-Fargo agent who protected the express car and thwarted the robbers’ every attempt to break in.

Nobody at the Tribune has ever told me what to write or what not to write. I find, though, that I tend to stay away from Mormon stories, in part because I want to include all Utahns in the column, and in part because I hate the ugliness of the online comments that follow any mention of Mormonism – not that the commenters really need me to mention Mormonism; they could turn a column about rainbows into a diatribe against tithing without breaking a sweat. When I do tell stories about Mormons, their Mormon-ness is not the point of the story.

This weekend I broke all my rules.

First, the story was a downer. I told about the short life and unhappy end of Ina Maybert, whom some of you might remember from an earlier post, Tracing Emily.

Second, the story involved Mormonism as a critical element. Ina was orphaned at age 2, and raised by Lucy Bigelow Young, one of Brigham Young’s wives, and the mother of Susa Young Gates. As a 17-year-old, Ina left the Young family, entered prostitution, and committed suicide the next year. Her reality as an unhappy young girl in trouble was lost in all the ink spilled by both the Mormon and non-Mormon press, each side blaming the other for her downfall.

It’s hard to tell a complex story in the 650 words allotted for the column, but I tried to give a sense of what might have caused Ina to leave her family and head into trouble, and I tried to be eminently fair to both sides (Mormon and Gentile), in representing each side’s behavior and claims.

The story is on the Trib site here and is archived at Keepa here.

Man, oh, man, how readers reacted to that story! It was the most viewed Tribune story for most of the weekend (it dropped off the radar, though, when the webmaster removed the word “prostitute” from the headline – a change I was glad to see, but which also suggests the main reason it was so popular). More people voted thumbs up/thumbs down than have ever voted before on one of my columns.

Most of the online comments were predictable: the Mormon-baiters didn’t have to stretch to find a hook for their slams against the church. Yawn.

A few people understood what I was trying to say, that everybody has a story, and nobody’s story should be reduced to the worst thing they ever did. One woman emailed me to say, “The last sentiment, ‘Everyone deserves to be remembered for who she was, not just for the way she died,’ is one I have always believed, and is one of the reasons I am a Genealogist.” One asked to reprint the column on her website, because “in a way, she’s a member of my family. A cousin of mine married a daughter of Brigham Young and his wife Clarissa Clara Decker, so this is very profound for me.” A man wrote, “Yes, everyone deserves to be remembered and everyone has a story. I’m sure you are a kind person and your thoughts are appreciated.” These and others seem to be from people who like to read history and would like to comment and connect with others, but they have given up on the online comments because their gentler words are so drowned out. Blogs give a voice to people like that, I think.

One man saw the story’s dramatic possibilities: “I rarely stop to email journalists, but your story on Ina Maybert read like fiction. I kept thinking this thing should be a movie. These are the kinds of stories the LDS filmmakers should be telling. True stories with themes related to history, loss and tolerance.”

The ones that surprised me were the Mormons who thought I must be an anti-Mormon. “What is the point? It seems to me that you want to blame the Mormons. I can argue that the protestant minister sexual[ly] abuse[d] her, which I am pretty sure he did. The Youngs were nice to take care of [her].” (That one from a woman who claimed to have a master’s degree, yet couldn’t read carefully enough to know that although she was born in India, Ina was of English blood: “Don’t blame the Mormons – blame her Hindu family because they didn’t care of her.” There is no evidence, by the way, to support an accusation of sexual abuse; the minister’s life and character are well known, and no hint of improprieties of that kind have ever surfaced.)

Some keyed in on the fact that Ina was an immigrant, and that dominated their reaction: “I think they should send her back to India and see for herself what poverty really was there.”

One email was hard to categorize, but I decided to take it as a compliment. He certainly understood what it is like to deal with criticism that really has nothing to do with the writing itself:

Firstly, I think you are talented and want you to continue doing what you do. I just hate it when readers Mormonize everything, both Pro and Con. It really gets old fast and becomes a folly, often for both sides. I’m not from Utah and sometimes wish I could send Mormons and Gentiles around the world to live for 10 years, and maybe they would come back with a more pleasant perspective and a deeper appreciation of this place we all call home.

No, I didn’t care for the article. The subject just didn’t grab me. Had nothing to do with you, religion or the man on the moon. I just didn’t like this one. But does that require me to be rude like so many readers are? Doesn’t matter. You had a story that is meaningful to some and that’s what counts here.

Again, I certainly hope you keep pounding the keyboard and putting out articles, warts and all. I admire you for having the guts to get out there and present history, at least the facts as we know them, and present them in a way that is not doctored up one way or the other. I honestly don’t know how you tolerate rude readers and rude people in general. It must be a skill you have developed over time. Good luck and keep writing.

My cousin wrote last night with his own comments on the column. He described it as “a Rorschach test” – how readers reacted to Ina’s story told more about the readers themselves than about either Ina or my writing.

As I read reactions today to various conference talks over the weekend, I see the same evidence of a Rorschach test. A dozen commenters look at the same talk and see a dozen different things. We all heard and saw the same event. Our reactions to it reflect who and what we are, far more than anything our reactions say about the event itself.