The colorful and conflicted life of Brigham Young’s Catholic Daughter

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

Brigham Young’s only Catholic daughter lived a colorful and conflicted life.

Eudora Lovina “Dora” Young Hagan was born in Salt Lake City in May 1852. Her mother— Lucy Bigelow Young—was one of sixteen plural wives who had children with the man known as the Lion of the Lord.

Dora and her two younger sisters (Susa Young Gates and Mabel Young Sanborn) grew up as Mormon royalty in the Lion House, one of Brigham’s many homes. Romney Burke’s 2022 book about Susa says the house was “full of half siblings who in a given week might include four babes in arms, six toddlers, five or six preschoolers, 13 or more school-age children between six and 14 years, [and] several older offspring in their late teens to early 20s…”

Despite the crowded conditions, Burke says, “Brigham’s families lived in relative splendor…” The family compound—a 50-acre plot right next to Temple Square—“was well-appointed, self-sufficient” and included a store, flour mill, barn, corrals, garden, orchard, gymnasium, and even a swimming pool.

Dora was witty, popular, and beautiful but also rebellious. Ignoring all objections, at age 18 she eloped, running off to the home of a local Protestant minister to marry her boyfriend Morely Dunford, the son of a Main Street shoe merchant. 

The New York Times said Dora’s actions “scandalized” the Saints and “enraged” her father. Poor Susa—coerced into the conspiracy—got blamed for it too and was banished with her mother to live at Brigham Young’s St. George home.

Susa’s writings say Morely was “industrious…with a sunny disposition,” but lacked self-control, especially regarding alcohol. After giving birth to two sons, Dora divorced him in 1876 and moved to St. George to rejoin her family.

Perhaps to appease her worried parents, Dora flirted with plural marriage. In February 1877, The Salt Lake Tribune reported that “the prophet’s wayward lamb” was about to be sealed to someone. 

It turned out to be future church president Wilford Woodruff, then age 70. Young married Dora and Woodruff in March 1877, but they separated a year later after their newborn child died.

Dora was devastated when her father passed away in August 1877. She attended his funeral at the Salt Lake Tabernacle along with some 15,000 other people.

Burke’s book says Brigham’s last words to Dora’s mother Lucy were “take care of the girls.” That mandate proved to be quite a challenge, for Susa married twice and Mabel thrice—the last time to a gentile.

Making matters even more difficult, Dora and several of Brigham’s children sued his estate and challenged his will. In 1879, Dora married Albert Hagan, the lawyer who helped her win a favorable settlement in that litigation.

Hagan’s law firm was a high-profile force in the local courts. He represented Mark Twain in a Utah copyright lawsuit and his partner Frank Tilford had helped prosecute John D. Lee for the infamous Mountain Meadows Massacre.

After the estate lawsuit ended, the church excommunicated Dora and the other litigious heirs. In May 1880, The Deseret News declared that the apostates had “falsely charged their father’s Executors and the authorities of the Church with defrauding the heirs…”

Publicly rejected by the church into which she was born, Dora left Utah and adopted the Catholic faith of her new husband. The couple moved around to several places where Hagan practiced law, including Chicago, Denver, New Mexico, Spokane, and Idaho. 

Dora was in the prime of her life. 

In September 1880, a Chicago newspaper described her as a “particularly handsome and attractive looking woman with a complexion of great beauty, abundant golden hair, and a set of the most perfect teeth, which shone like pearls when she smiled.”

Dora told the Chicago reporter that she adored and missed her father. “I loved him beyond anything that words can tell…he was the most magnetic person I ever knew or heard of.”

But she also hated polygamy. “There was an outward semblance of goodwill, but in reality, the Mormon wives hate each other with deadly hatred. This alone is one of the most evident evil effects of the dreadful system, this hatred that exists under roofs called homes, what are often perfect hells, and scenes of the most disgraceful quarrels.”

The Hagans settled in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. Two of their children died young but two others grew into adulthood.

Albert established himself as a well-respected attorney practicing in Northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. He died, however, at the young age of 53 in 1895. 

Albert’s death dealt both a financial and emotional blow to Dora. She struggled to make ends meet, living with her son in Southern California for a time and then staying with her sister Mabel in the Northwest. 

Even after Albert passed away, the Utah gossip mongers hounded Dora. In 1905, the same year her mother Lucy died, The Salt Lake Herald published a series of wild and often inaccurate articles about Dora. 

One suggested Dora engaged in multiple “entangling matrimonial alliances” and had conspired to lock Albert’s first wife away in an insane asylum. The Herald also claimed Dora had apostatized from the Mormon Church and soon would do the same thing to the Catholics by marrying a fourth time.

In fact, Dora was and remained a devoted Catholic. She was active in her Pasadena parish and was known to be close friends with Baltimore Cardinal James Gibbons, one of the best known American Catholics of his time.

The new faith stuck with Dora’s descendants too.  

Her son—a talented singer—performed with a distinguished Catholic choir. And her great grandson joined Utah’s old Huntsville monastery and is one of the monks I wrote about in my 2021 book Monastery Mornings.

Newspaper accounts say the adult Young/Bigelow sisters and their families visited each other frequently. Dora even stayed involved in the Brigham Young Family Association. 

Dora’s Catholicism, however, created conflict with Susa, who by then was a strong and outspoken defender and advocate for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 

In response to Susa’s passionate pleas that she return to their once-shared faith, Dora wrote: “I am so sorry you are so troubled about me. In my spiritual life, I am most happy in my devout belief of the Holy Catholic Church.…It is wrong for you to harp against my holy belief—I don’t attempt to convert you to my belief.”

I bet that’s a conversation many other Utah families have had too during the last 175 years.

After a long illness, Dora died at her daughter’s home in Salt Lake City in October 1921 at age 69. Her funeral was at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church and she is buried in Mount Olivet Cemetery.

Despite the great religious divide between them, Susa always loved the older sister she called “the idol” of both her and Brigham’s hearts, but who never returned to their church. 

At the end of Susa’s life, she lamented in her journal, “Poor, tragic, selfish, vain Dora—where are you?”

Another Utah Trappist monk—my friend Father Patrick Boyle—heard that type of question often, asked by Catholics, Latter-day Saints, and even non-believers about their loved ones on unexpected spiritual detours. 

He’d usually smile and respond, “They’re right where God wants them to be.”

(The Salt Lake Tribune published a version of this article on January 4, 2026.) (Photo of Dora from a May 1947 article about pioneer fashion in the Deseret News.}

*Mike O’Brien (author website here) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. Paraclete Press published his book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, in August 2021. The League of Utah Writers chose it as the best non-fiction book of 2022. Mike’s new holiday novel, tentatively titled “The Merry Matchmaker Monks,” will be published in time for Christmas 2026.