SINAH REID
President 1906
Charter Member
Paradise, Cache County, Utah, saw the birth of Sinah Pugh Bishop Reid in 1865. Named for her mother, she lived a rugged pioneer life there which she described as "cold and bleak" with her parents, James Bishop and Sinah Pugh, until she was eight years of age. Then in 1873, she spend three days traveling from Logan to Salt Lake City where she resided the remainder of her life. Her father, a master steam fitter, worked installing the heat and gas lights in the Tabernacle.
As a child, she was greatly impressed with a neighborhood woman from Germany who was high educated in music, literature, and the fine arts of her native land. This pioneer woman in the wilderness possessed a fine mind, but rarely conversed with anyone, retiring in nature, and was generally shunned by the neighborhood. She would never forget one night, after overhearing singing, this stately woman of culture coming through the gate and asking her and sister, "Will you little girls come and sing for me?" As this woman listened to them, she wept. From then on she appreciated the value of empathy and "Loving Thy Neighbor As Thyself".
Her schooling was gained from Miss Cook’s school, which she attended with many of the children of the church and community leaders. Here she gained the fundamentals of education and became keenly interested in affairs of the State. On August 20, 1884, she married John B. Reid. Together they would have eight children. Having been blessed with an outstanding singing voice, she was a member of the Tabernacle Choir for 35 years. Through her church and civic activities, she passed the values she exhibited onto her children.
Sinah was elected as a democratic delegate to the state convention in 1895 (right before women's voting rights were actually restored) and elected to an executive committee for her precinct by the democratic women. She helped throw a big democratic ball catapulting the names of Martha Hughes Cannon, Emily Richards, Eurithe LaBarthe and others to the forefront of politics and the suffragist movement. In 1900, 1910 and in 1912, she was elected a Democratic delegate. She was named to a ladies committee for the Democratic party at the county level in 1918. And, in 1929, she is listed as a Democratic registration agent.
On September 20, 1945, following the end of World War II, she wrote a poignant letter containing the following:
"This is a sick and weary world staggering under conditions never before experienced in its history. Children cast adrift upon the ocean, torn from their parents never more to gaze upon their sweet faces. Many stricken at their mother's side, torn to atoms. These terrible things have been going on for years."
She was a founding member of the Women’s Democratic Club and served in many roles including President, Treasurer and Historian for the club and was a member of the club's State Committee. She campaigned actively for every Democratic president during her lifetime including Grover Cleveland in 1885, the first democrat elected after the Civil War, traveling throughout the state giving of her talents freely in the great Democratic cause. She was recognized as a peacemaker and received many letters of thanks from President and Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt.
She passed away in 1963, 27 years after her husband, at age 98. She is buried in the Salt Lake City Cemetery.
Adapted from the Biography of Sinah Reid from the Utah State Archive and supplemented with information from numerous new articles published in the Salt Lake Tribune and elsewhere.