Jill Mulvay Derr: Mormon Historian

Jill Mulvay Derr is a historian and emeritus professor of American history at Brigham Young University. She was a research historian at the Church History Department. She is also a former director of the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History and former president of the Mormon History Association. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Derr was born on September 8, 1948, and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. She earned a bachelor’s degree from the University of Utah and a master’s degree in teaching from Harvard University.

She is the author, coauthor, or editor of several articles and books including Women’s Voices: An Untold History of the Latter-day Saints, 1830–1900 (with Kenneth W. Godfrey and Audrey M. Godfrey); Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society (with Janath Russell Cannon and Maureen Ursenbach Beecher); Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry (with Karen Lynn Davidson). Her paper on Sarah M. Kimball received first prize in the 1976 Utah Bicentennial Biographies contest.

Derr is married to C. Brooklyn Derr and they are the parents of four children.