Brigham Morris Young was one of the founders of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association (YMMIA), the predecessor to the Young Men

Young Men (organization)

The Young Men is a youth organization and an official auxiliary of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...

 program of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS Church).

Young was the son of Brigham Young

Brigham Young

Brigham Young was an American leader in the Latter Day Saint movement and a settler of the Western United States. He was the President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1847 until his death in 1877, he founded Salt Lake City, and he served as the first governor of the Utah...

 and one of his wives, Margaret Pierce. In 1875, Morris Young served a mission for the LDS Church in the Hawaiian Islands

Hawaiian Islands

The Hawaiian Islands are an archipelago of eight major islands, several atolls, numerous smaller islets, and undersea seamounts in the North Pacific Ocean, extending some 1,500 miles from the island of Hawaii in the south to northernmost Kure Atoll...

. Shortly after returning from this mission he was asked by his father to organize the YMMIA along with Junius F. Wells

Junius F. Wells

Junius Free Wells was the first head of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association, an organization which is today the Young Men organization of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...

 and Milton H. Hardy

Milton H. Hardy

Milton Henry Hardy was an American educator and was the founder of and a member of the inaugural general superintendency of the Young Men's Mutual Improvement Association of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints . From 1876 to 1880, Hardy was the first assistant to Junius F...

.

In 1883 Young served another mission in the Hawaiian Islands. He married Armeda Snow, a daughter of Lorenzo Snow

Lorenzo Snow

Lorenzo Snow was the fifth president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from 1898 to his death. Snow was the last president of the LDS Church in the nineteenth century.-Family:...

.

In 1885 Young, his wife and their children returned from serving his second mission in the Hawaiian Islands. Shortly after returning to Utah

Utah

Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...

, Young began publicly performing as a cross-dressing

Cross-dressing

Cross-dressing is the wearing of clothing and other accoutrement commonly associated with a gender within a particular society that is seen as different than the one usually presented by the dresser...

 singer under the pseudonym

Pseudonym

A pseudonym is a name that a person assumes for a particular purpose and that differs from his or her original orthonym...

 Madam Pattirini. Young performed as Pattirini in north and central Utah venues from 1885 to the 1900s. He could produce a convincing falsetto, and many in the audience did not realize that Pattirini was Young.

Sources

• Andrew Jenson
  Andrew Jenson
  Andrew Jenson, born Anders Jensen, was a Danish immigrant to the United States who acted as an Assistant Church Historian of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for much of the early-twentieth century...
  
  . LDS Biographical Encyclopedia. Vol. 4, p. 251.
• Galen Snow Young. Brief History of Brigham Morris Young. P. 31.
• Dean C. Jessee
  Dean C. Jessee
  Dean Cornell Jessee is a historian of the early Latter Day Saint movement and leading expert on the writings of Joseph Smith, Jr.-Biography:...
  
  . Letters from Brigham Young to His Sons. P. 243.