User:InProgress/Website reviews/Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

Website review: Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

My greatest hope in this regard is that the LDS Church will not defend Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy as appropriate.
—The anonymous author of Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith (http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Who.htm)

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Overview

FAIR's evaluation of the web site Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

• The owner of the site claims to be an active Latter-day Saint. He remains anonymous on the web site.
• The author's stated hope is that the Church will "not defend Joseph Smith's involvement with polygamy."
• The site uses a FAIR article to make the Church appear as if they are hiding plural marriage.

Summary

Loaded and prejudicial language

• "In the relative stability of Nauvoo, Joseph would try to establish polygamy, a practice he had flirted with in Kirtland and Missouri."

Biographies

Emma Hale

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Fanny Alger

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Lucinda Morgan Harris

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Louisa Beaman

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Zina Huntington Jacobs

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	The website states that Henry Jacobs "seemed to struggle" with Zina marrying Brigham Young, and notes that Henry wrote the following in a letter to her: “...the same affection is there...But I feel alone...I do not Blame Eny person...may the Lord our Father bless Brother Brigham...all is right according to the Law of the Celestial Kingdom of our God Joseph.”	Source text with extracted text highlighted: "I feel alone & no one to speak to or call my own I feel like a lamb without a mother I do not blame eny person or persons no may the Lord our father Bless Brother Brigham and all pertains unto him forever tell him for me I have feelings against him nor never had, all is right according to the Law of the Celestial Kingdom of our God Joseph Zina be comforted be of good cheer and the God of our fathers bless you I know your mind has been troubled about many things but fear not all things will work together for good for them that Love God therefore the subject to council as you hav commenced and you will be saved…" Letter from Henry B. Jacobs, no date, part of the Zina Card Brown Family Collection (1806-1972), LDS Church Archives, MS 4780, box 2, folder 1.

Presendia Huntington Buell

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary
	The website claims that in return for giving his sister to Joseph in marriage, that Joseph offered Dimick Huntington "any reward he wanted." Oliver Buell (Presendia's brother): “Dimick had given our sisters Zina & Presendia to Joseph as wives.” “that where you and your fathers family are, there I and my fathers family may also be.”
	Presendia continued to live with her "first husband Norman" for approximately two years after she married Heber C. Kimball. Oliver Buell (Presendia's brother): “Presendia’s Husband would not follow the Church any longer...so she left him and followed after her Lord [Kimball]” Presendia Buell: “No tongue can tell my feelings in those days of trial; but I had considered well, and felt I would rather suffer and die with the saints, than live in Babylon.”
	The site states that Presendia "married Joseph Smith on December 11, 1841," and shortly afterward notes that when Presendia left to cross the plains in 1846 that she "took her six year old son, Oliver, with her, leaving behind her 16 year old son George and husband, Norman."		Note that Presendia took with her a son that may have been conceived during the time that she was married to Joseph Smith. This appears to be an allusion to the claim that Oliver Buell (originally made by Fawn Brodie in No Man Knows My History), that Oliver was actually Joseph's son. This claim has been proven false through DNA research. "Only 9 of the 23 genetic markers match when comparing the inferred Oliver Buell haplotype to that of Joseph Smith. Such a low degree of correlation between the two haplotypes provides strong evidence that they belong to two unrelated paternal lineages, thus excluding with high likelihood Joseph Smith Jr. as the biological father of Oliver N. Buell. Further weight is given to this observation by the close match of the inferred haplotype of Owen F. Buell to the independent Buell record in the SMGF data base, which genetic relationship dates back prior to Joseph Smith's era. Additionally, the two genetic profiles were run through a haplogroup predictor algorithm that assigned the Smith haplotypes to a cluster known as R1b and the cluster for the Buell's haplotypes to I1b2a, two deeply divergent clades that separated anciently, thus providing further evidence that the Oliver Buell and Joseph Smith lineages are not closely related" See: Joseph Smith and polygamy—Children of polygamous marriages—Buell

Agnes Coolbrith

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Sylvia Sessions Lyon

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary
	The web site notes that Sylvia married Joseph Smith on February 8, 1842, and states: "It is uncertain if her husband, Windsor, was aware of the marriage, but she did continue to live with him." The site then states that Brigham Young taught “if the woman preferred a man higher in authority, and he is willing to take her and her husband gives her up-there is no Bill of divorce required...it is right in the sight of God”. Brigham is also claimed to have said that the woman: “...would be in a higher glory”. The web site speculates that "[t]his may help shed light on Sylvia’s complex marriage arrangement."	The actual source is a journal entry by J.A. Beck on Brigham Young's discourse on plural marriage given on 8 October 1861. Extractions are highlighted (note that the extracted text has been altered): But there was a way in which a woman could leave a man lawfully. When a woman becomes alienated in her feelings & affections from her husband it is then his duty to give her a Bill & set her free which would be fornication for the man to cohabit with his wife after she had thus become alienated from him. The children begotten of such a woman would be bastards in the true scriptural term of the word fornication for the crime of adultery a woman (& also men) would be stoned to death & then come up in the morning of the resurrection & claim all of her rights & priviledges in the marriage covenant. Also there was another way in which a woman could leave a man if the woman preferred another man higher in authority & he is willing to take her & her husband gives her up there is no Bill of divorce required in the case it is right in the sight of God. But if he ever after has any connexion with her, he is then guilty of committing a very great sin & will be punished accordingly. If a man is faithfull & should his wife leave him & be married to another without his consent there is no power in heaven or on earth that can prevent him from claiming her in the resurrection. See: Primary sources/Brigham Young 8 October 1861 discourse on plural marriage	Note that the site uses a discourse given by Brigham in 1861 to "help shed light" on a "complex marriage arrangement" in 1842. The site makes no effort to note that Brigham's sermon occurred 19 years later.
	The site notes that "10 months later" (24 Dec. 1942) that "Joseph’s journal mentions a visit to his wife, Sylvia, who was giving birth to her third child": “Walked with Sec[retary Willard Richards] to see Sister Lyons who was sick. Her baby died 30 minutes before [we] arrived”.	Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 181, 183. ( Index of claims )	The implication of "10 months later," of course, is that the baby was Joseph's child, and that this is why the visit occurred.
	The site notes another visit by Joseph to Sylvia: “Joseph and I rode out to borrow money, drank wine at Sister Lyons P.M. I got $50 of Sister Lyons and paid it to D.D. Yearsly.”	Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 181, 183. ( Index of claims )
	Josephine Lyon wrote: “Just prior to my mothers death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days were numbered and before she passed away from mortality she desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire secret from me and from all others but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith”.	Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 183. ( Index of claims ) Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 44.

Mary Rollins Lightner

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Patty Bartlett Sessions

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Marinda Johnson Hyde

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Elizabeth Davis Durfee

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Sarah Kingsley Cleveland

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Delcena Johnson

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Eliza R. Snow

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Sarah Ann Whitney

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Martha McBride Knight

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Ruth Vose Sayers

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Flora Ann Woodworth

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Emily Dow Partridge

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Eliza Maria Partridge

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Almera Johnson

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Lucy Walker

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Sarah Lawrence

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Maria Lawrence

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Helen Mar Kimball

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Hanna Ells

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Elvira Cowles Holmes

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Rhoda Richards

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Desdemona Fullmer

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Olive Frost

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Melissa Lott

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Nancy Winchester

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Fanny Young

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Notes

Further reading

• Church Response to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, Newsroom, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (27 June 2003). See section "Plural Marriage."