Joseph Smith/Polygamy

Joseph Smith and Polygamy

Important introductory material on plural marriage available here

Answers portal
Plural marriage
    RESOURCES

Joseph Smith era:

Post-Joseph Smith:

Post-Manifesto–present

    PERSPECTIVES
    MEDIA
    OTHER PORTALS

Topics


Joseph Smith and polygamy

Summary: Joseph Smith is frequently criticized for his introduction and practice of polygamy. From a Christian perspective, these attacks usually focus on arguing that polygamy is unchristian or unbiblical, and that Joseph hid the truth from the world. From a secular perspective, it is asserted that the practice of polygamy sprung from Joseph's carnal desires to marry young women. Of particular interest is the fact that Joseph was sealed to women who were already married to other men (polyandry).


Articles about Joseph Smith
Life and Character
Youth
Revelations and the Church
Prophetic Statements
Society
Plural marriage (polygamy)
Death

Articles about Plural marriage
Doctrinal foundation of plural marriage
Introduction of plural marriage
Plural marriage in Utah
End of plural marriage

To learn more about any of the known or suspected plural wives of Joseph Smith, click the links below


Notes


Implementation of plural marriage


Jump to Subtopic:

Articles about Joseph Smith
Life and Character
Youth
Revelations and the Church
Prophetic Statements
Society
Plural marriage (polygamy)
Death

Accounts
Historical context
Doctrinal impact

When did Joseph Smith receive the revelation on plural marriage?

Joseph's first introduction to the concept of plural came during the 1829 translation of the Book of Mormon

Of the little we do know, much comes from later reminiscences. Later memories are not useless, but memory can change, and can be influenced by what people later came to believe or desire. Such data must be used with caution.

There are enough scattered bits of evidence, however, that let us form some tentative conclusions.

The first specifically-LDS encounter with plural marriage was the 1829 Book of Mormon. The prophet Jacob rebuked the Nephites for their practice of having many wives and concubines. Jacob forbade this practice, and declared monogamy to be the norm unless "I will…raise up seed unto me…." [1]

It is not clear that the early Saints contemplated any exceptions to this command in their own case, until after Joseph had taught plural marriage. As late as May 1843, Hyrum Smith (not yet converted to Joseph's plural marriage doctrine) attempted to rebut rumors of plural marriage by citing the condemnation in Jacob 2.[2]

Evidence points to a 1831 date for the revelation to Joseph regarding plural marriage

There are no contemporaneous records which tell us when Joseph first taught plural marriage, or when he first had a revelation endorsing it. One account has Brigham Young placing the revelation to Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith in 1829 while translating the Book of Mormon.[3]

Most scholars have rejected this early date. Brigham was not even a member at this time, so he would have heard such a story second-hand at best, and may well have misunderstood the timing. There is nothing in the Book of Mormon that portrays plural marriage positively, so there is little which would inspire Joseph and Oliver to ask questions about it, and such questioning seems to have been a prerequisite to Joseph and Oliver's early revelations on baptism, the priesthood, and other matters. The journal which records the 1829 date may be in error, since there is another, earlier record in which Brigham Young opines that Joseph had the plural marriage revelation "as early as in the year 1831." [4]

Other evidence also points to an 1831 date. Joseph undertook his revision/translation of the Bible, and was working on Genesis in February–March 1831.[5] Hubert Howe Bancroft was the first to suggest this theory,[6] while Joseph Noble,[7] B.H. Roberts,[8] and Joseph F. Smith [9] have agreed. The obvious approval of the polygamous patriarchs in Genesis is a more likely stimulus for Joseph's questions to the Lord about plural marriage than the Book of Mormon's generally negative view.

Joseph was probably teaching the idea of plural marriage to a limited circle by the end of 1831

The date of 1831 is reinforced by a letter written years later by W.W. Phelps. Phelps reported that on 17 July 1831, the Lord told Joseph "It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just." Phelps then said that he asked Joseph three years later how this commandment could be fulfilled. Joseph replied, "In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpha, by revelation." [10] Phelps' recollection is reinforced by Ezra Booth, an apostate Mormon. In November 1831, Booth wrote that Joseph had received a revelation commanding a "matrimonial alliance" with the natives, though he says nothing about plural marriage per se.[11]

Since Joseph's explanation to Phelps came three years later, this does not help us date the receipt of the revelation specifically. It may be that Joseph did not understand the import of the July 1831 revelation any more than Phelps did. On the other hand, Orson Pratt reported that Joseph told some early members in 1831 and 1832 that plural marriage was a true principle but that the time to practice it had not yet come.[12] Lyman Johnson also reportedly heard the doctrine from Joseph in 1831,[13] as did a plural wife who recalled late in life that in 1831 Joseph told her that he had been commanded to one day take her as a plural wife.[14] Mosiah Hancock reported that his father was taught about plural marriage in the spring of 1832.[15]

Some authors have suggested that Phelps' late recollection is inconsistent with other things that he wrote earlier. Richard Van Wagoner argues that:

the Phelps letter has been widely touted as the earliest source documenting the advocacy of Mormon polygamy, [but] it is not without its problems. For example, Phelps himself, in a 16 September 1835 letter to his wife, Sally, demonstrated no knowledge of church-sanctioned polygamy: "I have no right to any other woman in this world nor in the world to come according to the law of the celestial kingdom." [16]

It seems, though, that the problem is more in Van Wagoner's reading of the data. Phelps says nothing about "church-sanctioned polygamy," one way or the other. He merely tells his wife that he has no right to any other woman. This was certainly true, since Joseph Smith had introduced no other men to plural marriage by September 1835. In fact, Phelps' remark seems a strange comment to make unless he understood that there were circumstances in which one could have "right to" another woman.[17]

Joseph F. Smith gave an account which synthesizes most of the preceding data:

The great and glorious principle of plural marriage was first revealed to Joseph Smith in 1831, but being forbidden to make it public, or to teach it as a doctrine of the Gospel, at that time, he confided the facts to only a very few of his intimate associates. Among them were Oliver Cowdery and Lyman E. Johnson, the latter confiding the fact to his traveling companion, Elder Orson Pratt, in the year 1832. (See Orson Pratt's testimony.)" (Andrew Jenson, The Historical Record 6 [Salt Lake City, Utah, May 1887]: 219) [18]

The bulk of the evidence, therefore, suggests that plural marriage was known by Joseph by early 1831. The Prophet was probably teaching the idea to a limited circle by the end of that year.

Did Joseph Smith actually teach and practice polygamy?

Some splinter groups of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have claimed that Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy. Instead, these groups argue, polygamy was the later invention of a libidinous and greedy Brigham Young. Since, on these groups’ view, plural marriage was a man-made invention instead of a commandment from the divine, this is evidence that the modern Church is in apostasy and that we must seek the true authority elsewhere. A related charge is that the Church hasn’t taught that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy openly and frequently.

There is contemporaneous, reliable documentation to establish that Joseph Smith received the revelation on plural marriage and there is ample documentation that he and many of his colleagues practiced plural marriage.

Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, "Joseph Smith: Monogamist or Polygamist?"

Brian C. Hales,  Interpreter: A Journal of Latter-day Saint Faith and Scholarship, (2017)

In the past decades much of the debate regarding Joseph Smith and plural marriage has focused on his motivation — whether libido or divine inspiration drove the process. Throughout these debates, a small group of observers and participants have maintained that Joseph did not practice polygamy at any time or that his polygamous sealings were nonsexual spiritual marriages. Rather than simply provide supportive evidence for Joseph Smith’s active involvement with plural marriage, this article examines the primary arguments advanced by monogamist proponents to show that important weaknesses exist in each line of reasoning.

Click here to view the complete article

The charts below, prepared by Brian Hales, outline all the evidence available for a polygamist Joseph in an easy-to-read way.



Video by The Interpreter Foundation.

Load video
YouTube

When and how did plural marriage begin in the Church?

Of the little we do know, much comes from later reminiscences

Of the little we do know, much comes from later reminiscences. Later memories are not useless, but memory can change, and can be influenced by what people later came to believe or desire. Such data must be used with caution.

There are enough scattered bits of evidence, however, that let us form some tentative conclusions.

The first specifically-LDS encounter with plural marriage was the 1829 Book of Mormon

The first specifically-LDS encounter with plural marriage was the 1829 Book of Mormon. The prophet Jacob rebuked the Nephites for their practice of having many wives and concubines. Jacob forbade this practice, and declared monogamy to be the norm unless "I will…raise up seed unto me…." [19]

It is not clear that the early Saints contemplated any exceptions to this command in their own case, until after Joseph had taught plural marriage. As late as May 1843, Hyrum Smith (not yet converted to Joseph's plural marriage doctrine) attempted to rebut rumors of plural marriage by citing the condemnation in Jacob 2. [20]

There are no contemporaneous records which tell us when Joseph first taught plural marriage, or when he first had a revelation endorsing it

There are no contemporaneous records which tell us when Joseph first taught plural marriage, or when he first had a revelation endorsing it. One account has Brigham Young placing the revelation to Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith in 1829 while translating the Book of Mormon. [21]

Most scholars have rejected this early date. Brigham was not even a member at this time, so he would have heard such a story second-hand at best, and may well have misunderstood the timing. There is nothing in the Book of Mormon that portrays plural marriage positively, so there is little which would inspire Joseph and Oliver to ask questions about it, and such questioning seems to have been a prerequisite to Joseph and Oliver's early revelations on baptism, the priesthood, and other matters. The journal which records the 1829 date may be in error, since there is another, earlier record in which Brigham Young opines that Joseph had the plural marriage revelation "as early as in the year 1831." [22]

Evidence also points to an 1831 date for receipt of the revelation on plural marriage

Other evidence also points to an 1831 date. Joseph undertook his revision/translation of the Bible, and was working on Genesis in February–March 1831. [23] Hubert Howe Bancroft was the first to suggest this theory, [24] while Joseph Noble, [25] B.H. Roberts, [26] and Joseph F. Smith [27] have agreed. The obvious approval of the polygamous patriarchs in Genesis is a more likely stimulus for Joseph's questions to the Lord about plural marriage than the Book of Mormon's generally negative view.

Joseph's First Mention of the Doctrine in 1831

The date of 1831 is reinforced by a letter written years later by W.W. Phelps. Phelps reported that on 17 July 1831, the Lord told Joseph "It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just." Phelps then said that he asked Joseph three years later how this commandment could be fulfilled. Joseph replied, "In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpha, by revelation." [28] Phelps' recollection is reinforced by Ezra Booth, an apostate Mormon. In November 1831, Booth wrote that Joseph had received a revelation commanding a "matrimonial alliance" with the natives, though he says nothing about plural marriage per se. [29]

Since Joseph's explanation to Phelps came three years later, this does not help us date the receipt of the revelation specifically. It may be that Joseph did not understand the import of the July 1831 revelation any more than Phelps did. On the other hand, Orson Pratt reported that Joseph told some early members in 1831 and 1832 that plural marriage was a true principle but that the time to practice it had not yet come. [30] Lyman Johnson also reportedly heard the doctrine from Joseph in 1831, [31] as did a plural wife who recalled late in life that in 1831 Joseph told her that he had been commanded to one day take her as a plural wife. [32] Mosiah Hancock reported that his father was taught about plural marriage in the spring of 1832. [33]

Some authors have suggested that Phelps' late recollection is inconsistent with other things that he wrote earlier. Richard Van Wagoner argues that:

…the Phelps letter has been widely touted as the earliest source documenting the advocacy of Mormon polygamy, [but] it is not without its problems. For example, Phelps himself, in a 16 September 1835 letter to his wife, Sally, demonstrated no knowledge of church-sanctioned polygamy: "I have no right to any other woman in this world nor in the world to come according to the law of the celestial kingdom." [34]

It seems to me, though, that the problem is more in Van Wagoner's reading of the data. Phelps says nothing about "church-sanctioned polygamy," one way or the other. He merely tells his wife that he has no right to any other woman. This was certainly true, since Joseph Smith had introduced no other men to plural marriage by September 1835. In fact, Phelps' remark seems a strange comment to make unless he understood that there were circumstances in which one could have "right to" another woman. [35]

Joseph F. Smith gave an account which synthesizes most of the preceding data:

The great and glorious principle of plural marriage was first revealed to Joseph Smith in 1831, but being forbidden to make it public, or to teach it as a doctrine of the Gospel, at that time, he confided the facts to only a very few of his intimate associates. Among them were Oliver Cowdery and Lyman E. Johnson, the latter confiding the fact to his traveling companion, Elder Orson Pratt, in the year 1832. (See Orson Pratt's testimony.)" (Andrew Jenson, The Historical Record 6 [Salt Lake City, Utah, May 1887]: 219) [36]

The bulk of the evidence, therefore, suggests that plural marriage was known by Joseph by early 1831. The Prophet was probably teaching the idea to a limited circle by the end of that year.

Load video
YouTube
Source(s) of the criticism
Critical sources

Notes

  1. ↑ Jacob 2:27–30.
  2. ↑ Levi Richards Journal, 14 May 1843; cited by Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 54.; Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd ed. (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 141, 332.
  3. ↑ Brigham Young, quoted in Charles L. Walker, "Diary," (Harold B. Lee Library, BYU, 1855–1902), 25–26.
  4. ↑ Journal History, 26 August 1857; cited by Hyrum Leslie Andrus, Doctrines of the Kingdom (Salt Lake City, Utah: Desert Book Co., 1999), 489n436.
  5. ↑ Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible, a History and Commentary (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975), 64–67. Also discussed in Danel W. Bachman, "A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy before the Death of Joseph Smith" (Purdue University, 1975), 67 and Danel W. Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis: The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage," Journal of Mormon History 5 (1978): 24. This view is endorsed by Todd Compton, "Fanny Alger Smith Custer: Mormonism's First Plural Wife?," Journal of Mormon History 22/1 (Spring 1996): 178–181.
  6. ↑ Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis," 22n11 notes that Roberts' History of the Church introduction (5:xxix) and Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft Co., 1889), 161 were the first to posit the role of Joseph's revision of the Bible in the plural marriage revelation.
  7. ↑ Joseph Noble, cited in Millennial Star 16:454.
  8. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ed. Brigham H. Roberts, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1980), 5:xxix.
  9. ↑ }Joseph F. Smith at funeral of Elizabeth Ann Whitney; cited in Deseret Evening News (18 February 1882).
  10. ↑ W.W. Phelps, Letter to Brigham Young, 1861, original in Church Archives, emphasis in original; cited by B. Carmon Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier (Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2007), 36–37
  11. ↑ Ezra Booth, Letter to the editor, Ohio Star (10 November 1831).
  12. ↑ Orson Pratt, "Celestial Marriage," Journal of Discourses, reported by David W. Evans (7 October 1869), Vol. 13 (London: Latter-day Saint's Book Depot, 1871), 192–193.
  13. ↑ Lyman Johnson as recounted by Orson Pratt, reported in "Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith," Millennial Star 40/50 (16 December 1878): 788; cited in Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy", 56.
  14. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner to Emmeline B. Wells, Summer 1905, LDS Archives; cited by Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 65.
  15. ↑ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 644. ( Index of claims ); citing Mosiah Hancock Autobiography, 61–62.
  16. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 3n2.
  17. ↑ Phelps would publicly teach the idea of eternal marriage soon thereafter: "[W]e came into this world and have our agency, in order that we may prepare ourselves for a kingdom of glory; become archangels, even the sons of God where the man is neither without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord…" - WW Phelps to O[liver] Cowdery, "Dear Brother in the Lord," Latter-day Saint Messenger & Advocate 1/9 (June 1835): 130. See discussion of the Phelps material in Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis," 28–29
  18. ↑ Joseph F. Smith (comment made 4 March 1883) in "Utah Stake Historical Record, 1877–1888," LDS Archives;Richard and Pamela Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy—Vision Articles [from Vision Magazine, Vol. 32–46, 48–51, 53–56], vol. 2 (E-book: Price Publishing Company, n.d.), "LDS Leaders Accused Oliver Cowdery of Polygamy".
  19. ↑ Jacob 2:27–30.
  20. ↑ Levi Richards Journal, 14 May 1843; cited by Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 54.; Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd ed. (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 141, 332.
  21. ↑ Brigham Young, quoted in Charles L. Walker, "Diary," (Harold B. Lee Library, BYU, 1855–1902), 25–26.
  22. ↑ Journal History, 26 August 1857; cited by Hyrum Leslie Andrus, Doctrines of the Kingdom (Salt Lake City, Utah: Desert Book Co., 1999), 489n436.
  23. ↑ Robert J. Matthews, "A Plainer Translation": Joseph Smith's Translation of the Bible, a History and Commentary (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1975), 64–67. Also discussed in Danel W. Bachman, "A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy before the Death of Joseph Smith" (Purdue University, 1975), 67 and Danel W. Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis: The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage," Journal of Mormon History 5 (1978): 24. This view is endorsed by Todd Compton, "Fanny Alger Smith Custer: Mormonism's First Plural Wife?," Journal of Mormon History 22/1 (Spring 1996): 178–181.
  24. ↑ Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis," 22n11 notes that Roberts' History of the Church introduction (5:xxix) and Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of Utah (San Francisco: A.L. Bancroft Co., 1889), 161 were the first to posit the role of Joseph's revision of the Bible in the plural marriage revelation.
  25. ↑ Joseph Noble, cited in Millennial Star 16:454.
  26. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, ed. Brigham H. Roberts, 7 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1980), 5:xxix.
  27. ↑ }Joseph F. Smith at funeral of Elizabeth Ann Whitney; cited in Deseret Evening News (18 February 1882).
  28. ↑ W.W. Phelps, Letter to Brigham Young, 1861, original in Church Archives, emphasis in original; cited by B. Carmon Hardy, Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy: Its Origin, Practice, and Demise, Kingdom in the West: The Mormons and the American Frontier (Norman, Okla.: Arthur H. Clark Co., 2007), 36–37
  29. ↑ Ezra Booth, Letter to the editor, Ohio Star (10 November 1831).
  30. ↑ Orson Pratt, "Celestial Marriage," Journal of Discourses, reported by David W. Evans (7 October 1869), Vol. 13 (London: Latter-day Saint's Book Depot, 1871), 192–193.
  31. ↑ Lyman Johnson as recounted by Orson Pratt, reported in "Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith," Millennial Star 40/50 (16 December 1878): 788; cited in Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy", 56.
  32. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner to Emmeline B. Wells, Summer 1905, LDS Archives; cited by Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 65.
  33. ↑ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 644. ( Index of claims ); citing Mosiah Hancock Autobiography, 61–62.
  34. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 3n2.
  35. ↑ Phelps would publicly teach the idea of eternal marriage soon thereafter: "[W]e came into this world and have our agency, in order that we may prepare ourselves for a kingdom of glory; become archangels, even the sons of God where the man is neither without the woman, nor the woman without the man in the Lord…" - WW Phelps to O[liver] Cowdery, "Dear Brother in the Lord," Latter-day Saint Messenger & Advocate 1/9 (June 1835): 130. See discussion of the Phelps material in Bachman, "New Light on an Old Hypothesis," 28–29
  36. ↑ Joseph F. Smith (comment made 4 March 1883) in "Utah Stake Historical Record, 1877–1888," LDS Archives;Richard and Pamela Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy—Vision Articles [from Vision Magazine, Vol. 32–46, 48–51, 53–56], vol. 2 (E-book: Price Publishing Company, n.d.), "LDS Leaders Accused Oliver Cowdery of Polygamy".

The "Cochranites" and their potential influence on Mormon plural marriage

Summary: Did another religious group from the 1830s--the "Cochranites"--act as the source for plural marriage in the LDS faith?


Jump to details:


<onlyinclude>

Mormonism and polygamy: Introductory remarks




Plural marriage was implemented by Joseph Smith in the mid-1830s. It was introduced in secret to a limited circle in Nauvoo prior to the Prophet's death in 1844. It became public in 1852, and was practiced openly until 1890, when President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto publicly discontinuing the Church's encouragement of the practice. In 1904, President Joseph F. Smith issued the Second Manifesto, which made polygamy a sin liable to result in excommunication. Modern-day practitioners of polygamy have no membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Present day Church leaders have been clear that it is not Church doctrine that plural marriage is required for exaltation. Furthermore, we have no revealed knowledge on the extent (if any) of plural marriage in the post mortal state:

Instructions to LDS seminary teachers:
Note: Avoid sensationalism and speculation when talking about plural marriage. Sometimes teachers speculate that plural marriage will be a requirement for all who enter the celestial kingdom. We have no knowledge that plural marriage will be a requirement for exaltation.
— Doctrine and Covenants and Church History: Seminary Teacher Resource Manual (Intellectual Reserve, 2001, [updated 2005]).

Historical evidence demonstrates that the nineteenth century Church members who entered into plural marriages–both men and women–were virtually all reluctant to do so, and did so only on the basis of religious conviction. Many women and their families reported divine manifestations that convinced them that the command to enter plural marriage was of God.

Despite the Saints' religious convictions, polygamy was a challenging social arrangement for women and men. Scarce resources of time, money, and affection were not always shared equally. Natural human tendencies of jealousy could and did occur. These inherent difficulties were only heightened by the intense social and legal persecution heaped upon the Saints by the American federal government.

Plural marriage is a complex subject which can be difficult to understand. Some difficulties arise because of different social practices in many nineteenth-century marriages (such as the practice of marrying younger women than is customary today). Others occur because of sensationalism, distortions, or out-right fictionalization of plural marriage. Almost all the evidence available about Joseph Smith's plural marriage was produced after-the-fact. Some data that we would like to have simply does not exist or has not yet been located. Women left some accounts, but sometimes only male perspectives of a given event or issue are available.

The FairMormon Answers wiki has many resources (including some focused specifically on Joseph Smith) to help readers understand these and many other issues. If you cannot find an answer to your particular question, please contact FairMormon.

See also Brian Hales' discussion

William Marks claimed Joseph intended to abandon plural marriage


Jump to details:



Doctrinal issues related to plural marriage


Jump to Subtopic:


Critics' claimed motivations for Joseph's implementation of plural marriage


Jump to Subtopic:

Keeping plural marriage a secret


Jump to Subtopic:

Entering into plural marriage


Jump to Subtopic:

Articles about Plural marriage
Doctrinal foundation of plural marriage
Introduction of plural marriage
Plural marriage in Utah
End of plural marriage

What do we know about Joseph Smith's "polyandrous" sealings or plural marriages?

Nothing in plural marriage mystifies—or troubles—members of the Church more than Joseph's polyandrous sealings

Nothing in plural marriage mystifies—or troubles—members of the Church more than Joseph's polyandrous sealings. Marriage to multiple wives may seem strange, but at least it intrudes on our historical awareness, while many remain unaware of polyandry's existence in LDS history. This variant of plural marriage does not seem to have been a feature of Utah polygamy under Brigham Young and his successors. To complicate the issue further, we understand little about how Joseph and his contemporaries saw these relationships. Mary Elizabeth Rollins seemed to recognize that later students of the period would not have the necessary information to understand her choices as a polyandrous wife: "[I] could explain some things in regard to my living with [my first husband] after becoming the Wife of Another [i.e., Joseph], which would throw light, on what now seems mysterious—and you would be perfectly satisfied with me. I write this; because I have heard that it had been commented on to my injury."[1]

Lacking such perfect satisfaction, we can still offer some tentative observations and conclusions.

The doctrine of sealing and adoption

Plural marriage was one means by which Joseph implemented the broader doctrine of sealing. Ultimately, his intent seems to have been to reunite the human family into a bonded whole. "Joseph did not marry women to form a warm, human companionship," observed Richard Bushman, "but to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities."[2] Alma Allred agrees with Todd Compton that "[m]arriage, sealing and adoption, in fact, were nearly interchangeable concepts,"[3] for Joseph's followers, but criticizes Compton because this principle is "much too important to be relegated to, or lost in a footnote" when discussing Joseph's plural marriages.[4]

Sealing creates new, eternal families, and "[a]s each new family came into being, it became another link in the chain of families stretching back to Adam, who was linked to God. Thus the 'family of God' became more than metaphor."[5] It is but a short step from sealing existing families to extending that privilege outward. Since many, if not most, of the saints would have family outside the church, there was an understandable anxiety that they be included in the new, eternal family being forged by Joseph.

Later in Church history, this was accomplished by adoption, where faithful members would serve as surrogate parents in the divine order. This practice was not without its problems, as some surrogates began to look on their adoption of others as a route to glory and power, both spiritual and temporal, rather than as a service for the family of heaven.[6] Adoption by living non-relatives was eventually replaced by the present practice of sealing members to deceased ancestors, with the expectation that definitive resolution of such matters can await the millennial years.

This expanded understanding, however, was decades in the future. In Joseph's day, the necessity of sealing was clear, and most members did not anticipate having faithful family to whom they could be sealed. The Mormons' anticipation of an imminent end to the world may have heightened the sense of urgency.[7]

The role of sealing in marriages was clear—as we will see, Joseph may have extended the role of marriage to binding not just his partners, but their spouses and family as well, into the divine family.

Evaluating each polyandrous marriage

Because we know little or nothing about some of Joseph's marriages, some authors succumb to the temptation to treat evidence in one marriage as evidence for them all.[8] Each marriage, however, involved unique individuals and situations; we cannot turn them into carbon copies. For ease of discussion, however, we will divide the polyandrous marriages into three groups:

  1. Spouse is a non-member
  2. Spouse is a non-faithful LDS
  3. Spouse is faithful LDS
  4. Separated/divorced from their spouse at the time of their sealing to Joseph (i.e., pseudopolyandry)

Group 1: Women with non-member spouses

Ruth Vose Sayers

Three of Joseph's plural marriages involved women who were married to non-member spouses. Of one, Ruth Vose Sayers, we know very little. She married Edward Sayers in 1841, and they had no children. Her husband remained friendly to Joseph Smith, as far as we know, to the end of Joseph's life.[9] Brian Hales notes that Church Historian Andrew Jensen's documents "regarding Ruth Vose Sayers demonstrate that her marriage was for 'eternity only,' without conjugal relations on earth,"[10] pointing out that Jenson wrote of Sayer's non-believing husband:

[he] not attaching much important to \the/ theory of a future life insisted that his wife \Ruth/ should be sealed to the Prophet for eternity, as he himself should only claim her in this life. She \was/ accordingly the sealed to the Prophet in Emma Smith's presence and thus were became numbered among the Prophets plural wives. She however \though she/ \continued to live with Mr. Sayers/ remained with her husband\ until his death.[11]

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner was among the earliest converts to the Church. She had married Adam Lightner on 11 August 1835.[12] Following the Haun's Mill massacre, Mary could have escaped General Clark's siege of Far West, since Governor Boggs had ordered the clandestine evacuation of his friend Adam Lightner and family prior to an anticipated assault on Far West. Mary, her husband, and sister-in-law refused the offer to leave, even though Clark insisted that all remaining men, women, and children "were to be destroyed."[13]

Later in life, Mary reported that at age twelve, Joseph Smith "told me [in 1831] about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife."[14] She also described how

God had Commanded him in July 1834 to take me for a Wife, but he had not dared to make it known to me, for when he received the Revelation; I was in Missouri and when he did see me, I was married. But he was again commanded, to fulfil the first revelation; or Suffer condemnation…[15]

Mary described how "[t]he Prophet Joseph tried hard to get Mr. Lightner to go into the water, but he said he did not feel worthy, but would, some other time. Joseph said to me that he never would be baptized, unless it was a few moments before he died."[16] Despite not being a member, Lightner was a loyal friend to the Saints and to Joseph, and died in Utah.

Of her sealing to Joseph, Mary wrote: "I could tell you why I stayed with Mr. Lightner. Things the leaders of the Church does not know anything about. I did just as Joseph told me to do, as he knew what troubles I would have to contend with."[17]

Sarah Kingsley Howe Cleveland

There is considerable debate as to whether Sarah Kingsley was sealed to Joseph Smith.[18] Danel Bachman's pioneering study on plural marriage argued that there was "little supporting evidence for [her]…inclusion" on a list of Joseph's wives.[19] Todd Compton argues for Sarah's inclusion, since she is included on Andrew Jenson's list of plural wives, had a proxy marriage to Joseph Smith in the temple following the martyrdom, and because Eliza R. Snow is known to have been sealed to Joseph at Sarah's home. Compton holds—and I find his reasoning persuasive—that Joseph's decision to marry Eliza in front of Sarah makes little sense if Sarah had not already been introduced to plural marriage. (Though it must be admitted that Sarah could have been aware of plural marriage, but not practicing it.) Compton's argument is strengthened by the fact that Andrew Jenson also had access to Eliza R. Snow as a witness, so she could have confirmed Sarah's sealing.[20]

Sarah married John Cleveland, her second husband, on 10 June 1826, and she joined the Church in 1835. Her husband never joined the Church, but was a close friend of Joseph's. While Joseph was in Liberty Jail, Emma and her children were welcomed into the Cleveland's Quincy, Illinois home. Following his release in May 1839, Joseph rejoined his family and they remained in Sarah and John's home for three weeks.

While Joseph and most of the Church migrated to the Nauvoo region, the Clevelands remained in Illinois for a time. Though not a member, John continued to provide shelter and help to members of the Church who were victims of persecution. This aid given to the beleaguered Saints led to persecution against John and Sarah, and they eventually moved to Nauvoo.

Sarah served as a counselor to Emma Smith in the Nauvoo Relief Society, and at age 54 was probably sealed to Joseph Smith prior to Eliza R. Snow's marriage on 29 June 1842. It is not known if her husband knew of the sealing, but he remained friendly to Joseph and the Saints.[21]

When Brigham Young and the Saints made plans to move west, Sarah remained behind with her husband. Various explanations for this decision exist, but in one account says that:

Brigham Young and council…counciled her to stay with her Husband as he was a good man, having shown himself kind ever helping those in need, although for some reason his mind was darkened as to the Gospel. She obey[ed] the council and stayed with her Husband, and was faithfull and true to her religion and died a faithfull member of the Church…[22]

Observations about the first group

Though little is known of one woman, and it is debated whether another ought to be counted as a wife, these histories share some significant elements. All were faithful women who had sacrificed a great deal for the Church. All had a long association with Joseph Smith—he knew them and their families well. All were married to men who were good friends of Joseph's, and remained so until his death. We know little about Edward Sayers, but the other two husbands had made enormous sacrifices for the Saints. Both were willing to risk persecution and death for a religion of which they were not a part.

Given the importance which Joseph placed upon the sealing ordinances, it is not surprising that he wished to assure the salvation of such faithful women. We have only glimpses of Joseph's theology of sealing; it may even be that he hoped that by marrying/sealing these wives, their non-member husbands might also benefit from the blessings of sealing. Lightner and Cleveland were certainly two non-members whom Joseph and the Saints would have hoped to see saved with them.

Group 2: Women with non-faithful LDS spouses

Prescindia Lathrop Huntington Buell

Prescindia Lathrop Huntington Buell and her husband Norman joined the Church in 1836. By 1839, Norman had left the Church, and Prescindia noted that "the Lord gave me strength to Stand alone & keep the faith amid heavy persecution."[23]

"[I]n 1841 I entered into the New Everlasting Covenant," said Prescindia, "[I] was sealed to Joseph Smith the Prophet and Seer, and to the best of my ability I have honored plural marriage, never speaking one word against the principle… Never in my life, in this kingdom, which is 44 years, have I doubted the truth of this great work."[24] Her motivation for the sealing to Joseph is alluded to by Emeline B. Wells:

She knew Joseph to be a man of God, and she had received many manifestations in proof of this, and consequently when he explained to her clearly the knowledge which he had obtained from the Lord, she accepted the sealing ordinance with Joseph as a sacred and holy confirmation.[25]

Two of Prescinda's children have been suggested as potential children by Joseph, though DNA evidence has ruled one child out, and the claim for the other is extremely shaky (see here).

Observations about the second group

According to Emeline, this sealing served as a "holy confirmation," a completion or capstone on a life of faithfulness. As with the wives having non-member spouses, Prescindia's acceptance of sealing seems motivated by a desire to bind her into the family of faithful Saints, destined for exaltation even if her first husband did not continue faithful.

Group 3: Women with faithful LDS spouses

Six (or five, if one doubtful wife is excluded) of Joseph's polyandrous marriages were to women married to faithful LDS men.

Esther Dutcher

Daniel H. Wells wrote to Joseph F. Smith of a sealing between Joseph and Esther Dutcher. Wells' source of information was Dutcher's husband, Albert Smith (no relation to Joseph):

It seems that she was sealed to Joseph the Prophet in the days of Nauvoo, though she still remained his wife, and afterwards nearly broke his heart by telling him of it, and expressing her intention of adhering to that relationship. He however got to feeling better over it, and acting for Joseph, had her sealed to him [in the temple--all of Joseph's marriages were understood to require resealing in the temple once it was completed], and to himself for time.[26]

Patty Bartlett Sessions

Sylvia Session's mother Patty joined the Church in 1833, and was sealed to Joseph Smith on 9 March 1842. The reaction of her husband David is unknown, but he remained a faithful member and diligent missionary. He later married a plural wife, which caused difficulties in their marriage.[27]

Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde

Nancy married future apostle Orson Hyde on 4 September 1834. He was involved briefly with apostasy at Far West in the fall of 1838, but had returned to the Church by March 1839 following a dramatic vision in which he saw the consequence of continued rebellion.[28]

There are two sealing dates for Marinda— one in April 1842, while Orson was on a mission and the other May 1843, when Orson had returned. Only antagonistic accounts of this sealing exist.[29] Of the four reports, two claim that Orson was aware of the sealing, and two claim that he was not.

Author Date Claim Comments
Sidney Rigdon[30] 1845
  • Orson unaware of marriage
  • Orson refused to live with wife when he found out

Contrary to claim, Orson continued to live with Miranda and father children by her.

William Hall[31] 1852
  • Joseph demanded Miranda and all Orson's money to let him back in the Church
  • "Many jokes were cracked at his [Hyde's] expense."

Very unlikely—no record of others mocking Hyde; Hall is unreliable on other marriages as well.[32] Orson's return to the quorum was in June 1839,[33] putting Hall's account two years too early for marriage.[34]

Ann Eliza Young[35] 1876
  • Orson did not know of marriage
  • Angry when he learned of it
  • Swore would not live with his wife; did so anyway.

Too young to have any first-hand knowledge of Nauvoo, her book's intent was clearly to titillate with stories of polygamous intrigue. Claims that Brigham told Orson that she was only to be his wife for time, and Joseph's for eternity—but this is frankly false, since sealed to Orson in early 1846.[36] She also confuses the temporality, since she describes Hyde "in a furious passion," because "he thought it no harm for him to win the affection of another man's wife… but he did not propose having his rights interfered with even by the holy Prophet whose teachings he so implicitly followed" (326). Yet, Orson did not begin practicing plural marriage until after he knew of Miranda's sealing to Joseph.

John D. Lee[37] 1877
  • "Report said that Hyde's wife, with his consent, was sealed to Joseph for an eternal state, but I do not assert the fact."
 Lee's work was published posthumously and may have been altered by anti-Mormon editor.[38]

Unique to the Hyde's marriage is the fact that Marinda was sealed to Orson following Joseph's death. All of the Prophet's other polyandrous wives were posthumously sealed to Joseph by proxy.[39]

The Hydes were to divorce in 1870: "The precise reasons for the divorce are not known, but it appears that Orson was giving most of his attention to his younger wives at this time."[40]

Two of Marinda's children have been suggested as potential children by Joseph, but this is very unlikely (see here).

See also: Did Mrs. Hyde not know who fathered her son? and Did Joseph send men on missions to steal their wives?

Elvira Annie Cowles Holmes

Elvira was married to Joseph at age twenty-nine. Her husband, Jonathan Holmes, was a pall-bearer at Joseph Smith's funeral. As Todd Compton remarks

Though it is impossible to know for certain, the fact that Holmes was so close to Joseph Smith suggests that he knew of Smith’s marriage to his wife and permitted it…He later stood as proxy for Smith as Elvira married the prophet for eternity in the Nauvoo temple…This ‘first husband’ never wavered in his loyalty to the Mormon leader….[41]

Elizabeth Davis Goldsmith Brackenbury Durfee

The inclusion of "Mrs. Durfee," as she was known, on the list of Joseph's wives is strongly contested among historians. Durfee is not found on Andrew Jenson's list of Joseph's plural wives. Todd Compton argues that Durfee's post-martyrdom proxy sealing to Joseph is evidence of a living marriage, as is the fact that she taught plural marriage to other prospective wives. Compton also holds that two hostile sources (John C. Bennett and Sarah Pratt) confirm Durfee as a plural wife.[42]

Danel Bachman's 1975 thesis does not include Durfee,[43] and her inclusion is contested by Anderson and Faulring, who question Compton's interpretation of the Sarah Pratt evidence:

…assuming Sarah Pratt is accurately quoted, we are still in doubt about where she obtained her information. In Sacred Loneliness misleads the reader by claiming that "Sarah Pratt mentions that she heard a Mrs. Durfee in Salt Lake City profess to have been one of Smith's wives" (p. 260). But this changes the actual report of Sarah's comments on Mrs. Durfee: "I don't think she was ever sealed to him, though it may have been the case after Joseph's death. . . At all events, she boasted here in Salt Lake of having been one of Joseph's wives" (p. 701).[44]

I am inclined to agree that Sarah's statement argues against a marriage. I also find it strange that Andrew Jenson did not list her if she was a plural spouse. If, as in the case of Sarah Kingsley (see above) I side with Compton in agreeing that Eliza R. Snow could have confirmed Sarah's marriage for Jenson's list, then it strikes me as inconsistent to then assume that Eliza would not have likewise confirmed Mrs. Durfee's marriage for Jenson's list. Compton himself notes that Eliza and Durfee were close friends, and Jenson certainly had access to Eliza as a witness.[45] There seems to me to be little doubt that Mrs. Durfee was associated with plural marriage, but I think her status as a wife during Joseph's lifetime dubious.

The only thing about which we can be certain is that Mrs. Durfee was sealed to Joseph by proxy after the martyrdom. Her LDS husband stood as proxy to Joseph. Their relationship seems to have been strained by this time—they were soon to divorce and each remarried.[46]

Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs

In 1839, at age 18, Zina arrived with her parents in Nauvoo after being driven out of Missouri. Faithful LDS missionary Henry Jacobs courted her during 1840–41. At the same time, Joseph Smith had taught Zina the doctrine of plural marriage, and thrice asked her to marry him. She declined each time, and she and Henry were wed 7 March 1841.[47]

Zina and Henry were married by John C. Bennett, then mayor of Nauvoo. They had invited Joseph to perform the ceremony, but Bennett stepped in when Joseph did not arrive:

…Zina asked the Prophet to perform the marriage. They went to the Clerk’s office and the Prophet did not arrive, so they were married by John C. Bennett. When they saw Joseph they asked him why he didn’t come, and he told them the Lord had made it known to him that she was to be his Celestial wife.[48] Family tradition holds, then, that Zina and Henry were aware of Joseph's plural marriage teachings and his proposal to Zina. While this perspective is late and after-the-fact, it is consistent with the Jacobs' behaviour thereafter. Zina's family also wrote that Henry believed that "whatever the Prophet did was right, without making the wisdom of God's authorities bend to the reasoning of any man."[49]

On 27 October 1841, Zina was sealed to Joseph Smith by her brother, Dimick Huntington. She was six months pregnant by Henry, and continued to live with him.

Joseph Smith and Brigham Young's "mistreatment" of Henry and their "theft" of his family have received a great deal of publicity, thanks to late 19th century anti-Mormon sources, and Fawn Brodie increased their cachet for a 20th century audience. These charges are examined in detail (here). For present purposes, we will focus on Zina. She had refused Joseph's suit three times, and chosen to marry Henry. Why did she decide to be sealed to Joseph?

When interrogated by a member of the RLDS Church, Zina refused to be drawn into specifics. She made her motivations clear, and explained that God had prepared her mind for Joseph's teachings even before she had heard them:

Q. "Can you give us the date of that marriage with Joseph Smith?"

A. "No, sir, I could not."

Q. "Not even the year?"

A. "No, I do not remember. It was something too sacred to be talked about; it was more to me than life or death. I never breathed it for years. I will tell you the facts. I had dreams—I am no dreamer but I had dreams that I could not account for. I know this is the work of the Lord; it was revealed to me, even when young. Things were presented to my mind that I could not account for. When Joseph Smith revealed this order [Celestial marriage] I knew what it meant; the Lord was preparing my mind to receive it."[50]

Zina herself clearly explains the basis for her choice:

…when I heard that God had revealed the law of Celestial marriage that we would have the privilege of associating in family relationships in the worlds to come, I searched the scriptures and by humble prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for myself that God had required that order to be established in his Church.[51] Faced with questions from her RLDS interviewer that she felt exceeded propriety, Zina became evasive. She finally terminated the interview by saying, "Mr. Wight, you are speaking on the most sacred experiences of my life…."[52]

Henry was to stand as proxy for Zina's post-martyrdom sealing to Joseph, and her sealing for time to Brigham Young. He and Zina separated soon thereafter, and Henry was soon gone on one of his many missions for the Church. (See here for a more in-depth analysis of attacks on Brigham and Joseph regarding Zina and Henry.)

Observations about the third group

In Henry Jacob's and Albert Smith's cases, we have the clearest evidence of husbands of polyandrous wives who knew about Joseph's sealing to his spouse. Henry remained a devout member of the Church, continued to serve as a missionary, and stood proxy for Zina's sealing to Joseph. Albert Smith was initially troubled, but later felt better about the arrangement, and stood proxy for Joseph in ratifying the sealing after Joseph's death.

The faithful husbands of Joseph's other polyandrous wives likewise give no sign that they were troubled by the marriages—if they were aware of them. It is notable, however, that Joseph seemed to have a particularly close bond with these husbands, and there is no evidence that such bonds were threatened by the polyandry.

Group 4: Women likely separated/divorced from their first husbands (i.e., pseudopolyandry)

Two cases may represent women who did not consider themselves still married to their first husband.

Sylvia Sessions Lyon

Sylvia Sessions married Windsor Lyon on 21 April 1838. Joseph Smith performed the ceremony. She was sealed to Joseph Smith on 8 February 1842. Her husband Windsor's reaction is not recorded, but he was a faithful, active member of the Church at the time.

Windsor was excommunicated on 7 November 1842 because he sued stake president William Marks for repayment of a loan (Church members frowned on using secular courts to settle disputes between themselves).[53] Despite his excommunication, Windsor remained on close terms with Joseph; tradition holds that he was "a true friend of the Prophet Joseph Smith."

Sylvia gave birth to a daughter, Josephine, on 8 February 1844, and there was evidence for many years that Joseph was the father (see here). However, DNA analysis ultimately disproved this: Josephine was not a descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr.[54]Regardless, Windsor Lyon remained a close friend and ally of Joseph's—he was called as a witness at the trial of Joseph and Hyrum's assassins.

Brian Hales has recently published work demonstrating that Todd Compton likely worked with incomplete data on Session's first marriage. In Hales' view, Sessions considered herself divorced from her husband, and Joseph is the only viable father for her child. If so, Sessions' marriage to Joseph was not polyandrous.[55]

Windsor was rebaptized on 18 January 1846, and Sylvia was sealed to Joseph by proxy with her husband's permission. She was then sealed to Heber Kimball for time, though she continued to cohabitate with Windsor, who also took a plural wife.[56]

Mary Heron Snider

Mary Heron Snider's husband John died active and faithful in the Church. Further, he served a mission in England and was the first Mormon to preach there, served on the committee building the Nauvoo House, was appointed a "bodyguard" for Joseph's body following the martyrdom at Carthage.[57] There is a one-sentence claim of sexual relations between her and Joseph by a son-in-law, Joseph E. Johnson.[58] Mary and her husband "seem to have endured significant periods of estrangement after 1833, with no pregnancies after Mary turned twenty nine. Also, the couple's marriage was never sealed, though the option was available....without addition[al] documentation, reliable conclusions are unattainable."[59] It may be that Snider's marriage to Joseph parallels the case of Sylvia Sessions Lyon, who was likely separated from her first husband prior to her plural marriage to Joseph.

See also: Divorce in the 19th century

A hypothesis—why so many early polyandrous marriages?

Joseph's polyandry strikes us as a strange practice, but few have noted some of the strangest elements. Interestingly, after Joseph's resumption of plural marriage in April 1841, all of his marriages (with one exception) were polyandrous until 29 June 1842. The lone exception is the marriage to his dead brother's widow. Furthermore, of his eleven polyandrous marriages, all but two occurred before July 1843.

This early prominence, even predominance, of polyandry is counter-intuitive. Polyandrous marriages would seem to be the most risky for Joseph and his wives. With polyandry, Emma's reaction to the marriages would be the least of Joseph's worries. Unlike being sealed to single women, polyandrous sealings introduced an additional dangerous variable: the first husband! In teaching and practicing polyandry, Joseph ran the significant risk of a jealous husband learning of his arrangement with the wife, and exposing the explosive secret in hostile terms. Such a husband might also choose to threaten Joseph physically for wrongs to his wife's—and his own—honor.

The risk to Joseph is heightened when we appreciate that a single woman had no competing loyalties, while a polyandrous wife almost always had children and a husband to whom she was bound by love and loyalty. Finally, since a key justification for Mormon polygamy was the biblical model, polyandry would also have been the most difficult form to justify to potential initiates, since there is no biblical polyandry.

Yet when we examine Joseph's polyandrous marriages, none of these problems seem to surface. All of the men—member or non-member—were close friends of Joseph's, and remained so until his death. No wife seems to have second thoughts; none tearfully confessed all to her unsuspecting husband or Nauvoo society.

This common-sense analysis hinges, however, on the question of marital intimacy. If polyandrous sealings were not expected to involve sexual intimacy, then they were much less challenging for all involved—including Joseph and Emma. Emma would be far less troubled by a polyandrous marriage intended to seal Joseph to beloved friends than a marriage to single women living in her home. Joseph's natural—and, I suspect, profound—desire to keep the Lord's commandments and protect Emma's feelings would have been satisfied.

If the first husband was aware of the sealings, the faithful Saints would have been untroubled by a relationship which they saw as primarily binding their family to Joseph's, while non-member husbands would have seen it as a purely religious rite with a man for whom they retained great respect and affection.

Could faithful members save the unfaithful or unbaptized?

A skeptical reader might, at this point, suspect we are over-reaching for an explanation. There is evidence, however, that early Mormons firmly believed that a faithful spouse could help exalt a wayward or non-member spouse.

Twenty-one-year-old Isaiah Moses Coombs immigrated to Utah in 1855. To his grief, his childhood sweetheart refused to accompany him, despite their marriage the year before. Reflecting on the agonizing decision to go west without his non-member spouse, Coombs wrote:

…not least was the consideration that I was obeying the voice of God and that I was taking a course that would secure my own glory and exaltation and that would eventually either in this life or that which is to come enable me to bind my wife to me in bands that could not be broken. She was blind then but the day would come when she would see.[60]

Coombs' wife was never to join the Church, and refused a later entreaty to return with him to Utah. Yet, he persisted in the conviction that his faithfulness to the sealing covenant would suffice to exalt his disbelieving, non-member wife in the hereafter, even if she did not accept the gospel in mortality.

This example is instructive, and is significant because the account was not written for public consumption. He had no polemic purpose, save to tell his life's story.

He was also not a "prominent" member of the Church—his reflections demonstrate how one rank-and-file member, living apart from the main body of saints because of poverty, understood matters in the early 1850s. Coombs' journal makes it wrenchingly clear that his decision to leave was extraordinarily difficult—if a relatively unknown young man, moving outside the hub of Church power in Nauvoo and Utah was thus convinced, it seems likely that other early members also saw their own engagement in sealing as sufficient to help save faithful, wayward, or non-member spouses.

Further evidence against sexual polyandry

Nauvoo witnesses did not try to justify sexual polyandry

Brian Hales notes that none of the members at Nauvoo attempted to justify sexual polyandry:

Belinda Marden Pratt, a plural wife of Parley P. Pratt, wrote in 1854: "'Why not a plurality of husbands as well as a plurality of wives?' To which I reply: 1st God has never commanded or sanctioned a plurality of husbands." On October 8, 1869, Apostle George A. Smith taught that "a plurality of husbands is wrong." His wife, Bathsheba Smith, was asked in 1892 if it would "be a violation of the laws of the church for one woman to have two husbands living at the same time." She replied, "I think it would." All of these individuals were involved with Nauvoo polygamy, and several were undoubtedly aware of Joseph Smith's sealings to legally married women, yet they made no effort to condone sexual polyandry, nor is there any evidence that any man but Joseph Smith engaged in polyandry in Nauvoo.[61]

Nauvoo detractors likewise say nothing about sexual polyandry

Hales remarks:

A fourth group of polygamy insiders who may have left a record is comprised of the detractors. William Law, though a member of Joseph Smith's First Presidency, denounced plural marriage and accused Joseph Smith of adultery....In his split with Joseph Smith in the spring of 1844, the fact that Law did not accuse the Prophet of sexual polyandry and never mentioned it so far as available documents indicate, is surprising. Polyandrous sexuality would have been more shocking that adultery at that time and place. So the absence of any reference to it suggests that Law was unaware of conjugality in those unions or purposefully chose to ignore them altogether. In the end, Law settled for a less explosive charge of adultery.[62]

Hales also points out that John C. Bennett likewise did not invoke polyandry in his charges against Joseph:

Even more impressive is the fact th[at] John C. Bennett, who claimed knowledge of seven of Joseph Smith's plural marriages to civily married women and even identified three by name...did not accuse the Prophet of sexual polyandry. He reported polyandrous marriages without distinguishing them from nonpolyandrous polygamous unions and without recruiting the presumably offended husbands to joint his crusade against Joseph....

Bennett and Francis [Higbee] together named more than a dozen persons who they thought were likely candidates to join in denunciations of Joseph Smith's improprieties; but none of these individuals were polyandrous husbands (who, logically speaking, would have been prime candidates to protect their family's honor) nor did they mention sexual polyandry as one of Joseph's alleged numerous misdeeds.

If any of Joseph Smith's opponents had suspected the presence of sexual polyandry, their silence on the subject is puzzling. The standard of frontier justice regarding a sexually molested woman generally allowed a father, husband, brother, or son to exact revenge by beating, horsewhipping, or even killing the perpetrator.[63]

Evidence from the "Temple Lot" case of non-consummation of polyandrous marriages

Hales has identified a further line of evidence which suggests that polyandrous marriages were not consummated. In 1892, the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (RLDS, now Community of Christ) brought suit against the Hendrickite, or "Temple Lot" break-off group. They claimed that the Independence, Missouri temple site was rightfully RLDS property, since they were the direct heirs of Joseph Smith's original religious group.

Although not embracing plural marriage themselves, the Temple Lot group was anxious to demonstrate that Joseph Smith had taught plural marriage--for, if this was so, then the RLDS (who denied that Joseph had practiced it, and certainly did not embrace the doctrine) would have difficulty proving that they were the direct successors to the church founded by Joseph.

Hales reports:

Nine of Joseph Smith's plural wives were still living when depositions started at Salt Lake City on March 14, 1892. Three were polyandrous wives (Zina Huntington Jacobs Young, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, and Patty Bartlett Sessions) and six were nonpolyandrous (Helen Mar Kimball, Martha McBride, Almera Johnson, Emily Partridge, Malissa Lott, and Lucy Walker.) Factors evidently affecting the choice of witnesses involved the health and travel distances for the women, and importantly, whether their polygamous marriages to the Prophet included conjugality. Non-sexual sealings would have been treated as spiritual marriages of little importance and would have played right into the hands of RLDS attorneys....

All three of Joseph Smith's polyandrous wives lived in or relatively near Salt Lake City and were apparently willing to testify but were bypassed. General Relief Society President Zina D. Huntington was in good health, living only a few blocks from the deposition room. Yet she was not summoned. Likewise, polyandrous wife Mary Elizabeth Rollins was well known to Church leaders and resided in Ogden, thirty-eight miles north of Salt Lake City. She was not requested to appear, not was Patty Bartlett Sessions, who lived in Bountiful ten miles north of Salt Lake City. Patty was ninety-seven, probably a sufficient reason to pass her by....

Among nonpolyandrous wives who were not summoned was Martha McBride who lived in Hooper, Utah (thirty-seven miles to the north). McBride's relationship with Joseph Smith is poorly documented, with no evidence of sexual relations....Also passed by was Salt Lake resident Helen Mar Kimball who had written two books defending the practice of plural marriage. Her sealing to the Prophet ocurred when she was only fourteen and the presence or absence of sexual relations in her plural marriage is debated by historians.

Throughout the length question-and-answer sessions with Malissa Lott, Emily Partridge, and Lucy Walker, the details of their polygamous marriages with Joseph Smith were paramount; the physical aspect of sexuality was a core issue. If Zina and/or Mary Elizabeth could not testify to such relations, their testimonies as the Prophet's polygamous wives could hurt the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) cause.[64]

Would polyandrous testimony have been harmful to the Church, and so avoided?

Hales goes on to note that there is another possible explanation for the absence of polyandrous wives from the Temple Lot testimony:

...it might be reasoned that they avoided testifying because their answers might have revealed polyandrous sexuality, which would have been embarrassing and doctrinally problematic.

This second option seems less likely because, six years later, Zina willingly engaged in a formal interview (later published) with an RLDS elder, John Wight, who at one point asked: 'Then it is a fact, Mrs. Young ,is it not, that you married Mr. Smith at the same time you were married to Mr. Jacobs?" to which Zina immediately responded: "What right do you have to ask such questions? I was sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity." Zina's willingness to be interviewed by an RLDS inquisitor in 1898 suggests she would have been equally willing to face RLDS attorneys in 1892. However, her 1898 responses would not have been helpful to the Church of Christ (Temple Lot) at that time, had she been asked to testify.

Similarly, in 1905, Mary Elizabeth spoke freely to missionaries at BYU and even answered a direct question "concerning her husband [Adam Lightner]." She explained: "My husband did not belong to the Church. I begged and pled with him to join but he would not. He said he did not believe in it though he thought a great deal of Joseph. He sacrificed his property rather than testify against Joseph, Hyrum, and Geo. A. Smith. After he said this I went forward and was sealed to Joseph for Eternity." In other words, she, like Zina, explained that she was "sealed to Joseph for Eternity." This testimony, which stopped short of sexual relations, would not have strengthened the Temple Lot Church's case.

In their responses, both women spoke of their polyandrous relationships with Joseph Smith without any hint of sexual polyandry or the need to justify and defend it. Also, documents indicate that if Church leaders in 1892 were worried about hiding Joseph Smith's polyandrous marriages (because of sexuality or other concerns), it would have been the first time such anxieties are identifiable in the historical record. [Neither Joseph F. Smith affidavits from 1869 or Andrew Jenson's notes from 1887] seemed to treat polyandrous plural marriages as problematic.[65]

Conclusion

It may be Joseph's first polyandrous sealings were undertaken to protect his relationship with Emma, while still fulfilling the angel's command to implement plurality. Did he hope that the "less difficult" polyandrous and levirate marriages would satisfy the commandment? Or, at the very least, were the polyandrous marriages intended to prepare both Emma and the Saints for the numerous, more difficult "single woman" plural marriages that would follow?

Such a reconstruction must remain speculative, especially since relatively little is known about the polyandrous marriages. It would, however, explain why Joseph chose to enter the "most difficult" or "most risky" marriages first—they would have been, contrary to what we might first expect, the easiest.

This is not to argue that such marriages must not or could not involve sexuality. However, assuming full sexuality in these relationships makes less sense of the available data.[66]

Is it reasonable to think that Nauvoo plural marriages had different levels of "sexual access"? Modern readers are inclined to think of marriage as mostly—or entirely—about cohabitation, but it is not clear that the early Saints saw things in this way.

For example, Utah-era polygamy had a wide range of marriage types, each of which entailed different responsibilities and degrees of sexual access. Kathryn Daynes has noted the following varieties of LDS marriages:[55]

  • Civil marriages (for time only)
  • Marriage for time and eternity
  • Marriage for eternity only (no sexual access)
  • Marriage for time only (i.e., by proxy)
  • Marriages of young children (no cohabitation was permitted until the partners were older; such marriages were often never consummated, and were later cancelled when one of the partners chose to marry a different love match).
  • "Convenience only" marriages: these unusual arrangements allowed for childless couples to conceive in an era which lacked assisted reproductive technology. Under prophetic approval, the couple would choose a fellow member to marry the childless wife following their own divorce. The new husband would impregnate the spouse, receive a divorce from her, and the childless couple would remarry and raise the child as their own. The "donor" husband had no on-going rights of sexual access or duties to support the wife or child.

It is clear, then, that later polygamy easily contemplated relationships which did not involve sexual access. If Joseph had implemented such variation in Nauvoo, then Brigham Young's later decision to endorse a variety of marriage forms is even more understandable.

See also: Did Joseph Smith send men on missions in order to steal their wives? and Did Joseph have any children through polygamous marriages?
See also Brian Hales' discussion
Learn more about polygamy: polyandry
Key sources
  • Brian C. Hales, "'Joseph Smith’s Sexual Polyandry and the Emperor’s New Clothes: On Closer Inspection, What Do We Find?'," Proceedings of the 2012 FAIR Conference (August 2012). link
  • Brian Hales' site: Sexual Polyandry: Common questions
Wiki links
FAIR links
  • Ugo Perego, "Joseph Smith DNA Revealed: New Clues from the Prophet’s Genes," Proceedings of the 2008 FAIR Conference (August 2008). link
Navigators

Source(s) of the criticism
Critical sources

Emma Smith and polygamy


Jump to Subtopic:


Articles about Plural marriage
Doctrinal foundation of plural marriage
Introduction of plural marriage
Plural marriage in Utah
End of plural marriage

Can you summarize what we know about whether or not Joseph Smith fathered any children by his plural wives?

The record is frustratingly incomplete regarding the question of which marriages were consummated, it is likewise spotty with regards to whether Joseph fathered children by his plural wives

The record is frustratingly incomplete regarding the question of which marriages were consummated, it is likewise spotty with regards to whether Joseph fathered children by his plural wives. Fawn Brodie was the first to consider this question in any detail, though her standard of evidence was depressingly low. Subsequent authors have returned to the problem, though unanimity has been elusive (see Table 1). Ironically, Brodie did not even mention the case of Josephine Lyon, now considered the most likely potential child of Joseph.

Table 11‑1 Possible Children of Joseph Smith, Jr., by Plural Marriage

Key:
  • NM = Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 2nd edition (1971);
  • Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy" (1975);
  • VW=Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 2nd edition (1989);
  • Fo = Foster, Religion and Sexuality (1984);
  • Co = Compton, In Sacred Loneliness (1997);
  • Be = Bergera, "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists," (2005);
  • Ha = Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy (2013).

Notation:

  • Y – indicates the author considers the child a possible child of Joseph Smith, Jr.
  • N - indicates that author argues against this child being Joseph's child, or lists someone else as the father.
  • Ø - indicates that author does not mention the possibility (pro or con) of this being Joseph's child.

Endnote links for above table

[67] [68] [69] [70] [71] [72] [73] [74] [75] [76] [77] [78] [79] [80] [81] [82] [83] [84] [85] [86] [87] [88] [89] [90] [91] [92] [93] [94] [95] [96] [97] [98] [99] [100] [101] [102]

Did Joseph Smith father any children through polygamous marriages?

Science has eliminated most of the possibilities that had long been rumored to be descendants of Joseph Smith. There are a couple for which DNA can tell us nothing either way and that rest on dubious historical reasoning. Thus critics cannot claim in honesty that Joseph had any children by his polygamous wives.

It is claimed that Joseph Smith fathered children with some of his plural wives, and that he covered up the evidence of pregnancies. It is also claimed that Joseph Smith had intimate relations with other men’s wives to whom he had been sealed, and that children resulted from these unions.

Critics of Joseph Smith have long had difficulty reconciling their concept of Joseph as a promiscuous womanizer with the fact that the only recorded children of the prophet are those that he had with Emma. Science is now shedding new light on this issue as DNA research has eliminated most of the possibilities that had long been rumored to be descendants of Joseph Smith. In the case of at least two, however, DNA cannot tell us either way. The historical reasoning for justifying that Joseph had children by these wives is dubious.

Did Joseph Smith produce any children by his plural wives?: The case for children

Josephine Fisher (Josephine Lyon)

DNA analysis has determined that Josephine Fisher is not a descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr., [103] but for many years she appeared to be the strongest possibility. The resolution of this question was difficult to resolve until the appropriate DNA analysis techniques became available. These findings have been replicated in non-Latter-day Saint, peer-reviewed, reputable journals.[104]

The case of Josephine Fisher relied on a deathbed conversation:

Just prior to my mothers death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days were about 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….[105]

Perhaps significantly, Josephine's name shares a clear link with Joseph's. Whether this account proved that she was his biological daughter had long been debated:

Rex Cooper…has questioned the interpretation that Smith was Fisher's biological father. He posits that because Fisher's mother was sealed to Smith, Fisher was his daughter only in a spiritual sense…More problematic is whether there is a discrepancy between what Fisher understood and what her mother meant. That is, did Fisher interpret her mother's remarks to mean she was the biological daughter of Joseph Smith and thus state that with more certitude than was warranted, when in fact her mother meant only that in the hereafter Fisher would belong to Joseph Smith's family through Session's sealing to him? Because Sessions was on her deathbed, when one's thoughts naturally turn to the hereafter, the latter is a reasonable explanation.[106]

As Danel Bachman notes, however, there seems to be relatively little doubt that

[t]he desire for secrecy as well as the delicacy of the situation assure us that Mrs. Sessions was not merely explaining to her daughter that she was Smith's child by virtue of a temple sealing. The plain inference arising from Jenson's curiosity in the matter and Mrs. Fisher's remarks is that she was, in fact, the offspring of Joseph Smith.[107]

However, DNA evidence now disproves this theory. It is possible, then, that Fisher misunderstood her mother, but this seems unlikely. Any unreliability is more likely to arise because of a dying woman's confusion than from miscommunication. No evidence exists for such confusion, though we cannot rule it out.

Josephine's account is also noteworthy because her mother emphasizes that "…she [had] been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church."[108] This may explain her reasoning for being sealed to Joseph at all—her husband was out of fellowship. Todd Compton opines that "[i]t seems unlikely that Sylvia would deny [her husband] cohabitation rights after he was excommunicated," but this conclusion seems based on little but a gut reaction.[109] These women took their religion seriously; given Sylvia's deathbed remarks, this was a point she considered important enough to emphasize. She apparently believed it would provide an explanation for something that her daughter might have otherwise misunderstood.

There is also clear evidence that at least some early members of the Church would have taken a similar attitude toward sexual relations with an unbelieving spouse. My own third-great grandfather, Isaiah Moses Coombs, provides a striking illustration of this from the general membership of the Church.

Coombs had immigrated to Utah, but his non-member spouse refused to accompany him. Heartsick, he consulted Brigham Young for advice. Young "sat with one hand on my knee, looking at my face and listen[ing] attentively." Then, Young took the new arrival "by the hand in his fatherly way," and said "[Y]ou had better take a mission to the States…to preach the gospel and visit your wife…visit your wife as often as you please; preach the gospel to her, and if she is worth having she will come with you when you return to the valley. God bless and prosper you."[110]

Coombs did as instructed, but was not successful in persuading his wife. His description of his thoughts is intriguing, and worth quoting at length:

I may as well state here, however, that during all my stay in the States, [my wife and I] were nothing more to each other than friends. I never proposed or hinted for a closer intimacy only on condition of her baptism into the Church. I felt that I could not take her as a wife on any other terms and stand guiltless in the sight of God or my own conscience…I could not yield to her wishes and she would not bend to mine. And so I merely visited her as a friend. This was a source of wonder to our mutual acquaintances; and well it might be for had not my faith been founded on the eternal rock of Truth, I never could have stood such a test, I never could have withstood the temptations that assailed me, but I should have yielded and have abandoned myself to the life of carnal pleasure that awaited me in the arms of my beautiful and adored wife. She was now indeed beautiful. I had thought her lovely as a child—as a maiden she had seemed to me surpassing fair, but as a woman with a form well developed and all the charms of her persona matured, she far surpassed in womanly beauty anything I had ever dreamed of.[111]

Coombs' account is startlingly blunt and explicit for the age. Yet, if this young twenty-two-year-old male refused marital intimacy with his wife (whom he married knowing their religious differences), Compton's confidence that Sylvia Sessions would not deny marital relations to her excommunicated husband seems misplaced. Sessions may, like Coombs, have seen her faithfulness to the sealing ordinances sufficient to "eventually either in this life or that which is to come enable me to bind my [spouse] to me in bands that could not be broken." Like him, she may have believed that "[My spouse] was blind then but the day would come when [he] would see."[112]

More importantly, however, is Brian Hales’ more recent work, which demonstrates that Sylvia Sessions Lyon may well have not been married to her husband when sealed to Joseph Smith, contrary to Compton’s conclusion. Thus, rather than being a case of polyandry with sexual relations with two men (Joseph and her first husband) Lyons is instead a case of straight-forward plural marriage.[113] Given that Joseph has been ruled out as Josephine's father, it may be that Sylvia's emphasis to Josephine about being Joseph's "daughter" referred to a spiritual or sealing sense, and she wished to explain to her daughter why Josephine was, then, sealed to Joseph Smith rather than her biological father.

Other possible children

Olive Gray Frost is mentioned in two sources as having a child by Joseph. Both she and the child died in Nauvoo, so no genetic evidence will ever be forthcoming.[114]

Did Joseph Smith produce any children by his plural wives? The case against children

Angus M. Cannon seems to have been aware of Fisher's claim to be a child of Joseph Smith, though only second hand. He told a sceptical Joseph Smith III of

one case where it was said by the girl's grandmother that your father has a daughter born of a plural wife. The girl's grandmother was Mother Sessions, who lived in Nauvoo and died here in the valley. Aunt Patty Sessions asserts that the girl was born within the time after your father was said to have taken the mother.[115]

Clearly, Cannon has no independent knowledge of the case, but reports a story similar to Josephine's affidavit. Cannon's statement is more important because it illustrates how the LDS Church's insistence that Joseph Smith had practiced plural marriage led some of the RLDS Church :to ask why no children by these wives existed. Lucy Walker reported [the RLDS] seem surprised that there was no issue from asserted plural marriages with their father. Could they but realize the hazardous life he lived, after that revelation was given, they would comprehend the reason. He was harassed and hounded and lived in constant fear of being betrayed by those who ought to have been true to him.[116] Thus the absence of children was something of an embarrassment to the Utah Church, which members felt a need to explain. It would have been greatly to their advantage to produce Joseph's offspring, but could not.[117]

Anxious to demonstrate that Joseph's plural marriages were marriages in the fullest sense, Lucy M. Walker (wife of Joseph's cousin, George A. Smith) reported seeing Joseph washing blood from his hands in Nauvoo. When asked about the blood, Joseph reportedly told her he had been helping Emma deliver one of his plural wives' children.[118] Yet, even this late account tells us little about the paternity of the children—Joseph was close to these women (and their husbands, in the case of polyandry), and given the Saints' belief in priesthood blessings, they may have well welcomed his involvement.

George Algernon Lightner and Florentine M. Lightner

Even by the turn of the century, the LDS Church had no solid evidence of children by Joseph. "I knew he had three children," said Mary Elizabeth Lightner, "They told me. I think two of them are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names."[119] Again, evidence for children is frustratingly vague—Lightner had only heard rumours, and could not provide any details. It would seem to me, however, that this remark of Lightner's rules out her children as possible offspring of Joseph. Her audience was clearly interested in Joseph having children, and she was happy to assert that such children existed. If her own children qualified, why did she not mention them?

Orson W. Hyde and Frank Henry Hyde

Two of Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde's children have been suggested as possible children. The first, Orson, died in infancy, making DNA testing impossible. Compton notes, however, that "Marinda had no children while Orson was on his mission to Jerusalem, then became pregnant soon after Orson returned home. (He arrived in Nauvoo on December 7, 1842, and Marinda bore Orson Washington Hyde on November 9, 1843),"[120] putting the conception date around 16 February 1843.

Frank Hyde's birth date is unclear; he was born on 23 January in either 1845 or 1846.[121] This would place his conception around 2 May, of either 1844 or 1845. In the former case, Frank was conceived less than two months prior to Joseph's martyrdom. Orson Hyde left for Washington, D.C., around 4 April 1844,[122] and did not return until 6 August 1844, making Joseph's paternity more likely than Orson's if the earlier birth date is correct.[123] The key source for this claim is Fawn Brodie, who includes no footnote or reference. Given Brodie's tendency to misread evidence on potential children, this claim should be approached with caution.

Frank's death certificate lists Orson Hyde as the father, however, and places his birth in 1846, which would require conception nearly a year after Joseph's death.[124] A child by Joseph would have brought prestige to the family and Church, and Orson and Nancy had divorced long before Frank Henry's death.[125] It seems unlikely, therefore, that Orson would be credited with paternity over Joseph if any doubt existed. Without further data, Brodie's dating should probably be regarded as an error, ruling out Joseph as a possible father.

Ruled out by DNA Evidence: Oliver Buell, Mosiah Hancock, John Reed Hancock, Zebulon Jacobs, Moroni Llewllyn Pratt, and Orrison Smith

Scientific ingenuity has also been applied to the question of Joseph's paternity. Y-chromosome studies have conclusively eliminated Orrison Smith (son of Fanny Alger), Mosiah Hancock, Zebulon Jacobs, John Reed Hancock, Moroni Llewellyn Pratt, and Oliver Buell as Joseph's offspring.[126]

Two additional children—George Algernon Lightner and Orson W. Hyde—died in infancy, leaving no descendants to test, though as noted above Lightner can probably be excluded on the basis of his mother's testimony.

The testing of female descendants' DNA is much move involved, but work continues and may provide the only definitive means of ruling in or out potential children.

The case of Oliver Buell is an interesting one, since Fawn Brodie was insistent that he was Joseph's son. She based part of this argument on a photograph of Buell, which revealed a face which she claimed was "overwhelmingly on the side of Joseph's paternity."[127] A conception on this date would make Oliver two to three weeks overdue at birth, which makes Brodie's theory less plausible.[128]

Furthermore, prior the DNA results, Bachman and Compton pointed out that Brodie's timeline poses serious problems for her theory—Oliver's conception would have had to occurred between 16 April 1839 (when Joseph was allowed to escape during a transfer from Liberty Jail)[129] and 18 April, when the Huntingtons left Far West.[130] Brodie would have Joseph travel west from his escape near Gallatin, Davies County, Missouri, to Far West in order to meet Lucinda, and then on to Illinois to the east. This route would require Joseph and his companions to backtrack, while fleeing from custody in the face of an active state extermination order in force.[131] Travel to Far West would also require them to travel near the virulently anti-Mormon area of Haun's Mill, along Shoal Creek.[132] Yet, by 22 April Joseph was in Illinois, having been slowed by travel "off from the main road as much as possible"[133] "both by night and by day."[134] This seems an implausible time for Joseph to be meeting a woman, much less conceiving a child. Furthermore, it is evident that Far West was evacuated by other Church leaders, "the committee on removal," and not under the prophet’s direction, who did not regain the Saints until reaching Quincy, Illinois.[135]

Brodie's inclusion of Oliver Buell is also inconsistent, since he was born prior to Joseph's sealing to Prescinda. By including Oliver as a child, Brodie wishes to paint Joseph as an indiscriminate womanizer. Yet, her theory of plural marriage argues that Joseph "had too much of the Puritan in him, and he could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage."[136] Thus, Brodie argues that Joseph created plural marriage to justify his immorality—yet, she then has him conceiving a child with Prescinda before being sealed to her. By her own argument, the paternity must therefore be seen as doubtful.[137]

Despite Brodie's enthusiasm, no other author has included Oliver on their list of possible children (see Table 1). And, DNA evidence has conclusively ruled him out. Oliver is an excellent example of Brodie's tendency to ignore and misread evidence which did not fit her preconceptions, and suggests that caution is warranted before one condemns Joseph for a pre-plural marriage "affair" or other improprieties. Since Brodie was not interested in giving Joseph the benefit of the doubt, or avoiding a rush to judgment, her decision is not surprising.

John Reed Hancock is another of Brodie's suggestions, though no other author has followed her. The evidence for Joseph having married Clarissa Reed Hancock is scant,[138] and as with Oliver Buell it is unlikely (even under Brodie's jaded theory of plural marriage as justification for adultery) that Joseph would have conceived a child with a woman to whom he was not polygamously married. DNA testing has since confirmed our justified scepticism of Brodie's claim.[139]

John Hyrum Buell, Son of Prescinda Huntington Buell

Bachman mentions a "seventh child" of Prescinda's, likely John Hyrum Buell, for whom the timeline would better accommodate conception by Joseph Smith. There is no other evidence for Joseph's paternity, however, save Ettie V. Smith's account in the anti-Mormon Fifteen Years Among the Mormons (1859), which claimed that Prescinda said she did not know whether Joseph or her first husband was John Hyrum's father.[140] As Compton notes, such an admission is implausible, given the mores of the time.[141]

Besides being implausible, Ettie gets virtually every other detail wrong—she insists that William Law, Robert Foster, and Henry Jacobs had all been sent on missions, only to return and find their wives being courted by Joseph. Ettie then has them establish the Expositor.[142] While Law and Foster were involved with the Expositor, they were not sent on missions, and their wives did not charge that Joseph had propositioned them. Jacobs had served missions, but was present during Joseph's sealing to his wife, and did not object (see Chapter 9). Jacobs was a faithful Saint unconnected to the Expositor.

Even the anti-Mormon Fanny Stenhouse considered Ettie Smith to be a writer who "so mixed up fiction with what was true, that it was difficult to determine where one ended and the other began,"[143] and a good example of how "the autobiographies of supposed Mormon women were [as] unreliable"[144] as other Gentile accounts, given her tendency to "mingl[e] facts and fiction" "in a startling and sensational manner."[145]

Brodie herself makes no mention of John Hyrum as a potential child (and carelessly misreads Ettie Smith's remarks as referring to Oliver, not John Hyrum). No other historian has even mentioned this child, much less argued that Buell was not the father (see Table 1).

Scant evidence: Sarah Elizabeth Holmes, Hannah Ann Dibble, Loren Walker Dibble, Joseph Albert Smith, and Carolyn Delight

A few other possibilities should be mentioned, though the evidence surrounding them is tenuous. Sarah Elizabeth Holmes was born to Marietta Carter, though "No evidence links her with Joseph Smith."[146] The Dibble children suffer from chronology problems, and a lack of good evidence that Joseph and their mother was associated. Loren Dibble was, however, claimed by some Mormons as a child of Joseph’s when confronted with Joseph Smith III’s skepticism.[147]

Joseph Albert Smith was born to Esther Dutcher, but the available evidence supports her polyandrous sealing to Joseph as for eternity only. Carolyn Delight has no evidence at all of a connection to Joseph—the only source is a claim to Ugo Perego, a modern DNA researcher.[148] No textual or documentary evidence is known for her at all.

Fanny Alger and Eliza R. Snow: Miscarriages?

We have elsewhere seen the tenuous basis for many conclusions about the Fanny Alger marriage (see here and here). The first mention of a pregnancy for Fanny is in an 1886 anti-Mormon work, citing Chauncey Webb, with whom Fanny reportedly lived after leaving the Smith home.[149] Webb claimed that Emma "drove" Fanny from the house because she "was unable to conceal the consequences of her celestial relation with the prophet." If Fanny was pregnant, it is curious that no one else remarked upon it at the time, though it is possible that the close quarters of a nineteenth-century household provided Emma with clues. If Fanny was pregnant by Joseph, the child never went to term, died young, or was raised under a different name.

A family tradition—repeated by anti-Mormon Wyl—holds that Eliza R. Snow was pregnant and shoved down the stairs by a jealous Emma before being required to leave the Smith home.[150] The tradition holds that Eliza, "heavy with child" subsequently miscarried. While Eliza was required to leave the home and Emma was likely upset with her, no contemporary evidence points to a pregnancy.[151] Eliza's diary says nothing about the loss of a child, which would be a strange omission given her love of children.[152] It seems unlikely that Eliza would have still been teaching school in an advanced state of pregnancy, especially given that her appearance as a pregnant "unwed mother" would have been scandalous in Nauvoo. Emma's biographers note that "Eliza continued to teach school for a month after her abrupt departure from the Smith household. Her own class attendance record shows that she did not miss a day during the months she taught the Smith children, which would be unlikely had she suffered a miscarriage."[153] Given Emma's treatment of the Partridge sisters, who were also required to leave the Smith household, Emma certainly needed no pregnancy to raise her ire against Joseph's plural wives.

Eliza repeatedly testified to the physical nature of her relationship with Joseph Smith (see Chapter 9), and was not shy about criticizing Emma on the subject of plural marriage.[154] Yet, she never reported having been pregnant, or used her failed pregnancy as evidence for the reality of plural marriage.

In the absence of further information, both of these reported pregnancies must be regarded as extremely speculative.

What did the husband of Sylvia Sessions know about her sealing to Joseph Smith for eternity?

Sylvia was married to Windsor Lyon by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, and was sealed to Joseph Smith at some point after she was married

Sylvia was married to Windsor Lyon by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. She was sealed to Joseph Smith at some point after she was married. Brian Hales notes that , "This marriage triangle is unique among all of the Prophet’s plural marriages because there is strong evidence that Sylvia bore children to both men. She became pregnant by Windsor Lyon in October of 1838, September of 1840, and April of 1842. Then a year later became pregnant with a daughter (named Josephine—born February 8, 1844) that was purportedly fathered by the Prophet." Sylvia's daughter, who had the intriguing name "Josephine," made the following statement:

Just prior to my mothers [Sylvia Sessions Lyon] death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days on earth were about numbered and before she passed away from mortality she desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire secret fro me and from others until no but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon had was out of fellowship with the Church.

Daughter Josephine was proven not to be a daughter of Joseph Smith, Jr. through DNA analysis

For many years, Josephine appeared to be the only viable candidate as a child of Joseph Smiths "polyandrous" sealings. However, DNA analysis ultimately disproved the paternity claim: Josephine was not a descendant of Joseph Smith, Jr.[155]

Sylvia may have considered herself divorced from Windsor after he was excommunicated from the Church

It appears, however, that Sylvia may have considered herself divorced from Windsor after he was excommunicated from the Church and left Nauvoo. Hales points out that "Currently, no documentation of a legal divorce between Windsor and Sylvia after his excommunication has been found. However, in the mid-nineteenth century, religious laws often trumped legal proceedings. Stanley B. Kimball observed: 'Some church leaders at that time considered civil marriage by non-Mormon clergymen to be as unbinding as their baptisms. Some previous marriages . . . were annulled simply by ignoring them.'" [156] The sealing to Joseph occurred after Windor's excommunication. Andrew Jenson, in his historical record, referred to Sylvia as a "formerly the wife of Windsor Lyons." [157] There is no known evidence that Windsor lived with Sylvia after he returned to Nauvoo, but Sylvia did "rejoin" Windsor after he was rebaptised in 1846. Hales states, "No details are available to clarify what authority was used to reconfirm the marriage relationship between Sylvia and Windsor after their previous marital separation. Most likely the couple consulted with Brigham Young or Heber C. Kimball, who authorized their rejoining. Whether a private religious marriage ceremony for time was performed or the couple resumed observing their legal marriage is unknown. Importantly, even with the renewed conjugality between Windsor and Sylvia after Joseph Smith’s death, no evidence has been found to support her involvement in sexual polyandry at any time." [158]

Did Prescindia Buell (or Sarah Pratt, or Mrs. Hyde) not know who was the father of her son?

The source for this claim is a notoriously unreliable anti-Mormon work. It makes several errors of fact in the very paragraph in which the claim is made

It is claimed that Prescindia Lathrop Huntington Buell admitted that she did not know who was the father of her child—Joseph Smith or her first husband. Sometimes Sarah Pratt (wife of apostle Orson Pratt) is mistakenly identified as the woman in this story. [159] Others sometimes mention Orson Hyde's wife as the source of this rumor. [160]

The source for this claim is a notoriously unreliable anti-Mormon work. It makes several errors of fact in the very paragraph in which the claim is made.

It is implausible that the supposed admission upon which the claim is based would be made. There are major historical problems of geography and timeline for Joseph to have even been a potential father of Buell's child.

The claim cannot be substantiated.

See also: Prescindia Buell's sealing to Joseph Smith, Did Joseph send men on missions to steal their wives?, and Is there any evidence that Joseph fathered Presendia Buell's child?

Is the source reliable?

This book was written by Nelson Winch Green, who reported what estranged member Marry Ettie V. Coray Smith reportedly told him.

Even other anti-Mormon authors who had lived in Utah regarded it as nearly worthless. Fanny Stenhouse wrote:

Much has already been written on this subject much that is in accordance with facts, and much that is exaggerated and false. Hitherto, with but one exception [Mrs. Ettie V. Smith is noted in the footnote as the work referred to] that of a lady who wrote very many years ago, and who in her writings, so mixed up fiction with what was true, that it was difficult to determine where the one ended and the other began no woman who really was a Mormon and lived in Polygamy ever wrote the history of her own personal experience. Books have been published, and narratives have appeared in the magazines and journals, purporting to be written by Mormon wives; it is, however, perhaps, unnecessary for me to state that, notwithstanding such narratives may be imposed upon the Gentile world as genuine, that they were written by persons outside the Mormon faith would in a moment be detected by any intelligent Saint who took the trouble to peruse them. [161]

So, we must remember that this work is not regarded as generally reliable today, and it was not regarded as reliable even by the Church's enemies in the 19th century.

The claim

The source for this claim is an anti-Mormon book. The relevant passage reads:

The Prophet had sent some time before this, three men, Law, Foster and Jacobs, on missions, and they had just returned, and found their wives blushing under the prospective honors of spiritual wifeism; and another woman, Mrs. Buel [sic], had left her husband, a Gentile, to grace the Prophet's retinue, on horseback, when he reviewed the Nauvoo Legion. I heard the latter woman say afterwards in Utah, that she did not know whether Mr. Buel [sic] or the Prophet was the father of her son. These men [Law, Foster and Jacobs] established a press in Nauvoo, to expose his alleged vicious teachings and practices, which a revelation from Joseph destroyed. [162]

Errors of fact

As might be expected, then, there are many claims in this passage that are in error. We know that the following are false:

  • Ettie Smith claims that William Law, Robert D. Foster, and Henry Jacobs were on missions and that Joseph had proposed plural marriage to them. Law and Foster, in fact, never served missions. Henry Jacobs did serve a mission, but he was not gone on a mission when Joseph discussed plural marriage.
  • Foster and Law did participate in publishing the Nauvoo Expositor, but Henry Jacobs did not. He was and remained a faithful member of the Church.
  • The destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor was undertaken by the Nauvoo city council. Some members of that council were not members of the Church--it seems implausible to think that they would bow to a "revelation" to Joseph requiring its destruction. The decision was made, instead, after 8 hours of discussion and after consulting legal references.

Thus, in the single paragraph we have several basic errors of fact. Why should we believe the gossip of what Mrs. Buell is claimed to have said?

Such an admission would be out of character for a believing Utah woman of the 19th century

Furthermore, such an admission would be out of character for a believing Utah woman of the 19th century. As Todd Compton notes:

Talk of sexuality was avoided by the Victorian, puritanical Mormons; in diaries, the word 'pregnant' or 'expecting' is never or rarely used. Women are merely 'sick' until they have a child. Polyandry was rarely discussed openly by Mormon women. [163]

It is difficult for Joseph to have even had contact with her at the proper time to conceive a child

Fawn Brodie painted a fanciful scenario in which Joseph would have been able to potentially father a Buell child. However, she misread the historical information, and it is difficult, as Todd Compton has demonstrated, for Joseph to have even had contact with her at the proper time to conceive a child. [164] This would suggest that there were no grounds for Mrs. Buell—or a modern reader—to conclude that Joseph might have been the father.

Main article: Joseph could not have fathered Presendia Buell's child

Did Joseph Smith father children by polyandrous plural wife Prescindia Buell?

All those who have been definitively DNA tested so far—Oliver Buell, Mosiah Hancock, Zebulon Jacobs, Moroni Pratt, and Orrison Smith—have been excluded as children of Joseph Smith

Nauvoo Polygamy author George D. Smith tells his readers that "until decisive DNA testing of possible [Joseph] Smith descendants—daughters as well as sons—from plural wives can be accomplished, ascertaining whether Smith fathered children with any of his plural wives remains hypothetical" (pp. 228–29, cf. p. 473). This is true, but G. D. Smith fails to tell us that all those who have been definitively tested so far—Oliver Buell, Mosiah Hancock, Zebulon Jacobs, Moroni Pratt, and Orrison Smith—have been excluded. Would he have neglected, I wonder, to mention a positive DNA test?

The consequences of George D. Smith's less-than-rigorous approach to sources becomes clear in the case of Oliver Buell, son of Presendia.[165] Huntington Buell, one of Joseph’s polyandrous plural wives. Fawn Brodie was the first to suggest that Oliver Buell was Joseph’s son, and she was so convinced (based on photographic evidence)[166]Fawn Brodie to Dale Morgan, Letter, 24 March 1945, Dale Morgan papers, Marriott Library, University of Utah; cited by Todd Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives and Polygamy: A Critical View," in Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie and Joseph Smith in Retrospect, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), 166.</ref> In a footnote, G. D. Smith notes that Todd Compton "considers it improbable that Joseph and Presendia would have found time together during the brief window of opportunity after his release from prison in Missouri" (p. 80 n. 63).[167]

The geography

This slight nod toward an opposite point of view is inadequate, however. G. D. Smith does not mention and hence does not confront the strongest evidence. Compton’s argument against Joseph’s paternity does not rest just on a "narrow window" of opportunity but on the fact that Brodie seriously misread the geography required by that window. It is not merely a question of dates. Brodie would have Joseph travel west from his escape near Gallatin, Davies County, Missouri, to Far West in order to meet Lucinda, and then on to Illinois toward the east. This route would require Joseph and his companions to backtrack while fleeing from custody in the face of an active state extermination order.[168] Travel to Far West would also require them to travel near the virulently anti-Mormon area of Haun’s Mill, along Shoal Creek.[169] Yet by April 22 Joseph was in Illinois, having been slowed by traveling "off from the main road as much as possible"[170]:320-321 "both by night and by day."[170]:327 This seems an implausible time for Joseph to be conceiving a child. Furthermore, it is evident that Far West was evacuated by other church leaders, "the committee on removal," and not under the Prophet’s direction. Joseph did not regain the Saints until reaching Quincy, Illinois, contrary to Brodie’s misreading.[170]:315, 319, 322-23, 327 Timing is the least of the problems with G. D. Smith’s theory.

Despite Brodie’s enthusiasm, few other authors have included Oliver on their list of possible children.[171] With so many authors ranged against him, G. D. Smith ought not to act as if Compton’s analysis is merely about dates.

The DNA

G. D. Smith also soft-pedals the most vital evidence—the DNA.[172] He makes no mention in the main text that Oliver’s paternity has been definitively ruled out by DNA testing. This admission is confined to a footnote, and its impact is minimized by its placement. After noting Compton’s disagreement with the main text’s suggestion that Oliver might be Joseph’s son, G. D. Smith writes, "There is no DNA connection," and cites a Deseret News article. He immediately follows this obtuse phrasing with a return to Compton, who finds it "‘unlikely, though not impossible, that Joseph Smith was the actual father of another Buell child,’ John Hiram, Presendia’s seventh child during her marriage to Buell and born in November 1843" (p. 80 n. 63). Thus the most salient fact—that Joseph is certainly not Oliver's father—is sandwiched between a vicarious discussion with Compton about whether Oliver or John could be Joseph’s sons. Since G. D. Smith knows there is definitive evidence against Joseph’s paternity in Oliver’s case, why mention the debate at all only to hide the answer in the midst of a long endnote? That Brodie is so resoundingly rebutted on textual, historical, and genetic grounds provides a cautionary lesson in presuming that her certainty counts for much.[173]

Maybe another Buell child?

Two pages later, G. D. Smith again tells us of a Buell child being sealed to a proxy for Joseph with "wording [that] hints that it might have been Smith’s child." "It is not clear," he tells us, "which of her children it might have been" (p. 82). In fact, what is clear is that he has not assimilated the implications of the DNA data. John Hiram, the seventh child about whom Compton is skeptical, is the only other option. Yet the only evidence for this child belonging to Joseph is Ettie V. Smith’s account in the anti-Mormon Fifteen Years among the Mormons (1859), which claimed that Presendia said she did not know whether Joseph or her first husband was John Hiram’s father.[174] As Compton notes, such an admission is implausible, given the mores of the time.[175]

Besides being implausible, Ettie’s account gets virtually every other detail wrong—insisting that William Law, Robert Foster, and Henry Jacobs had all been sent on missions only to return to find Joseph preaching plural marriage. Ettie then has them establish the Expositor.[176] While Law and Foster were involved with the Expositor, they were not sent on missions. Jacobs had served missions but was a faithful Saint unconnected to the Expositor. He was also, contrary to Ettie’s claims, present when Joseph was sealed polyandrously to his (Jacobs’s) wife.

Even the anti-Mormon Fanny Stenhouse considered Ettie Smith to be a writer who "so mixed up fiction with what was true, that it was difficult to determine where one ended and the other began,"[177]:618 and a good example of how "the autobiographies of supposed Mormon women were [as] unreliable"[177]:x as other Gentile accounts, given her tendency to "mingl[e] facts and fiction" "in a startling and sensational manner."[177]:xi-xii

Brodie herself makes no mention of John Hiram as a potential child, going so far as to carelessly misread Ettie Smith’s remarks as referring to Oliver, not John Hiram. No other historian has argued that Buell was not the father.[178] There is no good evidence whatever that any of Presendia’s children were Joseph’s. It is not clear why G. D. Smith clings to the idea.

What is the current state of the evidence for proving or disproving that Joseph Smith had children by his plural wives?

As always, we are left where we began—with more suspicions and possibilities than certitudes

Few authors agree on which children should even be considered as Joseph's potential children. Candidates which some find overwhelmingly likely are dismissed—or even left unmentioned—by others. Recent scholars have included between one to four potential children as options. Of these, Josephine Lyon was the most persuasive, until her relationship to Joseph Smith was ultimately disproven through DNA testing. Orson W. Hyde died in infancy, and so can never be definitively excluded as a possible child, though the dates of conception argue against Joseph's paternity. Olive Gray Frost is mentioned in two sources as having a child by Joseph. Both she and the child died in Nauvoo, so no genetic evidence will ever be forthcoming.[179]

Table 2

Table 11‑2 Possible Children of Joseph Smith, Jr., by Plural Marriage

This table is in the same order as Table 1.

Key:
  • NM = Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 2nd edition (1971);
  • Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy" (1975);
  • VW=Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 2nd edition (1989);
  • Fo = Foster, Religion and Sexuality (1984);
  • Co = Compton, In Sacred Loneliness (1997);
  • Be = Bergera, "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists," (2005);
  • Ha = Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy (2013).

Notation:

  • Y – indicates the author considers the child a possible child of Joseph Smith, Jr.
  • N - indicates that author argues against this child being Joseph's child, or lists someone else as the father.
  • Ø - indicates that author does not mention the possibility (pro or con) of this being Joseph's child.

Endnote links for above table

Brodie;[180] Bachman;[181]; and Compton.[182]

Conclusions

As always, we are left where we began—with more suspicions and possibilities than certitudes. One's attitude toward Joseph and the Saints will influence, more than anything else, how these conflicting data are interpreted.

The uncertainty surrounding Joseph's offspring is even more astonishing when we appreciate how much such a child would have been valued. The Utah Church of the 19th century was anxious to prove that Joseph had practiced full plural marriage, and that their plural families merely continued what he started. Any child of Joseph's would have been treasured, and the family honoured. There was a firm expectation that even Joseph's sons by Emma would have an exalted place in the LDS hierarchy if they were to repent and return to the Church.[183] As Alma Allred noted, "Susa Young Gates indicated that [Brigham Young] wasn’t aware of such a child when she wrote that her father and the other apostles were especially grieved that Joseph did not have any issue in the Church."[184]

In 1884, George Q. Cannon bemoaned this lack of Joseph's posterity:

There may be faithful men who will have unfaithful sons, who may not be as faithful as they might be; but faithful posterity will come, just as I believe it will be the case with the Prophet Joseph's seed. To-day he has not a soul descended from him personally, in this Church. There is not a man bearing the Holy Priesthood, to stand before our God in the Church that Joseph was the means in the hands of God, of founding—not a man to-day of his own blood,—that is, by descent,—to stand before the Lord, and represent him among these Latter-day Saints.[185]

Brigham and Cannon, a member of the First Presidency, would have known of Joseph's offspring if any of the LDS leadership did. Yet, despite the religious and public relations value which such a child would have provided, they knew of none. It is possible that Joseph had children by his plural wives, but by no means certain. The data are surprisingly ephemeral.

Was the only purpose of polygamy to "multiply and replenish the earth" and "bear the souls of men"?

Doctrine and Covenants states that polygamy is for the purpose of multiplying and replenishing the earth

Doctrine and Covenants 132꞉63 states,

But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

The institution of the practice of polygamy was part of the "restoration of all things"

Polygamy was not permitted only for the purpose of procreation. Joseph established the practice of plural marriage as part of the "restoration of all things," (D&C 132: 40, 45) and introduced it to a number of others within the Church. This alone may have been the purpose of Joseph's initiation of the practice. The establishment of the practice ultimately did have the effect of "raising up seed"...just not through Joseph Smith.

As Brian Hales writes:

Joseph Smith dictated what is now Doctrine and Covenant section 132 on July 12, 1843. This revelation, along with his other statements, provide several reasons why he believed plural marriage could be introduced among the Latter-day Saints.

The earliest justification mentioned by the Prophet was as a part of the "restitution of all things" prophesied in Acts 3:19–21. Old Testament prophets practiced polygamy, so it could be a part of the restoration of "all things" (see D&C 132:40, 45).

Several members who knew Joseph Smith left accounts of him referring to a connection between the two during the Kirtland period.

Benjamin F. Johnson recalled in 1903: "In 1835 at Kirtland I learned from my Sisters Husband, Lyman R. Shirman,[186] who was close to the Prophet, and Received it from him. That the ancient order of plural marriage was again to be practiced by the Church."[187]

A few years later in 1841, Joseph Smith attempted to broach the topic publicly. Helen Mar Kimball remembered: "He [Joseph] astonished his hearers by preaching on the restoration of all things, and said that as it was anciently with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, so it would be again, etc."[188] Joseph Smith was a prophet-restorer, which helps to explain why the command to practice plural marriage has been labeled a "restoration," even though it is not a salvific ordinance.[189]

The institution of the practice of polygamy made available the blessings of eternal marriage to everyone

Brian Hales addresses one aspect of D&C 132 that may be overlooked in casual readings:

The fourth reason Joseph Smith gave for the practice of plural marriage dwarfs the other three explanations in significance because it deals with eternity. The message of D&C 132:16–17 states that men and women who are not sealed in eternal marriages during this life (or vicariously later) "remain separately and singly, without exaltation, in their saved condition, to all eternity."

In other words, "exaltation," the highest salvation, requires eternal marriage. No unmarried person can be exalted according to Joseph Smith’s teachings. Doctrine and Covenants section 132 seems to anticipate more worthy women than men as it approves a plurality of wives[190] and disallows a plurality of husbands.[191] Verse 63 states that a plurality of wives is "for their [the wives] exaltation in the eternal worlds." Section 132 supports that eternity was the primary focus of the Joseph’s marriage theology rather than plurality or sexuality. Eternal, rather than plural, marriage was his zenith doctrine. It appears that the crucial objective of polygamy on earth was to allow all worthy women to be eternally sealed to a husband and thus obtain all the ordinances needed for exaltation. According to these teachings, a plurality of wives in some form may be practiced in eternity, but not by all worthy men and women. We know that polygamy on earth is unequal and difficult, but we know nothing about how eternal marriage or eternal plural marriage might feel in eternity. Brigham Young acknowledged that eternal marriage (not plural marriage) is "the thread which runs from the beginning to the end" in God’s plan for His children:

The whole subject of the marriage [not plural marriage] relation is not in my reach, nor in any other man’s reach on this earth. It is without beginning of days or end of years; it is a hard matter to reach. We can tell some things with regard to it; it lays the foundation for worlds, for angels, and for the Gods; for intelligent beings to be crowned with glory, immortality, and eternal lives. In fact, it is the thread which runs from the beginning to the end of the holy Gospel of salvation—of the Gospel of the Son of God; it is from eternity to eternity.[192][193]

Can this be included in the interpretation of D&C 132: 63?

Another author commenting on this verse made a compelling case for this theology being put into D&C 132: 63:

Here is the text in its entirety, from verse 62: "for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfil the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men." [Emphasis added.] You want to get legalistic? Let’s get legalistic. Just for fun, let’s parse the living snot out of this.This clause begins with multiplying and replenishing as a primary justification. Then we get the word "and" thrown in there. You’re reading this as if it says "they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, in order to fulfil the promise…" But that’s not what it says.

"And" suggests we’re about to get a second reason, not a clarification of the first. In fact, a tight, strict-constructionist reading of this verse reveals three different and distinct reasons for plural marriage, not "only" the replenishment of the earth, [. . .]So let’s review the three reasons:

1. Multiply and replenish the earth.
[. . .] D&C 132 is unequivocal on this point, just as it is unequivocal on the two points that follow.

2. Fulfil [sic] "the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world."

What promise? This seems to have reference to the "restitution of all things, which God hath spoken by the mouth of all his holy prophets since the world began." (Acts 3:21) Joseph cited the need to restore ancient practices to prepare for the Second Coming as a justification for polygamy, and this verse provides a credible scriptural context for him to do so. So just relying on this phrase – plural marriage is acceptable because it fulfills God’s promises – would be justification enough for the practice, at least according to D&C 132.
3. For "their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men."

Oh, this one’s my favorite. Notice the emphasis I added on the "that." The word appears there to create a conditional clause. You claim the bearing of souls is the same thing as multiplying and replenishing the earth, but the actual text insists that the bearing of the souls of men will only be made possible by "exaltation in the eternal worlds." This is a promise of eternal increase, of bearing souls after the earth is no longer around to be replenished. Big, big difference.

And right here, with Reason #3, we have a clear rationale and justification for Joseph being sealed to women with whom he made no attempts to multiply and replenish the earth – i.e. no sex.[194]

See also Brian Hales' discussion
Both modern and 19th century members of the Church have proposed a variety of explanations for the practice of plural marriage. Not all of these suggestions can be supported by the available data.
Joseph identified four reasons for the restoration of plural marriage.
Many are quick to declare that Joseph's polygamy sprang from religious extremism and/or sexual desire. This article explores the difficulties that Joseph had with plural marriage, and evidence for what truly motivated his acts.
Why did early members of the Church practice polygamy? Were they all dupes? Easily manipulated? Religious fanatics who believed Joseph could do no wrong? This article explores the initial reactions and eventual decisions made by the first generation of polygamists in Nauvoo.


Why would Joseph Smith be sealed to other men's wives?

Summary: Why would Joseph Smith be sealed to other men's wives? Some of these men were even active members of the Church. Were these marriages for time or only for eternity? Were these marriages consumated? Why did these women continue to live with the husbands after being sealed to Joseph Smith?

Question: Were there sexual relations in Joseph's marriages to women with living husbands?

Summary: There is no good evidence for sexual relations in polyandrous sealings.
See also Brian Hales' discussion
Some wonder if sexual relations were included in Joseph Smith’s plural marriages. The answer is yes or no, depending upon the type of plural marriage. Those marriages, often called “sealings,” were of two types. Some were for this life and the next (called “time-and-eternity”) and could include sexuality on earth. Others were limited to the next life (called “eternity-only”) and did not allow intimacy in mortality. Overall, evidence indicates that less than half of Joseph Smith’s polygamous unions were consummated and sexual relations in the others occurred infrequently.
It appears the Prophet experienced sexual relations with less than half of the women sealed to him. There is no credible evidence that Joseph had sex with three subgroups of his plural wives: (1) fourteen-year-old wives, (2) non-wives (or women to whom he was not married), and (3) legally married women who were experiencing conjugal relations with their civil husbands.
No children are known to have been born to Joseph and his plural wives.


Notes

  1. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Letter to John A. Young (1892); cited in Richard S. Van Wagoner, "Joseph and Marriage," Sunstone 10/ 9 (Issue #32 / January 1986): 32; also cited in Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 43; Richard S. Van Wagoner, "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 18/ 3 (Fall 1985): 77. (Need more citation info here [citation needed]).
  2. ↑ Richard L. Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 440.
  3. ↑ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 637. ( Index of claims )
  4. ↑ Alma Allred, "Review of Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness," (6 December 1999) (no pages).
  5. ↑ Gordon Irving, "The Law of Adoption: One Phase of the Development of the Mormon Concept of Salvation, 1830–1900," Brigham Young University Studies 14 no. 3 (Spring 1974), 294.
  6. ↑ Irving, "The Law of Adoption," 299–304.
  7. ↑ Alma Allred, "Review of Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness," (6 December 1999) (no pages).
  8. ↑ See Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives (Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith)," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998), 83–84. [67–104] They criticize Compton's In Sacred Loneliness on these grounds.
  9. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 383.
  10. ↑ Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 2: History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 362.
  11. ↑ Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 1: History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 423.
  12. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Utah Genealogical and Historical Magazine (July 1926): 197.
  13. ↑ Lightner, 198–199.
  14. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner to Emeline B. Wells, summer 1905, LDS Archives; cited by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 65.
  15. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Autobiography, Susa Young Gates Collection, UHI, 18–22, 24–24-25; cited B. Carmon Hardy (editor), Doing the Works of Abraham: Mormon Polygamy, Its origin, practice and demise, Vol. 9 of Kingdom in the West Series: The Mormons and the American Frontier (series editor Will Bagley), (Norman, Oklahoma: The Arthur H. Clark Company, 2007), 47. ISBN 0870623443. ISBN 978-0870623448.
  16. ↑ Lightner: 202–203.
  17. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Letter to Emeline B. Wells (1880); cited in Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 43. ; Van Wagoner, "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo," 77; Van Wagoner, "Joseph and Marriage," 32.
  18. ↑ Anderson and Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives, 76. They argue against her inclusion.
  19. ↑ Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy Before the Death of Joseph Smith,” (1975) (unpublished M.A. thesis, Purdue University), 108.
  20. ↑ Todd M. Compton, "Truth, Honesty and Moderation in Mormon History: A Response to Anderson, Faulring and Bachman’s Reviews of in Sacred Loneliness," (July 2001).
  21. ↑ Biographical information from Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 273–283.
  22. ↑ [citation needed]; cited in Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 283.
  23. ↑ [citation needed]; cited in Van Wagoner, "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo," 78; Van Wagoner, "Joseph and Marriage," 32.
  24. ↑ [citation needed]; cited in George D. Smith, "Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841–46: A Preliminary Demographic Report," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 27/ 1 (Spring 1994): 21; Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 122.
  25. ↑ Emeline B. Wells (Need more citation info here).; cited in Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 122.
  26. ↑ Daniel H. Wells, Letter to Joseph F. Smith, 25 June 1888; cited in Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 424.
  27. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 174–187.
  28. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 234.
  29. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 238–239.
  30. ↑ J. GI SON DIVINE [Sidney Rigdon], "To the Sisters of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints," Latter Day Saint's Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh) 1/10 (15 March 1845): 154–158.
  31. ↑ William Hall, Abominations of Mormonism Exposed; Containing Many Facts and Doctrines Concerning That Singular People, During Seven Year's Membership with Them; from 1840 to 1847 (Cincinnati: I. Hart, 1852), 113.
  32. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 239.
  33. ↑ See History of the Church, 3:345. Volume 3 link Brigham H. Roberts, Comprehensive History of the Church (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1965), 2:24–25n12. GospeLink Wilford Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff’s Journal, 9 vols., ed., Scott G. Kenny (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1985), 1:340 (journal entry dated 25 June 1839). ISBN 0941214133.
  34. ↑ See Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 238.
  35. ↑ Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19, or the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy (Hartford, Conn.: Custin, Gilman & Company, 1876), 324–326.
  36. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 243.: "Marinda was sealed to Orson Hyde, not Smith, for time and eternity on January 11, 1846."
  37. ↑ John D. Lee, Mormonism Unveiled; or, the Life and Confessions of the Late Mormon Bishop, John D. Lee; (Written by Himself) Embracing the History of Mormonism ... With an Exposition of the Secret History, Signs, Symbols and Crimes of the Mormon Church. Also the True History of the Horrible Butchery Known as the Mountain Meadows Massacre (St. Louis: Bryan, Brand, 1877), 147.
  38. ↑ Need more citation info here [citation needed]
  39. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 240–242.
  40. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 230–243.
  41. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 249.
  42. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 548.
  43. ↑ Compton, "Truth, Honesty and Moderation," (July 2001).
  44. ↑ See Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy Before the Death of Joseph Smith,” (1975) (unpublished M.A. thesis, Purdue University), 113–115.
  45. ↑ Anderson and Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives (Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith)," [citation needed]
  46. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 262.
  47. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 263–264.
  48. ↑ Allen L. Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young," in FAIR Conference (Salt Lake City, Utah: FAIR, 1st draft, 2006). I have a first draft of Wyatt’s paper that contains additional quotes and references, for which I am grateful.
  49. ↑ Oa J. Cannon, "History of Henry Bailey Jacobs," (L. Tom Perry Special Collections, Brigham Young University, n.d.), 1; cited by Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young," (emphasis added). See also Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 44; Van Wagoner, "Mormon Polyandry in Nauvoo," 78; Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 80.
  50. ↑ Cannon, "History of Henry Bailey Jacobs," 5; cited in Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 44.
  51. ↑ Interview of John Wight [RLDS] with Zina D.H. Young, October 1, 1898, "Evidence from Zina D. Huntington-Young," Saints’ Herald, 52 (11 January 1905), 29; cited in Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young."
  52. ↑ Autobiography of Zina D. Young, no date, part of the Zina Card Brown Family Collection (1806-1972), LDS Church Archives, MS 4780, box 2, folder 17, cited by Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young,"; John Wight with Zina D.H. Young, 1 October 1898, "Evidence from Zina D. Huntington-Young," Saints Herald, 52 (11 January 1905): 28
  53. ↑ Todd Compton calls this a "church taboo…especially [with] cases involving highly visible leaders such as a stake president" (180). Compton leaves unmentioned that a caution against using non-believers' courts to settle differences between Christians goes back at least to the Pauline epistles (see 1 Corinthians 6:1–8).
  54. ↑ R. Scott Lloyd, "http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865656112/Joseph-Smith-apparently-was-not-Josephine-Lyons-father-Mormon-History-Association-speaker-says.html?pg=all "Joseph Smith apparently was not Josephine Lyon's father, Mormon History Association speaker says,"] Deseret News (13 June 2016)
  55. ↑ Brian C. Hales, "The Joseph Smith-Sylvia Sessions Plural Sealing: Polyandry or Polygyny?" Mormon Historical Studies 9/1 (Spring 2008), 41–57. [41–57] See also Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 349–376..
  56. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 177–186.
  57. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 464 467.
  58. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 464,472.
  59. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 464,473.
  60. ↑ Kate B. Carter, ed., Isaiah M[oses] Coombs from His Diary and Journal (Salt Lake City, Utah: published by Daughters of Utah Pioneers through Utah Printing Company, n.d.), 339, italics added.
  61. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 393.
  62. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 396–397.
  63. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 397–398.
  64. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 404–405.
  65. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 405–406.
  66. ↑ Brian C. Hales has taken this stance strongly. See: Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 303–474. He responds to the most extensive attempt to argue otherwise in Brain C. Hales, "A Response to D. Michael Quinn's 'The Evidence for the Sexual Side of Joseph Smith's Polygamy'," (25 August 2012).
  67. ↑ Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 43–44, and 43n43.
  68. ↑ Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community, Illini Book Edition ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984 [1981]), 157–158.. Foster notes that "there are a number of family traditions in Utah of children by plural wives of Joseph Smith, I have not been able to investigate them closely enough to determine their possible validity" (311n116). Foster then cites Brodie for examples of such allegations. Foster's work cannot be considered an independent examination of the evidence for or against the paternity of specific individuals.
  69. ↑ Bergera writes that four "may or may not" have been fathered by Joseph, citing Todd Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives and Polygamy: A Critical View," in Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie and Joseph Smith in Retrospect, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), xxx. as the authority. See Gary James Bergera, "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841–44," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 38/ 3 (Fall 2005): 49–50n115. Interestingly, Compton's article lists only one of these four (Josephine Fisher) as a likely child of Joseph's—Bergera's reference does not support his claim.
  70. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 298–299.
  71. ↑ Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 345. ( Index of claims )
  72. ↑ Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy Before the Death of Joseph Smith,” (1975) (unpublished M.A. thesis, Purdue University), 140.
  73. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 172.
  74. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 301–302, 345–346, 470–471.
  75. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140.
  76. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 172.
  77. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 167–168. gives the following data which argue for the 1840 birthdate: Prescinda's genealogy records, Essom's Pioneers and Prominent Men of Utah, "A Venerable Woman," Women's Exponent, Prescinda's holographic autobiography. Only Augusta Joyce Crocheron, Representative Women of Deseret mentions the 1839 date, saying merely, "About this time' her son Oliver was born" (italics added). Clearly the 1840 date has much better attestation.
  78. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 301–302, 345, 460–462. Brodie was so convinced of Joseph's paternity, that she wrote "If Oliver Buell isn't a Smith them I'm no Brimhall [her mother's family]." - Fawn Brodie to Dale Morgan, Letter, 24 March 1945, Dale Morgan papers, Marriott Library, University of Utah; cited by Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 166. Compton devastates Brodie's circumstantial case for Buell as a child of Joseph (166–173), and DNA has definitively vindicated his skepticism.
  79. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 137–138.
  80. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 166–173.
  81. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139. suggests that this child is more likely than Oliver to be Joseph's, but he remains skeptical.
  82. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 167.
  83. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464.
  84. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139.
  85. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 164.
  86. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 465.
  87. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 164.
  88. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 467.
  89. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy", 140}}
  90. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  91. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  92. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464.
  93. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139.
  94. ↑ Compton points out that "It is striking that Marinda had no children while Orson was on his mission to Jerusalem [15 April 1840–7 December 1842], then became pregnant soon after Orson returned home. (He arrived in Nauvoo on December 7, 1842, and Marinda bore Orson Washington Hyde on November 9, 1843). – Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  95. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464.
  96. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139–140.
  97. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  98. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140–141.
  99. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 172.
  100. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464.
  101. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139–140.
  102. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  103. ↑ R. Scott Lloyd, "Joseph Smith apparently was not Josephine Lyon's father, Mormon History Association speaker says," Deseret News (13 June 2016)
  104. ↑ See Ugo A. Perego, Martin Bodner, Alessandro Raveane, Scott R. Woodward, Francesco Montinaro, Walther Parson, and Alessandro Achilli, "Resolving a 150-year-old Paternity Case in Mormon History Using DTC Autosomal DNA Testing of Distant Relatives," Forensic Science International: Genetics, June 6, 2019. doi:10.1016/j.fsigen.2019.05.007.
  105. ↑ Josephine R Fisher, affidavit, 24 February 1915, LDS Archives.
  106. ↑ Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840–1910 (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 2001), 30. ISBN 0252026810.; citing Rex Eugene Cooper, Promises Made to the Fathers: Mormon Covenant Organization (Publications in Mormon Studies), (University of Utah Press, 1990), 143n1}}
  107. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 142.
  108. ↑ Josephine R Fisher, affidavit, 24 February 1915, LDS Archives.
  109. ↑ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 183. ( Index of claims )
  110. ↑ Kate B. Carter, ed., Isaiah M[oses] Coombs from His Diary and Journal (Salt Lake City, Utah: published by Daughters of Utah Pioneers through Utah Printing Company, n.d.), 345}}
  111. ↑ Carter, ed., Isaiah M[oses] Coombs from His Diary and Journal, 350–351.
  112. ↑ Carter, ed., Isaiah M[oses] Coombs from His Diary and Journal, 339.
  113. ↑ See Brian C. Hales, "The Joseph Smith-Sylvia Sessions Plural Sealing: Polyandry or Polygyny?" Mormon Historical Studies 9/1 (Spring 2008), 41–57. [41–57] and Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 1: History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 349–376.
  114. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 293, 297–298.
  115. ↑ Angus M. Cannon, Statement of an Interview with Joseph Smith, President of the ‘Reorganites,’ October 12, 1905," LDS Archives; cited by Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 44n43}}
  116. ↑ Lucy Walker Kimball, "Recollections," LDS Archives, 41; cited in Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139.n165}} from Rodney W. Walker and Noel W. Stevenson, Ancestry and Descendants of John Walker [1794–1869] of Vermont and Utah, Descendants of Robert Walker, and Emigrant of 1632 from England to Boston, Mass. (Kaysville, Utah: Inland Printing Co., 1953), 35. Portions also cited by Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 44n43
  117. ↑ This need remains to the present. Despite the fact that most RLDS historians have accepted that Joseph Smith did teach and practice plural marriage, some members remain unconvinced. Reorganization conservative and voice for many "fundamentalist" members of the Reorganization Richard Price continues to insist that "The truth [that Joseph did not teach plural marriage] is found in Joseph's denials, and the fact that he had no children by any woman but his wife Emma." – Richard and Pamela Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy—Vision Articles [from Vision Magazine, Vol. 32–46, 48–51, 53–56], vol. 2 (E-book: Price Publishing Company, n.d.)
  118. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140–141.; citing Lucy M. Smith, written statement (18 May 1892), in Papers of George A. Smith family, Special Collections, Marriot Library, University of Utah, Salt Lake City. Bachman notes that a second, undated, signed statement exists which tells "essentially the same story" in the Wilford C. Wood Museum in Bountiful, Utah. (See Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140–141n175.)
  119. ↑ Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, "Remarks," given at BYU 14 April 1905, typescript, BYU.
  120. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  121. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464. gives his birth as 1845, though there is no footnote indicating her source. Frank's death certificate lists his birth in 1846}} Compton follows the date of 1846, citing Howard H. Barron, Orson Hyde: Missionary-Apostle-Colonizer (Salt Lake City: Horizon, 1977), 134 and Ancestral File.
  122. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 6:286. Volume 6 link Times and Seasons 5 (15 September 1844): 651}}
  123. ↑ Andrew Jenson, LDS Church Chronology: 1805–1914 (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Co., 1914), entry for 6 August 1844. GospeLink.
  124. ↑ Frank H. Hyde, State of Utah--Death Certificate, State Board of Health File No. 967300}} Online at <http://wiki.hanksplace.net/index.php/Image:FrankHHyde.jpg>
  125. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 249.
  126. ↑ Ugo A. Perego and Scott R. Woodward, "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith" (paper presented at the Mormon History Association Conference, 28 May 2005); see also Ugo A. Perego et al., "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith Jr.: Genealogical Applications," Journal of Mormon History 32/ 2 (Summer 2005); Carrie A. Moore, "DNA Tests Rule out 2 as Smith Descendants," Deseret Morning News 10 November 2007): Michael DeGroote, "DNA solves a Joseph Smith mystery," Deseret News (9 July 2011). Don Alonzo Smith was likewise ruled out; see letter from Perego to Hales on 6 December 2011 cited in Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 296, note i.
  127. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 301. Brodie includes the picture between 298–299}}
  128. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 138.
  129. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 3:320–321. Volume 3 link
  130. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 168–171.
  131. ↑ See Clark V. Johnson, "Northern Missouri," in S. Kent Brown, Donald Q. Cannon, Richard H. Jackson (editors), Historical Atlas of Mormonism (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 42}}
  132. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 170.
  133. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 3:320–321. Volume 3 link
  134. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 3:327. Volume 3 link
  135. ↑ Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957), 3:315, 319, 322_323, 327. Volume 3 link
  136. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 297.
  137. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 138 makes similar points.
  138. ↑ See Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 164–165.
  139. ↑ Michael DeGroote, "DNA solves a Joseph Smith mystery," Deseret News (9 July 2011).
  140. ↑ Nelson Winch Green, Fifteen Years among the Mormons: Being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, Late of Great Salt Lake City; a Sister of One of the Mormon High Priests, She Having Been Personally Acquainted with Most of the Mormon Leaders, and Long in the Confidence of The "Prophet," Brigham Young (New York: H. Dayton, Publishers, 1860 [1858]), 34-35.
  141. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 166.
  142. ↑ Green, Fifteen Years Among the Mormons, 34-35.
  143. ↑ Mrs. T.B.H. [Fanny] Stenhouse, "Tell It All": The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism (Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington & Company, 1875 [1874]), 618, the footnote confirms the identity of the author as Ettie V. Smith..
  144. ↑ Stenhouse, "Tell It All", x.
  145. ↑ Stenhouse, "Tell It All", xi-xii.
  146. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 298.
  147. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 298. Hales cites Joseph Smith III to Bro. E.C. Brand, 26 January 1894, 65}}
  148. ↑ Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Vol. 1, 298.
  149. ↑ Wilhelm Wyl, Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends (Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886), 57. Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19, or the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy (Hartford, Conn.: Custin, Gilman & Company, 1876), 66–67. Discussed in Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140. Also in Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 34–35.
  150. ↑ Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 314–315.
  151. ↑ This bit of folklore is explored in Maureen Ursenbach Beecher et al., "Emma and Eliza and the Stairs," Brigham Young University Studies 22/ 1 (Fall 1982): 86–96}} RLDS author Richard Price also argues that the physical layout of the Mansion House makes the story as reported by Charles C. Rich unlikely, in "Eliza Snow Was Not Pushed Down the Mansion House Stairs," in Richard Price. "Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy: How Men Nearest the Prophet Attached Polygamy to His Name in Order to Justify Their Own Polygamous Crimes." (n.p.: Price Publishing Company, 2001), chapter 9 <http://restorationbookstore.org/jsfp-index.htm > Price's dogmatic insistence that Joseph never taught plural marriage, however, cannot be sustained by the evidence.
  152. ↑ See discussion in Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 140n73.
  153. ↑ Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 136.
  154. ↑ See, for example, Eliza R. Snow, Woman's Exponent 8 (1 November 1879): 85: "So far as Sister Emma personally is concerned, I would gladly have been silent and let her memory rest in peace, had not her misguided son, through a sinister policy, branded her name with gross wickedness [by quoting her as denying plural marriage]."
  155. ↑ R. Scott Lloyd, ""Joseph Smith apparently was not Josephine Lyon's father, Mormon History Association speaker says," Deseret News (13 June 2016)
  156. ↑ Brian and Laura Hales, "Sylvia Sessions," josephsmithspolygamy.org off-site
  157. ↑ Andrew Jenson Papers, MS 17956, CHL, box 49, folder 16.
  158. ↑ Brian and Laura Hales, "Sylvia Sessions," Note 28 josephsmithspolygamy.org off-site
  159. ↑ This type of error is not new in later anti-Mormon documents. An 1884 document claiming to be by Sarah Pratt (who was by then antagonistic to the Church) describes her as the wife of "Orson Hyde," rather than "Orson Pratt." This error is corrected three times, but the error stands in three other cases. See discussion in Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 1: History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 577. The document cited is [Anonymous], "Workings of Mormonism Related By Mrs. Orson Pratt," typescript of holograph, MS 4048, LDS Church History Library. Sarah Pratt's role, if any, in creating the document is not known. (See Hales, 2:462).
  160. ↑ Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 298–299, 308, 345. ( Index of claims ); Nelson Winch Green, Fifteen Years among the Mormons: Being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, Late of Great Salt Lake City; a Sister of One of the Mormon High Priests, She Having Been Personally Acquainted with Most of the Mormon Leaders, and Long in the Confidence of The "Prophet," Brigham Young (New York: H. Dayton, Publishers, 1860 [1858]), 34–35.; George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: "...but we called it celestial marriage" (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008), 82. ( Index of claims , (Detailed book review))
  161. ↑ Stenhouse, "Tell It All", 618.
  162. ↑ Nelson Winch Green, Fifteen Years among the Mormons: Being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith, Late of Great Salt Lake City; a Sister of One of the Mormon High Priests, She Having Been Personally Acquainted with Most of the Mormon Leaders, and Long in the Confidence of The "Prophet," Brigham Young (New York: H. Dayton, Publishers, 1860 [1858]), 34–35.
  163. ↑ Todd Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives and Polygamy: A Critical View," in Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie and Joseph Smith in Retrospect, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst (Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press, 1996), 166.
  164. ↑ Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 670–673. ( Index of claims ) Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 166–170.
  165. ↑ Presendia’s name is also spelled Presenda or Prescindia in contemporary documents. We here use the spelling adopted by her autobiography, also followed by Compton and G. D. Smith.
  166. ↑ Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 301. Brodie includes the picture between 298–99. ( Index of claims ) that she wrote, "If Oliver Buell isn’t a Smith then I’m no Brimhall," which was her mother’s name.
  167. ↑ Citing Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 670, 673. ( Index of claims )
  168. ↑ See Clark V. Johnson, "Northern Missouri," in Historical Atlas of Mormonism, ed. S. Kent Brown, Donald Q. Cannon, and Richard H. Jackson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 42.
  169. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 170.
  170. ↑ 170.0 170.1 170.2 Joseph Smith, History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 7 volumes, edited by Brigham H. Roberts, (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1957). Volume 3 link
  171. ↑ The following all fail to include Oliver Buell as a potential child of Joseph’s: Danel Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 137–38; Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 43–44 and 43 n. 43; Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 157–58; Gary James Bergera, "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841–44," Dialogue 38/3 (Fall 2005): 49–50 n. 115.
  172. ↑ Carrie A. Moore, "DNA tests rule out 2 as Smith descendants," Deseret Morning News, (10 November 2007), off-site (accessed 2 December 2008); Ugo A. Perego et al., "Resolving the Paternities of Oliver N. Buell and Mosiah L. Hancock through DNA," The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal 28 (2008): 128–36. For background information, see Ugo A. Perego and Scott R. Woodward, "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith" (paper presented at the Mormon History Association Conference, 28 May 2005); Ugo A. Perego et al., "Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith Jr.: Genealogical Applications," Journal of Mormon History 32/2 (Summer 2005): 70–88.
  173. ↑ Elsewhere G. D. Smith actually uses an appeal to the fact that Brodie was persuaded by a tale as evidence! (p. 131).
  174. ↑ Green, Fifteen Years Among the Mormons, 34-35.
  175. ↑ Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives," 166.
  176. ↑ Green, Fifteen Years, 34–35.
  177. ↑ 177.0 177.1 177.2 Mrs. T.B.H. [Fanny] Stenhouse, "Tell It All": The Story of a Life's Experience in Mormonism (Hartford, Conn.: A.D. Worthington & Company, 1875 [1874]), The footnote confirms the identity of the author as Ettie V. Smith.
  178. ↑ See Bachman, "Plural marriage," 139; Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 43–44 and 43 n. 43; Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 157–58; Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives," 167; Gary James Bergera, "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841–44," Dialogue 38/3 (Fall 2005): 49–50 n. 115.
  179. ↑ Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy Volume 1: History (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 298.
  180. ↑ Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 345, 464.
  181. ↑ Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy," 139.
  182. ↑ Compton points out that "It is striking that Marinda had no children while Orson was on his mission to Jerusalem [15 April 1840–7 December 1842], then became pregnant soon after Orson returned home. (He arrived in Nauvoo on December 7, 1842, and Marinda bore Orson Washington Hyde on November 9, 1843}}) – Compton, "Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith's Plural Wives," 165.
  183. ↑ See, for example, Brigham Young, "I have a Few Times in My Life Undertaken to Preach to a Traveling Congregation, but My Sermons have been Very Short, and Far Between," (7 October 1866) from Brigham Young Addresses, 1865–1869, A Chronological Compilation of Known Addresses of the Prophet Brigham Young, edited by Elden J. Watson (Salt Lake City), Vol. 5; cited in The Essential Brigham Young, 187–191; Brigham Young, "Increase of the Saints Since Joseph Smith's Death, &c.," (24 August 1872) reported by David W. Evans, Journal of Discourses Vol. 15 (London: Latter-day Saint's Book Depot, 1873), 136}}
  184. ↑ Alma Allred, "Review of Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness," (6 December 1999) (no pages).
  185. ↑ JD 25:369. (19 Oct 1884). wiki
  186. ↑ Sherman was a close friend and devout follower of Joseph Smith. He was called as an apostle but died before learning of the appointment. See Lyndon W. Cook, "Lyman Sherman—Man of God, Would-Be Apostle," 121–24.
  187. ↑ Dean R. Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets: An Analysis of the Letter of Benjamin F. Johnson to George F. Gibbs (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon, 1976), 37–38.
  188. ↑ Helen Mar Whitney, Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph: A Reply to Joseph Smith [III], Editor of the Lamoni Iowa "Herald," (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882), 11; see also Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo, Utah: Bookcraft, 1992), 142–43. See also Joseph A. Kelting, "Affidavit," March 1, 1894, images 11–16a; see also Kelting, "Statement," Juvenile Instructor 29 (May 1, 1894): 289–90.
  189. ↑ Brian Hales, "Plural Marriage Teachings" <http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/theology/joseph-smiths-teachings/#back_ajs-fn-id_4-56> (accessed 18 December 2018)
  190. ↑ See vv. 34, 37–39, 52, 55, 61–65.
  191. ↑ See vv. 41–42, 61–63.
  192. ↑ Brigham Young, October 6, 1854 Journal of Discourses, 2:90. Important in Brigham Young’s comments is his observation that the "marriage relation," referring to eternal marriage, not exclusively plural marriage, comprises the "foundation for worlds … and for Gods."
  193. ↑ Brian Hales, "Plural Marriage Teachings" <http://josephsmithspolygamy.org/theology/joseph-smiths-teachings/#link_ajs-fn-id_16-56> (accessed 17 December 2018)
  194. ↑ Jim Bennett "A Faithful Reply to the CES Letter from a former CES Employee" <https://canonizer.com/files/reply.pdf> (accessed 30 December 2018)
Articles about Plural marriage
Doctrinal foundation of plural marriage
Introduction of plural marriage
Plural marriage in Utah
End of plural marriage

Gospel Topics: "Divorce was therefore available to women who were unhappy in their marriages"

"Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah," Gospel Topics on LDS.org:

Church leaders recognized that plural marriages could be particularly difficult for women. Divorce was therefore available to women who were unhappy in their marriages; remarriage was also readily available.[1]

How were divorces formalized among Mormons on the frontier in the 19th century?

Some members of the Church remarried without obtaining a formal legal divorce

Some members of the Church remarried without obtaining a formal legal divorce. Was this adultery? Remarriage without a formal, legal divorce was the norm for the period, especially on the frontier and among the poor. These were the legal realities faced by nineteenth century Americans.

"Presentism" is an analytical fallacy in which past behavior is evaluated by modern standards or mores. Even worse than a historian's presentism is a historian exploiting the presentism of his readers. Critics do this repeatedly when they speak about legal issues. "Presentism," observed American Historical Association president Lynn Hunt, "at its worst, encourages a kind of moral complacency and self-congratulation. Interpreting the past in terms of present concerns usually leads us to find ourselves morally superior. . . . Our forbears constantly fail to measure up to our present-day standards." [2]

To remarry without a formal divorce was not an unusual thing in antebellum America

Louisa Rising married Edwin Woolley "without first divorcing her legal husband," the dust jacket of George D. Smith's Nauvoo Polygamy teases. We are reminded later that "though she was not divorced from her legal husband, she agreed to marry" (p. 345). Eleanor McLean also married Parley Pratt without divorcing her first husband. It appears that G. D. Smith hopes to capitalize on ignorance about nineteenth-century laws and practices regarding marriage and divorce. "From the standpoint of the legal historian," wrote one expert who is not a Latter-day Saint, "it is perhaps surprising that anyone prosecuted bigamy at all. Given the confusion over conflicting state laws on marriage, there were many ways to escape notice, if not conviction." [3] To remarry without a formal divorce was not an unusual thing in antebellum America.

Bigamy or, rather, serial monogamy (without divorce or death) was a common social experience in early America. Much of the time, serial monogamists were poor and transient people, for whom the property rights that came with a recognized marriage would not have been much of a concern, people whose lives only rarely intersected with the law of marriage. [4]

The legal apparatus for performing divorces was not always readily available

The Saints were often poor and spent most of their time on the frontier, where the legal apparatus of the state was particularly feeble. Women who had joined the church and traveled to Zion without their husbands were particularly likely to be poor, and also unlikely to be worried about property rights. Nor, not incidentally, were their husbands available for a formal divorce.

Does this mean that marriage in America was a free-for-all? Hardly, notes Nancy Cott:

When couples married informally, or reversed the order of divorce and remarriage, they were not simply acting privately, taking the law into their own hands. . . . A couple about to join or leave an intimate relationship looked for communal sanction. The surrounding local community provided the public oversight necessary. Without resort to the state apparatus, local informal policing by the community affirmed that marriage was a well-defined public institution as well as a contract made by consent. Carrying out the standard obligations of the marriage bargain—cohabitation, husband's support, wife's service—seems to have been much more central to the approbation of local communities at this time than how or when the marriage took place, and whether one of the partners had been married elsewhere before. [5]

It also should be remembered that because Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Latter-day Saint leaders exercised exclusive jurisdiction over celestial or plural marriages, marriages conducted under their supervision had as much (or more) formal oversight as many traditional marriages in America during the first half of the nineteenth century. Critics of the Church offer us none of this information or perspective—with the result that some readers might be horrified by the "loose" marriage practices of the Saints.

Was it normal not to obtain a formal civil divorce in 19th century America?

To remarry without a formal divorce was not an unusual thing in pre-Civil War America

Some critics of Mormonism like to emphasize that some LDS members did not receive civil divorces before remarrying—either monogamously or polygamously. They either state or imply that this shows the Saints' cavalier attitude toward the law.

The Saints were often poor and spent most of their time on the frontier, where the legal apparatus of the state was particularly feeble. Women who had joined the church and traveled to Zion without their husbands were particularly likely to be poor, and also unlikely to be worried about property rights. Critics usually tell us nothing of all this—with the result that some credulous readers might be horrified by the "loose" marriage practices of the Saints. It also should be remembered that because Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and other Latter-day Saint leaders exercised exclusive jurisdiction over celestial or plural marriages, marriages conducted under their supervision had as much (or more) formal oversight as many traditional marriages in America during the first half of the nineteenth century.

"From the standpoint of the legal historian," wrote one expert who is not a Latter-day Saint, "it is perhaps surprising that anyone prosecuted bigamy at all. Given the confusion over conflicting state laws on marriage, there were many ways to escape notice, if not conviction." [6]

Bigamy or, rather, serial monogamy (without divorce or death) was a common social experience in early America. Much of the time, serial monogamists were poor and transient people, for whom the property rights that came with a recognized marriage would not have been much of a concern, people whose lives only rarely intersected with the law of marriage. [7]

Nor, not incidentally, were their husbands available for a formal divorce.

Marriage in 19th century America was not a "free-for-all"

Does this mean that marriage in America was a free-for-all? Hardly, notes Nancy Cott:

When couples married informally, or reversed the order of divorce and remarriage, they were not simply acting privately, taking the law into their own hands. . . . A couple about to join or leave an intimate relationship looked for communal sanction. The surrounding local community provided the public oversight necessary. Without resort to the state apparatus, local informal policing by the community affirmed that marriage was a well-defined public institution as well as a contract made by consent. Carrying out the standard obligations of the marriage bargain—cohabitation, husband’s support, wife’s service—seems to have been much more central to the approbation of local communities at this time than how or when the marriage took place, and whether one of the partners had been married elsewhere before. [8]

Source(s) of the criticism
Critical sources

Was polygamy illegal in Nauvoo in the 1840s?

Summary: Contrary to popular belief, the plural marriages in Illinois were not illegal under the adultery statutes of the day

Did Joseph Smith violate marriage laws in Ohio by performing marriages for members who had not received formal divorces?

Summary: Formal divorces from the government were not required. That said, the marriage which receives the most criticism—of Newel Knight and Lydia Bailey—could not have been improper, since it was conducted after obtaining a license from the secular authorities and because Lydia's husband (who had abandoned her) later proved to be dead at the time. Ohio law also allowed spouses to consider themselves divorced and to remarry three years after an abandonment.

Notes

  1. ↑ "Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah," Gospel Topics on LDS.org (2013)
  2. ↑ Lynn Hunt, "Against Presentism," Perspectives 40/5 (May 2002); available online at http://www.historians.org/perspectives/issues/2002/0205/ (accessed 2 December 2008).
  3. ↑ Beverly J. Schwartzberg, "Grass Widows, Barbarians, and Bigamists: Fluid Marriage in Late Nineteenth-Century America" (PhD diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001), 51–52.
  4. ↑ Hendrik Harlog, Man & Wife in America: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 87.
  5. ↑ Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 37.
  6. ↑ Beverly J. Schwartzberg, "Grass Widows, Barbarians, and Bigamists: Fluid Marriage in Late Nineteenth-Century America" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2001), 51–52.
  7. ↑ Hendrik Harlog, Man & Wife in America: A History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 87
  8. ↑ Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), 37.

Notes


Retrieved from "http://104.237.154.152/answers/index.php?title=Joseph_Smith/Polygamy&oldid=120695"