Today was cold and cloudy most of the day, and very quiet here at the Carthage Visitors Center. Mom and I were up early and had our morning devotional together before our walk. We also cleaned the jail as part of our Monday responsibilities and then got ready for the day.
It was a very quiet day at the center and gave me an opportunity to study more about the life of the Prophet Joseph Smith. I have wanted to gain a better understanding of the teachings of Joseph Smith as the Prophet of the Restoration, and have wanted to understand as much as I could about the practice of plural marriage.
It seems like every history book about the life of Joseph touches very briefly on this subject, so I started my own research. Here is an article I found interesting, and wanted to post here for my posterity to better understand. It is one of the most challenging and controversial subjects in Church History, at least in my limited understanding, and I was grateful for the information noted here from an article posted on the Church website;
Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo
Latter-day Saints believe that monogamy—the marriage of one man and one woman—is the Lord’s standing law of marriage.
1
In biblical times, the Lord commanded some of His people to practice
plural marriage—the marriage of one man and more than one woman.
2
Some early members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints
also received and obeyed this commandment given through God’s prophets.
After receiving a revelation commanding him to practice plural
marriage, Joseph Smith married multiple wives and introduced the
practice to close associates. This principle was among the most
challenging aspects of the Restoration—for Joseph personally and for
other Church members. Plural marriage tested faith and provoked
controversy and opposition. Few Latter-day Saints initially welcomed the
restoration of a biblical practice entirely foreign to their
sensibilities. But many later testified of powerful spiritual
experiences that helped them overcome their hesitation and gave them
courage to accept this practice.
Although the Lord commanded the adoption—and later the cessation—of
plural marriage in the latter days, He did not give exact instructions
on how to obey the commandment. Significant social and cultural changes
often include misunderstandings and difficulties. Church leaders and
members experienced these challenges as they heeded the command to
practice plural marriage and again later as they worked to discontinue
it after Church President Wilford Woodruff issued an inspired statement
known as the Manifesto in 1890, which led to the end of plural marriage
in the Church. Through it all, Church leaders and members sought to
follow God’s will.
Many details about the early practice of plural marriage are unknown.
Plural marriage was introduced among the early Saints incrementally,
and participants were asked to keep their actions confidential. They did
not discuss their experiences publicly or in writing until after the
Latter-day Saints had moved to Utah and Church leaders had publicly
acknowledged the practice. The historical record of early plural
marriage is therefore thin: few records of the time provide details, and
later reminiscences are not always reliable. Some ambiguity will always
accompany our knowledge about this issue. Like the participants, we
“see through a glass, darkly” and are asked to walk by faith.
3
The Beginnings of Plural Marriage in the Church
The revelation on plural marriage was not written down until 1843,
but its early verses suggest that part of it emerged from Joseph Smith’s
study of the Old Testament in 1831. People who knew Joseph well later
stated he received the revelation about that time.
4
The revelation, recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 132, states that
Joseph prayed to know why God justified Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses,
David, and Solomon in having many wives. The Lord responded that He had
commanded them to enter into the practice.
5
Latter-day Saints understood that they were living in the latter
days, in what the revelations called the “dispensation of the fulness of
times.”
6
Ancient principles—such as prophets, priesthood, and temples—would be
restored to the earth. Plural marriage was one of those ancient
principles.
Polygamy had been permitted for millennia in many cultures and
religions, but, with few exceptions, was rejected in Western cultures.
7
In Joseph Smith’s time, monogamy was the only legal form of marriage in
the United States. Joseph knew the practice of plural marriage would
stir up public ire. After receiving the commandment, he taught a few
associates about it, but he did not spread this teaching widely in the
1830s.
8
When God commands a difficult task, He sometimes sends additional
messengers to encourage His people to obey. Consistent with this
pattern, Joseph told associates that an angel appeared to him three
times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural
marriage when he hesitated to move forward. During the third and final
appearance, the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with
destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully.
9
Fragmentary evidence suggests that Joseph Smith acted on the angel’s
first command by marrying a plural wife, Fanny Alger, in Kirtland, Ohio,
in the mid-1830s. Several Latter-day Saints who had lived in Kirtland
reported decades later that Joseph Smith had married Alger, who lived
and worked in the Smith household, after he had obtained her consent and
that of her parents.
10
Little is known about this marriage, and nothing is known about the
conversations between Joseph and Emma regarding Alger. After the
marriage with Alger ended in separation, Joseph seems to have set the
subject of plural marriage aside until after the Church moved to Nauvoo,
Illinois.
Plural Marriage and Eternal Marriage
The same revelation that taught of plural marriage was part of a
larger revelation given to Joseph Smith—that marriage could last beyond
death and that eternal marriage was essential to inheriting the fulness
that God desires for His children. As early as 1840, Joseph Smith
privately taught Apostle Parley P. Pratt that the “heavenly order”
allowed Pratt and his wife to be together “for time and all eternity.”
11
Joseph also taught that men like Pratt—who had remarried following the
death of his first wife—could be married (or sealed) to their wives for
eternity, under the proper conditions.
12
The sealing of husband and wife for eternity was made possible by the
restoration of priesthood keys and ordinances. On April 3, 1836, the
Old Testament prophet Elijah appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery
in the Kirtland Temple and restored the priesthood keys necessary to
perform ordinances for the living and the dead, including sealing
families together.
13
Marriages performed by priesthood authority could link loved ones to
each other for eternity, on condition of righteousness; marriages
performed without this authority would end at death.
14
Marriage performed by priesthood authority meant that the procreation
of children and perpetuation of families would continue into the
eternities. Joseph Smith’s revelation on marriage declared that the
“continuation of the seeds forever and ever” helped to fulfill God’s
purposes for His children.
15 This promise was given to all couples who were married by priesthood authority and were faithful to their covenants.
Plural Marriage in Nauvoo
For much of Western history, family “interest”—economic, political,
and social considerations—dominated the choice of spouse. Parents had
the power to arrange marriages or forestall unions of which they
disapproved. By the late 1700s, romance and personal choice began to
rival these traditional motives and practices.
16
By Joseph Smith’s time, many couples insisted on marrying for love, as
he and Emma did when they eloped against her parents’ wishes.
Latter-day Saints’ motives for plural marriage were often more
religious than economic or romantic. Besides the desire to be obedient, a
strong incentive was the hope of living in God’s presence with family
members. In the revelation on marriage, the Lord promised participants
“crowns of eternal lives” and “exaltation in the eternal worlds.”
17
Men and women, parents and children, ancestors and progeny were to be
“sealed” to each other—their commitment lasting into the eternities,
consistent with Jesus’s promise that priesthood ordinances performed on
earth could be “bound in heaven.”
18
The first plural marriage in Nauvoo took place when Louisa Beaman and Joseph Smith were sealed in April 1841.
19
Joseph married many additional wives and authorized other Latter-day
Saints to practice plural marriage. The practice spread slowly at first.
By June 1844, when Joseph died, approximately 29 men and 50 women had
entered into plural marriage, in addition to Joseph and his wives. When
the Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, at least 196 men and
521 women had entered into plural marriages.
20
Participants in these early plural marriages pledged to keep their
involvement confidential, though they anticipated a time when the
practice would be publicly acknowledged.
Nevertheless, rumors spread. A few men unscrupulously used these
rumors to seduce women to join them in an unauthorized practice
sometimes referred to as “spiritual wifery.” When this was discovered,
the men were cut off from the Church.
21
The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded
denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent
about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial”
plural marriage.
22
The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no marital law
other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that
individuals, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do so.
23
Joseph Smith and Plural Marriage
During the era in which plural marriage was practiced, Latter-day
Saints distinguished between sealings for time and eternity and sealings
for eternity only. Sealings for time and eternity included commitments
and relationships during this life, generally including the possibility
of sexual relations. Eternity-only sealings indicated relationships in
the next life alone.
Evidence indicates that Joseph Smith participated in both types of
sealings. The exact number of women to whom he was sealed in his
lifetime is unknown because the evidence is fragmentary.
24
Some of the women who were sealed to Joseph Smith later testified that
their marriages were for time and eternity, while others indicated that
their relationships were for eternity alone.
25
Most of those sealed to Joseph Smith were between 20 and 40 years of
age at the time of their sealing to him. The oldest, Fanny Young, was 56
years old. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s
close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to
Joseph several months before her 15th birthday. Marriage at such an age,
inappropriate by today’s standards, was legal in that era, and some
women married in their mid-teens.
26
Helen Mar Kimball spoke of her sealing to Joseph as being “for eternity
alone,” suggesting that the relationship did not involve sexual
relations.
27 After Joseph’s death, Helen remarried and became an articulate defender of him and of plural marriage.
28
Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other
single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were
already married.
29 Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone.
30 Other women left no records, making it unknown whether their sealings were for time and eternity or were for eternity alone.
There are several possible explanations for this practice. These
sealings may have provided a way to create an eternal bond or link
between Joseph’s family and other families within the Church.
31
These ties extended both vertically, from parent to child, and
horizontally, from one family to another. Today such eternal bonds are
achieved through the temple marriages of individuals who are also sealed
to their own birth families, in this way linking families together.
Joseph Smith’s sealings to women already married may have been an early
version of linking one family to another. In Nauvoo, most if not all of
the first husbands seem to have continued living in the same household
with their wives during Joseph’s lifetime, and complaints about these
sealings with Joseph Smith are virtually absent from the documentary
record.
32
These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter
plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma.
He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with
the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage
relationships.
33
This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel
reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after
he had entered into the practice.
34 After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.
Another possibility is that, in an era when life spans were shorter
than they are today, faithful women felt an urgency to be sealed by
priesthood authority. Several of these women were married either to
non-Mormons or former Mormons, and more than one of the women later
expressed unhappiness in their present marriages. Living in a time when
divorce was difficult to obtain, these women may have believed a sealing
to Joseph Smith would give them blessings they might not otherwise
receive in the next life.
35
The women who united with Joseph Smith in plural marriage risked
reputation and self-respect in being associated with a principle so
foreign to their culture and so easily misunderstood by others. “I made a
greater sacrifice than to give my life,” said Zina Huntington Jacobs,
“for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman.”
Nevertheless, she wrote, “I searched the scripture & by humble
prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for myself.”
36
After Joseph’s death, most of the women sealed to him moved to Utah
with the Saints, remained faithful Church members, and defended both
plural marriage and Joseph.
37
Joseph and Emma
Plural marriage was difficult for all involved. For Joseph Smith’s
wife Emma, it was an excruciating ordeal. Records of Emma’s reactions to
plural marriage are sparse; she left no firsthand accounts, making it
impossible to reconstruct her thoughts. Joseph and Emma loved and
respected each other deeply. After he had entered into plural marriage,
he poured out his feelings in his journal for his “beloved Emma,” whom
he described as “undaunted, firm and unwavering, unchangeable,
affectionate Emma.” After Joseph’s death, Emma kept a lock of his hair
in a locket she wore around her neck.
38
Emma approved, at least for a time, of four of Joseph Smith’s plural
marriages in Nauvoo, and she accepted all four of those wives into her
household. She may have approved of other marriages as well.
39 But Emma likely did not know about all of Joseph’s sealings.
40 She vacillated in her view of plural marriage, at some points supporting it and at other times denouncing it.
In the summer of 1843, Joseph Smith dictated the revelation on
marriage, a lengthy and complex text containing both glorious promises
and stern warnings, some directed at Emma.
41
The revelation instructed women and men that they must obey God’s law
and commands in order to receive the fulness of His glory.
The revelation on marriage required that a wife give her consent before her husband could enter into plural marriage.
42
Nevertheless, toward the end of the revelation, the Lord said that if
the first wife “receive not this law”—the command to practice plural
marriage—the husband would be “exempt from the law of Sarah,” presumably
the requirement that the husband gain the consent of the first wife
before marrying additional women.
43
After Emma opposed plural marriage, Joseph was placed in an agonizing
dilemma, forced to choose between the will of God and the will of his
beloved Emma. He may have thought Emma’s rejection of plural marriage
exempted him from the law of Sarah. Her decision to “receive not this
law” permitted him to marry additional wives without her consent.
Because of Joseph’s early death and Emma’s decision to remain in Nauvoo
and not discuss plural marriage after the Church moved west, many
aspects of their story remain known only to the two of them.
Trial and Spiritual Witness
Years later in Utah, participants in Nauvoo plural marriage discussed
their motives for entering into the practice. God declared in the Book
of Mormon that monogamy was the standard; at times, however, He
commanded plural marriage so His people could “raise up seed unto
[Him].”
44 Plural marriage did result in an increased number of children born to believing parents.
45
Some Saints also saw plural marriage as a redemptive process of
sacrifice and spiritual refinement. According to Helen Mar Kimball,
Joseph Smith stated that “the practice of this principle would be the
hardest trial the Saints would ever have to test their faith.” Though it
was one of the “severest” trials of her life, she testified that it had
also been “one of the greatest blessings.”
46
Her father, Heber C. Kimball, agreed. “I never felt more sorrowful,” he
said of the moment he learned of plural marriage in 1841. “I wept days.
… I had a good wife. I was satisfied.”
47
The decision to accept such a wrenching trial usually came only after
earnest prayer and intense soul-searching. Brigham Young said that,
upon learning of plural marriage, “it was the first time in my life that
I had desired the grave.”
48
“I had to pray unceasingly,” he said, “and I had to exercise faith and
the Lord revealed to me the truth of it and that satisfied me.”
49
Heber C. Kimball found comfort only after his wife Vilate had a
visionary experience attesting to the rightness of plural marriage. “She
told me,” Vilate’s daughter later recalled, “she never saw so happy a
man as father was when she described the vision and told him she was
satisfied and knew it was from God.”
50
Lucy Walker recalled her inner turmoil when Joseph Smith invited her
to become his wife. “Every feeling of my soul revolted against it,” she
wrote. Yet, after several restless nights on her knees in prayer, she
found relief as her room “filled with a holy influence” akin to
“brilliant sunshine.” She said, “My soul was filled with a calm sweet
peace that I never knew,” and “supreme happiness took possession of my
whole being.”
51
Not all had such experiences. Some Latter-day Saints rejected the
principle of plural marriage and left the Church, while others declined
to enter the practice but remained faithful.
52
Nevertheless, for many women and men, initial revulsion and anguish was
followed by struggle, resolution, and ultimately, light and peace.
Sacred experiences enabled the Saints to move forward in faith.
53
Conclusion
The challenge of introducing a principle as controversial as plural
marriage is almost impossible to overstate. A spiritual witness of its
truthfulness allowed Joseph Smith and other Latter-day Saints to accept
this principle. Difficult as it was, the introduction of plural marriage
in Nauvoo did indeed “raise up seed” unto God. A substantial number of
today’s members descend through faithful Latter-day Saints who practiced
plural marriage.
Church members no longer practice plural marriage.
54
Consistent with Joseph Smith’s teachings, the Church permits a man
whose wife has died to be sealed to another woman when he remarries.
Moreover, members are permitted to perform ordinances on behalf of
deceased men and women who married more than once on earth, sealing them
to all of the spouses to whom they were legally married. The precise
nature of these relationships in the next life is not known, and many
family relationships will be sorted out in the life to come. Latter-day
Saints are encouraged to trust in our wise Heavenly Father, who loves
His children and does all things for their growth and salvation.
55
Resources
- See “The Family: A Proclamation to the World”; Jacob 2:27, 30.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:34–39; Jacob 2:30; see also Genesis 16.
- 1 Corinthians 13:12; Jeffrey R. Holland, “Lord, I Believe,” Ensign, May 2013.
- See Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6 (May 1887): 232–33; “Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith,” Millennial Star
40 (Dec. 16, 1878): 788; Danel W. Bachman, “New Light on an Old
Hypothesis: The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage,” Journal of Mormon History 5 (1978): 19–32.
- See Doctrine and Covenants 132:1, 34–38.
- Doctrine and Covenants 112:30; 124:41; 128:18.
- “Polygamy,” in The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, ed. John Bowker (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 757; John Cairncross, After Polygamy Was Made a Sin: The Social History of Christian Polygamy (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974).
- Lorenzo
Snow, deposition, United States Testimony 1892 (Temple Lot Case), part
3, p. 124, Church History Library, Salt Lake City; Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 13:193; Ezra Booth to Ira Eddy, Dec. 6, 1831, in Ohio Star, Dec. 8, 1831.
- See Brian C. Hales, “Encouraging Joseph Smith to Practice Plural Marriage: The Accounts of the Angel with a Drawn Sword,” Mormon Historical Studies 11, no. 2 (Fall 2010): 69–70.
- See
Andrew Jenson, Research Notes, Andrew Jenson Collection, Church History
Library, Salt Lake City; Benjamin F. Johnson to Gibbs, 1903, Benjamin
F. Johnson Papers, Church History Library, Salt Lake City;
“Autobiography of Levi Ward Hancock,” Church History Library, Salt Lake
City.
- Parley P. Pratt, The Autobiography of Parley Parker Pratt, One of the Twelve Apostles of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, ed. Parley P. Pratt Jr. (New York: Russell Brothers, 1874), 329.
- Hyrum Smith, sermon, Apr. 8, 1844, Historian’s Office General Church Minutes, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
- These were the same priesthood keys Elijah had given to Apostles anciently. (See Matthew 16:19; 17:1–9; Doctrine and Covenants 2.)
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:7; 131:2–3.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:19–20, 63; see also “Becoming Like God.”
- Stephanie Coontz, Marriage, A History: From Obedience to Intimacy, or How Love Conquered Marriage (New York: Viking Penguin, 2005), 145–60; Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500–1800, abridged ed. (Middlesex, UK: Penguin Books, 1985), 217–53.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:55, 63.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:46; Matthew 16:19.
- Joseph
Smith’s practice of plural marriage has been discussed by Latter-day
Saint authors in official, semi-official, and independent publications.
See, for example, Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” 219–34; B. H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1930), 2:93–110, Danel W. Bachman and Ronald K. Esplin, “Plural Marriage,” in Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 2:1091-95; and Glen M. Leonard, Nauvoo: A Place of Peace, a People of Promise (Salt Lake City and Provo, UT: Deseret Book and Brigham Young University, 2002), 343–49.
- Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 1:3, 2:165.
- Joseph Smith, Journal, May 19, 24, and 26, 1842; June 4, 1842, available at josephsmithpapers.org.
Proponents of “spiritual wifery” taught that sexual relations were
permissible outside of legalized marital relationships, on condition
that the relations remained secret.
- In the denials, “polygamy” was understood to mean the marriage of one man to more than one woman but without Church sanction.
- See, for example, “On Marriage,” Times and Seasons,
Oct. 1, 1842, 939–40; and Wilford Woodruff journal, Nov. 25, 1843,
Church History Library, Salt Lake City; Parley P. Pratt, “This Number
Closes the First Volume of the ‘Prophet,’” The Prophet, May 24,
1845, 2. George A. Smith explained, “Any one who will read carefully
the denials, as they are termed, of plurality of wives in connection
with the circumstances will see clearly that they denounce adultery,
fornication, brutal lust and the teaching of plurality of wives by those
who were not commanded to do so” (George A. Smith letter to Joseph
Smith III, Oct. 9, 1869, in Journal History of The Church of Jesus
Christ of Latter-day Saints, Oct. 9, 1869, Church History Library, Salt
Lake City).
- Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40. See Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 2:272–73.
- See Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy,
2:277–302. Despite claims that Joseph Smith fathered children within
plural marriage, genetic testing has so far been negative, though it is
possible he fathered two or three children with plural wives. (See Ugo
A. Perego, “Joseph Smith, the Question of Polygamous Offspring, and DNA
Analysis,” in Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster, eds., The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy [Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2010], 233–56.)
- J.
Spencer Fluhman, “A Subject that Can Bear Investigation’: Anguish,
Faith, and Joseph Smith’s Youngest Plural Wife,” in Robert L. Millet,
ed., No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues
(Provo and Salt Lake City: Brigham Young University Religious Studies
Center and Deseret Book, 2011), 104–19; Craig L. Foster, David Keller,
and Gregory L. Smith, “The Age of Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives in Social
and Demographic Context,” in Bringhurst and Foster, eds., The Persistence of Polygamy, 152–83.
- Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Autobiography, [2], Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
- Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Plural Marriage as Taught by the Prophet Joseph: A Reply to Joseph Smith, Editor of the Lamoni (Iowa) “Herald” (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1882); Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage (Salt Lake City: Juvenile Instructor Office, 1884).
- Estimates of the number of these sealings range from 12 to 14. (See Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith [Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997], 4, 6; Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy,
1:253–76, 303–48.) For an early summary of this practice, see John A.
Widtsoe, “Evidences and Reconciliations: Did Joseph Smith Introduce
Plural Marriage?” Improvement Era 49, no. 11 (Nov. 1946): 766–67.
- Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy,
1:421–37. Polyandry, the marriage of one woman to more than one man,
typically involves shared financial, residential, and sexual resources,
and children are often raised communally. There is no evidence that
Joseph Smith’s sealings functioned in this way, and much evidence works
against that view.
- Rex Eugene Cooper, Promises Made to the Fathers: Mormon Covenant Organization (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1990), 138–45; Jonathan A. Stapley, “Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism,” Journal of Mormon History 37, no. 3 (Summer 2011): 53–117.
- For a review of the evidence, see Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 1:390–96.
- Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005), 440.
- See Lorenzo Snow, deposition, United States Testimony 1892 (Temple Lot Case), part 3, p. 124.
- The
revelation on marriage provided powerful incentives for a marriage
performed by priesthood authority. (See Doctrine and Covenants
132:17–19, 63.)
- Zina Huntington Jacobs, autobiographical
sketch, Zina Card Brown Family Collection, Church History Library, Salt
Lake City; spelling modernized.
- The historical record
is striking for the lack of criticism found among those who had once
been Joseph Smith’s plural wives, although most of the wives left no
written record.
- Joseph Smith, Journal, Aug. 16, 1842, in Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., Journals, Volume 2: December 1841–April 1843, vol. 2 of the Journals series of The Joseph Smith Papers,
edited by Dean C. Jessee, Ronald K. Esplin, and Richard Lyman Bushman
(Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 93–96, available at josephsmithpapers.org; Mary Audentia Smith Anderson, ed., Joseph Smith III and the Restoration (Independence, MO: Herald House, 1952), 85.
- Jenson,
“Historical Record,” 229–30, 240; Emily Dow Partridge Young,
deposition, United States Testimony 1892 (Temple Lot Case), part 3, pp.
365–66, 384; Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 13:194.
- Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 2:8, 48–50, 80; Bushman, Rough Stone Rolling, 473.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:54, 64.
The warning to Emma Smith also applies to all who receive sacred
ordinances by authority of the priesthood but do not abide the covenants
associated with those ordinances. See, for example, Psalm 37:38; Isaiah 1:28; Acts 3:19–25; and Doctrine and Covenants 132:26, 64.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:61.
In Utah, the first wife was part of the plural marriage ceremony,
standing between her husband and the bride and placing the hand of the
bride in the hand of the husband. “Celestial Marriage,” The Seer 1 (Feb. 1853): 31.
- Doctrine and Covenants 132:65; see also Genesis 16:1–3.
- Jacob 2:30.
- On the question of children, see note 6 of “Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah.”
- Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, 23–24.
- Heber
C. Kimball, Discourse, Sept. 2, 1866, George D. Watt Papers, Church
History Library, Salt Lake City, transcribed from Pitman shorthand by
LaJean Purcell Carruth.
- Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 3:266.
- Brigham
Young, Discourse, June 18, 1865, George D. Watt Papers, Church History
Library, Salt Lake City, transcribed from Pitman shorthand by LaJean
Purcell Carruth; see also Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 11:128.
- Orson F. Whitney, Life of Heber C. Kimball, an Apostle: The Father and Founder of the British Mission
(Salt Lake City: Kimball Family, 1888), 338; see also Kiersten Olson,
“‘The Embodiment of Strength and Endurance’: Vilate Murray Kimball
(1806–1867),” in Women of Faith in the Latter Days, Volume One, 1775–1820, ed. Richard E. Turley Jr. and Brittany A. Chapman (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011), 137.
- Lucy Walker Kimball, “Brief Biographical Sketch,” 10–11, Church History Library, Salt Lake City.
- Sarah
Granger Kimball, for example, rejected plural marriage in Nauvoo but
came west with the Saints. Many of the individuals who rejected plural
marriage, including Emma Smith, later became members of the Reorganized
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.
- For example, see “Evidence from Zina D. Huntington-Young,” Saints’ Herald,
Jan. 11, 1905, 29; Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, “Mary Elizabeth
Rollins,” Susa Young Gates Papers, Utah State Historical Society.
- Gordon B. Hinckley, “What Are People Asking about Us?” Ensign, Nov. 1998; “Polygamy,” Newsroom, topics page.
- Alma 26:35; Doctrine and Covenants 88:41; 1 Nephi 11:17.
The Church acknowledges the contribution of
scholars to the historical content presented in this article; their work
is used with permission.
I am grateful to be a member of the Church and to be able to testify of the Prophet Joseph Smith and his role in the restoration of the Gospel. Mom and I continue to learn more each day about the life and teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith and I hope I will never quit learning! I hope this article and information is helpful to those who read the blog. My intention is to share the insights I am receiving with my precious family and friends for their edification and quest for learning.
Thank you for joining me tonight and reviewing some fascinating information with me!
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