11
Joseph Smith’s Practice of
Plural Marriage
In the revelation on eternal marriage, section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, several doctrinal reasons are given for the authorized practice of polygamy at times specified by the Lord. The Prophet Joseph Smith reported an angel appeared to him in 1834, directing him to practice plural marriage and introduce it among the Saints. However, the monogamous tradition of Church members and nonmembers created a huge obstacle to the open practice of that commandment. Further challenges came as Joseph implemented the principle in Nauvoo. The thin historical record complicates reconstructing a true picture of those first plural marriages in the Church. Nevertheless, a review of the Prophet’s decisions as he introduced and practiced polygamy reveals some strange dynamics at times, but nothing that was morally sinful in light of Joseph’s teachings on the matter.
In 1831, just one year after the Church was organized, Joseph Smith concluded that Old Testament patriarchs like Abraham and Jacob did not commit sin by marrying plural wives. Lyman E. Johnson recalled that “Joseph had made known to him as early as 1831 that plural marriage was a correct principle.”1 Whether the Prophet knew then that he would later institute it as a practice within the Church is unknown.
However, the Prophet reported that the directive came three years later in Kirtland, Ohio, when an angel appeared commanding him to personally practice plural marriage. Joseph told plural wife Mary Elizabeth Rollins: “The angel came to me three times between the years of 1834 and 1842 and said I was to obey that principle or he would slay me.” In response, Joseph “foresaw the trouble that would follow and sought to turn away from the commandment.”2 Uncharacteristically, he “put it off”3 and “hesitated and deferred from time to time.”4 Eliza R. Snow described Joseph as “afraid to promulgate it.”5
Facing the Challenges
The Prophet faced several obstacles as he introduced polygamy, including a Church membership rightfully steeped in a tradition of monogamy. Brigham related, “My brethren know what my feelings were at the time Joseph revealed the doctrine; I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin.”6 He later commented, “I never should have embraced it had it not been a command from the Almighty.”7 John Taylor similarly recalled, “[At] the time when men were commanded to take more wives. It made us all pull pretty long faces sometimes. It was not so easy as one might think. When it was revealed to us it looked like the last end of Mormonism. For a man to ask another woman to marry him required more self-confidence than we had.”8
The nearly universal reaction among LDS women was similar. Bathsheba B. Smith remembered, “We discussed it [polygamy] . . . that is, us young girls did, for I was a young girl then, and we talked a good deal about it, and some of us did not like it much.”9 When asked in 1859, “Is the system of your Church [plurality of wives] acceptable to the majority of its women?” Brigham Young answered: “They could not be more averse to it than I was when it was first revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally accept it, as I do, as the will of God.”10 One non-LDS author concluded, “All evidence tends to support the contention that the majority of the Church membership received the doctrine [of polygamy] with abhorrence. They adopted the practice against their natural inclinations, and out of fear of the hereafter, rather than from motives of lust.”11
Besides pushback from Church members, state laws allowed for and societal norms supported monogamous marriage. Any deviation from that standard quickly generated suspicions regarding the motivations of the participants. Joseph Smith’s nephew, Church President Joseph F. Smith, wrote in 1903: “It is difficult to convince the prejudiced mind that any but base intents and impure desires prompted the practice of plural marriage, but nevertheless it was entered into, God knows, with the highest religious and moral motives.”12 Joseph faced formidable resistance from within and without the Church.
Fanny Alger—Joseph Smith’s First Plural Wife
The Prophet entered into his first polygamous marriage with Fanny Alger, a domestic working in the Smith home, while living in Kirtland, Ohio. Joseph did not approach Fanny directly to discuss polygamy. Instead he enlisted the assistance of Levi Hancock, a friend, to serve as an intermediary and officiator. Levi’s son Mosiah wrote in 1896: “Father goes to Fanny and said ‘Fanny Brother Joseph the Prophet loves you and wishes you for a wife will you be his wife’? ‘I will Levi’ Said She. Father takes Fanny to Joseph and said ‘Brother Joseph I have been successful in my mission.’ ”13 Using priesthood authority, “Father gave her to Joseph repeating the Ceremony as Joseph repeated to him.”14 The dating of the ceremony is unknown, but was most likely in late 1835 or early 1836. Eliza R. Snow, who was “well acquainted” with Fanny and living in the Smith home at the time of the discovery of the union, corroborated a plural marriage occurred as she personally wrote Fanny’s name on an 1887 list of Joseph Smith’s plural wives.15
While the historical record is incomplete, it seems that Joseph entered his first plural marriage without informing his legal wife, Emma Hale Smith. Not informing Emma of the polygamous marriage created several problems and heartache for all involved. At some point, either years or weeks after the ceremony, Emma discovered the plural relationship. One secondhand account reports, “She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!”16 What Emma witnessed, whether it was the plural marriage ceremony or an exchange of affection, we are not told.
While Joseph had received numerous angelic visitations including one reportedly commanding polygamy, it is apparent Emma had not. She reacted violently and in order to quell the disturbance, Joseph called for Oliver Cowdery to help calm Emma. Oliver became convinced that the relationship between Fanny and Joseph was illegitimate and could not be persuaded otherwise. He held to that opinion despite Joseph’s efforts to convince him.17
Emma sent Fanny Alger away after the discovery of the relationship.18 The displaced Fanny rejoined her family who migrated to Indiana, where she soon married a nonmember and raised a large family.19 In 1874, she joined the Universalist Church and remained a member of that congregation until her 1889 death. However, Benjamin F. Johnson recorded, “Altho she never left the State [of Indiana] She did not turn from the Church nor from her friendship for the Prophet while She lived.”20
Sealings to Legally Married Women
Some readers may be surprised to learn that about a third of Joseph Smith’s plural sealings were to women who were already civilly married and had legal husbands. Most historians have listed these women as some of the Prophet’s time-and-eternity plural wives, fueling assumptions that those females practiced a plurality of husbands—technically called polyandry.21 Many authors have also asserted that these marriages sound and look like genuine polyandry, so they must have been polyandrous and to say they were anything other than polyandry would be to deny reality. In addition, since traditional marriage usually includes mutual affection, a desire for companionship, and sexuality, observers have likewise speculated that the women experienced these with Joseph and their civil spouses during the same time periods.
However, several problems exist with these assumptions. First, no plain evidence has been found supporting the claims. That is, no unambiguous documentation for genuine polyandry in Nauvoo has been located in the historical record. Writers who say Joseph Smith practiced genuine polyandry are basing their conclusions on opinion, rather than on evidence. Demonstrating the existence of a plurality of husbands could be done relatively easily by quoting a single credible supportive statement, if such existed. One well-documented testimony from a participant or other close observer (of which there were dozens) indicating that a woman had two genuine husbands at the same time would constitute such evidence. Even a passing reference to a polyandrous triangle in a letter, journal, or later recollection would be impressive. Also, a revelation or other theological justification traceable to Joseph Smith authorizing those relations would be very convincing. No evidence of this type has been found. Instead, the historical record reads as if sexual polyandry never occurred and would have been condemned if it had.
A second concern is that the teachings of Joseph Smith and all other Church leaders condemn a plurality of husbands as adultery. Section 132 mentions such relations three times, labelling them “adultery,” and in two cases stating the woman involved “would be destroyed.” When asked in 1852, “What do you think of a woman having more husbands than one?” Brigham Young answered, “This is not known to the law.”22 Orson Pratt similarly instructed: “God has strictly forbidden, in this Bible, plurality of husbands, and proclaimed against it in his law.”23 On October 8, 1869, Apostle George A. Smith taught that “a plurality of husbands is wrong.”24 First Presidency Counselor Joseph F. Smith wrote in 1889: “Polyandry is wrong, physiologically, morally, and from a scriptural point of order. It is nowhere sanctioned in the Bible, nor by the law of God or nature and has not affinity with ‘Mormon’ plural marriage.”25 Multiple additional condemnations are found in the historical record contrasting the complete absence of any supportive statements.
A third problem is that Doctrine and Covenants 22:1 states, “All old covenants have I caused to be done away in this thing; and this is a new and an everlasting covenant.” This revelation was given shortly after the Church was organized in response to a specific question about baptism, which is a new and everlasting covenant between a person and God. Thirteen years later, Joseph recorded another revelation that refers to eternal marriage as “a new and an everlasting covenant.”26 So if “all old covenants” are “done away” by “a new and everlasting covenant,” then a previous legal marriage (an “old” marriage covenant) would be “done away” when a woman is sealed to a new husband in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. This would create the equivalence of a Church divorce. Thereafter, from a religious standpoint, a woman previously civilly married and subsequently sealed would have only one husband in the eyes of the Church. Going back to her legal husband would be considered adultery because, according to the revelations, that marriage ended with the sealing. These scriptures are important because they show that a plurality of husbands is not doctrinally supported as part of the new and everlasting covenant of marriage. While many details are absent, there is no theological basis for a plurality of husbands in Joseph’s teachings.
So what was the nature of Joseph Smith’s sealings to legally married women? Available evidence indicates that those sealings were of two types. In the early days of the restoration, eternity-only sealings were sometimes permitted. Such sealings did not begin until the man and woman had died. In other words, the woman was married to one spouse during mortality and a different spouse in eternity. The husbands of a few of the women were not active Latter-day Saints, so they could not be sealed to their wives. Doctrine and Covenants 132:17 teaches plainly that eternal marriage is needed for exaltation, so it is easier to understand why these females were sealed to Joseph. Other men besides the Prophet were also sealed to plural wives for eternity only.
However, several of the women were legally married to men who were devout Church members. The motivations behind these sealings—why the women were not instead eternally married to their civil spouses and why Joseph allowed these sealings—are unknown, although in a couple of situations the legal marriages were unhappy. One possible reason is simply because the women chose to be sealed to Joseph Smith for the next life. Lucy Walker, one of Joseph’s plural wives, recalled his counsel regarding eternal sealings: “A woman would have her choice, this was a privilege that could not be denied her.”27 These types of sealings are no longer permitted but were apparently allowed at that time because the women had been previously married to their legal husbands “until death, do you part,” rather than for time and eternity.
Perhaps eleven of Joseph Smith’s fourteen plural marriages to women with legal husbands were nonsexual, eternity-only unions,28 possibly two were for time and eternity to women who had experienced the equivalence of a Church divorce from their first spouse, and one was a special situation where the woman married legally a “front” or pretend husband after her sealing to Joseph to deflect attention from her relationship with the Prophet.29
Understandably, these sealings and relationships seem strange, and questions still exist. Many wonder why the two women who were physically separated from their husbands would not simply obtain a civil divorce before being sealed for time and eternity to Joseph Smith as is now required in the Church. One possible reason is that it was difficult to obtain a divorce on the frontier in the nineteenth century. While a justice of the peace could marry a couple, often the state legislature needed to approve a divorce. Also, women did not possess the legal rights they now have; with a divorce, the women would have risked losing claim to their property and custody of their children. What to us seems rather straightforward was actually more complicated when analyzed in deference to the nineteenth-century legal system. Divorce became much easier in the Utah territory under Brigham Young’s leadership and was liberally granted to women, eliminating the appearance of polyandrous relationships.
It is important to note that the participants and others with a detailed knowledge of the relationships were apparently unbothered by the dynamics. None of the women recorded complaints, and their legal husbands left no grievances against the Prophet. There were many officiators and witnesses, none of whom protested, and even apostates in Nauvoo did not leave accusations against Joseph Smith concerning these sealings. Perhaps additional manuscripts will be discovered to further clarify the nature of these unusual unions.
Joseph, Emma, and Plural Marriage
On April 5, 1841, Joseph B. Noble sealed his sister-in-law, Louisa Beaman, to the Prophet.30 It seems clear that Emma was not informed that Joseph planned to unite in this polygamous union. The sealing to Louisa Beaman was for time and eternity, but during the next ten months, Joseph evidently sought almost exclusively sealings to civilly married women. Eight out of the next nine of Joseph Smith’s plural marriage proposals (and possibly eleven out of the next twelve) were to legally married women. The one exception was a marriage to a widow. There is no indication of sexual relations in any of those plural sealings. It is possible that Joseph Smith sought nonsexual, eternity-only sealings in order to fulfil a command while being sensitive to Emma’s feelings. But from 1842 forward, Joseph proposed to only three more legally married women and each was a unique situation. Most of the subsequent plural sealings were to unmarried females for time and eternity.
Throughout 1842 Emma was unaware of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages. Readers would expect the Prophet to be conflicted over his plural marriages and her non-participation and uninformed state. A plausible assumption explaining the chronology of the Prophet’s announcement to Emma is that he waited until she was ready to accept the principle of polygamy before presenting her with the details. In 1892, Apostle Lorenzo Snow recalled:
The people had the most implicit and perfect confidence in Joseph Smith, and when he gave a revelation, whether it was accepted or not, it didn’t make any difference with some, for they had the most perfect confidence in him. . . . [A new revelation] would be binding upon such as knew of it. . . . If that revelation is presented to me, and there is a half a dozen men and women and it is presented to them, it would be a law to them, and be binding upon them, and any other part of the church that had knowledge, — distinct and definite knowledge of it, — but I do not think it would be binding upon any other part of the church other than that which had knowledge of its existence.31
In addition, the revelation on celestial marriage explains that once Joseph taught Emma about it, she was obligated to “believe and administer unto him,” or else “she shall be destroyed.”32 If she rejected the doctrines, “she then becomes the transgressor.”33 As long as the new principles remained undisclosed, her position before the Lord was unchallenged and temporarily secure. The language in the revelation directed toward Emma may seem overly harsh. It is possible that if Joseph had had the opportunity to edit the revelation before publication, he would have softened those words.34
Emma probably accepted the principle of plural marriage in the spring of 1843 and gave Joseph four wives in May. However, she immediately struggled with its practice. On July 12, at Hyrum Smith’s suggestion, the Prophet dictated a revelation,35 which Hyrum presented to Emma in the hope that she would again accept Joseph’s practice of polygamy. Afterwards, he reported that “he had never received a more severe talking to in his life, that Emma was very bitter and full of resentment and anger.” Immediately she demanded that Joseph transfer financial resources to sustain her and her children should anything happen to Joseph or to their marriage. She apparently also required Joseph to obtain her permission before marrying any additional plural wives (and, indeed, he was sealed to only two women after that date).
Joseph and Emma’s marriage resembled, outwardly at least, that of other monogamists in Nauvoo. Even close neighbors were unaware of his plural wives. Mary Ralph recalled in 1883: “I lived in Nauvoo, Illinois, close to the house of Joseph Smith, just across the road, some time. . . . I was well acquainted with the two Partridge girls and the two Walker girls and their two brothers, William and Lorin Walker; they were orphans, and all lived in the family of Joseph Smith; but I never knew they were any of them his wives.”36
Looking back at Joseph Smith’s choices in dealing with the introduction of plural marriage to Emma, it is possible that his actions were less than perfect. The revelation on celestial marriage admonishes Emma saying “forgive my servant Joseph his trespasses.”37 Apparently he had trespassed against Emma. Perhaps as the Prophet dealt with the crosscurrents of polygamy and his own marriage, other approaches would have been better.
Emma’s experience with plural marriage was extremely difficult. But despite her struggles and stumbles, she remained true to Joseph. Reportedly when one of his plural wives complained about Emma’s behavior, he turned to her and said, “If you desire my love, you must never speak evil of Emma.”38 Immediately after the martyrdom, family friend John P. Greene saw Emma “weeping and wailing bitterly, in a loud and unrestrained voice, her face covered with her hands.” He remarked, “This affliction would be to her a crown of life.” She quickly replied, “My husband was my crown.”39
Young Wives
Much attention has been given to the fact that ten of Joseph Smith’s plural wives were teenagers: Helen Mar Kimball (fourteen), Nancy M. Winchester (fourteen?), Flora Ann Woodworth (sixteen), Sarah Ann Whitney (seventeen), Sarah Lawrence (seventeen), Lucy Walker (seventeen), Fanny Alger (nineteen?), Emily Dow Partridge (nineteen), Maria Lawrence (nineteen), and Malissa Lott (nineteen). While these ages may seem young to observers in the twenty-first century, none would have been considered scandalous in the 1840s, although the two fourteen-year-olds (Helen Mar Kimball and Nancy M. Winchester) may have been eyebrow-raising. Author Kimball Young explained, “By present standards [1954] a bride of 17 or 18 years is considered rather unusual but under pioneer conditions there was nothing atypical about this.”40 For example, William Clark (of the Lewis and Clark expedition) wed sixteen-year-old Julia Hancock in 1808. Jesse Hale, brother to Emma, married Mary McKune when she was fifteen and he was twenty-three.41 Martin Harris, one of the Three Witnesses of the Book of Mormon, married his wife, Lucy, when she was only fifteen.42 In fact, Illinois governor Thomas Ford, the state official who forced the Prophet to appear at Carthage where he was eventually murdered, married Frances Hambaugh in 1828; she was fifteen and he was twenty-eight.43
Though Joseph married two young teenagers, there is no evidence of sexuality with either of them. Little information is recorded regarding Joseph’s relationship with Nancy Winchester except that it occurred. Heber C. Kimball requested that Joseph be sealed to his daughter, to which Helen agreed.44 There is no historical data supporting the conclusion that the Prophet initiated that process or actively sought the plural union. Several observations support the view that his sealing to Helen Mar Kimball was never consummated, though it was likely for time and eternity. In 1892, depositions seeking to discover if Joseph Smith practiced polygamy were sought in litigation between the RLDS Church and the Church of Christ. Helen Mar Kimball was not called to testify, even though she lived close to the courthouse and had written two books defending plural marriage. Instead, three wives who lived in more distant areas were summoned and all affirmed sexual relations with the Prophet in their plural marriages to him. A likely reason Helen was not called is that she could not give the required testimony of experiencing sexuality in her sealing to the Prophet.
Although we have no firsthand accounts outlining the Prophet’s counsel on marriages to women in their teens, a pattern starting in Nauvoo that carried over into Utah taught that polygamous husbands should allow young wives to physically mature before beginning a family with them. Eugene E. Campbell described Brigham’s later instructions. To one man at Fort Supply, Young explained, “I don’t object to your taking sisters named in your letter to wife if they are not too young and their parents and your president and all connected are satisfied, but I do not want children to be married to men before an age which their mothers can generally best determine.”45 Writing to another man in Spanish Fork, he said, “Go ahead and marry them, but leave the children to grow.”46 To Louis Robinson, head of the Church at Fort Bridger, Young advised, “Take good women, but let the children grow, then they will be able to bear children after a few years without injury.”47
A Difficult Practice to Live
Joseph Smith established the divisive principle of plural marriage among the Nauvoo Saints in the early 1840s. The opposition from within and without the Church turned out to be substantial, sometimes requiring creative measures that seem unorthodox today. It may be useful to view the Prophet’s behavior as his contemporaries did. According to available evidence, none of the possible thirty-five plural wives sealed to Joseph Smith ever accused him of abuse or deception—even the seven who left the Church. The remaining twenty-eight remained true to a belief in the Prophet’s mission throughout their lives. Had any of Joseph’s polygamous wives eventually decided that he had tricked them, their subsequent scorn might have easily motivated them to expose him through the pages of the many anti-Mormon presses located across the expanding United States.
“I Never Told You I Was Perfect”
Just weeks before his martyrdom, the Prophet acknowledged: “I never told you I was perfect.”48 He also explained: “a prophet was a prophet only when he was acting as such,”49 declaring he “was but a man, and [people] must not expect me to be perfect.”50 He once lamented: “Altho’ I do wrong, I do not the wrongs that I am charg’d with doing—the wrong that I do is thro’ the frailty of human nature like other men. No man lives without fault.”51
Observers today can review the Prophet’s life and actions and expect him to have sincerely striven to keep the commandments52 but should not expect to see perfection. The Lord allowed Joseph to face challenges, telling him “all these things shall give thee experience, and shall be for thy good.”53 The early practice of polygamy unfolded against legal and social opposition that made it visibly messy and complicated. Looking at Joseph’s actions retrospectively, it may appear that the intensity of some challenges he encountered might have been diminished if he had acted differently, but without additional historical details, we may never really know what occurred all those years ago in a frontier town on the banks of the Mississippi.
Additional Resources
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo.” https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo.
Bringhurst, Newell G. and Craig L. Foster, eds., The Persistence of Polygamy, 3 vols. Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2010–2015.
Hales, Brian C. “Joseph Smith’s Personal Polygamy.” Journal of Mormon History 38, no. 2 (Spring 2012): 163–228.
Hales, Brian C. Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013.
Hales, Brian C. and Laura H. Hales. Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding. Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015.
Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. http://JosephSmithsPolygamy.org.
About the Author
Brian C. Hales is the author of seven books dealing with Mormon polygamy. He has presented at numerous meetings and symposia and published articles in The Journal of Mormon History, Mormon Historical Studies, and Dialogue, as well as the Persistence of Polygamy series. He also maintains the websites MormonPolygamyDocuments.org and JosephSmithsPolygamy.org. Brian works as an anesthesiologist and has served as the president of both the Utah Medical Association and the Medical Staff at the Davis Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, Utah. Brian is married to Laura Harris Hales and is the father to four children.
Notes
^1. Recalled by his mission companion, Orson Pratt, “Report of Elders Orson Pratt and Joseph F. Smith,” Millennial Star 40 (December 16, 1878): 788.
^2. Lorenzo Snow, quoted by Eliza R. Snow in Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1884), 69–70.
^3. Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review (repr.; Mesa, AZ: 21st Century Printing, 1992), 95–96; see also Zina Huntington, quoted in “Joseph, the Prophet, His Life and Mission as Viewed by Intimate Acquaintances,” Salt Lake Herald Church and Farm Supplement, January 12, 1895, 212.
^4. Lorenzo Snow, quoted in Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, 69–70.
^5. Eliza R. Snow, quoted in “Two Prophets’ Widows, A Visit to the Relicts of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young,” in St. Louis Globe-Democrat, St. Louis, Missouri, August 18, 1887, 6.
^6. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 3:266 (July 14, 1855).
^7. Elden J. Watson, Brigham Young Addresses, 1865–1869, A Chronological Compilation of Known Addresses of the Prophet Brigham Young (Salt Lake City: Elden J. Watson, 1982), 5:170 (August 5, 1869).
^8. John Taylor, Report of the Dedication of the Kaysville Relief Society House, November 12, 1876, Woman’s Exponent 5, no. 19 (March 1, 1877): 148.
^9. Bathsheba Smith, deposition, Temple Lot Transcript, Respondent’s testimony, part 3, 292, question 21.
^10. Horace Greeley, An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 (New York: H. H. Bancroft & Co., 1860; repr., New York: Ballantine Books, 1963), 138.
^11. Harry M. Beardsley, Joseph Smith and His Mormon Empire (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1931), 299.
^12. Joseph F. Smith, “The ‘Mormonism’ of To-day,” The Arena 29, no. 5 (May 1903): 450.
^13. Levi Ward Hancock, autobiography with additions in 1896 by Mosiah Hancock, MS 570, microfilm, 63, CHL; cited portion written by Mosiah.
^14. Hancock, autobiography, 63.
^15. Andrew Jenson, First List of Plural Wives, MS 17956, box 49, folder 16, doc. 1, Andrew Jenson Papers, CHL.
^16. William McLellin, letter to Joseph Smith III, July 1872, Community of Christ Archives.
^17. Oliver Cowdery, letter to Warren A. Cowdery, January 21, 1838, letterbook, Huntington Library, San Marino, California.
^18. McLellin, letter to Joseph Smith III, July 1872.
^19. Eliza R. Snow, MS 17956, box 49, folder 16, doc. 10, Andrew Jenson Papers, CHL.
^20. Dean R. Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets: An Analysis of the Letter of Benjamin F. Johnson to George F. Gibbs (Bountiful, UT: Horizon, 1976), 39.
^21. See Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City, Utah: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 1:277–474, for the most detailed description of the women and the relationships.
^22. Brigham Young, in Journal of Discourses, 1:361 (August 1, 1852).
^23. Orson Pratt, in Journal of Discourses, 18:55–56 (July 11, 1875).
^24. George Albert Smith, in Journal of Discourses, 13:41 (October 8, 1869).
^25. Joseph F. Smith, letter to Zenos H. Gurley, June 19, 1889, CHL.
^27. Lucy Walker Kimball, “A Brief Biographical Sketch of the Life and Labors of Lucy Walker Kimball Smith,” CHL; quoted in Lyman Omer Littlefield, Reminiscences of Latter-day Saints: Giving an Account of Much Individual Suffering Endured for Religious Conscience (Logan: Utah Journal Co., 1888), 46.
^28. “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo, paragraph 17.
^29. Joseph C. Kingsbury, “History of Joseph C. Kingsbury,” in Ronald and Ilene Kingsbury Collection, MS 522, box 3, folder 2, 13, J. W. Marriott Library, University of Utah.
^30. Joseph B. Noble, affidavit, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Book 1:38, 4:38, CHL; Joseph B. Noble, Temple Lot Case, Respondent’s testimony, Part 3, 396, 426–27, questions, 52–53, 681–704.
^31. Lorenzo Snow, deposition, Temple Lot Transcript, Respondent’s testimony, part 3, 126, questions 284–297.
^34. See Joseph F. Smith, in Journal of Discourses, 20:29 (July 7, 1878); brackets in original; see also Orson Pratt, Millennial Star 17 (April 25, 1857): 260.
^36. Ellen E. Dickinson, New Light on Mormonism (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1885), 218.
^38. Lucy M. Wright, “Emma Hale Smith,” Woman’s Exponent 30, no. 8 (December 15, 1901): 59.
^39. B. W. Richmond’s statement, quoted in “The Prophet’s Death!” Deseret News Weekly, December 8, 1875, 11.
^40. Kimball Young, Isn’t One Wife Enough? (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1954), 177.
^41. Jesse Hale, FamilySearch, accessed October 16, 2014, https://www.familysearch.org. Jesse Hale was born February 24, 1792, and Mary McKune was born either September 3 or December 3, 1799. The marriage occurred on July 23, 1815.
^42. Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, “For the Sum of Three Thousand Dollars,” Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14, no. 2 (2005): 4–11.
^43. J. F. Snyder, “Governor Ford and His Family,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 3, no. 2 (July 10, 1910): 46.
^44. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, “Autobiography, 30 March 1881,” MS 744, CHL.
^45. Eugene E. Campbell, Establishing Zion: The Mormon Church in the American West 1847–1869 (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1988), 198 note 5.
^46. Campbell, Establishing Zion, 198, n. 5.
^47. Campbell, Establishing Zion, 198, n. 5.
^48. Andrew F. Ehat and Lyndon W. Cook, eds., The Words of Joseph Smith, 369 (May 12, 1844 discourse).
^49. Andrew H. Hedges, Alex D. Smith, and Richard Lloyd Anderson, eds., The Joseph Smith Papers, Journals, Volume 2: 1841–April 1843 (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2011), 256 (February 7, 1843).
^50. Ehat and Cook, eds., Words of Joseph Smith, 132 (Saturday Morning, October 29, 1842).