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You’re expecting me to talk about Fanny Alger next, but something came across my desk that prompted me to jump chronological order to examine the tenuous hints people will seize upon when claiming a woman was a plural wife of Joseph Smith.

First we’ll talk about the case of Mary Heron, who some believe was either a wife or sex partner of Joseph Smith based on the testimony of Joseph Ellis Johnson (pictured to the left). Second, I’ll discuss the “hope” some have harbored that Clarissa Reed produced a son by Joseph Smith over a year after her marriage to Hancock. Continue reading Joseph’s Wives: Mary Heron & Clarissa Reed

Over the course of 2015 I will be blogging about the various women believed to have covenanted with Joseph Smith. For each I will provide biographical background, along with what, if anything, is known of her life after Joseph’s death.

In evaluating allegations that women were “married” to Joseph Smith, it is important to establish what constitutes sufficient evidence that a woman should be listed as a “wife.” I have come up with the following “tells” that can give us a high-level view of the women whose names are associated with Mormon founder, Joseph Smith. The first four attributes speak to whether or not a marriage occurred. The second four attributes speak to what may have motivated the marriage and what the marriage meant to the woman after Joseph’s death.

	Did reliable contemporaries consider the woman a wife?
	Are details of the alleged marriage known?
	Was the marriage said to be sexually consummated?
	Is it said Joseph Smith had a child with the wife?
	Was the woman sealed to Joseph after his death?
	Did the woman go to Utah after Joseph’s death?
	Was the marriage a subject of prophecy?
	Did the marriage “bind” Joseph to important people?

In some cases, the woman died before she could have achieved the milestones of being sealed to Joseph Smith in the Nauvoo temple or traveling to Deseret with the Saints.

The woman died before she could have achieved this milestone

Continue reading Wives of Joseph Smith

From December 2013 to August 2014 I wrote a series of posts on a Faithful Joseph, tracing a plausible history in which Joseph Smith didn’t keep his wife Emma in the dark, and rarely, if ever, engaged in sexual activity with the women he would covenant with.

This is the first post in the series Joseph’s Wives, describing each of the women believed to have been Joseph’s wife based on information from reliable contemporary witnesses. Of these, the first and most important to understand is Emma Hale. I have identified several “tells” which I plan to assess for each wife:

• Are there substantiating details that contemporaries considered the woman a wife?
• Are details of the alleged marriage during Joseph’s lifetime known?
• Is there an indication that the marriage was sexually consummated?
• Is it reported one or more children was engendered by Joseph Smith with the wife?
• Is there a record that the wife was sealed to Joseph after his death?
• Did the reported wife embrace Joseph’s teachings regarding covenant marriage after his death?
• Was the marriage a subject of prophecy?
• Did the marriage serve to “bind” Joseph to important families, so-called dynastic marriages?

The result will be a visual summary which can be used to assess the nature of Joseph’s marriages over the period of his lifetime. This visual summary and links to the posts describing the individual women will be posted separately.

Any discussion of Joseph’s wives must include Emma Hale, Joseph’s only legal wife, the only wife Joseph publicly acknowledged during his lifetime. Continue reading Joseph’s Wives: Emma Hale

And now for the review that matters this month, the delightfully concise book about Joseph Smith’s Polygamy written by Brian C. Hales with the support of his bride, Laura Harris [Hales].

The main text of this book captures the heart of the point Brian C. Hales made in his three volume, 1500+ page master work titled Joseph Smith’s Polygamy. Some of these points are:

1. Joseph was not the skank he is so often portrayed to be.
2. Polygamy in our day is not required. The New and Everlasting Covenant itself does not require polygamy.
3. Bennett was there, but he does not appear to have actually been instructed regarding the New and Everlasting Covenant. Thus his accusations and actions should not be presumed to accurately reflect Joseph’s teachings.

Continue reading Review: Joseph Smith’s Polygamy – Toward a Better Understanding

This second volume of the Persistence of Polygamy series deals with polygamy following the death of Joseph Smith. And yet it includes a surprising amount of content that those wishing to understand polygamy during Joseph’s life ought to know.

Thus I didn’t find this volume boring, contrary to my expectation.

I did find that this volume is much more eclectic that the first volume. Not only are the topics included eclectic, the individual articles themselves often wander away from what appeared to be “the point” into strange historical nooks and crannies. Reasonably, since these are all original essays, there isn’t a sense that the different essayists benefited from academic discussion with the other writers. Thus we learn graphic details of William Smith’s misbehavior in one article, while other articles portray William as merely a former polygamist who eventually relinquished plural marriage for monogamy within the RLDS faith tradition.

With my perspective that there were two distinct forms of “polygamy” practiced in Nauvoo during Joseph’s lifetime, I would have arranged the essays differently. In an introduction, I would have distinguished between the secretive covenant marriages Joseph and select followers entered into and the not-so-secretive instances of illicit intercourse (termed spiritual wifery) that occurred under the direction of Dr. John C. Bennett. I then would have listed all the individuals who were named in association with the 1842 High Council investigation in the introduction, noting where in the subsequent history these same names re-emerge.

I would have divided the book into three sections:

1. Legacy of Smith’s Polygamy among the Mountain Saints
2. The Factions who Didn’t Gather to Utah
3. Forces of Change

Continue reading Review: The Persistence of Polygamy, Volume 2

This intriguing volume has been available for several years now, but I only recently read it through in its entirety. This is germane at this time because Brian C. Hales and his lovely wife, Laura, will be coming out with a related book in the near future.

Besides, I always think it is germane to talk about polygamy. Especially if it means I can further explore the terrible damage John C. Bennett inflicted with his corruption of sexuality in Nauvoo.

Three volumes are planned in the Persistence of Polygamy series, with this first volume discussing the Origins of Polygamy and Joseph Smith. This is the controversial and bothersome part for so many people. The issue of how polygamy evolved after Joseph’s death isn’t particularly controversial, in my opinion. I do wish I could have been a bug on the lapel of Brigham Young in the fall of 1844, able to ask him the reasons for his actions. But after the die was cast in September, 1844, the way things evolved was understandable and a matter of history.

A third volume, which has not yet appeared, will talk about polygamy after the Manifesto, primarily (as I understand it) focusing on the fundamentalist groups who persist in practicing polygyny today.

At the very end of the collection, Jessie L. Embry asks: “Where does the study of polygamy go from here? As I read through these essays, I wondered if scholars need to come up with new questions, Maybe there are questions other than when Joseph Smith married his first plural wife? How many wives did he have? How old were they? And how did people react?”^[1]

Jessie continues: “While I recognize the need for new questions, I am caught in the old trap… I believe that scholars will continue to just rehash the same information unless someone comes up with new questions. Then Mormon history could be “researched” and “reinvestigated” and not just “retold,” defended, or attacked…”^[2]

For my part, I was continually frustrated that the impact of John C. Bennett, so obvious to me, is entirely absent from these essays. Bennett himself is nominally present, but the vast scope of what happened is clearly still being ignored in this volume, reflecting research as recent as 2010. Continue reading Review: The Persistence of Polygamy, Volume 1

1. ^[1]The Persistence of Polygamy, edited by Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster, John Whitmer Books, 2010, p. 288.↩
2. ^[2]ibid., p. 289.↩

A recent family e-mail chain got hijacked in royal fashion. One intriguing bit that came out was a discussion of the number of children that are appropriate in a family.

Much energy has been devoted at the global and national level to explaining that the world is over-populated and that resource scarcity will cause dire problems in the future. Even my infrequent posts here about water could be interpreted to indicate that children should be few in any responsible family.

Ironically, there is reason to believe that it is precisely responsible families who should have many children. In this case, let’s allow the definition of many to be four. Why would 4+ kids make sense for a socially responsible family? Continue reading Ideal Family Size? Do Two Kids Make Sense?

A few weeks ago I proposed that I would be blogging this year about Joseph’s plural wives and such matters. Then I got distracted.

I think we  should establish guidelines for the importance we attribute to different women as wives.

For now, we’ll accept women where there is documentation or oral tradition either from contemporaries or their descendants. I think this gives us a list of women that includes roughly 40 individuals.

I’d like to start, then, with each such woman having a score of 100% (or 1.0). Then as we consider various factors, that score may be decreased. If there are mitigating factors, a “penalty” may be reduced. Thus, as I go forward to talk about the various women, we can focus on those individuals whose “score” gives us greatest confidence that she is of import. This scoring matter can also give structure to the discussion of each woman. Continue reading Joseph’s Wives – an Algorithm

Recently at the adult session of Stake Conference, we had a delightful interchange about how councils can bless our families and our congregations. There were two microphones being carried through the congregation so that any who wanted to comment could be heard.

On individual who commented raised the matter of those who have had doubts, who have decided they could not remain in the faith. I think the individual’s comment was tending towards suggesting that we should make it safe to doubt in the Church.

The response was instructive. It is fine to have questions, the visiting authority (Elder Perkins) said, but it is not acceptable to doubt. Doubt, he contended, ends hope of moving forward, while questions, even if unresolved for an extended period of time, permit the individual with questions to move forward in faith.

The Definition of Doubt Continue reading On Doubt