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When I originally posted my Faithful Joseph series in 2013-2014, I proposed that Joseph Smith himself taught plural marriage, yet may have refrained from consummating his own plural marriages. There were those who welcomed such a viewpoint.
Others were puzzled why Joseph would flout God’s clear commandment to multiply and replenish the earth in conjunction with his plural wives, as recorded in D&C 132. Similarly, there were those who felt that it would be abusive to marry a woman and then refuse to engender children with her or otherwise comfort her with conjugal affection.
Whether Joseph’s clear reticence to raise up progeny with the women he covenanted with was abusive or not, it begged the question of how polygamy could subsequently become so entrenched in the LDS Church following Joseph’s death.
If Joseph rarely or never engaged in sex with covenant wives, as the lack of biological connection between the offspring of these women and Joseph suggests, how could Brigham Young’s actions be explained?
Brigham, the Realist
Joseph Smith may have hoped to avoid hostilities by easing into the practice of plural marriage at some future time. With Joseph’s death, Brigham had no hope that compromise on this issue would prevent hostilities. Brigham Young was also at liberty to fulfill the revelation in D&C 132 without concern for the preferences of Emma Hale [Smith].
Brigham likely felt the Bible was unambiguous regarding the duty a levirate husband owed the widow of a deceased comrade. In the Bible, it is clear that every widow had a right to bear a child to be raised in honor of her fallen husband. The yearning women can feel to bear a child is seen in the biblical stories of Tamar and Hannah. Tamar posed as a prostitute in order to trick Judah into fulfilling his family’s requirement to provide her a son. Hannah bargained with God, promising to yield up her child to God’s service if only God would allow her to conceive. [1] The great posterity levirate marriage could raise up is seen in Tamar and Ruth, whose progeny included most the Kings of Israel and Judea, as well as Jesus Christ.
In addition to widows, there were scores of extended family members and converts who were in need or had been damaged by the illicit intercourse scandal. It may never be possible to determine why men reached out to each of the hundreds of women they collectively married as plural wives prior to the flight from Nauvoo. But it seems some of these women had been victims of the Strikers and their seductions.
There is no biblical precedent for the numbers of plural marriages Brigham Young required of his people after the death of Joseph Smith. Yet the breadth of the sexual heresy promulgated by Dr. John C. Bennett and his Strikers had been extensive, if largely expunged from public histories.
Brigham Young was faced with a series of challenges:
- Provide for disadvantaged women as the Saints fled Nauvoo.
- Eliminate attempts to usurp the centralized and orderly authority to administer saving ordinances. According to D&C 132:7, there was only one person at any given time to hold these keys. [2] Brigham maintained he was that single authorized individual, following the death of JosephSmith
- Eradicate the heresy of spiritual wifery.
Brigham Young would wield his power to solemnize or sunder marriages liberally as he responded to each of these challenges. He would also use excommunication to clarify the boundaries of acceptable behavior.
William Smith, Volatile Brother
Joseph Smith had commanded Brigham Young to stand down from charging William Smith with adultery, likely in May 1842. [3] Though William had clearly been guilty of ecclesiastical abuse, he was ultimately not found to be the ringleader of those seducing women in 1841-1842.
After Joseph’s death, William Smith remained in the Boston area. When Samuel Smith died in the month after Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith were killed, William became the sole surviving Smith brother. When William returned to Nauvoo in 1845, the people welcomed him with open arms. [4] Those mourning Joseph cherished William as the only living male Smith.
William Smith appears to be the only Church leader who routinely charged money for his ecclesiastical services. Upon the death of Hyrum, William was made Church Patriarch. He voiced numerous patriarchal blessings, demanding a fee for each. [5]
William Smith had been a rogue among the apostles. He had beaten Joseph, breaking ribs. [6] He had called for Joseph’s death in 1838. [7] He had refused to leave America on the foreign missions other members of the Twelve Apostles served in 1839-41. [8] It appears William alone, of the apostles, had continued as a prominent participant in Bennett’s heresy promoting illicit intercourse in 1842.
While unsupervised in the Eastern United States, William took it upon himself to teach about eternal marriage, offering to seal people to one another outside of the temple. He also continued to teach variations of the spiritual wifery heresy, that it was acceptable for men and women to engage in sexual intercourse even if there was no marriage involved. Hints of this heresy were brought to the attention of the rest of the apostles when Wilford Woodruff visited William’s Massachusetts congregation. [9]
Parley P. Pratt was sent to the east to investigate. There Parley discovered the full extent of the wrongful teachings and actions of William and his ecclesiastical subordinates. Parley would attempt to instruct the eastern Saints on the proper manner of being sealed to one’s spouse, along with the fact that “sealing” was not license for licentiousness:
“How frequently a man and his wife, or a young couple about to be married, present themselves to me, with a request to be sealed to each other; that is, married for eternity. Do I ever grant their request? No; for the best of all reasons. –I have no authority so to do under present circumstances; and, were I to do it, it would only be deceiving them; as such a sealing would not stand, or be recognized in the resurrection; unless performed according to the strict law of God, and of the keys of the sealing powers, and in connection with the ordinances of endowment which brings to God’s sanctuary [temple], and no where else.
“[The sealing power allows for] no confusion, unlawful connection, or unvirtuous liberties.” [10]
The extent of the misdeeds was of grave concern to the leadership of the Church. Unfortunately, Joseph Ball, one of the Black men William had ordained to the priesthood, was deeply implicated in the wrongful sexual activity. [11]
Zina wrote in her diary following an address William Smith gave on August 17, 1845, in Nauvoo. At that time William openly advocated spiritual wifery and indicated that he practiced it. The discourse caused such distress that women put their handkerchiefs over their faces to show their disgust. Apostle John Taylor attempted to rebutt the sermon.
Zina wrote, “Wm Smith spoke to the people [and] Elder Talor made an appropriate reply, [because] it was needed.” [12]
Despite William’s offenses, there was a desire to keep William within the Church. However William was ultimately excommunicated for refusing to repent and accept the leadership of Brigham Young.
William could have reformed. We see this in the “marriage” between Willard Richards and Alice Langstroth in December 1845. Willard would write in his journal that they had “mutually acknowledge[d] each other husband and wife, in a covenant not to be broken in time or Eternity.” Apparently Willard administered to himself without authorization. The marriage would not be formalized in the temple and Alice Langstroth married another man. [13] The reprimand Richards likely received for his unauthorized sealing action is lost to history.
The Talented Lamanite
William Smith was not the last to presume they had authority to wield the sealing power.
The sordid tale of William McCary eventually emerged. Originally welcomed as a charismatic “Lamanite” or Native Indian leader, William McCary claimed he had the power of prophesy and transfiguration, in particular claiming he had the power to appear as various biblical and Book of Mormon figures.
McCary was eventually found to be a fraud. He was a mulatto rather than an Indian or “Lamanite.” Much worse were McCary’s unorthodox activities. McCary had been performing an “ordinance” where he would “seal” himself to women to guarantee their salvation. This ceremony was unlike any plural marriage sanctioned by the Church. Nelson Whipple reported McCary would seal a woman to himself by engaging in sexual intercourse with her while his wife watched. [14]
The obvious perversion involved in McCary’s usurpation of authority makes it a titillating story, but McCary’s threat to Brigham Young’s authority as sole holder of the sealing keys was resolved by excommunicating McCary.
Zion in Texas
Another challenge to Brigham’s central authority arose when it became clear that Apostle Lyman Wight had been officiating in sealing ceremonies without authorization. Lyman declined to follow Brigham’s lead and gather to Utah. Instead, Lyman led many of the Mormons he had worked with in the Wisconsin Pineries to an area near modern Austin, Texas. Lyman Wight was father of Orange Lysander Wight, who was apparently initiated into polygamy in 1841 after learning that John Higbee had two wives.
Brigham Young reacted by excommunicating Lyman Wight and his followers. [15] It is commonly presumed that the excommunication was prompted merely by Lyman’s refusal to gather to Utah. After all, how could Brigham Young, of all people, object to polygamy? Yet Brigham could and did object to plural marriages if not officiated in a proper manner.
Appropriating Zina
Zina [Jacobs] had been one of the first women to covenant with Joseph Smith. Following the 1844 death of Joseph Smith, Zina would undergo a unique marital shift, leaving the ostensibly faithful and believing father of her children to become the conjugal wife of Brigham Young.
Henry Bailey Jacobs was the man Zina had married in 1841 prior to covenanting with Joseph Smith. Henry was fully supportive of Brigham and the other apostles, as well as supporting Joseph’s legacy. Henry was present when Zina was sealed to Joseph Smith in the temple. He was similarly a witness as Zina was sealed “for time” to Brigham Young, who had stood as proxy for Joseph in the sealing that had immediately preceded the “for time” ordinance.
In February, 1846, when Zina was technically married “for time” to Brigham Young, Zina was pregnant with a child engendered by Henry Bailey Jacobs. Following her marriage “for time” to Brigham, Zina would not conceive again while associated with Henry Jacobs.
However this is not terribly noteworthy. Zina was pregnant until March 22, 1846, when she gave birth to a son near the Chariton River in Iowa. Henry and Zina named their son Henry Chariton Jacobs. In May 1846 Zina’s husband, Henry Bailey Jacobs, was called to serve a mission in England.
When Henry left on his mission, Zina moved in with her ailing father, William, until his death in August 1846. After Zina’s father died, she took protection in the household of Brigham Young. Zina would have had every expectation of reuniting with Henry Jacobs upon the successful completion of his mission to England. But Henry would come home under a cloud of suspicion and disgrace.
While in England, William W. Phelps asked Henry Jacobs to perform a marriage ceremony uniting Phelps to a plural wife. Henry presumed that there was no wrong in his performing the marriage.
Henry Jacobs and Elder W. W. Phelps subsequently rejoined the Saints in Utah. Upon arrival, they learned that this sealing, performed by Henry without appropriate authority, was not viewed as acceptable. In fact, it was seen as so unorthodox that Elder W. W. Phelps was excommunicated in December 1848, [16] despite the fact that other leaders were involved in conjugal plural marriages.
If Elder Phelps was excommunicated for entering into marriages that were not appropriately administered, how much more severe would have been the punishment for the man who led Elder Phelps into error? Henry Jacobs was excommunicated as well, though this is not well known outside the descendants of Henry Jacobs. [17]
In later years Zina was in a position to prevent insight into what had happened in December 1848. Thus the punishment that Henry Jacobs received for inappropriately wielding the sealing power is closely guarded in the LDS Church Archives. Zina’s own children were not told what had happened.
It seems the reason Zina was taken from Henry Jacobs and given to Brigham Young as wife was Henry Jacobs’s presumption in sealing a couple as though for eternity without authorization, as well as sealing a married man to other women.
If Zina had not been Joseph’s covenant wife, Henry’s period of disgrace might have passed without impact to the family situation.
Perhaps if Zina had not agreed to let Brigham stand as Joseph’s proxy when the sealing was re-solemnized in the temple in February 1846, Henry’s period of disgrace might have passed with Zina still as his wife.
If Zina had been a whiny burden during the year she spent in the Young household during the latter portion of Henry’s mission, Brigham might have been perfectly happy to insist that Zina return to Henry’s side after the period of disgrace.
But Zina was a great and good lady who had been anointed with portentious value as Joseph covenant wife. She had agreed to allow Brigham to serve as Joseph’s proxy in the temple. [18]
Thus when Henry Jacobs ran afoul of authority and doctrine, Henry was deemed unworthy to retain the hand of Zina, who was an unusually valued member of the religious community.
According to Oa Jacobs [Cannon], her mother, Emma Rigby [Jacobs], had been effectively adopted by Zina when she married Henry Chariton Jacobs. Their relationship was so close that apparently Zina told things to Emma Rigby [Jacobs] that she was not even willing to tell her own daughter, the daughter Brigham Young engendered with Zina in 1849. When Oa learned Henry Jacobs had been present when Brigham was married to Zina for time, Emma Rigby [Jacobs] begged her daughter to keep this information secret, apparently reflecting Zina’s own feeling that such knowledge was best kept buried.
Yet Zina did not conceive a child during the 36 months after she had theoretically become Brigham’s wife “for time.” She would not conceive Brigham’s child until six months after Henry Jacobs would have been excommunicated along with William Wines Phelps.
Even in this six months there is a clue. Brigham’s decision to wait six months before attempting to engender a child with Zina would ensure there was no question of the paternity of any children born by Zina after Henry’s disgrace.
Examining an Adultery
In 1850 Joseph Ellis Johnson was brought to Salt Lake City to stand trial for adultery. Joseph Ellis Johnson had engendered a child with Hannah Goddard, the estranged plural wife of Apostle Lorenzo Snow. Escorting Joseph Ellis Johnson to Salt Lake City were Apostle Orson Hyde and Henry Miller, founder of Kanesville, [19] the key Winter Quarters site. The party also included Joseph Kelly and family. No others traveled in the party.
Johnson came before the disciplinary council of leaders (including Brigham) in order to set the record straight. Despite Johnson’s transgression, Johnson wished to beg for forgiveness that he might be sealed to the woman he had lain with and then be sealed to their children.
In the transcript, we see the members of the council asking whether or not Johnson taught that it was acceptable for a man and woman to have intercourse as long as it was not known. This is clearly their attempt to determine whether Joseph Ellis Johnson had been teaching spiritual wifery or illicit intercourse. Joseph Kelly gave testimony exonerating Johnson of a key reason Johnson was suspected of teaching spiritual wifery. It appears Johnson’s mother-in-law had been a victim of spiritual wifery in Nauvoo.
Johnson denied he taught any such doctrine. He asserted he had merely slept with the young lady and things were as they were.
Joseph Ellis Johnson was restored to membership and sent back to Kanesville immediately following the trial. Upon his return, he met the tiny child who had been born to Hannah Goddard mere days after Johnson had been whisked off to stand trial.
Joseph Ellis Johnson would be officially sealed to Hannah in 1861, when Joseph and his families finally left Kanesville to gather to Salt Lake City. [20]
Making Fun of the Freighter
As the western settlements took shape, Brigham insisted that couples who wished to marry come to Salt Lake City. As the Biography of Elizabeth Houston [DeLong] relates, “At this time [1867] no marriages were solemnized out of the Endowment House.” [21] In other words, Church marriages were only performed in Salt Lake City, in the Endowment House.
For example, this explains why Joseph Ellis Johnson was not formally sealed to Hannah Goddard until he and Hannah had traveled to Salt Lake City in 1861.
In 1867, Albert DeLong was an bachelor and overland freighter. Albert fell in love with Elizabeth Houston, the twenty-year-old eldest daughter of Scottish widow Margaret Crawford [Houston]. It appears Margaret was not sufficiently impressed with Albert DeLong to part with a daughter on whom Margaret relied so wholly. This was a time when Brigham Young was actively discouraging commerce with those who were not Mormon, making people like DeLong social outcasts in the eyes of some of the faithful.
Margaret demanded an impossible condition. She would allow Elizabeth to travel from St. George to Salt Lake City in the company of Albert DeLong only if Elizabeth was married to Albert DeLong. However as the couple could only be married in Salt Lake City, it appeared the two could never be wed.
“To overcome this difficulty the young man went to Salt Lake City and explained his trouble to president Brigham Young, who gave him an order telling Erastus Snow to marry them in St. George.” [22]
Erastus Snow performed the ceremony marrying Elizabeth Houston and Albert DeLong on January 3, 1867. As Widow Houston feared, Elizabeth and Albert left St. George as soon as they were married. Brigham Young would joke with Albert and Elizabeth regarding the unusal circumstances of their marriage whenever he saw the DeLongs in his travels. This good-natured ribbing illustrates that Albert DeLong’s quest to circumvent the rules was not a typical happening in Brigham’s time.
This story illustrates the unusual level of control Brigham Young personally exercised over seemingly minor matters related to marriage.
Artificial Shortage of Women
In our modern age, countries with large shortages of women are associated with terrible violence against women. However these Asian countries, India and China, have a shortage of women precisely because they despise women to begin with, willing to abort and otherwise discard girl children.
In western culture, social science indicates men behave differently when they believe there are more than enough women, or when they believe the women have no choice.
In Jon Birger’s Date-onomics, he suggests that “When faced with an oversupply of women, guys are more likely to delay marriage and play the field.” [23] In other words, they act like the Strikers of Nauvoo, expecting sex without commitment from as many women as they can convince to yield.
By encouraging and even forcing leading men to embrace plural marriage, Brigham Young created the ultimate shortage of women. Not only were there few women available to players, the women could have any man in the community, regardless of the man’s prior marital commitments.
Brigham also put in place a liberal divorce policy. Husband or wife unhappy? Simply pay $10 dollars and the marriage was over. [24] This meant that a young woman did not need to feel trapped if the marriage she had initially agreed to turned out to be a mistake.
We see this in the case of Jonathan Harriman Holmes’s surviving daughter from his first marriage. Sarah Elizabeth Holmes married John Porter Barnard on February 14, 1853, when she was barely 15. John Porter Barnard, a respected butcher, was almost 50. [25] Given Sarah’s youth, it is possible that this “marriage” was more a live-in engagement than a consummated marriage. The marriage soon ended. Sarah went on to become a plural wife to Miles Weaver. Miles died, and Sarah and her sister-widow became the second and third wives to Miles’s brother, Franklin.
Brigham made it clear that the only accepted Mormon marriages were those officiated by Brigham Young or officiated by his express permission. It became impossible for anyone after the 1840s to fraudulently pretend their ceremony met the requirement that was a pre-requisite to the Celestial Kingdom. Hence Brigham Young controlled access to the highest heaven in Mormon theology, where families are able to be together forever.
Brigham made plural marriage a mandatory expectation for Church leaders. With the best men in the community selected for service, the best men were now also under mandate to take on additional wives. These leaders were prohibited from courting the women they wished to marry. They were only permitted to ask and had to accept whatever answer the woman gave. Women’s ability to marry anyone, refuse anyone, and divorce at will put women firmly in the driver seat when it came to marriage.
Orson Pratt and others would talk about the many social ills that were eliminated by polygamy. Foremost of these claims was that polygamy ended prostitution. [26] What modern ears usually fail to hear is the reference to the prostitution of women implicit in the illicit intercourse of Nauvoo.
Some modern researchers have presumed that polygamy reduced prostitution because the men, saddled with multiple wives, had insufficient interest or time or energy to also seek out prostitutes. However the artificial shortage of women created by polygamy meant that Mormon women did not need to sell their bodies for food. The connections between families created in Brigham’s polygamous Mormon community provided a robust support system for all members of the Mormon community, beyond plural wives.
By 1870, less than a decade before Brigham’s death, the rules of marriage were thoroughly established among the Mormons. There was no risk of spiritual wifery regaining a foothold as Joseph’s doctrine. Women could pick from a pool of steady and righteous men without concern that a good man already had a wife. The combination of rigid rules yet allowance for divorce resulted in widespread adherence to the marital standards. Though only a small percentage of Mormon men were ever polygamists at any given time, analysis of Utah census records for 1860 indicates that roughly 50% of married women in some congregations were a spouse in a polygamous household. [27]
The Lethal Cure
Brigham used polygamy to kill the heresy of spiritual wifery. He did this by tightly controlling marriage, openly promoting plural marriage, and making it so no woman was necessarily left in a vulnerable position that invited the possibility for spiritual wifery to regain a hold.
But the decades following Brigham’s death demonstrated the challenge of using plural marriage to kill spiritual wifery. Like a doctor who cures a patient of cancer by a lethal dose of chemotherapy, Brigham had accomplished a great good by implementing the damaging policy of quasi-mandatory plural marriage. Widespread plural marriage is an unsustainable practice in the long-term, as seen by examining the abuses associated with modern polygamist communities.
Brigham’s success in making plural marriage the defining aspect of the Mormon faith, possibly to quash spiritual wifery, would make ending the practice of plural marriage terribly difficult.
Eradicating Spiritual Wifery – Notes
As Brigham took leadership of the Mormon faithful, he faced a host of challenges to the central authority Joseph had taught was the prerogative of the presiding Prophet. These challenges would inform Brigham Young’s use of plural marriage and excommunication to control his people.
Several attempted to take the sealing power into their own hands. William Smith failed to understand that spiritual wifery was not part of Celestial marriage. William McCary invented his own variant of “sealing,” possibly composed of the worst lies Bennett and the Strikers had spread about Joseph Smith. Lyman Wight acted as though he had every right Brigham had to lead and perform eternal marriages. Henry Jacobs performed unauthorized plural marriages while in England. Each of these were excommunicated.
The 1850 trial of Joseph Ellis Johnson demonstrates the continued fear leaders had that spiritual wifery might reappear. Requiring that the Mormon faithful come to Salt Lake City and be married in the Endowment House ensured there was no confusion about which marriages were authorized and which were not.
By requiring leaders to marry plural wives, Brigham Young created an artificial shortage of women. A shortage of women is not a universal remedy for social ills. But in Western Society a shortage of women is recognized as being correlated with increased commitment and reduced promiscuity. But widespread polygamy is not sustainable. Brigham Young’s success in promoting plural marriage would make it terribly difficult to end the practice.
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[1] Hannah’s authority to bargain away her husband’s son indicates that she was likely not a first wife.
[2] See also D&C 28: 2, 7, 13.
[3] A late account (Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 9 April 1890) indicates Brigham Young was asked to accuse William Smith of adultery and other sins. After the trial began, Joseph stood and cried, “Bro. Brigham, I will not listen to this abuse of my family a minute longer…” Cannon writes “A rupture between the two greatest men on earth seemed imminent.”
[4] Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, pp. 220-221.
[5] See Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, p. 269-273
[6] Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, pp. 114-115.
[7] Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, pp. 141-142
[8] Walker, William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, p. 147.
[9] O’Donovan, Connell, “Black Priesthood and Priesthood Denial,” The Persistence of Polygamy, Vol 2, pp. 52-53. Also Walker, William B. Smith., pp. 198-203, though Walker characterizes William’s activities as merely unauthorized plural marriage rather than spiritual wifery. Joseph may have learned of William’s incorrect understanding of the doctrine in spring of 1844, possibly prompting Joseph’s comments to William Marks regarding the need to end this spiritual wife doctrine or polygamy.
[10] Pratt, Parley P., “This Number Closes the First Volume of the ‘Prophet’,” Prophet 1, no. 52 (May 24, 1845): 2. Citred by Kyle Walker in William B. Smith: In the Shadow of a Prophet, p. 245.
[11] O’Donovan, Connell, “Black Priesthood and Priesthood Denial,” The Persistence of Polygamy, Vol. 2, pp. 51-57.
[12] Huntington Jacobs Smith Young, Zina Diantha, Diary entry of August 17, 1845, repeated in Beecher, “All Things Move in Order in the City: The Nauvoo Diary of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs,” BYU Studies 19, no. 3 (Spring 1979): 318.
[13] Smith, George D, Nauvoo Polygamy, Signature Books, 2012, p. 649, note 315.
[14] Whipple, cited by O’Donovan, Persistence of Polygamy, Vol 2, p. 60.
[15] The Council of Fifty Record for Feb 4, 1845, shows Lyman Wight was dropped from that Council prior to Lyman’s emigration to Texas. Lyman’s excommunication was documented in the General Church Minutes for Dec 3, 1848 and in Lyndon W. Cook’s The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A Historical and Biographical Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants, Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985.
[16] O’Donovan, Connell, “Black Priesthood and Priesthood Denial,” The Persistence of Polygamy, Vol. 2, pp. 79-80.
[17] I had inferred Henry Jacobs must have been excommunicated. While in Nauvoo in February 2016, I encountered a descendant of Zina and Henry and confidante of Oa Jacobs Cannon who confirmed that Henry had, in fact, been excommunicated upon his return from England.
[18] Extreme measures were taken to ensure Zina and her children were not corrupted by they association with an excommunicated man, but this level of interference was rare. Agnes Coolbrith [Smith Smith Smith Pickett] was not rescued when her legal husband abandoned her. The relative neglect may have arisen because she was in California and had been sealed to Don Carlos rather than Joseph Smith in eternity.
[19] Kanesville was originally called Millers Hollow, after Henry W. Miller. Miller would be the first member of the Iowa State Legislature from the area.
[20] Joseph Ellis Johnson traveled to Salt Lake City in a company led by his nephew, Sixtus Ellis Johnson, departing Florence, Nebraska on 14-15 July 1861 and arriving in Salt Lake City on September 27, 1861. Familysearch.org shows Joseph Ellis Johnson was sealed to Hannah Goddard on November 17, 1861, in the Endowment House.
[21] Judd, Bessie, Biography of Elizabeth Houston DeLong, written January 15, 1922. Contained in The DeLong Family Saga, compiled by Gladys W. Banks, with Douglas W. Banks, p. 86.
[22] ibid.
[23] Tucker, Reed, “Sorry, ladies, there really is a man shortage,” New York Post, August 25, 2015, online 29 Nov 2015 at http://nypost.com/2015/08/25/hey-ladies-here-are-8-reasons-youre-single/.
[24] Journal of Discourses, 8:202 (B. Young/1860); Wilford Woodruff record of divorces (1889-98), cited by Michael Quinn in Extensions of Power, Chapter Six, note 78, Signature Books. Michael Quinn mentioned this divorce fee during a lecture at the Sunstone Symposium held in Washington, DC, in spring 1995.
[25] Ages at date of marriage from familysearch.org. The records for these individuals no longer show the relationship in familysearch. Online information at other sites still show the 1852 marriage date.
[26] Orson Pratt mentioned this benefit of polygamy in his August 1852 discourse announcing plural marriage as a formal belief of the LDS Church. Another source is Franklin D. Richards article “Polygamy,” Millennial Star 17, no. 14 (April 7, 1855): 213.
[27] Marie Cornwall, Camela Courtright, and Laga Van Beek, “How Common the Principle? Women as Plural Wives in 1860,” Dialogue 26 (Summer 1993): 149. Online 9 Dec 2015 at http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V26N02_153.pdf. See also Troy A. Wynn’s analysis of Utah households based on 1880 census data, online 9 Dec 2015 at http://www.somemormonstuff.com/polygamy-in-utah-1880/.