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Most Mormons welcomed the end of plural marriage, announced by Wilford Woodruff in 1890. The suffering caused by government enforcement of anti-polygamy laws had been great. Many had longed for plural marriage to end even before imposition of harsh political measures.
Yet even when Wilford Woodruff announced that plural marriage should end, not everything was over.
For the vast majority of men involved in a plural marriage, Wilford Woodruff’s pronouncement ending polygamy did not persuade them to put away their plural wives. Many of these men were older, with older plural wives who were at or near the end of their childbearing years.
A few men involved in plural marriage had married young brides in the final years before the Manifesto was issued. These were often inspired by John Taylor’s dying conviction that plural marriage was the New and Everlasting Covenant. These few men believed the requirement to enter into plural marriage could never righteously be taken from the earth.
Meanwhile, the United States had taken a hard position that polygamy was utterly wrong. On this point the people of the United States were of one mind as they have rarely been since.
Mind Your Own Business
Once the Morrill Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1878 and the Edmunds Act was signed into law in 1882, plural marriages were conducted in strict secrecy. Young wives retained their maiden names even when they moved away from home. A young man could never know if his lady love kept her distance due to disdain or because she had already secretly pledged herself to another. [1] In the years leading up to Wilford Woodruff’s announcement ending polygamy, Mormon culture had adopted means of hiding the actual practice of polygamy.
Annie Clark [Tanner] tells of the women who existed in the Mormon Underground. Pregnant women would be taken in without question. They would not be asked their name or where they came from. When she herself was pregnant and underground, she had a complete false history at the ready, should anyone ask her who she was.
In August 1889 Annie Tanner was with her young daughter at the home of her aunt, Mary Rich. President Wilford Woodruff was visiting, along with Apostles George Q. Cannon and Francis Marion Lyman. [2] Wilford Woodruff saw Annie playing with her daughter and asked if the child was Annie’s. Annie acknowledged that the girl was her child. Then President Woodruff asked who the father might be. Annie hesitated, saying nothing. Elder Cannon came to her rescue, saying “That is hardly a fair question, is it, Brother Woodruff?” [3]
Ironically, Annie’s husband was present that week. But they were never together in public. Similar scenes played out throughout the rest of the Mormon settlements. No one wanted to know anything they might have to testify to in a court of law. [4]
When President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto in 1890, it was not clear whether the ban on plural marriages was supposed to end existing plural marriages. The wording of the Manifesto led some to think plural marriages might still be possible to contract in countries other than the United States, where governments did not care enough to prosecute. Given a culture where participants in plural marriages were not willing to tell the prophet himself of their status, the Manifesto became something the Church could not effectively enforce.
Testing the Waters
Intense anti-polygamy persecution had been mounted against the Church. The Manifesto had declared that new plural marriages should no longer be solemnized in the United States, the country in which all Mormon temples existed at that time. To set an example, both Church President Wilford Woodruff and Presiding Apostle Lorenzo Snow severed earthly ties with their plural wives, each spending the rest of their life with only one of the women with whom they had respectively covenanted for eternity.
Others, however, continued to believe polygamy was a fundamental principle of exaltation.
One of those who resisted was B. H. Roberts, born 1857 in England. Roberts had started adulthood as a boozing, gambling miner who could not read. By the time Roberts was in his thirties, he had become a staunch defender of the faith, a prolific writer, a member of the First Quorum of Seventy, and husband to three women.
In 1898 B. H. Roberts [5] ran for Congress. He won election as a Democratic member of the House of Representatives. Because Utah was newly a state, this meant Roberts would be a voting member of Congress if allowed to take his elected seated. Constituents throughout the United States rebelled at the thought of admitting an acknowledged polygamist to Congress. Anti-polygamy activists distributed petitions demanding Roberts be barred from serving in Congress. The originals of these petitions are housed in the U.S. Archives, where they occupy multiple feet of shelf space. The number of signatures collected is in excess of 50% of the number of enfranchised voters at that time. [6] Roberts was never seated in Congress.
The Actions of the Sons
Most LDS Church officials continued to privately acknowledge their plural wives. The majority of these men married their plural wives before the beginning of intense government sanctions. They were now old men and their wives were largely beyond the age of childbearing.
A minority, however, had been willing to marry even in the face of the dire sanctions of the Edmunds-Tucker Act and the anticipated prohibition against polygamy on the part of the LDS Church. Now that Utah was a state, this minority quietly began to marry additional women, believing they could properly perform sealing ordinances in opposition to the direction of the prophet. [7]
In 1901 the three youngest apostles married additional plural wives. John W. Taylor and Abraham Owen Woodruff were the sons of former prophets, admitted to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles when they were in their mid-twenties. Matthias F. Cowley was the third apostle to break ranks and marry a plural wife in the new century. Joseph Marion Tanner, husband of Annie Clark [Tanner], was another prominent Church leader who followed the lead of the three youngest apostles.
John W. Taylor, born in 1858 during the Utah War, was the senior of these youngest apostles, both in age and apostolic rank. It is likely he was the ring-leader of those entering into post-manifesto polygamy. In 1886 John W. Taylor had been guarding the door in the home of John W. Woolley [8] when President John Taylor reportedly received a revelation. In response to John Taylor’s question asking if the Church was still bound to continue the New and Everlasting Covenant, God had said yes. John W. Taylor shared his father’s opinion that the New and Everlasting Covenant was synonymous with plural marriage.
In January, 1901, someone performed a marriage uniting 27-year-old Owen Woodruff with Eliza Avery Clark, an 18-year-old who had been born in Farmington, Utah. On August 29, 1901, someone performed marriage ceremonies binding John W. Taylor to two half-sisters as his fourth and fifth wives. Taylor’s new brides were college-educated Eliza Roxie Welling and Phoebe Welling, [9] also from Farmington, Utah. In 1901 Matthias Cowley married Mary Lenora Taylor. [10]
Given the secrecy surrounding plural marriages solemnized after the Manifesto, it is not always possible to determine when the marriages occurred or who had officiated. However it is certain the actions of these young apostles suggested plural marriages could continue despite President Woodruff’s 1890 Manifesto. The three junior apostles were young, handsome men. Their new wives were young women with their entire reproductive lives ahead of them.
The Smoot Hearings or Mormons Renounce Polygamy (Part 2)
In 1902, Apostle Reed Smoot obtained permission from the Church to run for the U.S. Senate. He won the election and was seated in 1903. National opposition to Reed Smoot was immediate. As a Mormon, Smoot was suspected of being a polygamist. As an LDS apostle, Smoot was suspected of being a mere puppet for the Mormon hierarchy.
The Smoot hearings would produce a huge record. According to Kathleen Flake:
“The four-year Senate proceeding created a 3,500-page record of testimony by 100 witnesses on every peculiarity of Mormonism, especially its polygamous family structure, ritual worship practices, “secret oaths,” open canon, economic communalism, and theocratic politics. The public participated actively in the proceedings. In the Capitol, spectators lined the halls, waiting for limited seats in the committee room, and filled the galleries to hear floor debates. For those who could not see for themselves, journalists and cartoonists depicted each day’s admission and outrage. At the height of the hearing, some senators were receiving a thousand letters a day from angry constituents. What remains of these public petitions fills 11 feet of shelf space, the largest such collection in the National Archives.” [11]
The most famous sound bite from the trial was uttered by Senator Boies Penrose of Pennsylvania. Boies was unabashed in his appetites, which included food and women. The pompous self-righteousness of others irritated Penrose. Addressing the subject of polygamy, Penrose reportedly glared at Senate colleagues who had reputations for philandering and said:
“As for me, I would rather have seated beside me in this chamber a polygamist who doesn’t polyg than a monogamist who doesn’t monog.” [12]
Despite four years of hearings, the Senate was ultimately unable to muster the 2/3 majority required to expel a member from the Senate. [13] In 1904, however, the outcome of the Smoot hearings was far from certain. Early in the proceedings, LDS Church President Joseph F. Smith was asked to testify before Congress.
Joseph F. Smith was one of those who had refused to put away his plural wives. He acknowledged to the U.S. Congress that his own unwillingness to give up his plural wives had set a bad example. Three months later, on June 6, 1904, President Smith issued a reiteration of the Church’s position on plural marriage:
Inasmuch as there are numerous reports in circulation that plural marriages have been entered into, contrary to the official declaration of President Woodruff of September 24, 1890, commonly called the manifesto, which was issued by President Woodruff, and adopted by the Church at its general conference, October 6, 1890, which forbade any marriages violative of the law of the land, I, Joseph F. Smith, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hereby affirm and declare that no such marriages have been solemnized with the sanction, consent, or knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
And I hereby announce that all such marriages are prohibited, and if any officer or member of the Church shall assume to solemnize or enter into any such marriage, he will be deemed in transgression against the Church, and will be liable to be dealt with according to the rules and regulations thereof and excommunicated therefrom. [14]
JOSEPH F. SMITH,
President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Significantly, B. H. Roberts seconded the new statement.
The next day Owen Woodruff’s first wife, Helen, died of small pox in Mexico. [15] Owen Woodruff himself passed away of small pox later that month. [16] The boyish apostle’s audacious practice of post-Manifesto polygamy would therefore be largely forgotten by history. [17]
However John W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley continued to solemnize plural marriages, despite the 1904 reiteration of the Church’s position. [18] When they were called as witnesses in the Smoot hearings, they fled the country and went into hiding. [19]
In 1905, Taylor and Cowley were called before their colleagues in the Church hierarchy. They resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve at the request of Joseph F. Smith on October 28, 1905.
In 1909, after Reed Smoot was no longer at risk of being ousted from the U.S. Senate, John W. Taylor married his secretary, Ellen Sandburg. [20] He was able to keep this sixth marriage quiet until 1911. When the Quorum of the Twelve learned of this post-1904 marriage, they questioned John W. Taylor. Taylor replied it was none of their business. John W. Taylor was excommunicated. Matthias Cowley was disfellowshipped, possibly because he had almost certainly performed the ceremony joining John W. Taylor and Ellen Sandburg.
Legend has it that John W. Taylor accepted his excommunication, but it broke his heart. [21] His financial dealings faltered now that he was no longer a member of the Church. [22] He was diagnosed with stomach cancer after the excommunication. He died in 1916 with President Joseph F. Smith sitting vigil for his last days. Some take the prophet’s vigil at the deathbed of his longtime colleague as a sign of their friendship. Others believe the prophet stood watch to ensure no one attempted to restore John’s blessings before he died. [23]
After Matthias Cowley was stripped of his priesthood, the former apostle curbed his involvement in advocating for plural marriage. In 1936, after twenty-five years, Matthias was again ordained to the priesthood. But Matthias Cowley was never readmitted to the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. Matthias’s son, Matthew Cowley, would rise to prominence in the Church, becoming an apostle in 1945. [24]
The erring apostles had been silenced by death and Church discipline. However others took up the cause of perpetuating polygamy.
The Church of the Landlord
There were those, like John Taylor, who were convinced that the New and Everlasting Covenant was synonymous with plural marriage. One of these was John W. Woolley. It was in Woolley’s house that John Taylor reportedly received the 1886 revelation regarding the New and Everlasting Covenant. [25]
As the man in whose house the John Taylor revelation had been received, John Woolley became convinced it was his duty to continue the practice of polygamy. Woolley preached that the Church leadership had fundamentally erred in ceasing the practice of plural marriage.
In 1914 John W. Woolley was excommunicated for performing plural marriages in his role as a temple sealer. Despite this public censure, John and his son, Lorin, appear to have believed the Church itself was secretly continuing the practice of plural marriage. In this vein, Lorin alleged that church president Heber J. Grant and apostle James E. Talmage had taken plural wives in the “recent past.” [26] The Church vigorously denied Lorin’s claims and excommunicated him in 1924.
John W. Woolley died in December 1928, claiming that he was the rightful successor to John Taylor and Wilford Woodruff, the last two Mormon prophets to allow plural marriages. It had been the now-dead apostle-sons of these two prophets who had participated in post-Manifesto polygamy. [27]
At John Woolley’s death, Lorin C. Woolley assumed the mantle of leadership in his father’s movement to continue polygamy.
In 1912 Lorin published the first account of the 1886 revelation. [28] The story became more elaborate as the years passed. In 1929 Lorin published what he claimed was the authoritative account of the revelation reportedly received in 1886. Lorin alleged that John Taylor had set apart a cadre of men to ensure that no year passed by without children being born in the New and Everlasting Covenant of marriage. Supposedly the end of the world would result. [29] By 1929 the mainstream LDS Church no longer understood the New and Everlasting Covenant to be synonymous with plural marriage. Therefore Lorin Woolley specifically claimed John Taylor’s alleged actions meant that no year must pass without children being born into plural marriages.
Lorin Woolley assumed control of the Council of Friends, a priesthood council Woolley claimed was superior in authority to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As Woolley argued his Council of Friends was the more authoritative organization, Woolley argued the Mormon Church could not appropriately excommunicate the polygamists. Lorin claimed the Council of Friends dated back to Adam. But most accounts simply report that Lorin organized the Council of Friends.
The Woolleys had said they were perpetuating necessary and fundamental tenets of Mormonism, including polygamy and the United Order. [30] Those who adhere to the Woolley faith tradition are often referred to as fundamentalists, a termed coined in the 1940s by LDS Apostle Mark E. Petersen. [31]
The vast majority of modern polygamists in the Mormon tradition belong to offshoots of Lorin Woolley’s 1929 Council of Friends. [32] Lorin would never live to see the many disparate fundamentalist traditions his controversial claims would spawn, with some leaders of fundamentalist sects found guilty of crimes including murder, rape, and incest. Mormons discovered to be practicing polygamy are excommunicated from the LDS Church. Their children must renounce polygamy to be baptized.
Fundamentalist polygamist groups are primarily located in the Western United States, Western Canada, and northern Mexico. Somewhere between 8,000 and 30,000 fundamentalists actually live in polygamous households.
One prominent fundamentalist leader, Warren Jeffs, was on the FBI list of ten most wanted criminals before he was apprehended and sentenced to life in prison plus twenty years for rape and incestuous abuse. Dan and Ron Lafferty were brothers who murdered their sister-in-law, Brenda Lafferty. Brenda had persuaded Ron’s wife to reject polygamy and leave Ron. The Laffertys also murdered their niece, Brenda’s infant daughter Erica. [33] The Lafferty case was documented in Jon Krakauer’s 2003 book about violent polygamist fundamentalism, Under the Banner of Heaven.
Despite the gross abuses of some, many fundamentalists are honorable individuals who merely feel they are holding true to a divine mandate to practice plural marriage, a mandate they feel the mainstream Mormon Church has abandoned. Meanwhile the modern LDS Church repudiates mortal polygamy.
What of the Taylors?
Some are confused by the history regarding the end of polygamy. Some are tempted to believe the modern Mormon Church was wrong to abandon polygamy in 1890. If this is true, the experience of one family may be of particular interest.
John Taylor went to his death bed believing that plural marriage was necessary. John Whitaker Taylor persisted in this belief as a high Church leader, until he was stripped of every privilege of Church membership. What did the third and fourth generations from John Taylor and his son choose?
The Taylors chose to remain in the mainstream LDS Church, the Church that walked away from “the principle.” As late as 1980 the matriarchs of the family were carefully teaching their descendants of the dangers of fundamentalist sects. These matriarchs were telling their children and grandchildren of their status as precious children of a storied heritage, children that fundamentalists would desire to seduce to their cause.
As of 1980, it was alleged that only one modern descendant of John Taylor had been involved in fundamentalist polygamy. This one young woman had the marriage annulled as soon as she became aware that her husband was a polygamist. [34] It is doubtful modern descendants of John Taylor have aligned themselves with fundamentalist polygamy. Yet if there were some secret polygamous way that led to “true” salvation, should not the modern descendants of the Taylors have sought that “true” salvation? [35][36]
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[1] Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother, pp. 74, 81.
[2] Annie only mentions Elder Cannon and Lyman, without including first names, but as Abraham Cannon would not become an apostle until two months after the reported visit, I think it’s unlikely Annie was referring to anyone other than George Q. Cannon.
[3] Annie Clark Tanner, A Mormon Mother, pp. 110-111.
[4] Annie Tanner would settle in Farmington, Utah, where she would become a Spiritual Living teacher, team teaching with Nellie Todd Taylor, the second wife of John W. Taylor.
[5] In 1895 the Church issued a manifesto supporting political neutrality, and prohibiting high Church leaders such as the Apostles and members of the Seventy from running for political office without the express permission of the Church. The policy was likely a concession related to hopes for Utah statehood, but B. H. Roberts argued the policy infringed on his rights as a U.S. citizen. See 1895 Political Manifesto, online 3 Aug 2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Mormon_Political_Manifesto.
[6] See Roberts, Brigham H., A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1965, p. 363. The petitions from U.S. citizens demanding that Roberts be denied a seat in congress take up several feet of space in the Library of Congress. The number of signatures on the petitions represent more than 50% of the enfranchised voters in the United States at the time. Unpublished research performed by Steven Stathis, also verifiable by accessing the originals held at the U.S. Archives and comparing numbers to the number of enfranchised voters in 1896. Roughly 14 million individuals cast a vote in the presidential election held that year, online 3 Aug 2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1896.
[7] It is clear these post-Manifesto marriages were not solemnized in accordance with Church policy. D&C 28 had made it clear that the prophet was to lead, though counsel could be given by others. D&C 132:7 clarified that only one person at any given time held the power to seal, though that power could be delegated, as Joseph had done with Hyrum and as Brigham did with Erastus Snow. By 1901 there were many to whom the power to officiate at sealings had been delegated. But any sealings they performed that were not in accordance with the will of the prophet were not considered valid, as seen by Wilford Woodruff’s action in razing the Endowment House due to the report of an unauthorized sealing.
[8] A few years later, John W. Taylor would marry John Woolley’s niece, Janet Maria Woolley.
[9] The sisters were grand-daughters of Jonathan Harriman Holmes and Elvira Annie Cowles.
[10] Mary Lenora does not appear to be closely related to John W. Taylor. Family search lists the marriage as being solemnized in 1905, but Mary Lenora gave birth to Matthias’s child on May 30, 1902, implying their marriage was solemnized no later than September 1901. Mary Lenora gave birth in Logan, Cache County, Utah, which is where Owen Woodruff’s plural wife, Avery, was going to school, suggesting a social link to the other apostles’ plural wives.
[11] Flake, Kathleen, The Politics of American Religious Identity: The Seating of Senator Reed Smoot, Mormon Apostle, The University of North Carolina Press (2004).
[12] Beers, Paul B., Pennsylvania Politics Today and Yesterday: The Tolerable Accommodation, The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA, 1980, p. 51.
[13] Reed Smoot would go on to serve in the U.S. Senate until 1933.
[14] The so-called Second Manifesto was presented at the April 6, 1904 General Conference of the LDS Church. President Joseph F. Smith read the manifesto, which was then accepted unanimously by those in attendance. “Resolved that we, the members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in General Conference assembled, hereby approve and endorse the statement and declaration of President Joseph F. Smith just made to this Conference concerning plural marriages, and will support the courts of the Church in the enforcement thereof.” Conference Report, April 1904, p. 76.
[15] The Woodruff family had most recently been staying in Colonia Juarez, one of the polygamous communities in Mexico close to the United States border. As a point of interest, Mitt Romney’s ancestors were part of the Colonia Juarez community, to which ancestor Miles P. Romney had fled to protect himself and his four wives from federal prosecution.
[16] Owen died in El Paso, Texas.
[17] Snyder, Lu Ann Faylor and Phillip A. Snyder, Post-Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, 2009, online 3 Aug 2014 at http://digitalcommons.usu.edu/usupress_pubs/40/.
[18] Presumably Taylor and Cowley felt that marriages performed outside of the United States were still permitted under the 1904 Manifesto.
[19] In March 1904 subpoenas were sent to Joseph F. Smith, M. W. Merrill, John W. Taylor, George Teasdale, Matthias F. Cowley, John Henry Smith, and Dr. Joseph M. Tanner, see Snyder and Snyder, Post Manifesto Polygamy: The 1899-1904 Correspondence of Helen, Owen, and Avery Woodruff, p. 33. Merrill and Teasdale were ailing, Taylor, Cowley, and Tanner went into hiding. Joseph F. Smith refused to do more than ask the rebellious men to testify, saying the hearings were a political matter, not a matter where he could exert spiritual command. Dr. Joseph M. Tanner was the husband of Annie Clark [Tanner], see notes 1-4 in this chapter.
[20] John’s honeymoon with Ellen involved a large family camping trip with his plural wives and their children. Only Nettie, of John’s plural wives, refused to participate in the “honeymoon” trip. Ironically, Nettie’s letter to Ellen, written lest Nettie’s unwillingness to participate in the camping trip be misinterpreted as rejection of Ellen herself, is now the only extant contemporary record of the honeymoon trip.
[21] John W. Taylor’s life is documented in Sam Taylor’s book Family Kingdom, a book the rest of the family would refer to as Nettie’s book, as Sam overwhelmingly featured his own mother’s interactions with John W. Taylor. The other wives did produce life sketches before their deaths, rounding out the picture of this particular post-Manifesto polygamous family.
[22] John W. Taylor’s last big deal never came together. He died still owing over $30,000 to his second wife, Nellie Todd. After his death, she was not permitted to inherit any of his estate, as she was a plural wife.
[23] According to Wikipedia, John W. Taylor’s blessing were secretly restored in 1965 by Joseph Fielding Smith, a few months after John’s first wife, May Leona Rich, turned 100. However John’s plural wives and their children were not aware of this restoration during their lifetimes.
[24] Matthew Cowley joined the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles shortly after the excommunication of Richard Lyman for adultery, an adultery Richard Lyman had pretended was merely a plural marriage. Matthew’s presence in the quorum was no doubt a reminder of the price a man had to pay for believing in the mortal continuation of plural marriage.
[25] A picture of the alleged revelation is extant, which appears to be written in John Taylor’s handwriting. But the original document is not publicly available. See 1886 Revelation, online 4 Aug 2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1886_Revelation.
[26] Brian C. Hales, ‘I Love to Hear Him Talk and Rehearse’: The Life and Teachings of Lorin C. Woolley, Mormon History Association, 2003. Online 3 Aug 2014 at http://www.mormonfundamentalism.com/archive/NEWFILES/LorinCWoolleyBio.htm.
[27] Others claim John W. Woolley was the rightful successor of Joseph F. Smith.
[28] In Sam Taylor’s Family Kingdom, he describes his father, John W. Taylor, being approached after his excommunicated by two groups. One group consisted of protestant preachers, who hoped to win the now-underutilized Taylor to their cause. He refused. The second group consisted of those wishing to reinstate polygamy, arguing that John W. Taylor could attract a large portion of the Church to his banner, were he to publicly declare a return to the teachings of his father, John Taylor. Again, John refused. Lorin Woolley’s publication of the account of the 1886 revelation likely followed John W. Taylor’s refusal.
[29] A belief that the end of the world might result if reproductive marriages were no longer solemnized within the New and Everlasting Covenant is loosely correlated with the allegory of the Olive grove, found in the Book of Mormon, Jacob 5 and is consistent with the language of Malachi 4:6.
[30] The United Order is a form of Christian communalism attempted in the early days of the Church in which property is shared. This sort of communalism is described in the New Testament, in Acts 4:32-37.
[31] Mark E. Petersen was the apostle who was called to replace excommunicated apostle Richard Lyman, whose adultery was inspired by a belief that plural marriage was still acceptable.
[32] See Mormon Fundamentalists article on Wikipedia, online 3 Aug 2014 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mormon_fundamentalists.
[33] The Laffertys’ anger was reportedly associated with Brenda’s counsel to Ron’s wife that led Ron’s wife to refuse him a second wife and then leave Ron herself.
[34] I was told this story in 1980, before I cared about family history, so I never recorded the young woman’s name. The generation that maintained this level of vigilance has now passed from this life. Michael Quinn indicates Ellen Sandburg [Taylor] hosted polygamous gatherings in support of her sisters, who had also entered into post-Manifesto marriages.
[35] I am unaware that any Cowleys entered into fundamentalist polygamy. Owen Woodruff’s eldest son, Wilford Owen Woodruff, only five when his father died, married a plural wife in 1942 and was excommunicated. His first wife left him and he was eventually re-baptized.
[36] “2015 Statistical Report for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” presented by Brook P. Hales during the Saturday afternoon session of General Conference, April 2, 2016.