CONCERNING JOSEPH SMITH
Helen Mar Kimball was 14 years old when she was married and sealed to Joseph Smith. Referring initially to her father, Heber C. Kimball, in her autobiographical journal, she wrote:
. . . he taught me the principle of celestial marriage, and having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one ewe lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter: how cruel this seamed to the mother whose heartstrings were already stretched untill they were ready to snap asunder, for he had taken Sarah Noon to wife & she thought she had made sufficient sacrafise, but the Lord required more. I will pass over the temptations which I had during the twenty four hours after my father introduced to me this principle & asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph, who came next morning & with my parents I heard him teach and explain the principle of Celestial marrage-after which he said to me, “If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred."
This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart—when Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied “If Helen is willing I have nothing more to say.” She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older and who better understood the step they were taking, and to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set; but it was all hidden from me.
Melissa Lott Smith Willes testified that she had
been Joseph’s wife “in very deed.” (3 Aug. 1893, Temple Lot case, 98, 105)
Emily Partridge said she “roomed” with Joseph the night
following her marriage to him and said that she had “carnal intercourse” with
him. (Temple Lot case 364, 367, 384)
Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young:
Joseph not only paid his addresses to the young and unmarried women, but he sought "spiritual alliance" with many married ladies.... He taught them that all former marriages were null and void, and that they were at perfect liberty to make another choice of a husband. The marriage covenants were not binding, because they were ratified only by Gentile laws. These laws the Lord did not recognize; consequently all the women were free...
One woman said to me not very long since, while giving me some of her experiences in polygamy: "The greatest trial I ever endured in my life was living with my husband and deceiving him, by receiving Joseph's attentions whenever he chose to care to me."…some of these women have since said they did not know who was the Father of her children; this is not to be wondered at, for after Joseph's declaration annulling all Gentile marriages, the greatest promiscuity was practiced; and, indeed, all sense of morality seemed to have been lost by a portion at least of the church.
Joseph Smith's attempt at plural marriage with Orson Pratt's wife (History of the Saints, pp. 228-231):
JOSEPH SMITH - Sister Pratt, the Lord has given you to me as one of my spiritual wives. I have the blessings of Jacob granted me, as God granted holy men of old, and as I have long looked upon you with favor, and an earnest desire of connubial bliss, I hope you will not repulse or deny me.
SARAH PRATT REPLIED - And is that the great secret that I am not to utter? Am I called upon to break the marriage covenant, and prove recreant to my lawful husband! I never will…. I care not for the blessings of Jacob. I have one good husband, and that is enough for me….Joseph, if you ever attempt any thing of the kind with me again, I will make a full disclosure to Mr. Pratt on his return home. Depend upon it, I will certainly do it.
JOSEPH SMITH RESPONDED - Sister Pratt, I hope you will not expose me, for if I suffer, all must suffer; so do not expose me. Will you promise me that you will not do it?
SARAH PRATT - If you will never insult me again, I will not expose you unless strong circumstances should require it.SMITH - If you should tell, I will ruin your reputation, remember that.
Sarah Pratt, after exposing Joseph's proposal of plural marriage (Mormon Portraits, 1886, p 62-63):
In his endeavors to ruin my [Sarah's] character Joseph went so far as to publish an extra-sheet containing affidavits against my reputation. When this sheet was brought to me I discovered to my astonishment the names of two people on it, man and wife, with whom I had boarded for a certain time. . . . I went to their house; the man left the house hurriedly when he saw me coming. I found the wife and said to her rather excitedly; "What does it all mean?" She began to sob. "It is not my fault" said she. "Hyrum Smith came to our house, with the affidavits all written out, and forced us to sign them." "Joseph and the Church must be saved," said he. We saw that resistance was useless, they would have ruined us; so we signed the papers."
CONCERNING THE TEACHINGS OF BRIGHAM YOUNG
Mary Ettie V. Smith (Mormonism: Its Rise, Progress, and Present Condition, 1870 edition, pp. 42-48):. . . Brigham Young . . . said . . . there are many gods, and they do not acknowledge the one Triune God of the Bible, but that every man will sometime be a ‘god;' and that women are to be the ornaments of his kingdom, and dependent upon him for resurrection and salvation;
PUBLIC DEFENDERS OF POLYGAMY
Phebe Woodruff, first wife among seven to Wilford Woodruff,
speaking at a mass meeting of Mormon women in 1882:
If I am proud of anything in this world, it is that I accepted the principle of plural marriage, and remained among the people called 'Mormons' and am numbered with them to-day.However, a few days later a long-time friend asked:How is it Sister Woodruff that you have changed your views so suddenly about polygamy? I thought you hated and loathed the institution.Phebe responded:I have not changed. I loathe the unclean thing with all the strength of my nature, but Sister, I have suffered all that a woman can endure. I am old and helpless, and would rather stand up anywhere, and say anything commanded of me, than to be turned out of my home in my old age which I should be most assuredly if I refused to obey counsel.
Emmeline B. Wells, a prominent public advocate of polygamy,
from a diary entry dated September 30, 1874:
O, if my husband could only love me even a little and not seem to be perfectly indifferent to any sensation of that kind. He cannot know the cravings of my nature; he is surrounded with love on every side, and I am cast out How much sorrow I have known in place of the joy I looked forward to. . . . O my poor aching heart when shall it rest its burden only on the Lord.
A WIFE OF A FOREIGN MISSIONARY
I can never tell the horrors of the next few hours.... I went to my room and dressed for the reception, which took place at Cannon's other house, where he kept his three wives. When I went down, there was a crowd there, among the rest a plain looking girl in a calico dress, to whom I was introduced. It was Emily Spencer.... I told her to get up. Miles came forward and said, ‘Sit still Emily Spencer, my wife.' I felt as though I had been shot. I said, Your wife! Then what am I?' He said, ‘You are both my wives.' All at once my shame flashed over me. Here I was dishonored, the polygamous wife of a Mormon. I ran out of the house, bent only on escape, I did not think where. I could not do it, though for Miles and young Cannon, a son of the Delegate, ran after me and dragged me back.... [B]ut I stole away and returned to the other house, where I had been living the three weeks since my arrival from England. I noticed there was no key in the lock, but shot a little bolt and piled chairs against the door. I cried myself to sleep. The next thing I knew, I don't know what time it was, Miles stood in the room and was locking the door on the inside. I screamed... Miles said I need not take on, for Brother Cannon had anticipated that I would make trouble and had the house cleared of everyone else. I found out that it was so. He told me that I might as well submit; there was no law here to control the saints. There was no power on earth that would save me.
WIVES OF LATTER-DAY PROPHETS AND APOSTLES
Mary Ann Angell
Young, legal wife of Brigham Young:
God will be very cruel if he does not give us poor women adequate compensation for the trials we have endured in polygamy.
Zina Huntington, wife of Brigham Young (New York World, November 17,
1869, as cited in The Lion of the Lord, pp. 229-230):
It is the duty of the first wife to regard her husband not with a selfish devotion... she must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy... we believe in the good old custom by which marriages should be arranged by the parents of the young people.
Vilate Kimball, wife of Heber C. Kimball (“Theatrical and Social Affairs
in Utah,” by S.A. Cooks, pp. 5-6, Bancroft Library, p. 209):
She [the plural wife] must lay aside wholly all interest or thought in what her husband was doing while he was away from her... [and be] pleased to see him when he came in as she was pleased to see any friend.
Sarah Pratt, wife of Orson Pratt, New York Herald, May 18, 1877:
Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young (“Letter Number Two,” The Women of Mormonism, pp. 169-170):
I do not wish to wrongfully accuse my husband, although we have been hopelessly separated for ten years. I believed, when he decided to enter upon the practice of polygamy, that he did so not from any violence of individual passion, but from sheer fanaticism. He told me that he believed it was his duty to take other women besides myself to wife, and at first he said that this would make no difference in his affection for me, which would continue pure and single as it had ever been. But think of the horror of such an announcement. He took wife after wife until they numbered five, and for a long time they were kept away from me and I was spared from intercourse with them. By and by he told me that he intended to put these five women on an exact equality with me; that he could spend a week with one, a week with another, and so on, and that I should have the sixth week! Then patience forsook me. I told him plainly that I wouldn't endure it. I said, "If you take five wives with your other women you can take the sixth with them also." Orson responded, "If you don't choose to live with me I don't know that I'm obliged to support you. You may have my permission to go to hell. Stick to it or to starvation.”
Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young (“Letter Number Two,” The Women of Mormonism, pp. 169-170):
It is the very refinement of cruelty, this polygamy, and it hurts are deeper and more poisonous than any other wounds can be. They never heal, but grow constantly more painful, until it makes life unendurable.
Ann Eliza Young, wife of Brigham Young (Wife No. 9, Chapter
18):
[We] were also told that floating through space were thousands of infant spirits, who were waiting for bodies; that into every child that was born one of these spirits entered, and was thereby saved; but if they had no bodies given them, their wails of despair would ring through all eternity; and that it was, in order to insure their future happiness, necessary that as many of them as possible should be given bodies by Mormon parents. If a woman refused to marry into polygamy, or, being married, to allow her husband to take other wives, these spirits would rise up in judgment against her, because she had, by her act, kept them in darkness.
FROM A DAUGHTER’S PERSPECTIVE
Annie Clark Tanner (A Mormon Mother, 1969, p.
133):
As a girl I had been proud that my father and mother had obeyed the highest principle in the Church... I was aware now that my mother's early married life must have been humiliating and joyless on many occasions because of her position as a second wife.
Comments
Post a Comment