Joseph Smith – Fanny Alger - Marriage or Affair?

Examining the Evidence

            Perhaps the most important new evidence to emerge is Eliza R. Snow’s unequivocal inclusion of Fanny Alger among Joseph Smith’s plural wives.  Through the recent efforts of historians researching the Mountain Meadows Massacre, a large collection of previously uncataloged documents at the LDS Church History Library was made available for investigation. As a result, Don Bradley obtained access to a folder containing Andrew Jenson’s research notes,[1] which he used to write “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6 (June 1887): 6:219-40. 

             Alger, Fanny

Joseph Smiths wife

one of the first wives Joseph

married, Emma made such a

fuss about in            

   Sister \E R./ Snow was well acquainted

with her \as she/ and lived with the

 Prophet at the time[2]

Don Bradley explains the significance of this information: (1) Not only did Snow actively participate in identifying Joseph Smith’s plural wives but may have served as Jenson’s sole source on Fanny Alger. Indeed, Jenson’s notes mention no second source, and the uniformity of his handwriting suggests that he produced the document at a single sitting. (2) Eliza was unquestionably knowledgeable, since she had lived in the Smith home during or near the time Joseph’s polygamous relationship with Fanny and when Emma expelled her. (3) Snow’s testimony as a contemporary witness helps to break the scholarly deadlock about whether Joseph and Fanny were actually married as opposed to having an affair. If she had had any doubts whether the relationship was a marriage, she could simply have remained silent. It also demolishes the position, held by relatively few, that they had no relationship. (4) She remembered that Emma “made such a fuss” about it (for unknown reasons these words were crossed out presumably by Jenson), a reaction consistent with Emma’s response to later relationships, including Snow’s own plural sealing to Joseph.[3] He summarizes: “Eliza’s late, but firsthand and friendly, testimony concurs on this point with Oliver Cowdery’s hostile but roughly contemporaneous statements. When intimate friend and intimate foe agree on the basic facts of Joseph Smith’s behavior, we have reason to trust their accuracy.”[4]

Historical Considerations

 Benjamin F. Johnson, a close friend of Joseph Smith from the Kirtland period on, recalled in 1903: 

            And now as to your question, “How early did the Prophet Joseph practice polygamy?”. . . In 1835, at Kirtland, I learned from my sister’s husband, Lyman R. Sherman,[5] who was close to the Prophet, and received it from him, “that the ancient order of Plural Marriage was again to be practiced by the Church.” This, at the time did not impress my mind deeply, although there lived then with his family (the Prophet’s) a neighbor’s daughter, Fannie Alger, a very nice and comely young woman about my own age, toward whom not only myself, but every one, seemed partial, for the amiability for her character; and it was whispered even then that Joseph loved her.[6]

 According to Mosiah Hancock, writing in 1896, Joseph did not approach Fanny directly. Rather, he enlisted Levi Hancock, the brother-in-law of Fanny’s father, to serve as an intermediary.[7] Levi asked Samuel Alger:   

            “Samuel, the Prophet Joseph loves your daughter Fanny and wishes her for a wife. What say you?” Uncle Sam says, “Go and talk to the old woman [Levi’s sister and Fanny’s mother] about it. Twill be as she says.” Father goes to his sister and said, “Clarissy, Brother Joseph the Prophet of the most high God loves Fanny and wishes her for a wife. What say you?” Said she, “Go and talk to Fanny. It will be all right with me.” 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.” Father gave her to Joseph, repeating the ceremony as Joseph repeated to him.”[8] 

 Several authors have written that there was no marriage, thus dismissing this narrative as apocryphal. Historian Janet Ellingson considers the Mosiah Hancock account to be “a bit much to swallow.” She apparently considers Joseph and Fanny’s relationship as a sexual liaison: “There is no contemporary evidence, in either Smith’s words or actions, that he thought of it as a marriage.”[9] Technically this is true, because no “contemporary evidence” of any kind exists “in either Smith’s words or actions” concerning the incident. In fact, nothing is recorded referring to the relationship until 1838. However, the lack of contemporary evidence from Joseph Smith does not support either interpretation.

 Ellingson also comments, “In later nineteenth-century Utah, the Hancock and Alger families had everything to gain by remembering and promoting Fanny’s relationship with Smith as a celestial polygamous marriage.”[10] Again, this is probably true during the Utah period. But if there was no marriage in 1835, it seems unlikely that Fanny’s parents, who apparently understood what was happening, would have continued to follow the Prophet in view of his obvious hypocritical behavior. According to Eliza Jane Churchhill Webb, Fanny’s mother told her: “Fanny was sealed to Joseph.”[11] Supporting the idea that they continued to accept Joseph as prophet, they left for Missouri in September 1836, accompanied by Fanny.[12] Two months later in Wayne County, Indiana, Fanny married Solomon Custer on November 16.[13] Todd Compton comments: “One can only speculate on Fanny’s motives for marrying a non-Mormon, after a courtship that could have only been a matter of weeks.  Perhaps she felt that Smith had abandoned her after Emma ejected her from the household. It is also possible that she simply fell in love with Solomon, who, unlike Smith, was her own age--nineteen.”[14]

 Fanny stayed in Wayne County and raised a large family, while her parents and at least one brother, John, continued on to Missouri, then followed the body of the Saints to Nauvoo in 1839. They also joined the migration west in 1846, and settled in southern Utah where they died in the 1870s.[15] This course would be less likely if Joseph had violated his own publicly declared standards of sexual morality with their daughter. Nothing in Joseph’s behavior with their daughter seemed to weaken the Algers’ faith in the restoration.

  As for Fanny herself, according to Benjamin Johnson, “She did not turn from the Church nor from her friendship for the Prophet while she lived.” Late in life she reportedly rebuffed questions about her relationship with Joseph Smith: “That is all a matter of my own, and I have nothing to communicate.”[16] Johnson does not explain the source of his information. Research supports that she joined the Universalist Church in 1874 and remained a member until her death in 1889.[17] 

 The Mosiah Hancock narrative is not without its problems. He was born in 1834 and consequently could not have been an eye witness or participant. Furthermore, he recounted the story decades later in 1896. Todd Compton provides this useful assessment: “Mosiah’s first-hand reminiscences are admittedly subject to the strengths and weaknesses generally found in Mormon and other autobiographies: inaccuracies in dates, misremembered events, an easy willingness to accept the miraculous, and a tendency to overidealize oneself or a hero such as Joseph Smith. Nevertheless, I accept it as generally reliable, providing accurate information about his own life, his family’s life, and Mormonism in Kirtland, Nauvoo and Salt Lake City.”[18]

 The strengths of Mosiah’s account are its consistency with some of Joseph Smith’s later plural marriages, which involved an intermediary to teach and to ascertain the willingness of the woman.[19] The narrative also recounts how a marriage ceremony did indeed occur, even providing the name of his father as the officiator. It also clarifies that Fanny was a willing participant.[20] 

 Perhaps equally important is the behavior of eye witnesses Chauncy and Eliza Webb, who are described as “intimately acquainted with Joseph Smith and his family for eleven years” prior to his death.[21]  Chancy reportedly claimed that they were “intimately acquainted with Joseph Smith and his family for eleven years,”[22] and “offered to take her [Fanny] until she could be sent to her relatives” after she was sent away from the Smith home.[23]  Eliza Jane recalled: “Fanny Alger had lived in Joseph's family several years, and when she left there she came and lived with me a few weeks.”[24]  Throughout their recollections, they (and their daughter Ann Eliza Webb Young) consistently maintained that a marriage ceremony of some kind was performed, referring to it as a “sealing.”[25] 

 In short, the Webbs apparently did not consider the union illicit or see the Prophet’s behavior as reprehensible. The Webbs followed the Church to Nauvoo, settling in a home on Granger Street, and were sealed in the Nauvoo Temple where Chauncy served as a temple worker.[26] They moved to Utah and settled near Tooele; and Chauncy served a mission in 1852.[27] These actions would be unexpected if they felt Joseph Smith was an adulterer. To the contrary, according to Ann Eliza Webb Young, Fanny’s parents considered “it the highest honor to have their daughter adopted into the Prophet’s family, and her mother has always claimed that she was sealed to Joseph.”[28] Furthermore, Benjamin F. Johnson recalled that Apostle Heber C. Kimball introduced Fanny’s brother, John, as “brother of the Prophet Joseph’s first Plural wife.”[29] Johnson’s memory is faulty in that the introduction reportedly occurred “in the Saint George Temple” and that Kimball died before it was completed.

Summary 

A review of available evidence provides a variety of documents that can be interpreted in any of three ways, that the Joseph Smith – Fanny Alger relationship was a plural marriage, a friendship, or adultery.[30] Eliza R. Snow’s view seems to be the most persuasive since she was present when the events unfolded and personally knew Fanny and the Prophet.[31] 

---

[1] Documents 1–18, Andrew Jenson Papers, ca. 1871–1942, MS 17956, Box 49, fd. 16, LDS Church History Library.

[2] An unquoted portion of Jenson’s notes (document 10) suggests that Eliza knew of Fanny’s later marriage and children, and also knew of “a brother Alger” in St. George.

[3] Probably because of Emma’s outrage over the sealing, Fanny disaffiliated with Mormonism and married another man later that year on November 16, 1836.   Jenson did not publish Eliza’s information about Emma’s “fuss” over Fanny. He also referred to the relationship as a “sealing,” rather than a “marriage,” a pattern he followed when he was aware that the woman was legally married to someone else during Joseph’s lifetime. He also misrepresented Fanny as “a wife of Joseph the Prophet, who since his death married again in Indiana.” (Andrew Jenson, “Church Encyclopedia,” Historical Record vol. 8, [Dec. 1889], 942.)

[4] Don Bradley, Analysis of Documents 1-18, Andrew Jenson Papers MS 17956, Box 49, fd. 16; copy in my possession; used by permission.

[5] Sherman was called by Joseph Smith as an apostle but died before learning of the calling. See Lyndon W. Cook, “Lyman Sherman--Man of God, Would-Be Apostle,” BYU Studies 19, no. 1 (1978): 121.

[6] Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 38; punctuation and spelling standardized. 

[7] A seemingly unanswerable question involves Fanny Alger’s understanding of her relationship with the Joseph Smith.  No historical data has been discovered providing her views.  Even if a marriage ceremony was performed, did she understand any of the underlying doctrines concerning polygamy as later taught in Nauvoo?  It seems unlikely that discussions of eternal sealings, the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, or a patriarchal priesthood order would have accompanied her introduction to plural marriage.  Such doctrines were not disclosed until 1840.  Was her willingness to proceed primarily based upon her faith in Joseph’s Prophetic calling?  What role did her understanding that Old Testament plural marriage and the possible need to restore it play? Did Fanny receive a spiritual conversion experience, like those described by many women later in Nauvoo?  What role did attraction play in forming the union, if any?  Did Joseph Smith tell Fanny about the angelic command?  Perhaps additional manuscript documentation will be discovered in the future to help discern the details of this relationship. 

[8] Levi Ward Hancock, “Autobiography with Additions in 1896 by Mosiah Hancock,” 63, MS 570, LDS Church History Library,   punctuation and spelling standardized; cited portion written by Mosiah. See also Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 32. I am indebted to Compton who discovered that both published versions of the journal are incomplete, having had all references to the Fanny Alger marriage removed. These published versions are The Mosiah Hancock Journal (Salt Lake City: Pioneer Press, n.d.), 74 pp., and The Levi Hancock Journal (N.p., n.d.), 58 pp. See also Compton, “Fanny Alger Smith Custer: Mormonism’s First Plural Wife?” 175 note 3. Mosiah Hancock, “Correspondence: The Prophet Joseph--Some of His Sayings,” Deseret News, February 27, 1884, 15, wrote: “Concerning the doctrine of celestial marriage the Prophet told my father [Levi] in the days of Kirtland, that it was the will of the Lord for His servants who were faithful to step forth in that order. But said Brother Joseph, ‘Brother Levi, if I should make known to my brethren what God has made known to me they would seek my life.’”

[9] Janet Ellingson, “Alger Marriage Questioned,” Letter, Journal of Mormon History 23 (Spring 1997), vi–vii. Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 181–82, and Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy, 4, 13, also consider the story apocryphal and dismiss the possibility that a form of marriage occurred. Interestingly, Van Wagoner provided this commentary: “If one views Joseph Smith’s introduction of polygamy as a reversion to Old Testament practice rather than an expansion of Christianity, then it is not so shocking to consider the possibility of no formal ceremony being performed for the women prior to Louisa Beeman. No where in the Old Testament is a marriage ceremony mentioned. The custom seemed to be that after an initial contract between the two parties, the husband-to-be, merely ‘took her according to the Law of Moses and of Israel.’” Richard Van Wagoner, Letter to Linda King Newell, n.d., Box 11, fd. 4, Linda King Newell Collection, Marriott Library. The interior quotation does not occur in this form anywhere in the Old Testament.

[10] Ellingson, “Alger Marriage Questioned,” vi–vii.

[11] Webb, Letter to Mary Bond, April 24, 1876.

[12] Mosiah Hancock also adds an additional statement regarding Fanny Alger and the “apostates”: “As time progressed the Apostates thought they had a good hold on Joseph because of Fanny and some of the smart  ones confined her in an upper room of the [Kirtland] Temple determined that the Prophet should be settled according to their notions Brother Joseph came to Father and said ‘Brother Levi what can be done’?--There being a wagon and a dry goods Box close by and  Joseph being strong and Father active Father soon gained the window Sill and Fanny was soon on the ground Father mounts his horse with Fanny behind him and although dark they were in New Lyme forty five miles distant.”  Mosiah Hancock, "Autobiography of Levi Ward Hancock with additions by Mosiah Hancock,” 64. This account in confusing in two ways. The second-story windows of the Kirtland Temple are at least twenty feet off the ground, too high to allow the safe, stealthy exit that Mosiah describes. Second, Oliver Cowdery, who seemed to be a primary source of complaint, would not have been classified with any “apostate” group in mid-1836. 

[13] “The clerk recorded: ‘Dublin November 16th, 1836 This day married by me Levi Eastridge a Justice of the Peace for Wayne County and State of Indiana Mr Solomon Custer and Miss Fanny Alger both of this town.” Wayne County, Indiana, marriage license, photocopy of holograph in my possession. Benjamin Johnson reported this marriage but misdates it by more than a year: “Soon after the Prophet’s flight in [the] winter of 1837 and 1838 [actually January 1838], the Alger family left for the west and stopping in Indiana for a time, Fanny soon married one of the citizens there.” (Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 33).

[14] Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 37.

[15] Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 37, 40.

[16] Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 33, punctuation and spelling standardized. The Lima Branch (Illinois) of the Church organized October 23, 1842, lists Fanny Custer as a member, but whether she was physically present there is not known. (Emer Harris’s Book of Patriarchal Blessings, no. 210, cited in Van Wagoner, Letter to Newell, n.d., Newell Collection, Marriott Library.)

[17] http://www.algerclan.org/getperson.php?personID=I135&tree=alger (accessed September 6, 2008).

[18] Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 29.

[19]Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 41–42, views this conversation as an “exchange of women” between Joseph Smith and Levi Hancock. Yet the assertion is weakened because Levi and Clarissa were already mutually attracted to each other.

[20] Janet Ellingson, “Alger Marriage Questioned,” vi–vii, doubts that “Levi Hancock, a man who had no civil authority, willingly and quickly accepted Smith’s demand that he perform a ‘a marriage.’”  Compton, “Response to Janet Ellingson,” Journal of Mormon History, 23 (Fall 1997): xviii, disagrees: “Ellingson finds it unbelievable that Levi Hancock would consent to perform a marriage without civil authority. Personally, I find it very believable--both that Smith would place his religious authority above civil authority and that one of Smith’s disciples would give him unquestioning obedience.”

[21] Wyl, Mormon Portraits, 7.  

[22] Ibid. 

[23] Ann Eliza Webb Young, Wife Number 19; or, The Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy. Hartford, Conn.: Dustin, Gilman, 1876, 67. 

[24] Eliza J. Webb [Eliza Jane Churchill Webb], Lockport, New York, to Mary Bond, April 24, 1876, Biographical Folder Collection, P21, f11, item 7, 8, Community of Christ Archives. 

[25] Ann Eliza Webb Young, Wife No. 19, or the Story of a Life in Bondage, being a Complete Expose of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy, (Hartford, Conn: Dustin, Gilman & Co., 1875), 66-67.  Eliza J. Webb [Eliza Jane Churchill Webb], Lockport, New York, to Mary Bond, April 24, 1876, Biographical Folder Collection, P21, f11, item 7, 8, Community of Christ Archives. Chauncy Webb quoted in Wyl (Mormon Portraits, 57). 

[26] Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and T. Jeffery Cottle, “The City of Joseph in Focus: The Use and Abuse of Historic Photographs,” BYU Studies 32, no. 1 (1991): 255. On March 31, 1841, Elder Chauncy Webb performed the marriage of John Harvey and Eliza Everett.  “Hymeneal,” Times and Seasons 2 (May 1, 1841): 405. Brown, Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings, 326.

[27]“QUINCY BRANCH, Tooele Stake, Tooele Co., Utah, consisted of a few families of Latter-day Saints residing in Skull Valley, including the Quincy Ranch. Skull Valley was used as a herd ground for cattle as early as 1857, when a man named Box located there and built a herd-house. Two years later Chauncy Webb also settled in what was then known locally as “The Dell.” Andrew Jenson, Encyclopedic History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Andrew Jenson Company, 1941, 1901-36), 688. For his mission, see Stanley S. Ivins, Notebook 13, p. 163, Utah State Historical Society.

[28] Ann Eliza Young, Wife Number 19, 67. See also Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6 (July, 1887): 232. Susa Young Gates reports as a family tradition:  “Father and the Twelve Apostles felt the death of the Prophet far more keenly than did the people; and as we believe that children are a part of the glory we inherit hereafter, it seemed a cruel thing that the beloved leader and Prophet should be stricken down in the prime of life, and left without issue in this Church.  Father went to those noble women who had accepted the principle of celestial marriage with the Prophet as their husband, and he told them he and his brethren stood ready to offer themselves to them as husbands for time, and the widows might choose for themselves.  Four of these young widows chose father, and he accepted the charge thus laid upon him. He felt the grand old Hebrew impulse, to be himself the instrument by which posterity for his dead brother might be born in this life.”  (“Joseph Smith ‘Left Without Issue in this Church,’” typescript, Susa Young Gates Collection, MS 8884, CHL; microfilm copy of original at Utah State Historical Society, reel 9, box 12, fd. 2.) An Alger family tradition states:  “Brigham Young, accompanied by Fanny’s brother, John Alger, did come to Indiana, before Fanny married Solomon Custer, to ask her to marry him.  She answered him by saying, ‘You are a fine young man but I want to be an only wife.’”  (Jo Kester to Allan Alger, email march 4, 2003, printout in possession of the author.)  It seems the only reason Brigham would have visited Fanny, if any of the traditions are true, would be to follow through with his commission to offer himself as a possible husband, for “time” to Joseph Smith’s plural wives and that Fanny was indeed married to the Prophet.

[29] Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 45.

[30] A middle-of the-road perspective is promoted by LDS Church Historian Jeffrey O. Johnson who believes that no physical relationship ever existed between Joseph and Fanny.  (Jeff Johnson to the author, email communication September 24, 2007.) 

[31] An Alger family tradition states:  “Brigham Young, accompanied by Fanny’s brother, John Alger, did come to Indiana, before Fanny married Solomon Custer, to ask her to marry him.  She answered him by saying, ‘You are a fine young man but I want to be an only wife.’”  (Jo Kester to Allan Alger, email march 4, 2003, printout in possession of the author.)  It seems the only reason Brigham would have visited Fanny, if any of the traditions are true, would be to follow through with his commission to offer himself as a possible husband, for “time” to Joseph Smith’s plural wives and that Fanny was indeed married to the Prophet.