Joseph Smith’s Polygamy – an Overview

Joseph Smith organized the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on April 6, 1830. Historical documents indicate that within a year, he had concluded that polygamy could be acceptable to God, but he taught that it was not then permitted. Evidence supports that in Kirtland, Ohio, in the 1830s, probably 1835, he experienced his first and only plural relationship before 1841 with a domestic in the Smith household named Fanny Alger. That union ended in 1836 and the following year Church members left Ohio to live in western Missouri, where they were driven out by 1839. Research indicates that no other Latter-day Saints were involved with plural marriage at any time prior to Nauvoo.

Nauvoo Plural Marriage

Settling a small Illinois hamlet on the Mississippi river shoreline renamed Nauvoo, the Prophet slowly introduced plural marriage to selected Church members beginning in late 1840. Called a “sealing,” Joseph Smith’s first polygamous matrimony in Nauvoo (and second overall) occurred on April 5, 1841. During the next seventeen months, he was sealed to over a dozen plural wives. A few other men and women were also invited to participate in the practice, although the principle was never openly taught so far as records indicate.

By the end of August, 1842, Joseph Smith discontinued plural marriages for a period of five months, undoubtedly due to the influences of dissenter, John C. Bennett. The Prophet resumed his polygamous marrying in February of 1843, being sealed to more than another dozen plural spouses during the next ten months. Current evidence supports that after November 2nd of 1843, during the last eight months of his life, Joseph contracted no new polygamous unions. By the time of Prophet’s death on June 27, 1844, additional Nauvooans had entered into polygamy. Available evidences shows that twenty-nine other men married fifty-one plural wives, joining the practice.[1]

Several different forces combined to create the environment wherein Joseph Smith was martyred, but none was more important than the secret introduction of plural marriage. He was killed on June 27, 1844 at Carthage, having been sealed to over thirty polygamous wives.

Time Period	Joseph Smith	Prior to Joseph Smith’s death (June 1844)	Joseph Smith’s death to opening of Nauvoo Temple (December 1845)	Sealed in the Nauvoo Temple	Post-Nauvoo Temple prior to trek west	Totals
New male polygamists	1	29	51	108	7	196
New plural wives	34	51	135	263	34	521

Plural Marriage after Joseph Smith’s Death

After the martyrdom, plural marriage continued as a well-known secret among many Church members. Expanding under the direction of the presiding Quorum of the Twelve Apostles leadership, Brigham Young controlled all new sealings. The spring of 1846 saw the Latter-day Saints pulling out of Nauvoo in covered wagons heading west. Entering the territories of the United States and Mexico, they were soon surrounded by a geography and time where plural marriage was legal. It was not until 1852 that the practice and doctrine were published to the world.[2] Ten years thereafter came the first federal legislation against polygamy, with more to follow. The government stepped up its anti-polygamy campaign until 1890, when the Supreme Court upheld laws that disfranchised the Church and confiscated much of its property, including its temples. With missionary work and temple work halted, then Church President Wilford Woodruff issued a Manifesto removing the mandate to practice plural marriage from the Latter-day Saints. Permission for polygamous unions was still secretly granted to a few Church members each year until 1904 when Wilford Woodruff’s successor, Joseph F. Smith, issued a Second Manifesto thereby withdrawing permission for any new polygamous marriages.

For the next twenty years or so, scattered individuals within and without the Church attempted to practice plural marriage without permission from the Church President. Between 1904 and the 1920s, no organization existed among these maverick pluralists, nor did they claim special priesthood keys that transcended Church authority. However, starting in 1921, Lorin C. Woolley claimed to possess a previously unheard of priesthood office as a member of an unknown council that ostensibly could authorize new plural marriages. In 1935, Elden Kingston asserted his own unique authority to practice polygamy. Twenty years later, the LeBaron brothers arrived with their own distinctive offices and authorities. During these years and afterwards, dozens of other “Mormon fundamentalist” polygamists entered the scene with their novel interpretations and priesthood claims.

Today the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints excommunicates anyone attempting to practice plural marriage, asserting they have no genuine priesthood authority to do so. Yet, upward of 30,000 individuals across the Wasatch Front have chosen that lifestyle. For more information, see my Modern Polygamy and Mormon Fundamentalism: The Generations After the Manifesto, (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2006).[3]

From the Church’s beginning in 1830 to April 1904, Latter-day Saints believe God directed the process through which marriage practices came full circle. The early 1830s standard of strict monogamy expanded to permit polygamy. Then in 1852 plural marriage was officially considered a commandment to all Church members. Thirty-eight years later the directive was removed through the issuance of the 1890 Manifesto, but plural unions were still secretly permitted for fourteen more years. Joseph F. Smith’s 1904 declaration blocked all new authorizations for plural marriage reinstating monogamy as the only acceptable marital form.

Echoes and shadows of polygamy persist among splinter groups today, but comparing their efforts to Joseph Smith’s polygamy demonstrates overwhelming dissimilarities.

[1] See George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “… but we called it celestial marriage”, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008, 574-656. George D. Smith identifies thirty-two men and fifty-four plural wives, but data for three of the marriages appears inconclusive.

[2] See Davis Bitton, “Polygamy Defended: One Side of a Nineteenth-Century Polemic,” in The Ritualization of Mormon History and Other Essays, Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1994, 34-53; "The Ritualization of Mormon History," Utah Historical Quarterly, 43 (Winter 1975), 67-85.

[3] See also Brian C. Hales, Setting the Record Straight: Mormon Fundamentalism, Salt Lake City: Millennial Press, 2008.