New Book!
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Books by Brian C. Hales dealing with "Mormon
fundamentalist" polygamy:
Despite claims that Joseph Smith was a womanizer, none of his plural wives complained that he had abused them. None left a record reflecting distain concerning his treatment of her. In later years, none of the Prophet's plural wives sought to discredit him in any way. Even those wives that left the Church did not write exposés or other criticisms of Joseph Smith.
Many of Joseph Smith’s plural wives lived into the late decades of the nineteenth century.
Grey indicates they died outside of Utah.
Ten of the thirty-four women died outside of Utah. Three of these, Maria Lawrence, Hannah Ells, and Olive Frost, passed away before the migration west or while it was in progress. Concerning Maria Lawrence’s death, Mary B. Smith (b. 1837), daughter of the Prophet’s brother Samuel, wrote in 1911:
There was a mystery about Mariah Lawrence. The Lawrences lived just across the street from us…
Maria Lawrence died of consumption or one might more truthfuly put it of a broken heart. My Aunt Lucy visited her and and felt great sympathy for her. She said to Aunt at one time "That if there was any truth in Mormonism she would be saved for said she ["]My yoke has not been easy nor my burden light." As to what was the cause of Maria's deep sorrow I do not exactly know. I have reason to believe that she was one of Almond Babits wives [after Joseph’s death] - And her heartbreak was as likely to be occasioned by him as anyone else…[7]
Seven of Joseph Smith’s plural wives died geographically distanced from the center of the Church apparently due to personal preference. If any of the Prophet's plural wives would have been inclined to speak ill of him, it seems these seven would be the most likely candidates.
Fanny Alger left Kirtland in 1836 and married a non-member. Her situation is somewhat unique in that she was not a part of the expanding knowledge of Celestial and plural marriage as revealed in Nauvoo. Evidence exists that she joined the Universalist Church in 1874 and remained a member until her death in 1889. One biographer wrote:
She [Fanny Alger] joined the Universalist church on the evening of the 10th of October, 1874, and until her last, held to that belief. She passed away peacefully and resignedly, with an abiding faith in the justice and love of an All Powerful and Supreme Being, and with joy in the full belief that she would meet with dear ones gone before.
Having fulfilled the duties of life, with a conscientious regard for the welfare and happiness of those who were compelled to lean on her in her middle and early life, she passed away, fully trusting that the welcome applaudit summons, "well done, thou good and faithful servant, enter thou into the joy of the Lord," would greet her on the other side. Funeral services were held at the Universalist church in Dublin [Indiana], on Sabbath morning, Dec. 1, 1889, Rev. P.S. Cook and C.T. Swain, officiating" [8]
Contrastingly, Benjamin F. Johnson asserted: “Altho she never left the State She did \not/ turn from the Church nor from her friendship for the Prophet while She lived.”[9]
Agnes Coolbrith, widow of Don Carlos Smith and the Prophet, married a Church member, William Pickett after Joseph Smith’s death. However, Pickett eventually left the Church and transported his family to California. Despite her geographic estrangement from the Church, Agnes remained in contact with various Church members throughout her life.[10] Agnes’ daughter, Ina Coolbrith, wrote to her cousin, Apostle Joseph F. Smith on July 22, 1857 quoting several scriptures and expressing her willingness to gather to Jackson County or Nauvoo, but not to Salt Lake. Her words reflect a belief in the Restoration, but she openly argued: “Is polygamy not spoken of as a crime there [in the Book of Mormon]?[11] Her mother, Agnes, added a postscript of her own to the letter, but said nothing about Joseph and polygamy.
In 1876, just months before her death, Agnes was visited by David and Alexander Smith who were on a missionary journey, promoting their anti-polygamist RLDS religion. They were undoubtedly surprised by what “Aunt Agnes” had to say. Lucy Walker visited Agnes eight years later and wrote:
I had a very pleasant visit at Oakland, [California] with Ina [Coolbrith, daughter of Agnes Coolbrith], who received me with much tenderness and affection… From her, I learned many things I was glad to know, one fact was, that her mother bore testimony to the “Boys” [Joseph and Emma Smith’s sons, members of the RLDS Church who visited in 1876] in regard to the faith and teachings of their Father and told them that what they had seen, and heard in Salt Lake was Truth, that those women were their Father's wives, and it was useless to promulgate falsehood to the world, and advised them to desist. They pretended not to believe, but she could plainly see they were stung with the truth of her testimony.
David seemed struck dumb, astounded at the living testimony of so many – What could their object [could] be! Alexander said he would not take any bodys word – not even Aunt Agnes. Jos. [Joseph Smith, III] would not talk on the subject. After they left [they] sent \Ina/ what purported to be the 'History of their Father with their Mother's dying testimony—and desired her to place them in the Library—She wrote them She could not with the knowledge She had—that they were false.. (Emphasis in original.)[12]
Agnes Coolbrith separated herself spiritually and physically from the Utah Church. However, when RLDS missionaries came teaching Joseph Smith was not a polygamist, Agnes directly challenged their testimony by recalling earlier events in her own life. Reportedly, her last words were “O! what a dupe I have been; what a dupe I have been!”[13] Agnes’ daughter interpreted this as referring to her association with Mormonism while Agnes’ nephew, Apostle Joseph F. Smith, believed it a reference to marriage to William Pickett and her separation from the Church.[14]
Available research shows that Elizabeth Davis followed the westward movement as far as Winter Quarters, but then she departed from the migrating Saints, turning back to Illinois. During the 1850s, she visited Salt Lake City. Anti-Mormon Sarah Pratt wrote:
There was an old woman called [Elizabeth Davis] Durfee. She knew a good deal about the prophet’s amorous adventures and, to keep her quiet, he admitted her to the secret blessings of celestial bliss. I don’t think that she was ever sealed to him, though it may have been the case after Joseph’s death, when the temple was finished. At all events, she boasted here in Salt Lake of having been one of Joseph’s wives.[15]
Elizabeth lived out the remainder of her life with her son. Ironically, in the late 1860s they were baptized into the RLDS Church, despite its official position that Joseph Smith’s did not practice plural marriage. Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring believe the evidence for Davis’ inclusion on Joseph Smith’s list of wives is not compelling.[16] However he name was added to Andrew Jenson’s list personally by Eliza R. Snow. Todd Compton summarized:
She [Elizabeth] died as a member of the RLDS faith, whose president Joseph Smith III, vehemently denied that his father had ever practiced polygamy. Perhaps Elizabeth came to believe that polygamy was wrong by the time she became a “Reorganite,” or perhaps she simply felt drawn to her old friend Emma Smith and Emma’s children. She remains one of the most interesting of Joseph’s wives, a puzzle only partially solved.[17]
Sarah Kingsley was married to non-Mormon John Cleveland who refused to migrate west. When the Latter-day Saint pulled out for the Rocky Mountains, Sarah joined them, leaving her husband behind. However, Church leaders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball counseled her to return to John in Illinois.[18] Sarah’s biographer wrote:
Brigham Young and council… counseled her to stay with her husband as he was a good man, having shown himself kind ever helping those in need, although for some reason his mind was darkened as to the gospel. She obeyed council and stayed with her husband, and was faithful and true to her relation and died a faithful member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.[19]
Despite Sarah’s biographer’s positive view, it appears that just prior to her 1856 death, she had joined a revivalist religion. Her son-in-law John L. Smith visited her in mid-1855 and recorded:
Mother had joined a Church a couple of weeks before my arrival I bore my testimony to her she seemed to have forgotten what her feelings were once.
Father Cleveland treated me with more respect than ever before & seeme\d/ greatly pleased to see me, asked me to pray & ask the blessing regularly while I was there, saying John you know we never pray but I wish you to pray with us.[20]
John L. Smith’s journal entry may have been too pessimistic. Todd Compton observed: “Without a support group of Mormons, it would have been difficult to live as a Latter-day Saint in ‘gentile’ Illinois, and Sarah always needed a religious social community in her life. Nevertheless, some aspects of her Mormon component were probably so deep that her outward membership in a local Protestant congregation may not have changed it significantly.”[21]
A few authors have written that Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris apostatized and joined a Catholic convent in the 1860s, but the evidence supporting this is problematic.[22] Masonic historian William Leon Cummings, wrote in 1934:
At some time prior to 1853, Mrs. Harris separated from her husband, for in 1856 Harris petitioned for a divorce, on the grounds that his wife had willfully deserted him and without reasonable cause absented herself for more than the space of three years…[23]
Morris [a Masonic historian] claims that Mrs. Harris (formerly Mrs. Morgan) joined the Roman Catholic Sisters of Charity, and was a nurse in a hospital in Memphis Tennessee, during the war of 1861-1865. [Other authors] have copied this statement. I have been unable to verify it from other sources, and the statement itself seems rather questionable. Neither the War Department records nor the records of the church contain any information concerning her. Furthermore, it has been ascertained that there were such requirements for membership in the Roman Catholic Sisterhoods, as age, financial resources, etc., with which it would seem that she would have been unable to comply.
Recently discovered evidence proves that she died at the home of her daughter, Mrs. Lucinda Wesley Smith, in Memphis, Tennessee, in 1856, thus rendering untenable the theory that she was in any way connected with the hospital service during the War Between the States.[24]
While Lucinda physically removed herself from the main body of the Saints to live with her daughter in the early 1850s, her feelings towards the faith and Joseph Smith prior to her death are unknown.
Flora Woodsworth married an anti-Mormon in late 1844. Nevertheless, she received her endowment in the Nauvoo Temple on January 17, 1846 and a temple sealing ordinances to Joseph Smith by proxy on February 4th.[25] Despite her husband’s dislike for the Church, Flora convinced him to accompany the migration. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney provided this narrative:
On the evening of September 1st [1846] Brother Woodworth and family arrived [at Winter Quarters]; all sick. They encamped outside of the square a little distance from our tent. We had a temporary bedstead prepared and took their daughter, Flora Gove, into our tent, where I nursed her until she recovered her strength. Her husband was also sick with fever; she had lain helpless for many days, and her heavy raven locks were so matted together that it took me hours to comb them out. We have lived neighbors in Nauvoo and were old schoolmates. She was older than myself and was sealed to the Prophet Joseph as his wife. This happened before I was aware of the principle. A young man boarding at her father’s after the death of Joseph[26] not a member of the Church had sought her hand, in time won her heart, and in a reckless moment she was induced to accept his offer and they eloped to Carthage, accompanied by a young lady friend, and were there married by a Justice of the Peace. Flora was never happy with him as he hated the Mormons, and she felt condemned for the rash step she had taken. She made this confession to me while I was nursing her, and said she desired to cling to Joseph hereafter.
They settled at the “Point,” and she paid me a visit the following winter. She still expressed herself as strong in the faith of the Gospel, also her great desire to cleave to the Prophet. I never saw her again as she died at that place, leaving two or three children.[27]
Historian Andrew Jenson recorded in 1887: “She [Flora Ann Woodword] regretted her last marriage, her husband being an unbeliever, and intended to cling to the Prophet.”[28]
Sarah Lawrence is the only one of Joseph thirty-four plural wives who appears to have openly denied a relationship with him in later life. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney chronicled her history in the pages of the Woman’s Exponent:
It is a sad thing to record the apostasy of any who were once so highly favored as to receive the great spiritual manifestations which were enjoyed by… Sarah Lawrence. [She] had been the wife of the Prophet Joseph, his first-wife, Emma, having given her and her sister to him as his wives for time and all eternity. Sarah made choice of my father to stand as proxy for Joseph in this life. But she allows a jealous nature to have full sway. She and I became warm friends after she entered my father’s family, and even after she became disaffected and thought to better her condition by marrying another we were still friends and she met nothing but kindness from father and his family…
But the man she married had proven truant to one wife and her little ones, leaving them to struggle for existence in this valley through the hardest times experienced here. And not until they had found friends to succor and help to keep the wolf from their door, did he make his appearance and then he had very little of the Gospel though he, at first, professed to be a “Mormon.” He had come from the goldmines of California where he had made what was then considered quite a fortune. It was not long before he proved the truth of my father’s predictions as he denied the faith and returned to California, taking Sarah with him. But it seems she failed to find happiness even in monogamy. As it turned out a dissipated character, and it was only a few years before she was divorced from him. She had lost every spark of the Gospel, which had once been her guiding star and was finally left to herself. She became so wicked that when paying her last visit to Salt Lake she denied emphatically ever being connected to Joseph or to my father, and was very insulting to those who dared to dispute her word. She abused her brother Henry’s second wife most shamefully, when meeting her in his store, laying to her the most humiliating and abusive accusations, which proved her to be a most vicious and heartless woman. Her brother, Henry Lawrence, was so annoyed by her unprincipled course, that he was among the most thankful when she left here and returned to California, where she soon died.”[29]
According to available evidence, of the thirty-four plural wives, three passed away in Nauvoo remaining true to their convictions. Twenty-four made the trek to the Rocky Mountains and throughout the remainder of their lives, maintained a belief in the Joseph Smith’s mission.
Regarding the remaining seven who died outside of Utah, nothing is known regarding Lucinda Pendleton’s religious convictions at her 1856 demise; Agnes Coolbrith remained friendly to Church members who visited her; Flora Woodworth held to her beliefs; and Sarah Lawrence became antagonistic. In addition, three joined other Churches: Fanny Alger united with the Universalists; Elizabeth Davis joined the RLDS late in life; and Sarah Kingsley was baptized into a protestant denomination just months before her death.
What is striking among all these observations is that none of Joseph Smith’s plural wives ever accused him of abuse or deception, including the seven who left the Church. Decades after their feelings had matured and their youthful perspectives expanded by additional experiences with marriage and sexual relations, none of them claimed they were victimized or beguiled by the Prophet. None came forth to write an exposé to tell the world Joseph Smith was a seducing imposter. None wrote that Joseph Smith’s polygamy was a sham or a cover-up for illicit sexual relations.
Had any of Joseph’s polygamous wives eventually decided that he had debauched them, their subsequent scorn might have easily motivated them to expose him through the pages of the anti-Mormon presses located across the expanding United States. Numerous publishers would have been eager to print their allegations. Even those seven wives who left the faith seem to have maintained respect for the Prophet.
Many exposés were written, but not by any of the actual participants. It appears that Joseph Smith's plural wives viewed his polygamy very differently than cynics and naturalists do today.
[1] John Boice and Mary Ann (Barzee) Boice "Record," MS 8883, Microfilm of manuscript, 174.
[2] Eliza R. Snow to Mary E. Rollins Lightner, April 3, 1865, Mary E.R. Lightner Collection, General Correspondence, BYU Special Collections, Vault Mss 363, folder 1.
[3] Eliza R. Snow, “To Mrs Sylvia P. Lion,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 1885. See also Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson, eds., Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry, Provo and Salt Lake City: BYU Press and University of Utah Press, 2009, 357-58. The authorship of this poem has also been attributed to Zina Huntington. See Zina Card Brown Family Collection, MS 4780, box 2, folder 20 (on Reel 1).
[4] “Presendia Huntington Kimball to Mary Elizabth Rollins Lightner, March 9, 1880,” Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner Collection, MSS 363, BYU HBLL Special Collections, Item 15.
[5] Zina D. Young to Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, June 27, 1886, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Collection, MSS 363, BYU HBLL Special Collections, item 9.
[6] Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, Collection, MSS 363, BYU HBLL Special Collections, item 31.
[7] Mary B. (Smith) Norman to Ina (Smith) Coolbrith, 3 February, 1911, P13, f1078, Community of Christ Archives, pages 10-11.
[8] http://www.algerclan.org/getperson.php?personID=I135&tree=alger (accessed September 6, 2008).
[9] Dean R. Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets: An Analysis of the Letter of Benjamin F. Johnson to George F. Gibbs. Bountiful, Utah: Horizon, 1976, 39. The Lima, Illinois branch of the Church organized October 23, 1842 lists Fanny Custer as a member but whether she was physically present there is not known. (See Emer Harris’s Book of Patriarchal Blessings, no. 210 cited in letter from Richard Van Wagoner to Linda King Newell, undated. Linda King Newell Collection, bx 11 fd 4, Marriott Library.)
[10] Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 156-70.
[11] Ina Coolbrith correspondence with Joseph F. Smith; typescript in Scott Kenney Papers, Marriott Library, MS 587, Box 1, Folder 21. See additional letters between Ina Coolbrith and her cousin Mary B. Smith Norman, daughter of Samuel H. Smith in folder 22 that also show that at least Ina had not abandoned an interest in the religion of her uncle Joseph Smith.
[12] Lucy Walker Kimball to Joseph F. Smith ("My very dear Nephew"), Santa Rosa, February 24, 1884, in Franklin R. Smith collection, CHL, MS 13700, fd 2.
[13] Joseph F. Smith to Ina Coolbrith, April 20, 1918, CHL.
[14] See discussion in Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 169.
[15] W. Wyl, pseud. [Wilhelm Ritter von Wymetal]. Mormon Portraits, or the Truth About Mormon Leaders From 1830 to 1886. Salt Lake City: Tribune Printing and Publishing Co., 1886, 54.
[16] See Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring, “Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd M. Compton,” FARMS Review of Books, (Provo, Utah: Maxwell Institute, 10/2 (1998), 75-77. [67-104]
[17] Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 269.
[18] See John L. Smith journal, MS 2072, CHL, and John L. Smith, MS 1122, CHL, p. 21.
[19] Anon. Biography, CHL. Possibly by August Cleveland Smith
[20] John L. Smith diary, CHL, MS 2072, folder 3 (photocopy) July 4, 1855. .
[21] Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 287.
[22] See Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 54; George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “… but we called it celestial marriage”, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008, 93.
[23] George W. Harris also left the Church. Andrew Jenson penned: “In 1854 Geo. W. Harris was living at Kanesville (Council Bluffs), Iowa. He claimed that ‘he had done enough for the Church and was going to work for George W. Harris now’ In 1857, Thomas B. Marsh having decided to be re-baptized, called on George W. Harris to make his peace. The wife was dead but Harris received Bro. Marsh with kindness, but expressed himself as unwilling to follow Bro. Marsh's example… In 1857, on account of the suspension of mail service to Utah because of the advance of Johnston's army a pony express between Kanesville and Salt Lake City was provided by public subscription. George W. Harris, when approached, gave his old excuse of working for George W. Harris, but two or three weeks later died, leaving his money behind him.” (Andrew Jenson, Andrew Jenson Collection, MS 17956, Box 73, Fd. 28, CHL.)
[24] William Leon Cummings, Bibliography of Anti-Masonry, reprinted from Part I, Volume IV, Nocalore, North Carolina Lodge of Research, 1834, 28.
[25] Lisle Brown, Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings: a Comprehensive Register of Persons Receiving LDS Temple Ordinances, 1841-1846, Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2006, 286.
[26] The Marriage index of Hancock County, Ill., 1829-1849, Tri-County Genealogical Society, compiler (Augusta, Ilinois:Tri-County Genealogical Society, 1983, p. 19) lists the marriage of Flora Woodworth to Carlos Gove, August 23, 1843.
[27] Helen Mar Whitney, “Travels Beyond the Mississippi,” Woman’s Exponent, November 1, 1884, 87.
[28] Andrew Jenson Papers [ca. 1871-1942], MS 17956; CHL, Box 49, Folder 16, document #13.
[29] Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, “Scenes and Incidents at Winter Quarters,” Woman’s Exponent, vol. 14, no. 18, Feb 15, 1886, page 138.
