Presendia Huntington Buell

Source:

Fawn Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 301-2.

Accusation:

The extreme informality attending Joseph’s earliest marriages (at least as it appears in the available records) is even more evident in the story of the prophet’s relationship with Presendia Huntington Buell. During the Missouri troubles of 1838–39 her husband, Norman Buell, temporarily left the church. About this time Presendia bore a son. She admitted later that she did not know whether Norman Buell or the prophet was the father. But the physiognomy revealed in a rare photograph of Oliver Buell seems to weight the balance overwhelmingly on the side of Joseph’s paternity.[3]

Discussion:

Fawn Brodie (and a few other authors) accuse Joseph Smith of fathering a child in 1839 (with or without a prior marriage ceremony) with Presendia[1] Huntington Buell, then the wife of Norman Buell, a sometime Mormon.[2] Brodie asserts that Oliver Norman Buell, born January 31, 1840, was Joseph’s son.

In her book she presents a few photographs that show a resemblance between Oliver Norman Buell and some of the sons of Joseph and Emma Smith.[4] However, Compton observes: “It would help to have pictures of Norman Buell and George Buell [another son of Presendia] to see if there were family resemblances there.”[5] Despite the obviously subjective nature of a photographic resemblance to Joseph Smith (of whom no photograph and few other contemporary images exist), Brodie was so confident that Joseph Smith was Oliver’s biological father that she wrote to fellow historian Dale Morgan in 1945: “If Oliver Buell isn’t a Smith, then I’m no Brimhall.”[6]

However, significant problems exist that undercut the credibility of this assertion. Presendia’s “admission” that she did not know who fathered her child is both third-hand and indirect. Mary Ettie V. Smith (b. 1827) was the sister of Howard Coray who served as a clerk to Joseph Smith. The Coray family were converted in Perry, Pike County, Illinois in 1840 and moved to Nauvoo.

Mary Ettie Coray Smith wrote in 1860: “I heard the latter woman [Presendia] say afterwards in Utah, that she did not know whether Mr. Buel [sic] or the Prophet was the father of her son.”[7] She implies that she heard this information directly from Presendia; but such a statement would be surprising in the context of the time. Issues regarding sexuality or implied sexuality were seldom voiced, especially to strangers. Compton writes: “One wonders if Presendia would have said such a thing. Talk of sexuality was avoided by the Victorian, puritanical Mormons; in diaries, the word ‘pregnant’ or ‘expecting’ is never or rarely used.”[8]

In addition, there is nothing in Presendia’s writings or history to support an intimate friendship with Mary Ettie where such a conversation might naturally occur. Stanley S. Ivins, arguably the most extensive researcher on early Mormon polygamy, dismissed Mary Ettie V. Smith’s report as “inaccurate and of no value.”[9] Similarly, anti-Mormon writer Fanny Stenhouse described Ettie Smith in 1875 as “a lady who wrote very many years ago and in her writings, so mixed up fiction with what was true, that it was difficult to determine where the one ended and the other began.”[10]

As an example of Mary Ettie’s confusion, only ten pages later she states that Presendia Buell became pregnant with Joseph Smith’s child while she was living “at Lima, Illinois.”[11] If she is remembering this detail correctly, then the son Presendia allegedly referred to could only have been Oliver’s younger brother, John Hyrum, born July 13, 1843, at Lima, Illinois, three years after Presendia and Norman left Missouri. Therefore, Fawn Brodie was either aware of her error when quoting Mary Ettie or deliberating misrepresenting the evidence.

Born January 31, 1840, Oliver would have been conceived approximately May 10, 1839. The chronology and geographical locations of Joseph and Presendia pose important problems with Brodie’s assertions. Joseph Smith escaped incarceration in Missouri on April 16, 1839.[12] At that time he was about twenty-five miles southeast of Adam-ondi-Ahman, traveling with a sheriff and deputies toward Boone County in central Missouri. Brodie writes incorrectly: “Joseph’s journal entries make it clear that after his escape he was mingling with the last Mormon group to leave Far West, which included the Huntington family.”[13] In fact, Joseph Smith’s journals contain no entries for the April 16–22 period.[14]

Inaccurately, Brodie assumes that immediately after gaining his freedom, Joseph went west (not east to Illinois) through the Missouri countryside to join Church members at Far West. As an escaped prisoner, he was risking his freedom and his life. The previous fall, Mormons had been slain at the Battle of Crooked River and Haun’s Mill. Others had been beaten with clubs and whipped. Neither is there evidence that Presendia was in Far West at that time. Regardless, according to Brodie, the Prophet allegedly fathered a child there with her (with or without a marriage ceremony). According to Brodie’s reconstruction of the events, Joseph then backtracked to flee from the state, arriving in Quincy on April 22. Brodie’s timetable also assumes that Oliver was two to three weeks premature at birth.

Furthermore, Joseph was not alone. The History of the Church records for April 17, 1839: “We prosecuted our journey towards Illinois, keeping off from the main road as much as possible, which impeded our progress.”[15] Hyrum Smith recalled that upon escaping: “Two of us mounted the horses, and the other three started on foot, and we took our change of venue for the State of Illinois; and in the course of nine or ten days arrived safely at Quincy, Adams county, where we found our families in a state of poverty, although in good health.”[16]

For the rest of April and May 1839, Joseph remained in Illinois, while Presendia lived at Fishing River, in Ray County, Missouri, over 100 miles away. At that point, Norman Buell was no longer affiliated with the Church and operated a carding mill on Fishing River until the fall of 1840.[17]

And conclusively, in 2007 genetics researcher Ugo Perego performed DNA testing on descendants of Oliver N. Buell, demonstrating a 57.5% disparity between the DNA loci of Joseph Smith and Oliver’s male descendants on the Y-chromosome. This lack of correlation shows conclusively that Joseph Smith could not have been Oliver Norman Buell’s father.[19] Taken together, this evidence supports the conclusion that there is virtually no likelihood that Joseph Smith was involved with Presendia in 1839.

Summary

Despite Fawn Brodie's apparent security that Joseph Smith was the father of Oliver Buell, numerous problems with her theory exist. Todd Compton concludes: “Every link in Brodie’s position that Oliver Buell was Joseph Smith’s son is implausible, improbable, or impossible. There is no good evidence that Oliver Buell was the son of Joseph Smith, and thus there is no good evidence that Joseph had an affair with Presendia Buell before he married her in 1841.”[18]

[1]Martha Sonntag Bradley and Mary Brown Firmage Woodward, Four Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2000), xxiii note 1, comment: “The spelling of Presendia appears in a variety of forms in both legal and personal documents--Presendia , Presendia , [and] Precindia among others.” In 1869 she signed an affidavit as Presendia . Joseph F. Smith, Affidavit Books, 1:7, 4:7. The “i” is clearer in 4:7 than in 1:7.

[2] Presendia Huntington was sealed to Joseph Smith on December 11, 1841 (Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, 1:19). This appears to have been an “eternity” only sealing; no evidence of sexual relations has been discovered.

[3]Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 301-2.

[4]Brodie, No Man Knows My History, two photos immediately preceding p. 299.

[5]Todd Compton, “Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives and Polygamy: A Critical View,” in Newell G. Bringhurst, ed., Reconsidering No Man Knows My History: Fawn M. Brodie and Joseph Smith in Retrospect (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), 167.

[6]Fawn Brodie, Letter to Dale Morgan, March 24, 1945, quoted in Newell G. Bringhurst, Fawn McKay Brodie: A Biographer’s Life (Norman: University of Oklahoma, 1999), 97. Fawn Brodie’s mother’s surname was Brimhall. See also Todd Compton, “Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives and Polygamy: A Critical View,” in Newell G. Bringhurst, ed., Reconsidering No Man Knows My History, 166. Morgan responded skeptically: “Your chain of reasoning looks logical, but it is attended by a string of ifs all along the line . . . and the probability of error increases as the chain of reasoning lengthens.” Ibid.

[7]Nelson Winch Green, ed., Fifteen Years among the Mormons: Being the Narrative of Mrs. Mary Ettie V. Smith (New York: D. W. Evans, 1860), 35. Brodie quotes her in No Man Knows My History, 301.

[8]Compton, “Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives and Polygamy,” in Bringhurst, Reconsidering No Man Knows My History, 166.

[9]Stanley S. Ivins, Notebook 4, p. 63, Ivins Collection, Utah State Historical Society.

[10]Fanny Stenhouse, “Tell It All": The Story of a Life’s Experiences in Mormonism (Hartford: A. D. Worthington & Co., 1875), 618.

[11]Green, Fifteen Years among the Mormons, 45.

[12]B. H. Roberts adds a footnote in History of the Church, 3:321, quoting Hyrum Smith, Affidavit, made before the municipal court of Nauvoo, July 1, 1843: “There we bought a jug of whisky, with which we treated the company, and while there the sheriff showed us the mittimus before referred to, without date or signature, and said that Judge Birch told him never to carry us to Boone county, and never to show the mittimus; and, said he, I shall take a good drink of grog, and go to bed, and you may do as you have a mind to. Three others of the guards drank pretty freely of the whisky, sweetened with honey. They also went to bed, and were soon asleep and the other guard went along with us, and helped to saddle the horses. Two of us mounted the horses, and the other three started on foot, and we took our change of venue for the State of Illinois.”

[13]Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 461–62.

[14]Jessee, The Papers of Joseph Smith, 2:318; Faulring, An American Prophet’s Record, 229, 234.

[15]History of the Church, 3:322.

[16]Hyrum Smith, Affidavit, July 1, 1843, in History of the Church, 3:321 footnote.

[17]Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 461–62.

[18]Compton, “Fawn Brodie on Joseph Smith’s Plural Wives and Polygamy,” 171.

[19]Ugo A. Perego, Jayne E. Ekins, and Scott R. Woodward, “Resolving the Paternities of Oliver N. Buell and Mosiah L. Hancock through DNA,” The John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, vol. 28 (2008), 128-36.