Joseph Smith and polygamy/Marriages to young women

From FAIRMormon

Jump to: navigation, search
FAIRwiki portal
Plural marriage
Image:plural_marriage1.jpg
FAIRwiki

Joseph Smith era:

Post-Joseph Smith:

Post-Manifesto–present

FAIR Wiki Topical Guide
FAIR web site
FARMS web site
  • [Pending]
Additional reading
Other portals

Contents

Criticism

Critics argue that Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages to young women are evidence that he was immoral, perhaps even a pedophile.

Source(s) of the Criticism

Response

The information we have on Joseph Smith's plural marriages is sketchy, simply because there were few official records kept at the time because of the fear of misunderstanding and persecution. What we do know is culled from journals and reminiscences of those who were involved.

The most conservative estimates indicate that Joseph entered into plural marriages with 29–33 women, 7 of whom were under the age of 18. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, who was 14. The rest were 16 (two) or 17 (three). One wife (Maria Winchester) about which virtually nothing is known, was either 14 or 15.

Helen Mar Kimball

Some people have concluded that Helen did have sexual relations with Joseph, which would have been proper considering that they were married with her consent and the consent of her parents. However, historian Todd Compton does not hold this view; he criticized the anti-Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner for using his book to argue for sexual relations, and wrote:

The Tanners made great mileage out of Joseph Smith's marriage to his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball. However, they failed to mention that I wrote that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. (p. 638) All the evidence points to this marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage.[1]

In other words, polygamous marriages often had other purposes than procreation—one such purpose was likely to tie faithful families together, and this seems to have been a purpose of Joseph's marriage to the daughter of a faithful Apostle. (See: Law of Adoption.)

Critics who assume plural marriage "is all about sex" may be basing their opinion on their own cultural biases and assumptions, rather than upon the actual motives of Church members who participated in the practice.

Helen Mar "took pen and paper in hand before she died to describe vividly her ties as a member of the Latter-day Saint Church during its first two decades of existence in a series of articles published in the Woman's Exponent" in the 1880s.[2] Some of her articles dealt with plural marriage: "Her personal remembrances of those days constitute an important source that, taken together with other first-hand accounts by participants, provides a more complete view of the introduction of one of the most distinctive features of nineteenth-century Mormonism."[3] Helen Mar's writings, an important source of LDS history, were published by BYU's Religious Studies Center in 1997 in a book entitled A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History. The book also includes her 1881 autobiography to her children wherein, concerning her marriage to the Prophet Joseph Smith, she wrote:

I have long since learned to leave all with [God], who knoweth better than ourselves what will make us happy. I am thankful that He has brought me through the furnace of affliction & that He has condesended to show me that the promises made to me the morning that I was sealed to the Prophet of God will not fail & I would not have the chain broken for I have had a view of the principle of eternal salvation & the perfect union which this sealing power will bring to the human family & with the help of our Heavenly Father I am determined to so live that I can claim those promises. (Holzapfel, 487)

Fanny Alger

Probably the wife about whom we know the least is Fanny Alger, Joseph's first plural wife, whom he came to know in early 1833 when she stayed at the Smith home as a house-assistant of sorts to Emma (such work was common for young women at the time). There are no first-hand accounts of their relationship (from Joseph or Fanny), nor are there second-hand accounts (from Emma or Fanny's family). All that we do have is third hand accounts, most of them recorded many years after the events.

Unfortunately, this lack of reliable and extensive historical detail leaves much room for critics to claim that Joseph Smith had an affair with Fanny and then later invented plural marriage as way to justify his actions. The problem is we don't know the details of the relationship or exactly of what it consisted, and so are left to assume that Joseph acted honorably (as believers) or dishonorably (as critics).

There is some historical evidence that Joseph Smith knew as early as 1831 that plural marriage would be restored, so it is perfectly legitimate to argue that Joseph's relationship with Fanny Alger was such a case. Mosiah Hancock (a Mormon) reported a wedding ceremony; and apostate Mormons Ann Eliza Webb Young and her father Chauncery both referred to Fanny's relationship as a "sealing." Ann Eliza also reported that Fanny's family was very proud of Fanny's relationship with Joseph, which makes little sense if it was simply a tawdry affair. Those closest to them saw the marriage as exactly that—a marriage.

Historical and cultural perspective

Plural marriage was certainly not in keeping with the values of "mainstream America" in Joseph Smith's day. However, modern readers also judge the age of the marriage partners by modern standards, rather than the standards of the nineteenth century.

Within Todd Compton's book on Joseph Smith's marriages, he also mentions the following monogamous marriages:

WifeWife's AgeHusbandHusband's AgeDifference in age
Lucinda Pendleton 18William Morgan4426
Marinda Johnson19Orson Hyde2910
Almira McBride17Sylvester Stoddard40s>23
Fanny Young44Roswell Murray6218

And, a variety of Mormon and non-Mormon historical figures had similar wide differences in age:

HusbandHusband's AgeWifeWife's AgeDifference
Johann Sebastian Bach36Anna Magdalena Wilcke1917
Lord Baden-Powell (Founder of Scouting)55Olave Soames2332[4]
William Clark (of the Lewis and Clark Expedition)37Julia Hancock1621[5]
Grover Cleveland (22nd, 24th US President)49Frances Cleveland 2128
Martin Harris (1808)24Lucy Harris (1st cousin)159[6]
Levi Ward Hancock (7 April 1803)30Clarissa Reed1713[7]
John Milton (Paradise Lost)34Mary Powell (1st wife)1717
John Milton55Elizabeth Minshull (3rd wife)2431
Alexander Smith23Elizabeth Kendall167[8]
David Hyrum Smith26Clara Hartshorn188[9]
Frederick Granger Williams Smith21Annie Maria Jones165[10]
Joseph Smith, III66Ada Rachel Clark 2937[11]
Almonzo Wilder28Laura Ingalls (Little House)1810

Statistical information for marital ages is available from the 1850 census [12]. Using a 1% random sample of individuals, 989 men and 962 women indicated they had been married within the last year. The plot below breaks these individuals down by census age.

Image:1850census2.jpg

Of note is that 41.7% of women married as teenagers compared to only 4.1% of men. The mean age for men was more than five years older than that for women (27.6 vs. 22.5). For young women, marriage in the early to mid teens was rare, but not unheard of as both the anecdotal and statistical evidence above show. Teenage brides married a husband that averaged 6.6 +/- 4.7 (std) years older. To put that in perspective, 13% of the time the husband was over 10 years older than his teenage wife.

The 21st century reader is likely to see marriages of young women to much older men as inappropriate.

According to the law of the early twenty-first century, someone of Joseph Smith's age might be found guilty of "statutory rape" in such a case—this is when an older person (usually a man) has sexual relations with a young person who is too young to give legal "consent." This means that even if she "wants" to have sexual relations, the law considers her too young to give that permission to someone so much older than herself.

But this is a more modern attitude.

The age of consent under English common law was ten. United States law did not raise the age of consent until the late nineteenth century. In Joseph Smith's day, most states still had declared age of consent to be ten. Some raised it to twelve, and Delaware lowered it to seven![13]

It is significant that none of Joseph's contemporaries complained about the age differences between polygamous or monogamous marriage partners. This was simply part of their environment and culture; it is unfair to judge nineteenth century members by twenty-first century social standards.

In past centuries, women would often die in childbirth, and men often remarried younger women afterwards. Women often married older men, because these were more financially established and able to support them than men their own age.

Conclusion

Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages to young women may seem difficult to understand or explain today, but in his own time such age differences were not typically an obstacle to marriage. The plural marriages were unusual, to say the least; the younger ages of the brides were much less so. Critics do not provide this perspective because they wish to shock the audience and have them judge Joseph by the standards of the modern era, rather than his own time.

Endnotes

  1. [back] Todd M. Compton, Response to Tanners, post to LDS Bookshelf mailing list, no date. It should be mentioned that many reviewers of Compton's work do not agree with all of his conclusions, even though he has collected much useful data; see the reviews of In Sacred Loneliness, linked under "Printed material," below.
  2. [back] Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History. (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1997), ix. GospeLink
  3. [back] Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History. (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1997), xv. GospeLink
  4. [back] "...such an age difference was not uncommon at the time." Baden-Powell, en.wikipedia.org (accessed 21 January 2006) off-site
  5. [back] "...Clark also met and married Julia Hancock, several years his junior, whom he met when she was 12 years old, and he decided he would marry her on her fifteenth birthday." Biography of William Clark, virginia.edu (accessed 31 May 2006) off-site
  6. [back]  Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, "For the Sum of Three Thousand Dollars," Journal of Book of Mormon Studies 14/2 (2005): 4–11. off-site PDF link wiki
  7. [back]  Susan Easton Black (editor), Who's Who in the Doctrine and Covenants, 114; Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 32.
  8. [back] Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 360, footnote 27. ISBN 0252062914. ISBN 978-0252062919.
  9. [back] Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 287. ISBN 0252062914. ISBN 978-0252062919.
  10. [back] Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, 2nd edition, (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 274. ISBN 0252062914. ISBN 978-0252062919.
  11. [back] Roger D. Launius, Joseph Smith III: Pragmatic Prophet (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1995}, 333–335. ISBN 0252065158. ISBN 978-0252065156.
  12. [back]  Steven Ruggles, Matthew Sobek, Trent Alexander, Catherine A. Fitch, Ronald Goeken, Patricia Kelly Hall, Miriam King, and Chad Ronnander, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 3.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis, MN: Minnesota Population Center [producer and distributor] (2004), accessed 14 July 2007. off-site
  13. [back]  See Melina McTigue, "Statutory Rape Law Reform in Nineteenth Century Maryland: An Analysis of Theory and Practical Change," (2002), accessed 5 Feb 2005. off-site

Further reading

FAIR wiki articles

Plural marriage wiki links

Scriptural and doctrinal issues

Joseph Smith

Youth
Beginnings
Emma
Wives
Controversies

Other Nauvoo period

Utah period

Cessation of plural marriage

Reviews and theories

Lying about polygamy?

FAIR web site

Plural marriage FAIR links
  • FAIR Topical Guide: Polyandry FAIR link
  • FAIR Topical Guide: Polygamy FAIR link
  • Suzanne Armitage, "O that my voice could reach the ears of those uninformed and misinformed." FAIR link
  • Claudia Bushman, "Lives of Mormon Women," FAIR presentation transcript, 2006. FAIR link
  • Michael W. Fordham, 'Ask the Apologist'—Plural Marriage in the Book of Mormon and D&C" FAIR link
  • Gregory Smith, "Polygamy, Prophets, and Prevarication: Frequently and Rarely Asked Questions about the Initiation, Practice, and Cessation of Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." FAIR link PDF link (Key source)
  • Allen Wyatt, "Zina and Her Men: An Examination of the Changing Marital State of Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Smith Young," FAIR presentation transcript, 2006. FAIR link (Key source)

External links

Plural marriage on-line articles
  • James B. Allen, "Line upon Line," Ensign (July 1979): 32–40. off-site
  • Edwin B. Firmage, "The Judicial Campaign against Polygamy and the Enduring Legal Questions," Brigham Young University Studies 27:3 (Summer 1987): 91–113. PDF link
  • Danel Bachman, Ronald K. Esplin, "Plural Marriage," Encyclopedia of Mormonism, 4 vols., edited by Daniel H. Ludlow, (New York, Macmillan Publishing, 1992), 3:1091–1095. ISBN 002904040X. off-site off-site off-site
  • Stephen R. Gibson, "Does the Book of Mormon Forbid Polygamy," lightplanet.com. off-site
  • Gordon Irving, "The Law of Adoption: One Phase of the Development of the Mormon Concept of Salvation, 1830–1900," Brigham Young University Studies 14:3 (Spring 1974): 291–314. off-site
  • Stephen E. Robinson, Are Mormons Christians? (Salt Lake City, Utah: Deseret Book Company, 1993), 90–96. off-site FAIR link GospeLink
  • Gilbert W. Scharffs, The Truth About “The Godmakers”: A Response to an Inaccurate Portrayal of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1986). FAIR link
  • W. John Walsh, "Is Plural Marriage Necessary for Exaltation?" off-site
  • Mormon-polygamy.org off-site

Printed material

Plural marriage printed references
  • Danel W. Bachman, “A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy Before the Death of Joseph Smith,” (1975) (unpublished M.A. thesis, Purdue University).
  • Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997). ISBN 156085085X. The introduction and prologue are available online at the Signature Books web site.
  • Reviews of In Sacred Loneliness:
    • Richard Lloyd Anderson and Scott H. Faulring, "The Prophet Joseph Smith and His Plural Wives (Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith)," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998): 67–104. off-site PDF link
    • Alma G. Allred, “Variations on a Theme,” Presentation to Mormon History Association, 1999, updated on-line version of 6 December 1999. PDF link
    • Danel W. Bachman, “’Let No One…Set On My Servant Joseph’: Religious Historians Missing the Lessons of Religious History,” Presentation to Mormon History Association, 22 May 1999.
    • Danel W. Bachman, "Prologue to the Study of Joseph Smith's Marital Theology (Review of In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith)," FARMS Review of Books 10/2 (1998): 105–137. off-site PDF link
    • Kathryn Daynes, “Review of In Sacred Loneliness,” Pacific Historical Review 68 (August 1999): 466–468.
    • Todd Compton's response to Anderson and Faulring off-site
    • Todd Compton's response to Jerald and Sandra Tanners' Review of In Sacred Loneliness off-site
  • Stephen R. Gibson, One-Minute Answers to Anti-Mormon Questions (Bountiful, Utah: Horizon Publishers, 1995).
  • Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman's View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1997). ISBN 1570083576. ISBN 978-1570083570. GospeLink
  • Joseph Fielding McConkie, Answers: Straightforward Answers to Tough Gospel Questions (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1998), 27–28. GospeLink
  • Ugo A. Perego, Natalie M. Myres, and Scott R. Woodward, 'Reconstructing the Y-Chromosome of Joseph Smith: Genealogical Applications," Journal of Mormon History 31. 3 (Fall 2005): 42-60. (Discusses how DNA shows that the parentage of Moroni Pratt, Zebulon Jacobs, and Orrison Smith is not through Joseph Smith).
  • John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations: Aids to Faith in a Modern Day, arranged by G. Homer Durham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960), 340–344. ISBN 088494073 GospeLink GL direct link
  • John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations: Aids to Faith in a Modern Day, arranged by G. Homer Durham (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960), 390–393. ISBN 088494073 GospeLink GL direct link
Retrieved from "http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith_and_polygamy/Marriages_to_young_women"
Personal tools
In other languages