Did Joseph Smith Marry Young Girls? History. The book also includes her 1881 autobiography to her children, wherein, concerning her marriage to the Prophet Criticism Joseph Smith, she wrote: I have long since learned to leave all with [God], who knoweth better than ourselves what will make us Critics argue that Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages to happy. I am thankful that He has brought me through young women are evidence that he was immoral, perhaps the furnace of affliction & that He has condesended to even a pedophile. 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 Response view of the principle of eternal salvation & the perfect union which this sealing power will bring to the The information we have on Joseph Smith's plural marriages is human family & with the help of our Heavenly Father sketchy, simply because there were few official records kept at I am determined to so live that I can claim those the time. This may have well been because of the fear of promises. (Holzapfel, 487) misunderstanding and persecution. What we do know is culled fromthe journals and reminiscences of those who were Fanny Alger involved. The most conservative estimates indicate that Joseph entered The wife about whom we know the least is Fanny Alger, into plural marriages with 33 women, 6 of whom were under Joseph's first plural wife. He came to know her in early 1833 the age of 18. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter when she stayed at the Smith home as a house-assistant of of LDS apostle Heber C. Kimball, who was 14. The rest were sorts to Emma (such work was common for young women at 16 (two) or 17 (three). the time). There are no first-hand accounts of their relationship (from Joseph or Fanny), nor are there second-hand accounts Helen Mar Kimball (from Emma or Fanny's family). All that we do have is third hand accounts, most of them written many years after the Some people have concluded that Helen did have sexual events. relations with Joseph. Even supposing they did, we must Unfortunately, this lack of reliable and extensive historical remember that Joseph Smith and Helen were married with her detail leaves much room for critics to claim that Joseph Smith consent and the consent of her parents. However, historian had an affair with Fanny and then later invented plural Todd Compton does not hold this view; he criticized the anti- marriage as way to justify his actions. The problem is that we Mormons Jerald and Sandra Tanner for using his book to argue have no evidence one way or another, and so are left to for sexual relations, and wrote: assume that Joseph acted honorably (as believers) or The Tanners made great mileage out of Joseph dishonorably (as critics). Smith's marriage to his youngest wife, Helen Mar There is some historical evidence that Joseph Smith knew as Kimball. However, they failed to mention that I wrote early as 1831 that plural marriage would be restored, so it is that there is absolutely no evidence that there was perfectly legitimate to argue that Joseph's relationship with any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, Fanny Alger was in line with the doctrine of polygamy. following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. (p. 638) All the evidence points to this Historical and cultural perspective marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage.[1] In other words, polygamous marriages often had other Plural marriage was certainly not in keeping with the values of purposes than procreation—one such purpose was likely to tie "mainstream America" in Joseph Smith's day. However, faithful families together, and this seems to have been a modern readers also judge the age of the marriage partners by purpose of Joseph's marriage to the daughter of a faithful modern standards, rather than the standards of the nineteenth apostle. century. Critics who assume that everything "is all about sex" reveal Within Todd Compton's book on Joseph Smith's marriages, he more about their own cultural biases and assumptions than also mentions the following monogamous marriages: they do about the minds of early Church members. Wife's Husband's Difference in Helen Mar "took pen and paper in hand before she died to Wife Husband describe vividly her ties as a member of the Latter-day Saint Age Age age Church during its first two decades of existence in a series of Lucinda William 18 44 26 articles published in the Woman's Exponent" in the 1880s. Pendleton Morgan (Holzapfel, ix)[2] Marinda 19 Orson Hyde 29 10 Some of her articles dealt with plural marriage: "Her personal Johnson remembrances of those days constitute an important source Almira Sylvester that, taken together with other first-hand accounts by 17 40s >23 McBride Stoddard participants, provides a more complete view of the introduction Roswell of one of the most distinctive features of nineteenth-century Fanny Young 44 62 18 Mormonism." (Holzapfel, xv) Helen Mar's writings, an Murray important source of LDS history, were published by BYU's And a variety of non-Mormon historical figures had similar wide Religious Studies Center in 1997 in a book entitled A Woman's differences in age: View: Helen Mar Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church 1 Husband's Wife's 1. [back] Todd M. Compton, Response to Tanners, post Husband Wife Difference Age Age to LDS Bookshelf mailing list, no date. It should be Anna mentioned that many reviewers of Compton's work do Johann Sebastian 36 Magdalena 19 17 not agree with all of his conclusions, even though he Bach Wilcke has collected much useful data; see the reviews of In Sacred Loneliness, linked under "Printed material," Lord Baden-Powell below. (Founder of 55 Olave Soames 23 32[3] Scouting) 2. [back] Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman's View: Helen Mar William Clark (of Whitney's Reminiscences of Early Church History. the Lewis and Clark 37 Julia Hancock 16 21[4] Expedition) (Provo: Religious Studies Center, BYU, 1997.) This book is available on GospeLink.com (subscription Grover Cleveland Frances required). (22nd, 24th US 49 21 28 Cleveland [back] "...such an age difference was not uncommon President) 3. at the time." Baden-Powell, en.wikipedia.org Martin Harris Lucy Harris 24 15 9[5] (accessed 21 January (1808) (1st cousin) 2006)* (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baden_Powell) John Milton Mary Powell 34 17 17 4. [back] "...Clark also met and married Julia Hancock, (Paradise Lost) (1st wife) several years his junior, whom he met when she was Elizabeth 12 years old, and he decided he would marry her on John Milton 55 Minshull (3rd 24 31 her fifteenth birthday." Biography of William Clark, wife) virginia.edu (accessed 31 May Laura Ingalls 2006)* (http://www.vcdh.virginia.edu/lewisandclark/ Almonzo Wilder 28 18 10 (Little House) biddle/biographies_html/clark.html) 5. [back] Susan Easton Black and Larry C. Porter, ""For The 21st century reader is likely to see marriages of young the Sum of Three Thousand Dollars"," Journal of women to much older men as inappropriate. Book of Mormon Studies 14:2 (2005): 6. According to the law of the early twenty-first century, someone 6. [back] See Melina McTigue, "Statutory Rape Law Reform of Joseph Smith's age might be found guilty of "statutory rape" in Nineteenth Century Maryland: An Analysis of Theory in the case of his younger wives —this is when an older person and Practical Change," (2002), accessed 5 Feb 2005. (usually a man) has sexual relations with a young person who * (http://www.law.georgetown.edu/glh/mctigue.htm) 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, the age of consent in most states was still ten. Some states raised it to twelve, and Delaware lowered it to seven![6] 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 better 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.

Endnotes 2