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UC San Diego UC San Diego Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title The new and everlasting order of marriage : the introduction and implementation of Mormon polygamy : 1830-1856 Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8p56036q Author Smith, Merina Publication Date 2011 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN DIEGO The New and Everlasting Order of Marriage: The Introduction and Implementation of Mormon Polygamy: 1830-1856 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History by Merina Smith Committee in charge: Professor Rebecca Plant, Chair Professor Claudia Bushman Professor John Evans Professor Mark Hanna Professor Christine Hunefeldt Professor Rachel Klein 2011 The Dissertation of Merina Smith is approved, and is acceptable in quality and form for publication on microfilm and electronically: _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ _______________________________________________________ Chair University of San Diego 2011 iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Signature Page……………………………………………………………………… iii Table of Contents………………………………………………………………….. iv Vita………………………………………………………………………………… v Abstract……………………………………………………………………………. vi Introduction ..……………………………………………………………………… 1 Chapter One: ………………………………………………………………………. 28 Mormon Millenarian Expectations: 1830-1841 The Restoration of All Things and the Resacralization of Marriage Chapter Two: ………………………………………………………………………. 84 Nauvoo Secrets and the Rise of a Mormon Salvation Narrative, 1841-42 Chapter Three: ……………………………………………………………………... 148 Scandal and Resistance, 1842 Chapter Four: ………………………………………………………………………. 191 Integration, 1843 Chapter Five: ………………………………………………………………………. 249 A Perfect Storm, 1844 Chapter Six: ………………………………………………………………………... 273 Polygamy and the Succession Crisis, 1844-46 Chapter Seven: ……………………………………………………………………... 316 Living Openly in Polygamy: 1846 and Beyond Customs and Mores Develop Epilogue ……………………………………………………………………………. 381 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………... 394 iv VITA 1990-1996 Bachelor of Arts, University of Colorado, Boulder 2003-2010 Teacher‘s Assistant, Research Assistant and Grader University of California, San Diego 2007 Master of Arts, University of California, San Diego 2011 Doctor of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: United States History Latin American History Christine Hunefeldt Early Modern Europe John Marino v ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION The New and Everlasting Order of Marriage: The Introduction and Implementation of Mormon Polygamy: 1830-1856 by Merina Smith Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, San Diego, 2011 Professor Rebecca Plant, Chair When Joseph Smith quietly introduced polygamy to a few chosen followers in Nauvoo, Illinois in April 1841, the innovation was not welcomed by most adherents to Mormonism. How, then, did polygamy become the favored form of marriage in 19th century Mormon culture? The answer is that it happened through a complicated and contingent process that took many years. Early adherents expected the advent of the millennium, perhaps in their lifetime, and were thus primed to accept unusual doctrine, but their acceptance of polygamy nevertheless depended on the development of a supporting theological narrative that they found convincing. vi Since polygamy was introduced slowly and secretly through key members of the community, people were able to gradually become accustomed to the concept before they were formally asked to accept it. Polygamy, in turn, influenced the development of a family-centered theology of salvation and exaltation within Mormonism. It also caused considerable strife and dissension in the church and ultimately led to the 1844 arrest and murder of Joseph Smith. After his death, it played a significant role in the succession crisis that followed and in the decision to move to the American west where Mormons could establish their own society and marry as they chose. During the journey west and in early Utah, social norms and mores developed in a trial-and-error manner as individuals attempted to implement the new marriage patterns. Brigham Young and the hardy Mormons who trekked west with him eventually succeeded in institutionalizing polygamy, both in the theological narrative and in practice, to the degree that it became an important force in Mormon self-understanding and in community organization and cohesion. Though many Mormons still resisted it, in an official sense, Mormons succeeded in institutionalizing polygamy so well that, just as they had resisted polygamy at the outset, many Mormons resisted giving it up after the church officially repudiated the practice in 1890. Sources include diaries, memoirs letters, pamphlets, minutes of meetings, sermons, newspaper accounts and a contemporary history of Mormonism compiled as events occurred. vii Introduction Brigham Young, famously the most married man of the 19th century, was not enthused about entering polygamy when the principle was first introduced to him by Joseph Smith in 1841. He later remembered, Some of my brethren know what my feelings were at the time Joseph revealed the doctrine; I was not desirous of shrinking f[rom] any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time and when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin…and I have had to examine myself from that day to this, and watch my faith, and carefully mediate lest I should be found desiring the grave more than I ought to.1 Most people Smith approached about plural marriage between 1841 and 1844 shared Young‘s initial reaction to polygamy. Young remembered one council ―where Joseph undertook to teach the brethren and sisters‖ and Smith‘s counselor in the first presidency of the church, William Law, declared, ―If an angel from heaven was to reveal to me that a man should have more than one wife, and if it were in my power I would kill him.‖ As Young noted, ―That was pretty hard, but Joseph had to submit for it. The brethren were not prepared to receive the doctrine.‖2 Women were predictably even more reluctant to embrace polygamy than men. Rachel Emma Woolley Simmons was a young child in Nauvoo when Joseph Smith introduced polygamy to her parents, Edwin and Mary Woolley. She recalled that afterwards, ―We saw very little of Mother…There would be days together that she would 1 Journal of Discourses, 3:266. 2 Brigham Young, ―A Few Words of Doctrine,‖ 8 October, 1861, Young papers, LDS Archives. 1 2 not leave her room. Often I have gone there and found her crying as though her heart would break.‖ Mary‘s crying did no good, however, because soon Edwin married two other women. Before she died in 1859, he had married six wives.3 Vilate Kimball expressed similar alarm in an 1843 letter to her husband, Heber, after her friend, Mary Ann Pratt, had ―ben to me for council.‖ Smith had taught Parley Pratt, Mary Ann‘s husband, ―some principles and told him his privilege, and even appointed [a wife] for him, I dare not tell you who it is, you would be astonished.‖ Kimball went on to relate ―Sister Pratt has ben rageing against these things, she told me her self that the devel had been in her until within a few days past, she said the Lord had shown her it was all right….‖4 Mary Ann Frost Pratt nevertheless divorced Parley several years and several wives later.5 Lawrence Foster has observed, ―In almost all recorded cases, initial presentation of the belief in plural marriage to either men or women produced shock, horror, disbelief, or general emotional confusion.‖ Faithful Mormons experienced intense ―inner turmoil,‖ and gossip and rumor rocked Nauvoo. 6 When Joseph Smith attempted on more than one occasion to test the waters in order to introduce polygamy publicly, the community uproar within the church quickly generated a retraction. In light of the intense opposition against it and the great turmoil it caused in people‘s lives, how did polygamy become the favored form of marriage among Mormons for most of what remained of the 19th 3 Memoir of Rachel Emma Woolley Simmons, from the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers publications. 4 Vilate Kimball to Heber C. Kimball, 24 June 1843, Winslow Whitney Smith collection, LDS Archives. 5 George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: But We Called It Celestial Marriage, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 2008, p. 613, note 288. Smith notes that the Mary Ann Frost divorced Parley in 1853, but further adds that she was married and sealed to Joseph Smith before his death, though married to Pratt for time, and sealed again to Joseph Smith after his death, with Parley acting as proxy. Todd Compton, however, does not include Mary Ann Frost Pratt in his list of women married polygamously to Joseph Smith. 6 Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality, University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1984, p. 153. 3 century? The obvious answer to this question is that the Mormon people believed polygamy was right, that it was ordained of God. Eventually this was true, but given the initial adverse reaction, how did Mormons come