'Wife': the Brigham Young Households

Determining and Defining 'Wife': The Brigham Young Households Jeffery Ogden Johnson UTAH SATIRIST AL CHURCH, among other suggestions on how to survive as a gentile in Utah, offered this tip: "Ask guides at the Beehive House how many wives Brigham Young had. (Of my last four tours, the answer has averaged 21.)" (1981, 17). The volunteer guides at the Beehive House have no corner on the confusion market. Ann Eliza Webb, a disgruntled wife suing Brigham Young for divorce and hefty alimony, defrayed her expenses by writing a mildly scandalous pot- boiler called Wife Number Nineteen (1876) in which she claimed (incorrectly) to be the last and (also incorrectly) the nineteenth. She was actually number fifty-two. Stanley Hirshson's major biography of Brigham Young, The Lion of the Lord, gives the number of wives as seventy (1969, 184—223). The research that produced this number is unfortunately no more accurate than that in the rest of the book. In 1940, the Young family produced a widely used pamphlet, "Brigham Young's Wives, Children and Grandchildren" (Sanborn 1940) that gives the number as twenty-seven, a number popularized by Irving Wallace in his The Twenty-seventh Wife (1961), a fictionalized biography of Ann Eliza Webb Young. Leonard J. Arrington's award-winning biography, Brigham Young: American Moses (1985, 420-21), divides the wives into three groups: (1) the sixteen wives who had children by Brigham Young, (2) nine others whom "Brigham Young held out to be wives" but who had no children by him, and (3) "some thirty women" who were sealed to him for eternity only, but whom he does not name. This paper has three purposes: to identify the number of wives, to suggest some reasons for the ambiguities of the term wife, and to document the wives Brigham Young married over the course of his life. (See Table 1 at the end of this paper.) JEFFERY OGDEN JOHNSON is manager of the Reference Bureau for the Utah State Archives. This paper was delivered at the annual meeting of the Mormon History Associa- tion, May 1986, in Salt Lake City, Utah. 58 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT The first purpose is the easiest: fifty-five women were sealed to Brigham Young. Then why has it taken 109 years after Brigham's death and a great deal of scholarly research to derive a clear number? One reason is Brigham Young's own reluctance. His Victorian sensibilities apparently made it hard for him to talk about so sexual a subject, and his Yankee independence bristled at the invasion of his privacy. He himself, on one of the few public occasions when he discussed the topic, reported in 1870 that he had sixteen wives (JD 13:173). But usually he tried to avoid the question. He gave instructions to the Historian's Office that "he did not wish but little history of his family given" (Historian's Office Journal, 31 Jan. 1857). On another occasion, he complained mildly: "Ladies who come into my office very frequently say, 'I wonder if it would hurt his feelings if I were to ask him how many wives he has?' ... I would as lief they should ask me that question as any other; but I would rather see them anxious to learn about the Gospel" (JD 14:162). A second reason for the confusion is the remarkable number of variations in the types of ecclesiastically recognized liaisons that occurred. Brigham Young's fifty-five sealings — meaning a ceremony performed by priesthood authority that linked a man and a woman — could be of two types. The most common — and the only one currently practiced — is a ceremony that seals a man and woman for time (mortal life) and for eternity. A second form could seal a woman to one man for time and another for eternity. Such ceremonies usually occurred when a widow was sealed to her dead husband for eternity and to a living husband for time in the same ceremony. It was understood that any children by the second husband would be considered the progeny of the first husband. In the early days of the Church, these relationships were com- monly called proxy marriages. However, the two forms of sealing did not exhaust the possible relationships. In both forms of sealing, the husband and wife could either establish a conjugal relationship or the ceremony could remain unconsummated. In Brigham Young's case, a significant number of sealings may have been nonconjugal, since the only incontrovertible proof of cohabitation after this lapse of years is either personal documentation (none exists) or the birth of a child, and Brigham Young fathered children by only sixteen of his wives. This does not necessarily mean that he did not have conjugal relationships with some of the other thirty-nine wives, but the topic of where he spent his nights was apparently not a matter of household discussion. His daughter, Susa Young Gates, in her recollections observes, "[Even] if I would, I could tell nothing of my father's marital relations, for they were regarded in the family as most sacred. And no one ever knew aught about these matters which should be preserved in the holiest silence of the human heart" (n.d., 74). Corroborative evidence of nonconjugal status is that Brigham Young, in an 1859 interview with Horace Greely, stated: "I have some aged women sealed to me upon the principle of sealing which I no more think of making a wife of than I would my Grand Mother" (Greeley 1859). Twelve of the thirty-nine Johnson: Determining and Defining Wife 59 were over forty-five when they married him, and six were more than ten years older than Brigham. A third complication was whether a sealed wife became part of Brigham Young's households. I have considered that women members of Brigham Young's households, if they resided with other wives, received financial support from Brigham Young and/or were publicly recognized as a wife. Twenty- three of his wives, by my count, belonged to his households. (Of course, a woman sealed to Brigham Young and living in his household would not necessarily be a conjugal wife.) One might well ask why a woman would seek or accept sealing to a man under some of the more unconventional circumstances I have explained. Much of the motive lies in an understanding of the doctrines of plural marriage, a theological discussion which has been amplified elsewhere. Latter-day Saints introduced to the doctrine of plural marriage in Nauvoo understood that it was part of the promised "restoration of all things" that included a reestablishment of the family structure of such ancient prophets as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that it was the "higher law" of the afterlife which they were being called by God and his prophet to live in this life; and that it was an ordinance necessary to salvation. Not only would it determine relationships with beloved kinfolk in the next life, but, Latter-day Saints believed a priesthood sealing between worthy partners was also essential for both men and women before they could be saved. In an 1845 sermon, Brigham Young alluded to this doctrine in those terms when he assured his listeners that "no woman can be perfect without a man to lead her . and I say to every man upon the face of the earth: if he wishes to be saved he cannot be saved without a woman by his side." He identi- fied this doctrine as "Joseph Smith's spiritual wife system" ("Speech," 1845). In addition to these persuasive doctrines, the economic realities of the American frontier made it virtually obligatory for a woman to be married; and the cultural norms of the society also reinforced the view that the institu- tion of marriage inevitably accompanied adulthood. Brigham Young was a married man when he encountered Mormonism, and he would, as it turned out, have two wives before he ever had a plural one. He married his first wife, Miriam Works, on 8 October 1824 when he was twenty-three years old and she was eighteen. They had two daughters, then joined the Church in April 1832. A few months later Miriam died of con- sumption at the age of twenty-seven. In Kirtland, Brigham met Mary Ann Angel. They were married on 10 February 1834, four months before her thirty-first birthday. She mothered Brigham's young daughters and, over the next seven years, gave birth to six additional children, including a set of twins. Brigham Young learned about plural marriage in Nauvoo from Joseph Smith, and there is no reason to question his own report that he reacted nega- tively. Greeley asked him, "Is the system of your Church [plurality of wives] acceptable to the majority of its women?" and Brigham Young answered, "They could not be more averse to it than I was when it was first revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally accept it, as I do, as the will of God" (Greeley 1859). He made similar statements on other occasions. 60 DIALOGUE: A JOURNAL OF MORMON THOUGHT WIVES SEALED TO BRIGHAM YOUNG DURING JOSEPH SMITH'S LIFETIME: JUNE 1842-MAY 1844 Between the time that Brigham Young first learned of the doctrine of plural marriage and the time Joseph Smith died — just under two years — he was sealed to four women. All four women came West, lived as part of his household, outlived him, and shared in his estate. Three of them bore him children. Brigham Young chose twenty-year-old Lucy Ann Decker Seeley for his first plural wife, and they were married by Joseph Smith on 17 June 1842.

Load more