Joseph Smith Polygamy: Tough Polygamy Questions with Dr. Brian Hales (Part 3)

Scott Woodward:
Another question coming from Lori regarding Joseph Smith Polygamy Timeline. Lori asks, “Can you share some examples of women who were approached about plural marriage, did not accept Joseph’s or other men’s proposals, and still remain part of the community? And any other evidence that women were not pressured into plural marriage would be helpful, too.” Is there any manipulation happening here, Brian, that you can see? And do we have examples of women who were approached, they said, “No, thank you,” and they were still allowed to thrive in the community?

Brian Hales:
Yes. In an article that was published in the Journal of Mormon History called “Joseph Smith’s Personal Polygamy,” I outline seven women who turned Joseph Smith down. Five of those women we only know about the proposal because they or a family member later mentioned it. So the idea that a woman would have her reputation ruined if she turned down Joseph Smith is simply not supported in these five cases. Now, there are two cases where he was accused publicly and he defended himself, and that’s Sarah Pratt and Jane Law. And, you know, there’s a good chance that Joseph offered to have them sealed to him for eternity because they were having trouble with their respective husbands at the time. Personally, I think that’s probably what it was. I don’t think it was a sexual offer. I don’t think Joseph would do that. That would’ve been adultery. But there’s ambiguity, and there’s silence, so people can form whatever opinions they want, but we can say very clearly Joseph was not going to destroy the reputation of these women. And a couple of them, after Joseph had passed away, they actually were sealed to him vicariously rather than to their legal husband. That was by their choice, and because they could relate the story that Joseph had proposed plural marriage to them while he was alive, then church leaders allowed that sealing to go forward. You couldn’t just be married to a member of the church and then decide you’d rather have your sealing be to Joseph. They didn’t allow that. But in special cases they would allow those things to go forward. Now you say, “Was there pressure?” You know, a funny story: Joseph Smith is walking down the street and I—Almira Knight, I want to say, is her name. I’m—I’d have to go back and look, but her mother is involved with plural marriage. The daughter sees Joseph coming, and the daughter goes out the back door as Joseph comes in the front door. And Joseph is trying to set up a plural marriage for Hyrum.

And the mother says, “Well, we’ll get back with you on it.” And the daughter didn’t want to do it, and that was the end of it. Joseph didn’t—there wasn’t any threats, and nothing happened to the woman’s reputation. And this is the church president who’s presenting it, and it was declined. And in several other cases with Joseph, one of the women says he starts to teach about polygamy, and she says, “Go teach it to somebody else.” And Joseph said, “Well, who do you want me to teach it to? God told me to teach you.” And then Joseph says, “I will pray for you.” Those were his last words, according to the account. And again, he was the church president, so you have to assume there’s some pressure there if he’s teaching this idea.
But beyond that implied pressure, there are no verbal threats or anything related by anyone except in the confusion of Jane Law, maybe, and Sarah Pratt. There’s he said, she said and back and forth, but in these five cases there’s nothing like that, so.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm. And what’s the name of that article? We’ll link to that in the show notes as well.

Brian Hales:
“Joseph Smith’s Personal Polygamy.”

Scott Woodward:
Awesome. Well, let’s talk about the initial question that got you interested in studying this in depth, Brian, about Joseph Smith marrying other men’s wives. In regards to Joseph Smith Polygamy, one of our listeners named Gabe asks, “Was Joseph ever married to women who were already married to faithful men in the church?” Casey and I in some of our previous episodes talked about one of the main reasons D&C 132 outlines for plural marriage is that every woman would have a chance to be sealed to a husband. Every faithful woman who wanted it could have it, even if they were currently married to a non-member, like Mary Elizabeth Rollins, or an inactive member or someone who didn’t really believe in the afterlife, like Ruth Vose Sayers’ husband. But are there examples of Joseph marrying other men’s wives and the man himself was a faithful member of the church? Like, there’s accusations that Joseph would send men on missions and then marry their wives while they were gone. I think that’s a John C. Bennett accusation. What do you want to say about that? How would you respond to Gabe?

Brian Hales:
Well, let me just back up a little bit.

Scott Woodward:
OK.

Brian Hales:
I told you that was what got me researching this, and what I found is that the authors, and I’ve mentioned my friend Todd Compton, Mike Quinn, and others.
They all portrayed Joseph as marrying and being a second husband to these women, with sexual relations. That’s how they portray them. And so when I dived in to the research, I could not find any unambiguous support.
Their logic would go, like, “Well, there was a sealing here for a marriage, and then there was a legal marriage, therefore, we assume there’s sexual relations in both.” But they don’t find any woman saying, “I had two husbands.” There’s nobody saying, “Joseph had a revelation saying he could be my second husband.” There’s no doctrinal discussions about how a woman could have two husbands. There’s no support for it.
But that didn’t matter to these authors because these authors already believed Joseph was driven by libido. You know, that he was a fraud.
And so for them to believe that he added a plurality of husbands to a plurality of wives so he could get into more beds was a very logical sequence of belief, even if it didn’t have strong documentation. So I get into the documentation, and I don’t find it, and it isn’t there.
And you can even go online and find three-part videos—they’re very long and very boring, but—saying that Joseph practiced polygamy. But the interesting thing that none of these authors do is ask a very important question, and that is it would’ve been more controversial in Nauvoo in the 1840s than it is today. And today it’s hugely controversial. If Joseph had introduced and practiced plural marriage, it would’ve been the most controversial thing he ever did or taught.

Scott Woodward:
Meaning marrying other men’s wives. Like, if he taught that, if he practiced that and there was sexual relations, that would’ve been the most explosive thing happening in Nauvoo.

Brian Hales:
We agree on that, right?

Scott Woodward:
Totally.

Brian Hales:
Yeah. And yet there is not a single one of Joseph’s critics who complained about it during Joseph’s lifetime or for years thereafter.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah. No husbands. Not a peep from anybody.

Brian Hales:
Nope. Not a single complaint from a husband.

The question was, “Were there active Latter-day Saint men whose wives were sealed to Joseph?” And a good example is Patty Sessions. And her husband, David Sessions, was an active member. And if I’m right, and this is kind of a guess, but as I look at it, when she chose to be sealed eternally to Joseph and not David, David kind of cut her off, kind of left her.

Scott Woodward:
Mm.

Brian Hales:
And she was a midwife. She was wealthy. She had prominence among the saints. She came to Utah, delivered a lot of babies. But there’s really no connection to her legal husband, and I trace that back to her sealing with Joseph. It may not be true, but I think it is. So in that case, I think David was disappointed. But he didn’t criticize Joseph. He just went out, and he plurally married other—and had that taken care of. And for me, if I could go back in time and whisper in Joseph Smith’s ears, I might just say, “Hey Joseph, don’t marry other men’s wives. It just looks bad to us in the 21st century.” I know it’s not a sin. Joseph Smith wasn’t perfect, but he was always worthy.
That’s a message from my research. But he wasn’t perfect, and I wish he hadn’t done some of these sealings because they just look so bad today. And people make assumptions that aren’t justified.
But they aren’t interested in finding out what really happened. And that’s how the propagandists and these rumors can go out there, so. One quote, though, from Lucy Walker, he remember—she remembered Joseph saying, “A woman should have her choice. That is something that could not be denied her.”
And that’s why I think when five women turned him down, he just marched on.
And that’s why if Patty Sessions had wished to be sealed to Joseph instead of David Sessions, his—her legal husband, he allowed that. I don’t think that’s a totally satisfying answer, but I think that’s the best we can come up with at this time.

Scott Woodward:
Hmm, interesting. So generally speaking, you would say that the likely reason Joseph is marrying other men’s wives is to give them the opportunity to be sealed in the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, which they didn’t have with their current husband. Is that generally true?

Brian Hales:
That is sometimes true.
I mean, we have the account of Ruth Vose Sayers, you know this account in the Joseph Smith Polygamy Timeline. Her husband didn’t believe in the afterlife, and he encouraged her to go be sealed to Joseph. And that’s a good example that eternity-only sealings were possible, that it’s an ordinance that Joseph Smith could allow or could perform. So it did exist in that one instance.
But we don’t have those kinds of accounts accompanying the other. 12 or 13.
Women with legal husbands that were married to Joseph.

Scott Woodward:
Yeah, that’s fair. We can’t just extrapolate from that one account, Ruth Vose Sayers, and say that must have been his motivation for all 14. I think that’s a good, cautious historical move right there. Do we see any other motives in any of the other accounts? Are there any other motives, especially with men who are faithful members of the church? Like, anything you can discern as to why Joseph would marry their wives, be sealed eternity-only with them when the husband was perfectly capable of being sealed to his wife? Orson Hyde comes to mind. Albert Smith, he was a member of the church, wasn’t he? When Joseph was sealed to Esther Dutcher. Maybe there’s a few others, Mary Heron. What do you do with those in terms of motivation? Any theological reason for those? Anything you can discern there, Brad?

Brian Hales:
Well, it’s interesting. You’ve mentioned several. Merinda Hyde is—you know, and John Bennett is the first to say that Joseph would send men on missions—to marry their wives. It’s not true. I looked at all 14 of them, and the only one that might have been on a mission is Orson Hyde.

Joseph Smith Polygamy: Miranda and Joseph Smith 

The reason I say it might have been is because we have, as you know, we have two marriage dates or sealing dates for Miranda to Joseph, and the second one is in a signed affidavit by her, and it’s after Orson is back. But what’s interesting is when she went to the Nauvoo Temple to have this redone she was sealed to Orson Hyde.

So she’d been sealed during Joseph’s lifetime to Joseph, but that was re-performed, and she was sealed to Orson Hyde in the Nauvoo temple. But then 15 years later they divorced and she was vicariously re-sealed to Joseph. And so the idea that all of these sealings that are happening in Nauvoo to Joseph, I just don’t know if these are going to all stay. I mean, they can’t. We don’t understand eternal marriage, and we understand even less about what that might be in the plural in the next life, so.

I think there will be lots of sealings and loosenings during the millennium that will allow every worthy person—and that’s the key thing, is stay worthy to have an eternal mate. And there will be opportunities to perform vicarious loosenings and sealings so that every worthy person will be in a dynamic and in a marriage to a person that is of their choosing, of their choice. No one needs to worry about any of this, because it will—God is not going to force anything on anyone. These sealing keys can be loosened, and there will be ample opportunity for the worthy to have all of this made right according to their desires prior to the resurrection.

Scott Woodward:
I think that’s a really key point. Just remember the character of God that undergirds all of this, right? God is not going to put somebody in a situation that they are not OK with. I’m talking about a covenant-keeping, faithful person, right? That somehow, some way they got duped into a marriage situation that they’re going to be stuck in for all eternity. That’s not the God we worship. That’s not the God we worship. He is just. He is merciful. He’s kind. He’s compassionate. He’s empathetic to all of this, and I think that Lucy Walker statement that Joseph told her, that every woman will have her choice—like, nobody’s going to be stuck.

Brian Hales:
No.

Scott Woodward:
I heard Elder Bednar personally. He told us in a class, I took his class here at BYU–Idaho 20 years ago, and I remember him saying, “The eternal sealing of a marriage in the temple does not force a couple to be together. It guarantees the opportunity if they still both want it when they’re dead. It ensures that you can have it if you want it,” right? It is never going to bind people against their will in a marriage situation or a dynamic that is toxic to them or in any way against their will. So I take comfort in just remembering the character of God that undergirds all of this, the Revelator behind the revelator, right? Jesus Christ, revealing this doctrine to Joseph Smith, Joseph imperfectly implementing it, but doing, I think, his very best to do it right, the best he understood. Is there some messiness? Yeah. But given the character of Christ, I’m not worried, ultimately. I don’t have ultimate worry about how this is all going to shake out.To listen to the full podcast episode, visit https://doctrineandcovenantscentral.org/podcast-episode/qr-tough-polygamy-questions-with-dr-brian-hales%e2%80%8b. 

By Dr. Scott Woodward, Source Expert

Dr. Scott Woodward has dedicated his professional career to educating within the Church Education System for almost twenty years. Currently, he serves as an esteemed faculty member in the BYU Idaho Religion department. He also holds the role of a managing director and content producer at Doctrine and Covenants Central, an affiliate of Book of Mormon Central. He shares his knowledge his Youtube channel titled “D&C Stories with Scott Woodward“. Dr. Woodward earned his PhD in Instructional Psychology and Technology from Brigham Young University.

Fact checked by Mr. Kevin Prince, Source Expert

Kevin Prince is a religious scholar and YouTube host of the Gospel Learning YouTube Channel. His channel currently has over 41,000 subscribers with over 4.5 million views. Mr Prince also developed the Gospel Learning App, a trusted source where truth-seeking individuals can easily find trusted answers to religious questions from the best teachers in the world.