35. Polygamy Numbers

The Ages of Joseph Smith’s Wives In the group of Smith’s well-documented wives, eleven (33 percent) were 14 to 20 years old when they married him. Nine wives (27 percent) were twenty-one to thirty years old. Eight wives (24 percent) were in Smith’s own peer group, ages thirty-one to forty. In the group aged forty-one to fifty, there is a substantial drop off: two wives, or 6 percent, and three (9 percent) in the group fifty-one to sixty. The teenage representation is the largest, though the twenty-year and thirty-year groups are comparable, which contradicts the Mormon folk-wisdom that sees the beginnings of polygamy as an attempt to care for older, unattached women. These data suggest that sexual attraction was an important part of the motivation for Smith’s polygamy. In fact, the command to multiply and replenish the earth was part of the polygamy theology, so non-sexual marriage was generally not in the polygamous program, as Smith taught it.

- Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Signature Books.

One may ask why the Mormon leader married any older women at all. Two reasons can be offered. First, two of these women, Fanny Young Murray and Rhoda Richards, were sisters of favored apostles, so the marriages were dynastic. Interestingly, Joseph’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, was the daughter of another loyal apostle, Heber C. Kimball, so that marriage may also be considered dynastic, not motivated solely by sexual interest. Second, older women served as teachers and messengers to introduce and convert younger women to the practice in Nauvoo. Elizabeth Durfee and Patty Sessions belong in this category. Eliza R. Snow acted in this capacity in Utah. For Mormon feminists unsympathetic to patriarchal polygamy, this will be one of the most troubling aspects of Mormon polygamy: women co-opting other, younger females into the order.

- Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Signature Books.

Eighteen of Joseph’s wives (55 percent) were single when he married them and had never been married previously. Another four (12 percent) were widows. One, Agnes Coolbrith Smith, was the widow of his younger brother, Don Carlos, making this a strict Levirate marriage. However, the remaining eleven women (33 percent) were married to other husbands and cohabiting with them when Smith married them. Another woman, Sarah Ann Whitney, married Smith, then married another man soon after in a civil, “pretend” marriage.

- Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Signature Books.