History Site Map

Introduction:

Introduction
Truth Quotes

Pre-LDS:

1. Joseph Smith and his Family practiced folk magic
2. Joseph Smith practiced treasure diggin with a seer stone
3. Joseph Smith Treasure Digging Flowchart
4. Joseph Smith claimed to be able to find lost objects using his seer stone. Joseph was unable to recover the lost 116 pages.
5. Joseph Smith claimed to see God and Jesus while a teenager. Some of the facts surrounding the First Vision accounts are not openly discussed in church.

Polygamy & Polyandry:

1. Polygamy pre-dates any recorded revelation sanctioning it. Joseph was practicing polygamy before the sealing authority was given.
2. Polygamy was illegal at the time.
3. While practicing polygamy, Joseph published a revelation declaring that “one man should have one wife.”
4. Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated for “falsely insinuating that he [Joseph Smith] was guilty of adultery.” This was after Emma caught Joseph in the barn with Fanny Alger.
5. On several occasions, Joseph claimed an angel with a drawn sword threatened him with destruction if he did not take on more wives.
6. Some of the marriages to these women and girls included promises by Joseph of eternal salvation, if they entered a plural marriage with him.
7. At least one of the girls was only given twenty-four hours to decide to agree.
8. The first recorded sealing of the church was Joseph Smith to Louisa Beaman. Louisa was dressed up as a man at the time to hid the ceremony.
9. Joseph married women who were already married to other living men (Polyandry). Of those 34 women and girls documented to have married Joseph, 11 of them were married women of other living men.
10. Joseph married other living men’s wives without the knowledge or consent of the husband.
11. Emma did not give consent now was she aware of most of these marriages
12. There is evidence, including several first hand accounts, that at least some of these marriages included sex
13. Apostle Orson Hyde was sent on a mission to dedicate Isreal. While he was gone Joseph secretly married his wife, Marinda Hyde.
14. Without consulting Orson Pratt (Who was away on a mission), Joseph Smith proposed to Orson’s wife, Sarah. Orson was feared to have committed suicide when he heard the news.
15. When Mary Rollins was twelve-years-old Joseph Smith told her that he was commanded to take her as a plural wife.
16. Joseph Smith married girls as young as fourteen-years-old. Joseph Smith was thirty-seven when he married fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball.
17. Among Joseph Smith’s wives were a mother-daughter set and three sister sets.
18. While Joseph Smith was married to many women, he said “…what a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers.”
19. 380 Elders volunteered to travel nationwide to distribute a broadside (a two-paged newspaper) filled with affidavits and certificates in a massive effort to convince the public, among other things, that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. Several anti-polygamy statements were published in church publications. Joseph was an active polygamist at the time, as were several of those who provided denials in the publications.
20. Joseph Smith had the Nauvoo Expositor torn down. The expositor published an expose showing that Joseph was practicing polygamy
21. Joseph would not allow Emma to have her endowments or get sealed to him, essentially damning her, until she accepted polygamy.
22. When one of the women, Nancy Rigdon, refused Joseph’s proposal saying it was wicked, Joseph wrote her a letter saying that whatever God requires is right…or in other words, whatever Joseph says is right, because the prophet can’t lead you astray.
23. When women would reject Joseph’s polygamy and then went public with the information, Joseph would publicly denounce them as liars and harlots.
24. The saints did not know what was going on behind the scenes as polygamy did not become common knowledge until 1852 when Brigham Young revealed it in Utah. Joseph Smith tried to keep the practice in the dark.
25. In general conference, Brigham Young claimed that Emma tried to poison Joseph because she was so opposed to polygamy.
26. Brigham Young had Zina Huntington stop living with her faithful, legal husband so she could live as one of his wives.
27. Polygamy was taught as doctrine by the church in the 1800’s. It might now be considered “not doctrinal”?
28. During the time that the church practiced polygamy there were more men than women living in Utah.
29. Studies have shown that monogamous women bore more children per wife than did polygamous wives except the first.
30. Mormon hierarchy were encouraged to get as many wives as they could.
31. Apostles and other high leaders continued to marry polygamous wives after the manifesto.
32. Until 1933, the new and everlasting covenant of marriage, or celestial marriage, was taught to be polygamy.
33. Plural marriages were often difficult and full of strife, often portrayed as devoid of love in private journals of women.
34. Other odds and ends about polygamy
35. Polygamy numbers

Other Upcoming Topics:

Translation

Book of Mormon

Book of Abraham

Kinderhook Plates

Joseph Smith Translation of the Bible

Other Parallel Sources for Joseph Smith

Revelations

Prophets

Evolution of Revelation

Critical Thinking