11. Emma Never Consented for the Majority of Joseph’s marriages
September 23, 202410. Joseph Married Wives Without their Husbands Knowledge
September 24, 2024
There is evidence, including several first hand accounts, that at least some of these marriages included sex.
Table of contents
- There is evidence, including several first hand accounts, that at least some of these marriages included sex.
- A1) Fanny Alger
- A2) Louisa Beaman
- A3) Emily Dow Partridge
- A4) Eliza Maria Partridge
- A5) Lucy Walker
- A6) Almera Woodard Johnson
- A7) Sylvia Sessions (Polyandrous Marriage)
- A8) Maria Lawrence and Sarah Lawrence
- A9) Malissa Lott
- Issues these Facts Raise
A1) Fanny Alger
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Oliver Cowdery)
I did not fail to affirm that what I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy scrape [“affair” overwritten] of his and Fanny Alger’s was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deviated from the truth on the matter.
-Oliver Cowdery, Letter to Warren A. Cowdery, January 21, 1838.
Second-Hand Account (William McLellin)
[O]ne night she [Emma Smith] missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!! She told me this story too was verily true.
-William E. McLellin, M.D., Letter to President Joseph Smith [III] Independence, Mo., July 1872.
Third-Hand Account (William McLellin quoted by J.H. Beadle)
He [McLellin] was in the vicinity during all the Mormon troubles in Northern Missouri, and grieved heavily over the suffering of his former brethren. He also informed me of the spot where the first well authenticated case of polygamy took place in which Joseph Smith was “sealed” to the hired girl. The “sealing” took place in a barn on the hay mow, and was witnessed by Mrs. Smith through a crack in the door! The Doctor was so distressed about this case, (it created some scandal at the time among the Saints,) that long afterwards when he visited Mrs. Emma Smith at Nauvoo, he charged her as she hoped for salvation to tell him the truth about it. And she then and there declared on her honor that it was a fact—“saw it with her own eyes.”
-William McClellin, quoted in J. H. Beadle, “Jackson County,” 4.
A2) Louisa Beaman
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Joseph B. Noble, Louisa’s brother-in-law)
Q. Do you know whether Joseph Smith ever lived any with Louisa Beaman as his wife?. . .
A. I know it for I saw him in bed with her. . . .
Q. What made you say the other day that Joseph Smith and that woman you sealed to him slept together that night?
A. Because they did sleep together.
Q. If you were not there that night, how do you know they slept together?
A. Well, they slept together I know. If it was not that night it was two or three nights after that.
Q. Where did they sleep together?
A. Right straight across the river at my house they slept together. . . .
Q. Did he sleep with her the first night after the ceremony was performed?
A. He did.
Q. Now you say that he did sleep with her?
A. I do.
Q. How do you know he did?
A. Well I was there.
Q. And you saw them go to bed together?
A. I gave him counsel . …
Q. What counsel did you give him?
A. I said “blow out the light and get into bed, and you will be safer there,” and he took my advice or counsel . . . .
Q. Well did you stay there until the lights were blown out?
A. No sir I did not stay until they blowed out the lights then.
Q. Well you did not see him get into bed with her that time?
A. No sir.
Q. And so you don’t know whether he followed your advice from your own knowledge?
A. No sir, I did not see him, but he told me he did.
Q. Well, you know from your own knowledge that he did?
A. Well, I am confident he did.
Q. But you don’t know it of your own knowledge from seeing him do it?
A. No sir, for I was not there.
- Joseph B. Noble, Deposition, Temple Lot Case, Part 3, pp. 396, 426-27, questions, 52–53, 681–704. The complete transcript of the Temple Lot Case is more than 1,750 pages long (copies at the Community of Christ Archives and microfilm at LDS Church History Library). A shortened version has been available from the RLDS Church (now Community of Christ) with much of the testimony regarding plural marriage in Nauvoo omitted (Lamoni, Iowa: Herald Publishing House, 1893); Price Publishing (Independence, Mo., 2003) reprints the RLDS version. See also Lawrence Foster, Religion and Sexuality: The Shakers, the Mormons, and the Oneida Community, 310 note 104.
First-Hand Account (Benjamin Winchester, note he was excommunicated by the time he gave this quote)
Q. Were you personally acquainted with any of Smith’s wives?
A. Yes, but especially with Louisa Beaman from a girl. About the year 43 Joseph Smith took rooms for her in my father’s house, and Smith came to see her about once a week.
Q. Did they sleep together?
A. Yes they did.
Q. Was there only one bed in the room?
A. Yes just one bed.
Q. Are you sure it was in 1843?
A. No, but it was about that time, or from 42 to 44.
- Benjamin Winchester, Testimony to Joseph Smith III, Council Bluffs, Iowa, November 27, 1900.
A3) Emily Dow Partridge
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Emily Dow Partridge)
Q. Had you roomed with him prior to … the night after you were married the last time?
A. No sir, not roomed with him.
Q. Well had you slept with him?
A. Yes sir.
Q. [Had you] slept with him … before the fourth of March 1843 [their marriage date]?
A. No sir. …
Q. Did you ever live with Joseph Smith after you were married to him after that first night that you roomed together?
A. No sir. Emma knew that we were married to him, but she never allowed us to live with him. . . .
Q. Do you make the declaration now that you ever roomed with him at any time?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Do you make the declaration that you ever slept with him in the same bed?
A. Yes sir.
Q. How many nights?
A. One.
Q. Only one night.
A. Yes sir.
Q. Then you only slept with him in the same bed one night?
A. No sir.
Q. Did you ever have carnal intercourse with Joseph Smith?
A. Yes sir.
Q. How many nights?
A. I could not tell you.
Q. Do you make the declaration that you ever slept with him but one night?
A. Yes sir.
Q. And that was the only time and place that you ever were in bed with him?
A. No sir.
Q. Were you in bed with him at any time before . . . you were married?
A. No sir, not before I was married to him. I never was.
- Emily Dow Partridge Young, Deposition, Temple Lot Transcript, Part 3, pp. 371, 384, questions 480–84, 747, 751-62.xx)
A4) Eliza Maria Partridge
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Benjamin F. Johnson)
“I saw one of my sisters married to him [Joseph Smith] and know that with her he occupied my house on May 16 and 17, 1843, which he had occupied with Eliza Partridge, another plural wife, on the 2nd of the previous month.”
- Benjamin F. Johnson, “More Testimony,” March 9, 1904.
A5) Lucy Walker
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Lucy Walker)
Q. Can you state the circumstances under which he [Joseph Smith] first taught you that principle [of plural marriage]?
A. Well, the circumstances were these,—it was a command from God to me to receive it, and I would rather have laid down my life than disobeyed it, but it was a grand and glorious principle that was to be established, and when I was called upon I stepped forward and gave myself up as a sacrifice to establish that principle, and I did that in the face of prejudice, of course. In this day and age [1892] we are considered fanatics of course, more or less. I gave myself up as a sacrifice, for it was not a love matter, so to speak, in our affairs, at least on my part it was not,—but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world.
Q. Did you live with Joseph Smith as his wife?
A. He was my husband sir. . . .
Q. How many children did you have by virtue of your marriage with Joseph Smith?
A. I decline to answer that question sir.
Q. Did you have any?
A. I decline to answer the question.
Q. Have you any children by Joseph Smith?
A. I decline to answer the question
Q. Why do you decline to answer it?
A. Well I think that is my business and none of yours. The principle by which we were married is an eternal principle, and will endure forever. . . .
Q. Well did you raise a child by him?
A. I decline to answer the question.
Q. Did you ever occupy the same bed with him?
A. I decline to answer the question.
Q. You say you will not answer any of these questions.
A. I do, not on that subject.
Q. Did you ever see a child that you knew was Joseph Smith’s outside of David, Alexander, Frederick and Joseph?
A. I decline to answer that question . . . .
Q. You know you did not have any children by him [Joseph Smith]?
A. Well now that is something that I did not tell you anything about at all. It is none of your business if we had twenty sons or children, and it is none of your business if we did not have any.
- Lucy Walker, Deposition, Temple Lot Transcript, Respondent’s Testimony, Part 3, pp. 450–51, 468, 473, questions 29–30, 463–74, 586.
Second-Hand Account (D.H. Morris, an acquaintance of Lucy’s)
“I . . . married Joseph Smith as a plural wife and lived and cohabited with him as such.”
- D. H. Morris, Untitled typed statement, June 12, 1930.
A6) Almera Woodard Johnson
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Almera Woodard Johnson)
“On a certain occasion in the spring of the year 1843 … I was sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith . … After this time I lived with the Prophet Joseph as his wife, and he visited me at the home of my brother Benjamin F. at Macedonia.”
- Almera W. Johnson, Affidavit, August 1, 1883; published in Joseph Fielding Smith, Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage, 71.
First-Hand Account (Benjamin Johnson)
Almera’s brother, Benjamin F. Johnson, left five records confirming that she had sexual relations with the Prophet:
“He [Joseph Smith] remained two days, lodging at my house with my sister as man and wife (and to my certain knowledge he occupied the same bed with her). This visit was on the 16th and 17th of May, 1843, returning to Nauvoo on the 18th.”
- Benjamin F. Johnson, Affidavit, March 4, 1870, Joseph F. Smith, Affidavit Books, 2:6-7; Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” 222.
“He [Joseph Smith] was at my house … where he occupied my sister Almira’s room and bed.”
- Benjamin F. Johnson, My Life’s Review, 96
“[As] for my younger sister the Prophet made me the medium of his courtship; and I saw her married to him in the summer of 1843, and I further know that they roomed together as husband and wife at various times in my home at Macedonia, where he associated with other of his plural wives and various times as he had occasion.”
- Benjamin F. Johnson, Letter to Frank Feely, December 10, 1897.
“The Prophet again Came and at my house ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister . …”
-Zimmerman, I Knew the Prophets, 44.
“The Prophet stayed … there [at my house] with my sister Almira as his wife.”
- Johnson to Lund, May 12, 1903.
A7) Sylvia Sessions (Polyandrous Marriage)
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Josephine Lyson)
“Just prior to my mother’s death in 1882 she called me to her bedside and told me that her days on earth were about numbered and before she passed away from mortality she desired to tell me something which she had kept as an entire secret from me and from all others but which she now desired to communicate to me. She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon had was out of fellowship with the Church.”
- Josephine R. Fisher, Statement, February 24, 1915, CHL.
Some historians have proposed the interpretation that Joseph either had no marital relations with his “polyandrous” wives, if the husband was faithful to the church, or that the “first husband” had no marital relations with the woman. Such a theoretical relationship has been called “pseudo-polyandry.” However, the Josephine Lyon Fisher affidavit argues against this. According to Josephine, her mother Sylvia, one of Smith’s polyandrous wives, “told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith, she having been sealed to the Prophet at the time that her husband Mr. Lyon was out of fellowship with the Church.”
Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Kindle Edition. loc. 945-49.
However we interpret this evidence, it shows that Sylvia believed that Josephine was Smith’s daughter, and it is convincing evidence that Smith had sexual relations with his wives, including his polyandrous spouses. How Sylvia was sure that Josephine was Joseph’s, not Windsor’s, is not clear.
Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Kindle Edition. loc. 4527-29.
A8) Maria Lawrence and Sarah Lawrence
Supporting Sources and Quotes
Second-Hand Account (Lucy Walker, one of Joseph Smiths Plural Wives)
“I am also able to testify that Emma Smith, the Prophet’s first wife, gave her consent to the marriage of at least four other girls [Emily and Eliza Partridge and Maria and Sarah Lawrence] to her husband, and that she was well aware that he associated with them as wives within the meaning of all the word implies.”
- Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” 230.
Second-Hand Account (Emily Partridge, one of Joseph Smiths Plural Wives)
“She [Emma Smith] afterwards gave Sarah and Maria Lawrence to him, and they lived in the house as his wifes. I knew this.”
- Emily Dow Partridge Young, “Incidents in the Life of a Mormon Girl,” n.d.
Second-Hand Account (Benjamin Johnson)
“I do know that at his [Joseph Smith’s] Mansion home was living Maria and Sarah Lawrence and one of Cornelius P. Lott’s daughters as his plural wives with the full knowledge of his wife, Emma, of their married relations to him.”
- Johnson, “More Testimony,” March 9, 1904.
A9) Malissa Lott
Supporting Sources and Quotes
First-Hand Account (Malissa Lott)
Q. There was not any children born to you by Joseph Smith?
A. No Sir.
Q. Have you ever borne any children since that time?
A. Yes sir, I have. . . .
Q. State now the reason why you never bore any children by Joseph Smith?
A. Well that is something impossible to do,—that is something I can’t tell. . . .
Q. Now you said there were no children born of that marriage [to Joseph Smith]?
A. I said I had none.
Q. You had none by Joseph Smith?
A. Yes sir, and you asked me why I hadn’t any and I told you I couldn’t tell you, that you would have to go to some higher authority than I to tell you that. . . .
Q. Did you ever room with Joseph Smith as his wife?
A. Yes sir.
Q. At what place?
A. At Nauvoo
Q. What place in Nauvoo?
A. The Nauvoo Mansion.
Q. At what place in the Mansion?
A. Do you want to know the number of the room, or what?
Q. Well just what part of the house the room was in if you can give it?
A. Well I can give it and the number of the room too. It was room number one.
Q. Room number one?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Who else roomed there?
A. I don’t know of any one. . . .
Q. So you roomed with him [Joseph Smith] in the Nauvoo Mansion in room number one?
A. Yes sir. . . .
Q. How often did you room there with Joseph Smith?
A. Well that is something I can’t tell you.
Q. Well was it more than once?
A. Yes sir, and more than twice.
Q. Well that is something I would like to know?
A. Well there is something I would like to know. If I am to be asked these questions I would like to know if I am to answer them. I have told you all about this thing that I know, and I can’t see any reason in your worrying me with these questions, and I would like to know if I have to answer them?
Q. Well if you decline to answer them say so, and that will do?
A. I don’t decline to answer any question that I know anything about.
Q. Well answer that question then?
A. What is the question?
Q. I asked you how many times you had roomed there in that house with Joseph Smith? I do not expect you to answer positively the exact number of times, but I would like to have you tell us the number of times as nearly as you can remember it?
A. Well I can’t tell you. I think I have acted the part of a lady in answering your questions as well as I have, and I don’t think you are acting the part of a gentleman in asking me these questions.
Q. Well I will ask you the questions over again in this form,—was it more than twice?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Well how many times?
A. I could not say.
Q. Did you ever at any other place room with him?
A. In what way
Q. Of course I mean as his wife?
A. Yes sir.
Q. At what places?
A. In my father’s house.
Q. At other places did you ever room with him as his wife?
A. Well now I think that is all the places it is necessary for me to answer you one way or the other . . .
Q. Did you ever room with Joseph Smith at any other place or places than at the Nauvoo Mansion and your father’s house,—that is did you ever room with him as his wife?
A. Them is all the places I remember.
Q. Those are the only places you remember?
A. Yes sir.
Q. Now at the times you roomed with him, did you cohabit with him as his wife?
A. Yes sir.
Q. And you never had any children?
A. No sir, I answered that question before and told you no.
- Malissa Lott, Deposition, Temple Lot Transcript, Part 3, pp. 97, 105–6, questions 87–93, 224–60.
Joseph Smith III who believed Malissa was not married to his father during his lifetime, recorded in 1894: “Melissa Lott. I knew her well, a bright good girl. Am glad that she was only for eternity or adopted into the family. But she was plenty large and old enough to be any man’s companion in cohabitation when I knew her; and about the only one of the entire outfit named by you [of twenty possible plural wives of Joseph Smith] whom I would be inclined to believe if she should tell me herself that father did cohabit with her.” Joseph Smith III, Letter to Bro. E. C. Brand, January 26, 1894, p. 66.
First-Hand Account (Malissa Lott)
Q. Were you married to my father?
A. Yes . . .
Q. Was you a wife in very deed?
A. Yes
Q. Why was there no increase, say in your case?
A. Through no fault of either of us, lack of proper conditions on my part probably, or it might be in the wisdom of the Almighty that we should have none. The Prophet was martyred nine months after our marriage.
- Malissa Lott Willes, Statement, August 4, 1893.
Issues these Facts Raise
Joseph’s teen brides include his own foster daughter and girls living in his house as maids: Fanny Alger, Sarah Lawrence, Lucy Walker, Emily Dow Partridge, Eliza Maria Partridge, and Maria Lawrence.
This feels like a no win situation, as I see only the following possibilities given the facts:
Option 1. Joseph Smith was directed by God to marry and have sex with his foster daughters.
For this to be true: God wanted, or at minimum allowed, Joseph to marry and have sex with his foster daughters. Either way I have to concede that doing so had zero consequence on his ability to receive revelation from God as he was actively restoring the church during this time.
Option 2. Joseph Smith was not directed by God.
For this to be true: Joseph was lying (whether he knew it or not). If Joseph was lying he either: 1. Was a fraud, 2. Was deceived, leaving other revelations very suspect, 3. Was confused about God’s direction—not making a very good spokesman for God (I.e. Prophet).
