17. Joseph Married Mother/Daughter Sets and Sister Sets
September 19, 202414. Joseph Proposes to Sarah Pratt while Orson is away
September 21, 2024
Joseph Smith married girls as young as 14-years-old. Joseph Smith was 37-years-old when he married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball.
Table of contents
- Joseph Smith married girls as young as 14-years-old. Joseph Smith was 37-years-old when he married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball.
- A1) Joseph Smith married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball when he was 37-years-old.
- A2) Joseph had given 14 year old Helen twenty-four hours to decide whether to marry him and ensure the families salvation or to deny the marriage proposal and promise of salvation.
- A3) Helen claimed Joseph taught her that plural marriage was “for the purpose of raising a righteous seed.”
- A4) Helen states that Joseph Smith promised eternal salvation for her and her family if she married him.
- Issues these Facts Raise
- Questions these Facts Raise
A1) Joseph Smith married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball when he was 37-years-old.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“Most of those sealed to Joseph Smith were between 20 and 40 years of age at the time of their sealing to him. The oldest, Fanny Young, was 56 years old. The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.”
– LDS.org, Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Navoo
In 1843 Apostle Heber C. Kimball had an important talk with his only daughter, fourteen-year-old Helen Mar. She wrote: “Without any preliminaries [my Father] asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives...The first impulse was anger...my sensibilities were painfully touched. I felt such a sense of personal injury and displeasure; for to mention such a thing to me I thought altogether unworthy of my father, and as quick as he spoke, I replied to him, short and emphatically, ‘No I wouldn’t!’...This was the first time that I ever openly manifested anger towards him...Then he commenced talking seriously and reasoned and explained the principle, and why it was again to be established upon the earth. [This] had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake.”
The next morning Joseph visited the Kimball home. "[He explained] the principle of Celestial marrage...After which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’’s household & all of your kindred.[‘] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart-when Joseph asked her if she was willing...She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older & who better understood the step they were taking, & to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come...; but it was all hidden from me.”
- Helen Mar Whitney, Autobiography, March 30, 1881
“In the single month of May 1843, Joseph Smith married four brides under the age of twenty. The youngest, Helen Mar Kimball, was fourteen. Of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, in fact, at least nine or ten were what would now be called “teenage” (the term was not widely used until the twentieth century) when they married the Prophet. Since evidence for physical intimacy between Joseph Smith and some of his wives is compelling, the question of sexual contact with the youngest wives ignites controversy in print and across the Internet. Further complicating the picture of Joseph Smith’s relationship with his young wives is the fact that Helen Mar Kimball Whitney experienced considerable pressure to consent to the marriage from both the Prophet and her own father, Elder Heber C. Kimball; she understood that her salvation and that of her family’s depended on her acquiescence. Because the most pertinent documents for the Whitney case were penned by Whitney herself, critics charge on the basis of the Saints’ own documentary record that Joseph Smith used his religious position to impose himself on innocent teens.”
- BYU Religious Studies Center, “A Subject That Can Bear Investigation” by J. Spencer Fluhman
A2) Joseph had given 14 year old Helen twenty-four hours to decide whether to marry him and ensure the families salvation or to deny the marriage proposal and promise of salvation.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he (my father) offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the altar: how cruel this seemed to my mother whose heartstrings were already stretched unil they were ready to snap asunder, for she had already taken Sarah Noon to wife and she thought she had made sufficient sacrifice but the Lord required more.” (Helen Mar Whitney Journal, Helen Mar Autobiography, Womans Exponent, 1880 and recently reprinted in A Woman’s view)
Helen’s father would eventually marry thirty-nine wives. She wrote, “I had, in hours of temptation when seeing the trials of my mother, felt to rebel. I hated polygamy in my heart.””
A3) Helen claimed Joseph taught her that plural marriage was “for the purpose of raising a righteous seed.”
Supporting Sources and Quotes
Helen later in life stressed the sexual nature of the polygamous marriages. She said, “It was revealed to the latter that there were thousands of spirits, yet unborn, who were anxiously waiting for the privilege of coming down to take tabernacles of flesh... which makes this plural wife system an actual necessity… The principle was established by the Prophet Joseph Smith, and all who have entered into it in righteousness, have done so for the purpose of raising a righteous seed.” (Helen Mar Whitney, Why We Practice Plural Marriage, pp. 7-8 (Juvenile Instructor 1884 - spelling and grammar as in original).
After Joseph’s death Helen remarried, moved to Utah and had 11 children with her new husband, but was never permitted to be sealed to him because she already belonged to Joseph.
A4) Helen states that Joseph Smith promised eternal salvation for her and her family if she married him.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
“I heard him [Joseph Smith] teach and explain the principle of celestial marriage. After which he said to me, “If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father’s household and all of your kindred.” This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward.”
- Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, “Autobiography, 30 March 1881,” MS 744, CHL. Typescript and copy of holograph reproduced in Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997), 482–87. Quote at: https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/helen-mar-kimball/
Issues these Facts Raise
For this to be true, God was directing Joseph to marry girls many years younger than himself, as young as 14 years old. After some research I see this was not a common age gap then or now.
Questions these Facts Raise
Why does the church put so much emphasis on dating after 16 when Joseph Smith married 14 and 15 year old girls? Is social norms driving much or our doctrine? Does God derive his laws from the norms of society? What evidence do I have that prophets are at the forefront of positive social change?
The average age of first time marriages for women was in the early 20s during the 1830s and 40s, and when they did marry young it was usually to boys their own age. With that in mind, how does the church justify 38 year old Joseph marrying multiple 14 & 15 year old girls?
Why is it better for Helen to be married for eternity to Joseph Smith, but not allowed to be with the husband she raised 11 children with?
