19. Joseph had Others Lie About Polygamy
September 18, 202416. Joseph Married Girls as Young as 14
September 20, 2024
Among Joseph Smith’s wives were a mother-daughter set and three sister sets.
A1) Among Joseph Smith’s wives were a mother-daughter set and three sister sets.
Supporting Sources and Quotes
Among the sets were Emily Dow Partridge and Eliza M. Partridge. The two sister were unaware of Joseph’s marriage to the other, nor was Emma aware of either at the time. Both were working as maids in Joseph and Emma’s home.
(LDS Biographical Encyclopedia. Elder Jenson, Andrew. 1951 Volume: 1 Page: 697 Marriages in Nauvoo Region 1839-45. Easton, S. Civil Marriages in Nauvoo 1839-45. Cook, Lyndon Nauvoo Temple Endowment Register 1845-46 Mormon Manuscripts to 1846.)
About this time Joseph introduced select men to the endowment ceremony. He taught that it was necessary for exaltation. Women would also be receiving the endowment and Joseph wanted his wife, Emma, to be the “Elect Lady”: the first women to receive the endowment. She would then disseminate it to the other women. The endowment requires a wife to be obedient to her husband. Because Emma was resisting plural marriage, Joseph would not let her participate in the endowment, thus risking her own exaltation as well as delaying ceremonial endowments for other women. Carrying this burden, Emma agreed to let Joseph marry additional wives; provided she could select them. Unaware of their marriage to Joseph months earlier, Emma selected her live-in helpers, Emily and Eliza. Emily recalls, “I do not know why she gave us to him, unless she thought we were where she could watch us better...” Emily continued, “To save the family trouble Brother Joseph thought it best to have another ceremony performed...[Emma] had her feelings, and so we thought there was no use in saying anything about it so long as she had chosen us herself...Accordingly...we were sealed to JS a second time, in Emma’s presence.” Within a week, Emma received her endowment.
Patty is less well-known as a wife of Joseph Smith. She and her daughter Sylvia are the only certain mother-daughter pair who married Smith. (Flora Woodworth and Phoebe Watrous Woodworth may have been another such combination, but Phoebe’s marriage to Smith is not certainly documented.) Patty married Joseph when she was forty-seven, well into middle age, so the marriage may have been ceremonial only, without a sexual dimension. She was Smith’s first older wife. Sylvia’s marriage was polyandrous (as was Patty’s) and has the usual elusive complexity of such relationships. However, she has considerable importance as the only wife of Joseph Smith, polyandrous or otherwise, who stated definitely that one of her children was biologically Joseph’s.
Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Kindle Edition. loc. 4259-64.
It is certain that at the time of Smith’s marriage to Sylvia, Windsor was a faithful Latter-day Saint who would have accepted Smith as a prophet .
Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Kindle Edition. loc. 4424-25.
Patty’s journal shares a few details of this marriage: “I was sealed to Joseph Smith by Willard Richards March 9 1842 in Newel K Whitneys chamber Nauvoo, for time and all eternity Eternity … Sylvia my daughter was presant when I was sealed to Joseph Smith.” Patty was forty-seven at the time and was the first older woman married by Smith. As was customary in later Mormonism, when older women married polygamously in Nauvoo, the ceremony was probably purely religious in nature and no cohabitation took place. Nevertheless, Patty became an important member of Smith’s extended family. Many of Smith’s plural wives participated in his subsequent marriages by educating prospective wives, by serving as messengers and go-betweens, and by acting as witnesses at ceremonies.
Todd M. Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Kindle Edition. loc. 4427-32.
The Mosaic law prohibited polygamous marriages involving a mother and daughter:
Neither shalt thou take a wife to her sister, to vex her, to uncover her nakedness, beside the other in her life time. Leviticus 18:18
The law also prohibited one from marrying two sisters:
And if a man take a wife and her mother, it is wickedness: they shall be burnt with fire, both he and they; that there be no wickedness among you. Leviticus 20:14
Issues these Facts Raise
For this to be true, God was directing Joseph to marry girls and women who were related to one another. To me this is unsettling, especially in context with living in the celestial kingdom.
It is unsettling that Emma’s own endowment (and by extension salvation) was dependent on her accepting Joseph’s polygamy.
Joseph claimed he was “restoring” biblical law regarding plural marriage, and yet he also violated the instructions of the bible with regard to plural marriage and mother/daughter and sisters.
