“POLYANDROUS”
SEALINGS
Several of the women
who were evidently sealed to Joseph Smith were already married to other men at
the time of their sealing to him. Why such sealings were performed is unclear,
although several possibilities suggest themselves. Some of these sealings, and perhaps
most, may have come about as a result of Smith’s well-documented hesitancy to
marry specific women as plural wives when he was initially commanded to do so. Several
years appear to have elapsed between the time of the commandment and his
decision to obey it, during which time the women he had been told to marry—who had
been single at the time of the commandment—married other men. Joseph Smith
evidently believed that he was still required to marry these women as plural
wives in spite of their having married someone else in the interim.
That some of the women
were married to men who were not members of the Church may have been another
consideration, for according to Doctrine and Covenants 132, only faithful men
and women who were sealed to faithful spouses were eligible for exaltation in
the kingdom of God (see vv. 7, 13-21). Similarly, that same revelation taught
that if a righteous woman was married to a man who had committed adultery,
Joseph Smith would “have power, by the power of [God’s] Holy Priesthood, to
take her and give her unto him that hath not committed adultery but hath been
faithful” (vv. 43-44). To what extent these or other considerations were behind
these so-called polyandrous sealings is largely unknown, as even fewer reliable
sources are extant for these complex relationships than are available for Smith’s
marriages to unmarried women (Richard L. Bushman has suggested another possibility
for these marriages—that is, that they provided Joseph Smith with a way to bind
or seal other families to his for the eternal benefit of both. See Richard
Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling [New York: Alfred A. Knopf,
2005], 437-46). No reliable sources have been located indicating that any of
these marriages included conjugal relations, although it should be noted that
nothing in section 132 or any of Joseph Smith’s other revelations “provides any
doctrinal reason for why any authorized plural marriage could not have included
such relations.”
It should be noted,
too, that the best available evidence does not support the charge of some have
made that Joseph Smith was sealed to some men’s wives after having sent them on
missions. The cases of Miranda Nancy Johnson Hyde, wife of Apostle Orson Hyde,
and Sarah Pratt, wife of Apostle Orson Pratt, are frequently invoked as
evidenced for this charge. Orson Hyde left on a mission in April 1840 and did
not return to Nauvoo until December 1842. Thomas Bullock, one of Joseph Smith’s
clerks, later recorded that Marinda was sealed to Joseph as a plural wife in
April 1842 which would have been several months before Hyde’s return. Marinda
herself, however, who was in a much better position to know the particulars of
her sealing to Joseph than Bullock was—dated the event to May 1843, several
months after Hyde’s return. In Sarah Pratt’s case, it was Nauvoo dissident John
C. Bennett who initially made the charge that Joseph had made advances toward
her while Pratt was on a mission. Testimony from a variety of other sources,
however (including witnesses who were not members of the Church), indicate that
it was Sarah and Bennett, rather than Sarah and Joseph, who had been involved
in a relationship during Pratt’s absence (For an annotated discussion of the
issues surrounding Marinda Hyde and Sarah Pratt, see JSP, JS2:xxvi, xxx).
AGE, CONSENT, AND
EMMA
Several of Joseph
Smith’s plural wives were in their teens when they were sealed t him, with the
youngest, Helen Mar Kimball, being fourteen years old at the time. While
marriage at such an age was not common in that period, it was legal, and other
examples have been found of women marrying in their mid-teens in that era.
Joseph also told at least some of his plural wives—and presumably all of them—that
they had the right and ability to obtain their own testimony of plural marriage
before they entered into such a relationship (See Lightner, Remarks, April 14,
1905; and Lucy Walker Smith Kimball, Affidavit, 1902, in Joseph F. Smith,
Affidavits about Plural Marriage, 1869-1915, CHL). Lucy Walker, for example,
who was sealed to Joseph as a plural wife on May 1, 1843, reported in a sworn
statement in 1902 that “[w]hen the Prophet Joseph Smith first mentioned the principle
of plural marriage to me I felt indignant and so expressed myself to him, because
my feelings and education were averse to anything of that nature. But he
assured me that this doctrine had been revealed to him of the Lord, and that I
was entitled to receive a testimony of its divine origin for myself. He
counselled me to pray to the Lord, which I did, and thereupon received from him
a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truthfulness and divinity of
plural marriage, which testimony has abided with me ever since” (Kimball
Affidavit, 1902).
Similarly, section
132 seems to indicate that a man’s first wife must give her consent before he
can take a second wife—a requirement evidently known as the “law of Sarah” (vv.
61, 65). Although Joseph’s first wife, Emma Hale Smith, “had a difficult time
accepting plural marriage,” several sources indicate that she “agreed to and even
attended at least some” of these marriages, and “several people close to her
and Joseph later reported that she told them or others that she knew it was a
true doctrine” (JSP, J3:xix and note 27). At the same time, it is clear
that on at least some occasions, Emma’s opposition to the practice resulted in
Joseph’s being sealed to other women without her knowledge. This may have been
done in accordance with the Lord’s instructions as given in Doctrine and
Covenants 132:64-65, which teaches that if the man who holds the keys of administering
plural marriage teaches his wife about the practice and she rejects it, he is “exempt
from the law of Sarah” and is to “receive al things whatsoever . . . the Lord .
. . will give unto him.” Such may have been the case in March 1843 when Emily
and Eliza Partridge were sealed to Joseph as plural wives. That Emma was
unaware of the sealings is suggested by the fact that two months later, in May
1843, she told Joseph that she would allow to be sealed to the two women as
plural wives and the ceremonies were then repeated (See Eliza Maria Partridge
Lyman, Affidavit, July 1, 1869, Millard County, Utah Territory, Joseph F. Smith
Affidavit Books, CHL; Emily Dow Partridge Young, Affidavit, May 1, 1869, Salt
Lake County, Utah Territory, Joseph F. Smith Affidavit Books, CHL; and Emily
Dow Partridge Young, Diary and Reminiscences, February 1874—November 1883,
typescript, CHL).
JOSEPH SMITH’S
DENIALS OF PLURAL MARRIAGE
Joseph did not
publicly teach the doctrine of plural marriage during his lifetime, choosing rather
to limit its practice to a relatively few trusted associates. Even as he and
these other fulfilled the Lord’s command to take plural wives, he continued to
emphasize the Lord’s usual standard that “no man shall have but one wife,” and
he directed Church leaders to discipline “those who were preaching teaching . .
. the doctrine[s] of plurality of wives” without his consent or direction (Joseph
Smith, Journal, October 5, 1843, CHL). Joseph and others involved with plural
marriage consistently denied the existence of the practice, although the
language they employed in doing so was sometimes evasive. Their reasons for the
denials are unclear but may include the need to present a message consistent with
the public doctrine of monogamy, fear of reprisal, and the fact that rumors about
the practice were often so inaccurate that admitting to it would be admitting to
something that, in its details, was not true (As the editors of the Joseph
Smith papers note, for example, the term John C. Bennett used for plural
marriage, “spiritual wifery,” was not used by those practicing plural marriage
in Nauvoo. Not is there any corroborating evidence for Bennett’s description of
Joseph’s plural wives as a “seraglio . . . divided into three distinct orders
or degrees,” JSP, J2:xixn23). (Andrew H. Hedges, “Eternal Marriage and
Plural Marriage,” in Scott C. Esplin, ed., Raising the Standard of Truth:
Exploring the History and Teachings of the Early Restoration [Provo, Utah:
Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret
Book, 2020], 309-22, here, pp. 314-17)
