While they try to defend the thesis that Joseph Smith never engaged in polygamy (the traditional RLDS position), Richard and Pamela Price make a compelling case that the rumor that Eliza R. Snow was pushed down the stairs by Emma and miscarried Joseph's child is a myth of history:
In
an effort to prove that Joseph Smith was the author of polygamy in the Church,
members of the LDS Church have proclaimed for over one hundred and fifty years
that Eliza R. Snow was one of Joseph’s plural wives in Nauvoo—and that Emma
Smith in a jealous rage beat Eliza and shoved her down the Mansion House
stairs, causing her to give birth prematurely to Joseph’s child, who died. This
story is false because the Mansion House stairs and hallway are constructed in
such a way that the supposed altercation between Emma and Eliza could not have
happened the way the story was reported. And even though Eliza lived with the
Smiths for a short time at the Homestead, she never lived with them at the
Mansion House, and her diary proves that she did not have an altercation with
Emma.
.
. .
Eliza’s Journal Proves that the “Altercation” Story Is False
Eliza
was born in 1804 to Oliver and Rosetta Snow and had lived with her parents,
brothers, and sisters in northern Ohio at the time the Church headquarters was
in Kirtland in the early 1830s. The Snows were friends of Sidney Rigdon and
belonged to the Disciples of Christ (Campbellite) which had recently been
formed, with Sidney as one of its founders, along with Alexander Campbell.
After Sidney left the Disciples of Christ and joined the Church, the Snow
family joined also. The Snows moved to Missouri with the Saints and suffered
the persecutions there. Later they moved to Nauvoo.
Eliza
Snow’s Nauvoo journal has now been published, which shows the entire
altercation story was fabricated. A study of her life and writings reveal the
following:
Spring
1838: IN the spring of 1838 when Eliza was thirty-four, she moved with her
father, mother, brothers, and sister from Kirtland to Adam-ondi-Ahman in
Daviess County, Missouri, not far from the Church’s headquarters at Far West
(see Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow,
12).
December
1838: Eliza was still living with her parents, brothers, and sisters in the Far
West area (ibid., 12-13).
March
5, 1839: Eliza and her family left Missouri, where they had lived for nine
months, and traveled together to Quincy, Illinois. Eliza’s parents and her two
teenage brothers settled temporarily in Quincy, while Eliza and her sister,
Leonora, went to live in nearby Lima, Illinois, and worked as seamstresses
(Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Ensign 9 [June 1980]: 66-67; see also
Beecher, Personal Writings, 15).
July
16, 1839: On this day Eliza Snow moved from Lima to Commerce (Nauvoo) at the
invitation of Sidney Rigdon, her former Church of Christ minister. She lived at
the Rigdon home and taught the Rigdon family school (ibid.). At that time the
Rigdons were living in the James White stone house at the foot of what later
became Parley Street. (When that area was flooded by water from the Keokuk Dam,
the house was inundated).
October
6, 1839: Eliza was still living with the Rigdons (ibid., 18).
Winter
1839-1840: Oliver Snow came for his daughter, Eliza, and she moved away from
Nauvoo to the home of her parents (ibid.).
Spring
1840: Eliza moved with her parents to La Harpe, Illinois, where they lived for
one year—until the spring of 1841. (Ibid.).
Spring
1841: Eliza and her parents moved to Nauvoo, and she lived there in her
parents’ home until June 20, 1842 (ibid., 52).
June
20, 1842: Eliza’s father, Oliver Snow, became so distraught about events
connected with Dr. John C. Bennett that he left Nauvoo and the Church, and
moved seventy-five miles away to Walnut Grove, Illinois (Beecher, Ensign
9 [June 1980]: 67). Eliza’s mother and brothers went also, but Eliza chose to
stay at Nauvoo even though no other members of her family was living there. Her
sister, Leonora, whom Eliza had left in Lima, had become a polygamous wife of
Patriarch Isaac Morley and was living in the Morley Settlement at Lima (ibid.).
(It must be remembered that Brigham Young and others were practicing polygamy
in 1842.) Housing was so scarce in Nauvoo that Eliza was desperate to find a
place to live.
August
13, 1842: On this date Emma Smith sent for Eliza. Emma was aware of Eliza’s sad
plight—a thirty-eight-year-old unmarried woman now bereft of family and home.
Emma’s heart and home were always open to the oppressed and lonely, especially
needy women and children. No doubt Emma knew the full story behind Oliver
Snow’s quick exit from the city, and Emma’s heart went out to Eliza—so she
invited Eliza to share her home (Beecher, Personal Writings, 54).
August
18, 1842: Eliza moved into Emma and Joseph’s home (the Homestead) on this date
(ibid.). Eliza’s diary shows that she was treated kindly by Joseph and Emma and
there is no evidence of plural marriage or contention. During this time Eliza
taught school at the Red Brick Store, and the Smith children were some of her
pupils.
February
11, 1843: Eliza moved out of the Homestead on this date, after having lived
with Emma and Joseph almost six months (ibid., 64). The day after she moved,
Eliza taught school as usual, with no evidence of having received a beating or
having suffered a fall or a miscarriage. If Eliza had been injured so severely
that she suffered a life-threatening miscarriage, she could have had to close
her school for the rest of the term—but the records show that she did not miss
a single day of teaching (Newell and Avery, Mormon Enigma, 136).
March
17, 1843: This was the last day of school and Eliza was happy to record in her
diary that at her closing school program she had “the pleasure of the presence
of Prest. J. Smith, [and] his lady” (Beecher, Personal Writings, 66).
Her “pleasure” at their presence shows a friendly regard for both the Prophet
and Emma, and is another proof that the entire story about Eliza being a plural
wife, who had been battered by Emma, is totally false.
Shortly
after her school term ended, Eliza moved from Nauvoo to Lima to live with her
sister, Leonora (Maureen Ursenbach Beecher, Eliza and Her Sisters, 58).
Leonora was still a plural wife of Isaac Morley. Eliza’s journal shows that she
never again lived with Emma and Joseph. According to Mormon Church history,
Joseph and Emma moved into the Mansion House August 31, 1843, six months after
Eliza moved from their home at the Homestead (LDS History of the Church
5:556). . . . [Eliza’s] diary proves the charges against Emma to be false,
because Eliza’s journal shows that she respected Emma. There is no hint of any
ill will between them, which would have appeared in her journal if Emma had
beaten her and pushed her down the stairs. Eliza’s journal portrays only a high
regard for the beautiful, capable, and kind-hearted Emma, who had given the
sad, middle-aged, homeless woman a place to live. (Richard Price and Pamela
Price, Joseph Smith Fought Polygamy, 3 vols. [Independence, Miss.: Price
Publishing Company, 2000], 1:89, 96-100)
Here are the images from pp. 88
and 126 of the volume:
Evidence presented in 2016 by
Andrea Radke Moss supports that Eliza may have been raped in Missouri and
perhaps thereafter was not sexually active. This would further refute the claim
she was pregnant by Joseph and later miscarried. See:
See also:
Brian C. Hales, “Emma Smith, Eliza R. Snow, and the Reported Incident on the Stairs,” Mormon Historical Studies 10, no. 2 (Fall 2009): 63–75