Thursday, August 25, 2022

Henry Eyring (1901-1981): His Father's Practicing of Post-Manifesto Polygamy in Mexico

  

A SECOND WIFE

 

Not only after returning from Germany, and before real prosperity had been achieved, Ed took a second wife. In 1903, he married Caroline’s younger sister, Emma Romney. He was encouraged to do so by his father-in-law, who had declared Ed “an ideal husband” (Eyring, Interview by Leonard R. Grover, 26). The Church had instructed its members in the United States to cease the formation of polygamous marriages in 1890, thirteen years earlier. However, polygamy was not prosecuted in Mexico—that was the reason for both the Eyrings and the Romneys being there—and Church leaders in the Mormon colonies continued to selectively encourage polygamy until a final, worldwide prohibition was issued by the First Presidency in Salt Lake City in 1904.

 

Ed’s taking a second wife redefined his life. Already the father of our children, he would ultimately become “papa” to eighteen, nine by each wife. One of the last faithful Church members to contract a polygamy marriage, he would preside as patriarch over his two families into the late 1950s. (Henry J. Eyring, Mormon Scientist: The Life and Faith of Henry Eyring [Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2007], 103)

 

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