Sunday, March 3, 2024

Richard Price and Pamela Price on the Problems with the Claim Eliza R. Snow Had an Altercation with Emma Smith

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:

 

Eliza R. Snow as a Victim of Sexual Violence in the 1838 Missouri War– the Author’s Reflections on a Source


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

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