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Plural Marriage: In That Day Seven Women Shall... - Page 4

Wow you're writing a book Brian! Awesome! I cannot wait to read it ...will be available online?. By the way, I'm interested in to know if Joseph Smith was sealed to already sealed women. We know he was sealed to married women but I would like also to know if he was sealed to women who have been sealed to their husbands. And of course, the explanation about all this. I still doing my research too. Good luck with your book!
[offtopic] do you still going to the other forum and fighting with the antis?[/offtopic]

Shall Women Day That Marriage Plural

Part of the confusion is to the fact that sealings were a new thing.  Early leaders did not understand them at first, and we don't always understand everything we are only familiar with certain particles of this doctrine.  What I know is that it was a custom in the endowment house (the building they used in Salt Lake City before the St. George Temple was dedicated) it was a custom to seal females to men (as daughters to fathers) at that time it was a custom for females to be sealed to Joseph Smith as either a wife, a daughter, a servant etc.  Male sealings did not take place often till the St George Temple was built.  One thing to point out is that when Wilford Woodruff was the prophet, he sent a letter asking that people being sealed be sealed to their parents first and then have their parents sealed to Joseph Smith

I don't think Joseph Smith was sealed to females already sealed to their husbands.  

But a good place to look is familysearch.org that is the churches genealogical web site and I have found a lot of information there.

Plural Marriage: In That Day Seven Women Shall... Studies Doctrine Mormon

About the book, the book will be about the prophecies and promises made to us by latter-day prophets.  It will not contain all of them mind you, because there are so many but it will be written so that peole may begin to search the prophecies of the prophets in more detail.  Here is just a portion of what it will contain, sorry if it is off topic but I don't know where else to discuss it:

"Remarks by President Gordon B. Hinckley on Sunday September 9, 2001 CES Fireside:"

"We are experiencing a serious economic downturn. You read of thousands of layoffs. This may be a difficult season for you. You worry much about your personal affairs. You worry about money. You worry about marriage. You worry about the future."

"There may be some lean days ahead for some of you. There may be troubles. None of us can avoid them all. Do not despair. Do not give up. Look for the sunlight through the clouds. Opportunities will eventually open to you."

"When President Hinckley said these words, what would happen in the next few days was unimaginable.  Only within a day and a half after President Hinckley made this statement, the September 11th attacks took place.  The World Trade Center in New York City was attacked and the Pentagon in Washington D.C. was as well.  Another attack was underway but the plain crashed before it could create more havoc.  The economy was not in such bad shape on September 9, nothing as it became after the attacks, and not a soul imagined what would come to pass in a few days.  The serious economic downturn became even more serious; this was indeed a difficult season for some of us.  There definitely were lean days ahead for some of us."  

"Amid this notion, we must remember that he has promised us hope...."

Page 4 Shall Women Day That Marriage Plural

I found some of this information interesting, some are from the book 'In Sacred Loneliness, the Plural wives of Joseph Smith" by Todd Compton. Read the whole thing, yeah I know it's long...take some of the information with a grain of salt like any other piece of information should be taken and make your own analysis.


"In the group of Smith's well-documented wives, eleven (33 percent) were 14 to 20 years old when they married him. Nine wives (27 percent) were twenty-one to thirty years old. Eight wives (24 percent) were in Smith's own peer group, ages thirty-one to forty. In the group aged forty-one to fifty, there is a substantial drop off: two wives, or 6 percent, and three (9 percent) in the group fifty-one to sixty.

Joseph Smith's first wife, Emma, allegedly told the wife of Apostle George A. Smith, Lucy, that Joseph Smith's plural wives were "celestial" only, that he had no earthly marital relations with them. "They were only sealed for eternity they were not to live with him and have children." Lucy later wrote that when she told this to her husband:
He related to me the circumstance of his calling on Joseph late one evening and he was just taking a wash and Joseph told him that one of his wives had just been confined and Emma was the Midwife and he had been assisting her. He [George A. Smith] told me [Lucy Smith] this to prove to me that the women were married for time [as well as for eternity], as Emma had told me that Joseph never taught any such thing.

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner stated that she knew of children born to Smith's plural wives: "I know he had six wives and I have known some of them from childhood up. I know he had three children. They told me. I think two are living today but they are not known as his children as they go by other names." Melissa Lott Willes testified that she had been Smith's wife "in very deed." Emily Partridge Young said she "roomed" with Joseph the night following her marriage to him, and said that she had "carnal intercourse" with him.

Other early witnesses also affirmed this. Benjamin Johnson wrote "On the 15th of May ... the Prophet again Came and at my hosue [house] ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister that the month previous he had ocupied with the Daughter of the Later Bishop Partridge as his wife." According to Joseph Bates Noble, Smith told him he had spent a night with Louisa Beaman.

Despite this evidence, some have argued that Joseph did not have marital relations with his wives, using the following arguments: First, some conclude that Helen Mar Kimball, who married Smith when she was fourteen, did not have marital relations with him. This is possible, as there are cases of Mormons in Utah marrying young girls and refraining from sexuality until they were older.

Some, like Emma Smith, conclude that Joseph's marriages were for eternity only, not for time (thus without earthly sexuality). But many of Joseph's wives affirmed that they were married to him for eternity and time, with sexuality included. Eliza Snow, in her autobiography, wrote that "I was sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, for time and eternity, in accordance with the Celestial Law of Marriage which God has revealed."

Eighteen of Joseph's wives (55 percent) were single when he married them and had never been married previously. Another four (12 percent) were widows. One, Agnes Coolbrith Smith, was the widow of his younger brother, Don Carlos, making this a strict Levirate marriage. However, the remaining eleven women (33 percent) were married to other husbands and cohabiting with them when Smith married them. (Polyandry). none of these women divorced their "first husbands" while Smith was alive and all of them continued to live with their civil spouses while married to Smith.
Another woman, Sarah Ann Whitney, married Smith, then married another man soon after in a civil, "pretend" marriage.

Some have suggested that the first husbands in these marriages were generally disaffected from Mormonism or were non-Mormon and that Smith married the women to offer them salvation. In such cases, the women would have wanted to be married to Smith as a righteous husband who could bring them exaltation. If so, one would have expected the women to leave the unworthy men
The totality of the evidence, however, does not support this theory. In the eleven certain polyandrous marriages, only three of the husbands were non-Mormon (Lightner, Sayers, and Cleveland) and only one was disaffected (Buell). All other husbands were in good standing in the church at the time Joseph married their wives. Many were prominent church leaders and close friends of Smith. George W. Harris was a high councilor in Missouri and Nauvoo, a position equivalent to that of a twentieth-century general authority. Henry Jacobs was a devoted friend of Joseph and a faithful missionary. Orson Hyde was an apostle on his mission to Palestine when Smith married his wife. Jonathan Holmes was one of Smith's bodyguards and served as a pallbearer after Smith's death. Windsor Lyon was a member in good standing when Smith united with Sylvia Lyon, and he loaned the prophet money after the marriage. David Sessions was a devout Latter-day Saint.

These data suggest that Joseph may have married these women, often not because they were married to non-members, but because they were married to faithful Latter-day Saints who were his devoted friends. This again suggests that the men knew about the marriages and permitted them.

Another theory is that Joseph married polyandrously when the marriage was unhappy. If this were true, it would have been easy for the woman to divorce her husband, then marry Smith. But none of these women did so; some of them stayed with their "first husbands" until death. In the case of Zina Huntington Jacobs and Henry Jacobs�often used as an example of Smith marrying a woman whose marriage was unhappy�the Mormon leader married her just seven months after she married Jacobs, and then she stayed with Jacobs for years after Smith's death. Then the separation was forced when Brigham Young (who had married Zina polyandrously in the Nauvoo temple) sent Jacobs on a mission to England and began living with Zina himself.

Another relevant doctrinal statement comes from an 1861 speech by Brigham Young:
"The Second Way in which a wife can be seperated from her husband, while he continues to be faithful to his God and his preisthood, I have not revealed, except to a few persons in this Church; and a few have received it from Joseph the prophet as well as myself. If a woman can find a man holding the keys of the preisthood with higher power and authority than her husband, and he is disposed to take her he can do so, otherwise she has got to remain where she is ... there is no need for a bill of divorcement ... "To recapitulate. First if a man forfiets his covenants with a wife, or wives, becoming unfaithful to his God, and his preisthood, that wife or wives are free from him without a bill of divorcement. Second. If a woman claimes protection at the hands of a man, possessing more power in the preisthood and higher keys, if he is disposed to rescue her and has obtained the consent of her husband to make her his wife he can do so without a bill of divorcement.
This allows for two options: (1) if a man apostatized, his wife could leave him without a formal divorce; (2) if a woman desired to be married to a man with greater priesthood authority than her current husband, and if both men agreed, she could be sealed to the second man without a formal divorce.

Another doctrine that apparently served as an underpinning for Smith's polyandry was his doctrine of a pre-existence, which holds that our spirits lived with God before birth and were given assignments there relating to what we would do here. According to Mary Elizabeth Lightner who was married to Adam Lightner when Joseph proposed to her, "Joseph Said I was his, before I came here. he said all the Devils in Hell should never get me from him." Elsewhere she wrote that Smith told her he had been commanded to marry her, "or Suffer condemnation�for I [Mary] was created for him before the foundation of the Earth was laid." Apparently, if Smith had a spiritual intuition that he was linked to a woman, he asserted that she had been sealed to him in the pre-existence, even though she was legally married to another man. But, as we have seen, he taught that civil marriages performed without the priesthood sealing power were not valid, even at times sinful. Therefore, the link in the pre-existence would take immediate priority over a marriage performed by invalid, secular or "sectarian ," authority in this life.
Apparently, however, Joseph would allow the wife to continue living with her first husband after such a marriage. There were not any divorces as a result of his polyandrous marriages. But the first husband probably recognized that he and the wife were married only until death, while Smith was married to her for eternity as well as for time. When eternal sealings were repeated in the Nauvoo temple in late 1845 and early 1846, two "first husbands," George W. Harris and Jonathan Holmes, stood proxy for the prophet as their wives were sealed to him for eternity. Another "first husband," Henry Jacobs, stood as witness when his wife, Zina, was sealed eternally to Smith (with Brigham Young, not Jacobs, standing proxy in this case), then witnessed his wife's sealing to Young for time, after which, Henry and Zina with their son, Zebulon, began the pioneer trek to the west together. Zina bore a second son to Jacobs, Henry Chariton, halfway across Iowa.

Another piece of evidence used to show that polyandrous wives were married only for eternity, not for time, is the interview with Zina Huntington Jacobs, which, as we have seen, is unsatisfactory for taking either side of the argument. In the same way, Mary Elizabeth Lightner's statement that she was married to Smith for eternity (as a polyandrous wife) has been used to show that she was not married to him for time; but she elsewhere specifically and repeatedly stated that she was married to him for time and eternity. Patty Sessions, another polyandrous wife, wrote in a genealogical record that she had been married to Joseph Smith "for Eternity," but to clarify, wrote above the line, "time and all eternity."

Therefore there is not any good evidence that Joseph Smith did not have sexual relations with any wife, previously single or polyandrous. On the other hand, there is evidence that he did have relations with at least some of these women, including one polyandrous wife, Sylvia Sessions Lyon, who bore the only polygamous offspring of Smith for whom we have affidavit evidence.


[edit]LDS I toned down your bold as it was blinding my eyes, I used dark green for emphasis. You may also wish to show where you got this text from and of course whatever copyright permissions.[/edit]

Shall Women Day That Marriage Plural

[quote]Other early witnesses also affirmed this. Benjamin Johnson wrote "On the 15th of May ... the Prophet again Came and at my hosue [house] ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister that the month previous he had ocupied with the Daughter of the Later Bishop Partridge as his wife." According to Joseph Bates Noble, Smith told him he had spent a night with Louisa Beaman.

Despite this evidence, some have argued that Joseph did not have marital relations with his wives, using the following arguments: First, some conclude that Helen Mar Kimball, who married Smith when she was fourteen, did not have marital relations with him. This is possible, as there are cases of Mormons in Utah marrying young girls and refraining from sexuality until they were older.  

Some, like Emma Smith, conclude that Joseph's marriages were for eternity only, not for time (thus without earthly sexuality). But many of Joseph's wives affirmed that they were married to him for eternity and time, with sexuality included. Eliza Snow, in her autobiography, wrote that "I was sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith, for time and eternity, in accordance with the Celestial Law of Marriage which God has revealed."  [/quote]
This part of your text is the most interesting. You don't say where this text came from so I cannot comment much on it, however if they are personal accounts then I wonder if the Church has done much to authenticate these.

Plural Marriage: In That Day Seven Women Shall...

Another issue, was Joseph Smith also sealed to men?. I read that there sealings of men to men in the early days but I need to look for more info about this but if anybody knows anything, I would like to know more about it.
JB thanks for the changes of my text, those extracts come from the book 'In Sacred Loneliness, the Plural wives of Joseph Smith' by Todd Compton. He's an LDS historian and the book he wrote is pretty mild, I said 'pretty' because I have the impression he doesn't believe that polygamy was something from God. That's why I said 'Take it with a grain of salt'. But at the same time, there are almost NO serious LDS historians who can talk about these things and give a logical explanation about it. Compton in my opinion is the one who is the mildest and is also a member of the Church. BUT FARMS gave a negative review about the book but in my opinion was not fair because they focused too much in the believes of Compton about Plural Marriage than whether is true the facts that he presented. Actually they said the book is mild and even with a friendly tone but they totally disagree on his views about Plural Marriage. But in my opinion they should review the facts rather than the guy personal feelings about it. Also I didn't like the fact that when someone doesn't agree with a Church doctrine or struggles with it, immediately is being called an 'apostate' or 'anti-mormon'. In the early days of the Church many brothers were not in agreement with Plural Marriage and I'm pretty sure some of them were excommunicated and never return to the Church now because of that...are their testimonies NOT valid?. I don't think it is fair.
There are many questions that need an answer and I research for them. This fact of challenging my own knowledge and why not, get answers from my leaders doesn't make me an anti or an apostate...but I have the impression we get too many of this 'labels' sometimes when a genuine person is looking for a genuine answer.

Also if anybody has more info about this I would like to know. One of the FARMS reviewers (Danel Bachman) said that a sister called Lydia Bailey, who left an abusive husband was permitted to remarry in Kirtland without divorcing her first husband.  And in Nauvoo one can find two or three cases where people who accepted Mormonism and immigrated to Church headquarters without their spouses were later permitted to remarry without securing a divorce from the partner who remained behind.
Can someone explain me how was this possible?

Plural Marriage That Day Women Shall... - Page 4

Hi,

The presence of the words time & for eternity in the ceremony does not prove sex. For example Todd Comtom doubts there was sex between Patty Sessions & Joseph. In the Josephine Fisher case I am not sure Syliva was making a biological claim to her daughter. Heber J. Grants mother was sealed to Joseph & was called a son of Joseph Smith Jr. It's possible that Josephine mistook her mothers claim she was a daughter of Joseph to literally.  If we could dig up Joseph & Josephine then we might perform a DNA test & settle the matter.

I felt when I read Todd Comptom that he failed to establish sexuality in the polyandrous marriages.

Joseph Noble did claim that Louissa Beaman & Joseph had consumnated the relationship. But what he left out was that the decision of Judge Phillips went against Nobles testimony.  

Plural Marriage That Day Women Shall... Mormon Doctrine Studies - Page 4

Hi Dale, welcome to our little forum!. Do you know the reason why Joseph Smith was sealed to already married women? and what's the Church view on it?.
Dale, I agree with you on Todd Compton doubts about certain marriages of Joseph Smith having sex BUT there are also good testimonies like Mary Lightner who said otherwise. Actually, based on her testimony and others...it's very possible he had intercourse with some, maybe not all of them, that's why I'm so interested in this topic because I would like to know what's behind all this and understand the purpose of it.  As you well know too there are also journals of sisters who were sealed to him that they said also that their marriages with Joseph were 'like any other kind of marriage' (yes, including intercourse). I quoted some of them in my previous posts.
I still looking for an answer of the reason why the Prophet would be sealed to someone who was already married.