Joseph Smith's Polyandry?

[JLHPROF]

8 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Thank you for the info, JLHPROF.

He must have married them all within approximately the last year of his life, right?

Did he have any children with his plural wives?

Yep, last year.  No plural children.
I think William Clayton and Heber C. Kimball were the only ones to have plural children prior to the prophet's death during the 2 year period after he started teaching the practice.

(I still think that fact Joseph had no plural children during the less than 3 years he was really living plural marriage is meaningless).

[Eek!]

3 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

I mention these because it is different to say "Joseph started hankering after his future dream brides in 1831" and "Joseph received revelation regarding the nature of marriage while studying the account of the Abrahamic Covenant in 1831."

I wouldn't be surprised if, by the late 1800's, considerably more hankerin' than was actually the case was being attributed to Joseph.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Eek!

[Meg Stout]

3 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

I think William Clayton and Heber C. Kimball were the only ones to have plural children prior to the prophet's death during the 2 year period after he started teaching the practice.

Six righteous men appear to have engendered children with their plural wives before Joseph's death, by my reckoning.

I consider the children engendered in 1842 to have likely been engendered by Strikers. These are the children of Sarah Peak Noon, Lucina Roberts Johnston, Mary Clift (supported by testimony given by both Mary Clift and seducer Gustavus Hills before the High Council), and Eliza Snow (suggested by her November poems, particularly the one talking about innocence being:

"Thrown side by side and face to face with that Foul hearted spirit, blacker than the soul
Of midnight’s darkest shade, the traitor,
The vile wretch that feeds his sordid selfishness Upon the peace and blood of innocence!

"The faithless, rottenhearted wretch, whose tongue Speaks words of trust and fond fidelity,
While treach’ry, like a viper, coils behind
The smile that dances in his evil eye.– "

In May 1843 we see William Clayton and Joseph Bates Noble engender a child with their plural wives (respectively Margaret Moon and Sarah B. Alley). In about 1844 Sarah Peak Noon produces another child, which I attribute to Heber C. Kimball, though the lack of a specific birth day makes it difficult to determine when the child was engendered. However, due to the birth of a subsequent child in 1845, it appears May 1843 is a good guess (when Hyrum accepted plural marriage and when Emma formally signaled her embrace of plural marriage by participating in the semi-public ceremonies with the Partridge girls).

From footnote 1 to the chapter Collecting the Sorrowful, I wrote:

DNA analysis fails to confirm any child born to a wife of Joseph Smith can be proven to have been engendered by Smith. The six couples where a plural wife almost certainly conceived within a covenant marriage prior to Joseph’s death are: Joseph B. Noble & Sarah B. Alley (George born February 2, 1844); William Clayton & Margaret Moon (Daniel born Feb 18, 1844); Lorenzo Dow Young & Harriet P. Wheeler Decker (John born September 5, 1844); William Fleshaw & Charlotte Walters (Katherine born January 25, 1845); Theodore Turley & Mary Clift (Ephraim born February 11, 1845); and Heber C. Kimball & Sarah Peak Noon (Henry born ca. 1844, his younger sister Sarah born July 1, 1845). From Bergera, “Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841-44,” Dialogue, online 7 Jul 2014 at http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V38N03_ 13.pdf. The earlier children conceived by Mary Clift and Sara Peak Noon, often believed to have been engendered by Theodore Turley and Heber C. Kimball respectively, were engendered during Dr. Bennett’s campaign of illicit intercourse. Presuming full-term deliveries, the children of Joseph B. Noble and William Clayton by their plural wives were likely conceived in late May 1843. The son of Heber C. Kimball with Sarah Peak [Noon] may also have been conceived in May 1843. The child of Lorenzo Dow Young was conceived no earlier than December 1843. The children of William Felshaw and Theodore Turley with plural wives were conceived in about May 1844. This pattern of conceptions suggests that Joseph Smith may also have consummated a plural marriage in May 1843, presumably the marriage to Emily Partridge. He also may have consummated a plural marriage in about May 1844, consistent with the 1894 testimony of Malissa Lott. There is no reason to be certain either consummation occurred without the knowledge and agreement of Emma Smith. 

 

[JulieM]

4 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Six righteous men appear to have engendered children with their plural wives before Joseph's death, by my reckoning.

I consider the children engendered in 1842 to have likely been engendered by Strikers. These are the children of Sarah Peak Noon, 

 

Do you consider Heber C, Kimball to have been one of Bennett's Strikers? Sarah Peak Noon became his first plural wife in 1842. (She then became pregnant with Adelbert Kimball in 1842, iirc.)

Edited June 24, 2016 by JulieM

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, JulieM said:

Do consider Heber C, Kimball to have been one of Bennett's Strikers? Sarah Peak Noon became his first plural wife in 1842.

What evidence is there to "consider" these children to "have likely been engendered by Strikers"? None, whatsoever. But back to the OP, I note again that the only evidence regarding Joseph practicing sexual polyandry is positive, albeit not conclusive, but there is no positive evidence for nonsexual polyandry--in other words, there is no evidence pointing to his marriages not having been sexual. 

I should mention that, contrary to what some people seem to believe, I do not have some kind of vendetta going against Meg or her work. Over a year ago, a friend asked me what I thought about Meg's blog series, which I had not heard of, so I read through it and responded on my blog. I probably spent too much time on it, but there were so many problems with her "midrash" that I felt it deserved a thorough response. I don't have a problem with historical fiction, such as, say "The Work and the Glory," so long as the historical parts actually follow the documented history. To me, the "My Joseph" series is like a house of cards, only the cards are made of tissue paper; the slightest breeze of historical information blows the whole thing down. 

[Meg Stout]

21 minutes ago, JulieM said:

Do consider Heber C, Kimball to have been one of Bennett's Strikers? Sarah Peak Noon became his first plural wife in 1842. (She then became pregnant with Adelbert Kimball in 1842, iirc.)

I don't believe it is conclusive that Heber was the biological father of Adelbert. Some suggest Adelbert was engendered by William Noon before he abandoned Sarah Peak Noon. I suggest that there was so much illicit intercourse going on in 1841-1842 that some other man could have engendered Adelbert.

I do suggest that Heber Kimball, along with Brigham, initially may have learned they had a duty to reach out to addition women from someone other than Joseph Smith.

In the case of Brigham, I suggest his December 1841 attempt to get Martha Brotherton to agree to an extra-monogamous liaison was guided by a derivative of Bennett's teachings rather than Joseph's teachings. The timing of Brigham's interaction with Martha can be pinned down by Martha's reports regarding how many weeks after her arrival in the Nauvoo area the interview occurred, the fact that the Brothertons came to Nauvoo with the Joseph Fielding company, the report that Martha and her parents left Nauvoo nine weeks after arriving, and the fact that the Brothertons are listed in the Nauvoo census, taken in February 1842.

In the case of Heber, it is reported that he was taught that he had a duty to reach out to additional women, and went to Joseph to report his plan to take on the two Pitkin spinsters. Joseph forbade this course. It was possibly at this time that "Joseph had to warn him [Heber Kimball] that he could lose his apostleship," as reported by Stanley Kimball (1). It was at some point after forbidding Heber to take on the Pitkin spinsters that Joseph insisted that Heber take responsibility for Sarah Peak Noon. The report that Joseph had to command Heber three times to obey is inferred to refer to entering into plural marriage in the first place, but might have been specific to either the demand that Heber give up approaching the Pitkins or the command to take responsibility for Sarah Peak Noon, who may have already been pregnant.

(1) Kimball, Stanley B., Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981, p. 95. Online 29 Nov 2015 at http://mormonpolygamydocuments.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/JSP_Book_61.pdf. 

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

In the case of Brigham, I suggest his December 1841 attempt to get Martha Brotherton to agree to an extra-monogamous liaison was guided by a derivative of Bennett's teachings rather than Joseph's teachings. The timing of Brigham's interaction with Martha can be pinned down by Martha's reports regarding how many weeks after her arrival in the Nauvoo area the interview occurred, the fact that the Brothertons came to Nauvoo with the Joseph Fielding company, the report that Martha and her parents left Nauvoo nine weeks after arriving, and the fact that the Brothertons are listed in the Nauvoo census, taken in February 1842. 

Here is a good example of taking liberties with the evidence. If someone didn't know anything about the history, they would conclude that Brigham Young had proposed a Bennett-derived "extra-monogamous liaison" having nothing to do with Joseph Smith or his teachings. However, Martha's testimony is that, while the initial contact/proposal was from Brigham and Heber C. Kimball, when they failed to convince her, they brought Joseph Smith into the room:

J S: Well, Martha, it is lawful and right before God. I know it is. Look here, don't you believe in me? Well Martha, just go ahead and do as Brigham wants you to, he is the best man in the world except me. . . . Yes, and I know that this is lawful and right before God, and if there is any sin in it I will answer for it before God, and I have the keys of the kingdom, and whatever I bind on earth is bound in heaven, and whatever I loose on earth is loosed in heaven; and if you will accept of Brigham, you shall be blessed. God shall bless you, and my blessing shall rest upon you, and if you will be led by him, you will do well; for I know Brigham will take care of you, and if he don't do his duty to you, come to me and I will make him; and if you do not like it in a month or two, come to me and I will make you free again; and if he turns you off I will take you on.

M B: Sir, it will be too late to think in a month or two after. I want time to think first. (St. Louis Bulletin, July 15, 1842)

Clearly, Meg accepts that Brigham made a proposal of plural marriage (why use the tortured term "extra-monogamous liaison"?) but for some reason dismisses Martha's testimony that Joseph Smith was involved and specifically told her that Brigham's proposal was "lawful and right before God." 

This highly selective and ideologically driven use of sources is only part of the problem, but it's a big one.

[ALarson]

6 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

I don't believe it is conclusive that Heber was the biological father of Adelbert. Some suggest Adelbert was engendered by William Noon before he abandoned Sarah Peak Noon. I suggest that there was so much illicit intercourse going on in 1841-1842 that some other man could have engendered Adelbert.

Do you have references for evidence that Adelbert wasn't Heber's son?  Iirc, Sarah Noon left William Noon in England and arrived in Nauvoo in 1841.  If true, he couldn't have been Adelbert's child.  So that leaves "some other man" which is again insulting to Sarah when she married Heber in 1842.

[Meg Stout]

28 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

I note again that the only evidence regarding Joseph practicing sexual polyandry is positive, albeit not conclusive, but there is no positive evidence for nonsexual polyandry--in other words, there is no evidence pointing to his marriages not having been sexual...

To me, the "My Joseph" series is like a house of cards, only the cards are made of tissue paper; the slightest breeze of historical information blows the whole thing down. 

Hi John,

There are reports that Joseph was behind closed doors with married women and Josephine's record of her mother's deathbed testimony has been interpreted to suggest sexual activity consistent with belief that Josephine could have been Joseph's biological child. There are also reports that women weren't sure who had fathered their children (Presendia iirc, alleged by the notoriously unreliable Mary Coray).

Lack of known children does not mean there was no sex. Yet allegations that infertility and miscarriage could account for the lack of children for most of Joseph's wives have not examined the probability that such a large population afflicted by infertility/miscarriage could subsequently simultaneously get better from infertility/miscarriage. There is either DNA evidence or other reason to suspect that the children born to women with legal husbands were engendered by the legal husbands rather than Joseph Smith.

As for Reluctant Polygamist, please send over the historical information you suggest "blows the whole thing down." Up to now, you have dismissed my perspective, but you have not provided facts that make my perspective untenable. The Josephine Lyon DNA results coming out with Joseph Smith as her biological parent would have been a huge problem. But that isn't what happened. There are other matters where other reasonable people disagree with my conjectures, but my conjectures are not proven false.

[ALarson]

5 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

The Josephine Lyon DNA results coming out with Joseph Smith as her biological parent would have been a huge problem.

Why?  You've stated that you are completely open to the option that Joseph consummated some of his marriages.  He still most likely did consummate his marriage with Sylvia (even if Josephine wasn't his biological child, it appears that Sylvia believed she was).  I think it's odd that you find it objectionable to consider Joseph most likely had marital relations with Sylvia or any of his other wives.

.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ALarson

[jkwilliams]

4 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi John,

There are reports that Joseph was behind closed doors with married women and Josephine's record of her mother's deathbed testimony has been interpreted to suggest sexual activity consistent with belief that Josephine could have been Joseph's biological child. There are also reports that women weren't sure who had fathered their children (Presendia iirc, alleged by the notoriously unreliable Mary Coray).

Lack of known children does not mean there was no sex. Yet allegations that infertility and miscarriage could account for the lack of children for most of Joseph's wives have not examined the probability that such a large population afflicted by infertility/miscarriage could subsequently simultaneously get better from infertility/miscarriage. There is either DNA evidence or other reason to suspect that the children born to women with legal husbands were engendered by the legal husbands rather than Joseph Smith.

As for Reluctant Polygamist, please send over the historical information you suggest "blows the whole thing down." Up to now, you have dismissed my perspective, but you have not provided facts that make my perspective untenable. The Josephine Lyon DNA results coming out with Joseph Smith as her biological parent would have been a huge problem. But that isn't what happened. There are other matters where other reasonable people disagree with my conjectures, but my conjectures are not proven false.

You are the one asserting there was no sex in the polyandrous marriages (and apparently in a lot of the polygynous ones, too, if I read you correctly). My point was that, what positive documentary evidence there is, which you apparently accept, points in the direction of sexual polyandry. It is not conclusive, obviously, or we wouldn't be having this discussion. If you have some positive documentary evidence that these marriages were not sexual, I've yet to see it. Absence of children is not positive evidence. 

Of course, the assumption seems to be that the object of plural marriage was to have more children. The lack of children suggests this was not necessarily the case, as is Joseph's advice to William Clayton when Clayton's plural wife Margaret became pregnant: "Just keep her at home and brook it and if they raise trouble about it and bring you before me I will give you an awful scourging and probably cut you off from the church and then I will baptize you and set you ahead as good as ever" (Clayton journal, Oct. 19, 1843). This tells me two important things: Joseph's vision of plural marriage involved sexuality but perhaps not the mandate to conceive children. Indeed, Joseph's advice to Clayton lends credence to the testimony of the Partridge sisters, Malissa Lott, Benjamin Winchester, and Joseph Noble that consummation was part of the practice for Joseph and those to whom he taught the principle.

We have been discussing the problems with your proposals and selective use of sources, all of which undermine your thesis. What I mean by a house of tissue paper is that, when someone shows that one of your conclusions is either weak or is countered by documentary evidence, you say, Well, I don't require that to have happened. But you take these unsupported assertions and string them together to build a narrative. Without documentary evidence, the whole thing falls apart. 

[ALarson]

5 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Six righteous men appear to have engendered children with their plural wives before Joseph's death, by my reckoning.

I consider the children engendered in 1842 to have likely been engendered by Strikers. These are the children of Sarah Peak Noon, Lucina Roberts Johnston, Mary Clift (supported by testimony given by both Mary Clift and seducer Gustavus Hills before the High Council), and Eliza Snow (suggested by her November poems, particularly the one talking about innocence being:

I'm still waiting for your evidence for or sources stating that Adelbert Kimball was not Heber's son.

But, let's look at Lucina Roberts Johnston.

Who do you believe was the father of her daughter if it wasn't Reynolds Cahoon?  Please provide sources to support your belief too.

.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ALarson

[Meg Stout]

54 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Do you have references for evidence that Adelbert wasn't Heber's son?  Iirc, Sarah Noon left William Noon in England and arrived in Nauvoo in 1841.  If true, he couldn't have been Adelbert's child.  So that leaves "some other man" which is again insulting to Sarah when she married Heber in 1842.

The information I was aware of was that William Noon accompanied Sarah Peak Noon to Nauvoo, but that they subsequently separated as a result of his abusive/dissolute habits. Do you have documentation to the contrary?

41 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Why [would it disturb the thesis of Reluctant Polygamist were Syvlia's child to have been engendered by Joseph Smith]?  You've stated that you are completely open to the option that Joseph consummated some of his marriages.  He still most likely did consummate his marriage with Sylvia (even if Josephine wasn't his biological child, it appears that Sylvia believed she was).  I think it's odd that you find it objectionable to consider Joseph most likely had marital relations with Sylvia or any of his other wives.

A DNA result proving Josephine was Joseph's child would necessitate accepting that Joseph was likely sexually intimate with many of the women with whom he had covenanted, in a manner difficult to differentiate from the illicit intercourse of John C. Bennett and his followers. The premise of Reluctant Polygamist is that Joseph's behavior, whatever it might have righteously been otherwise, was modified in response to his knowledge as of January 1842 that there were sexual predators in Nauvoo. Emma had legitimate fears that proof of conjugal plural marriage could lead to Joseph's death/defamation, and Joseph seems to have cared about what Emma thought.

As others have noted, there were very few children conceived by plural wives prior to Joseph's death who were born. There are no known children engendered by Joseph Smith with plural wives. I don't think you are in favor of suggesting the lack of children was caused by surgical abortion, as Sarah Pratt claimed per Wilhelm Wyl's anti-Mormon book in 1886.

As to women who are considered plural wives now who became pregnant in 1841/1842, we have the testimony of Mary Clift and Gustavus Hills that the child Mary Clift gave birth to had been engendered by Gustavus Hills as a result of his teaching her that illicit intercourse was acceptable. (1)

(1) See the fall 1843 High Council Minutes, The Nauvoo City Council and High Council Minutes, John S. Dinger editor, Signature Books, Salt Lake City, 2011.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Meg Stout

[jkwilliams]

28 minutes ago, ALarson said:

I'm still waiting for your evidence for or sources stating that Adelbert Kimball was not Heber's son.

But, let's look at Lucina Roberts Johnston.

Who do you believe was the father of her daughter if it wasn't Reynolds Cahoon?  Please provide sources to support your belief too.

From Gary Bergera's "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists," Dialogue, Sept. 2005):

Quote

Evidence for Reynolds Cahoon's early plural marriage apparently exists only in Cahoon family history. Stella Cahoon Shurtleff and Brent Farrington Cahoon, comps. and eds., Reynolds Cahoon and His Stalwart Sons (n.p., 1960), 78, and Mary L. S. Putnam and Lila Cahoon, eds. and comps., Reynolds Cahoon: His Roots and Branches (Bountiful, Utah: Family History Publishers, 1993), v, 65, 78, both report Cahoon's plural marriage to Lucina Roberts Johnson, a widow, sometime in late 1841 or early 1842. Lucina had married Peter Henry Johnson (born 1801) on November 24, 1824. She had six children before Peter died in 1838. Lucina evidently bore Cahoon a daughter, named Lucina Johnson Cahoon, about 1843, who died shortly after birth

Here's Meg's take on it:

Quote

 

Reynolds Cahoon and Lucina Roberts [Johnston]

Lucina Roberts was born in 1806 in Lincoln, Vermont. She married fellow Vermont native Peter Henry Johnston in 1824. By the time Lucina reached Nauvoo, her husband had died 11 and she had lost three of her six children to death.

The date when Lucina married Reynolds Cahoon is vague, reportedly during late 1841 or early 1842. 12 The birth of Lucina’s daughter, Lucina Johnson Cahoon, is given as “abt 1843.” 13 However Gary Bergera lists Lucina Cahoon as one of the four children born to plural wives prior to Joseph Smith’s death. 14

Again we have a widow in Nauvoo as a plural wife with an unusual lack of detail regarding either the marriage itself or the date when the child supposedly produced by that marriage was engendered.

 

Notice there is no affirmative evidence that Lucina's child was not from her marriage to Reynolds Cahoon. You can't just make an assumption based on nothing. There would have to be some evidence that Lucina had been engaged in a sexual liaison with someone other than Cahoon, but there is none. If someone gets married in late 1841 or early 1842 and has a child in 1843, there is no reason to believe the child is not a product of that marriage. 

And frankly, there's nothing unusual about people not marking exact dates. Indeed, Meg is untroubled that "the date when Nancy [Winchester] married Joseph is unknown." She accepts the marriage as fact and then surmises that "something traumatic" happened because Nancy "never consummated her marriage with Heber C. Kimball." How do we know this? Because she didn't bear any children to Heber, though Meg apparently discounts the possibility of miscarriage or stillbirth. She insinuates the trauma was sexual, but then Nancy did bear a child to her third husband when she was nearing 40.  

Edited June 24, 2016 by jkwilliams

[Meg Stout]

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Meg accepts the marriage [between Joseph Smith and Nancy Winchester] as fact and then surmises that "something traumatic" happened because Nancy "never consummated her marriage with Heber C. Kimball." How do we know this? Because she didn't bear any children to Heber, though Meg apparently discounts the possibility of miscarriage or stillbirth. She insinuates the trauma was sexual, but then Nancy did bear a child to her third husband when she was nearing 40.  

Hi John,

According to the lore, Heber is the one who made a point of explaining that he had never slept with Nancy. See Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, particularly p. 608.

WRT Lucina, I am pointing out that we know Bennett and Chauncy Higbee were pressuring widows to engage in illicit intercourse.

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi John,

According to the lore, Heber is the one who made a point of explaining that he had never slept with Nancy. See Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, particularly p. 608.

WRT Lucina, I am pointing out that we know Bennett and Chauncy Higbee were pressuring widows to engage in illicit intercourse.

And Joseph Smith was encouraging people like Reynolds Cahoon to marry plural wives, which he did. There is absolutely nothing tying Lucina to the "Bennett sex ring," but there is a marriage to Reynolds Cahoon. Proposing that her child was illegitimate is completely without foundation. I don't know why you can't see that.

[ALarson]

29 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

The information I was aware of was that William Noon accompanied Sarah Peak Noon to Nauvoo, but that they subsequently separated as a result of his abusive/dissolute habits. Do you have documentation to the contrary?

I've seen it stated different ways (that Sarah joined the church in England, left her husband and migrated to America in 1841, or joined the church, migrated and left her husband) and I'll try to find sources that support whether or not William came over.  But either way, that was in 1841.

So again I ask, what evidence do you have that Heber was not the father of Adelbert Kimball?   

29 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

A DNA result proving Josephine was Joseph's child would necessitate accepting that Joseph was likely sexually intimate with many of the women with whom he had covenanted, in a manner difficult to differentiate from the illicit intercourse of John C. Bennett and his followers

This is not true.  There would be nothing wrong with Joseph consummating some of his marriages to his plural wives, including his marriage to Sylvia Sessions.

*****(And please do not add words of your own to my quotes again.)

.

Edited June 24, 2016 by ALarson

[ALarson]

18 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

From Gary Bergera's "Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists," Dialogue, Sept. 2005):

Here's Meg's take on it:

Notice there is no affirmative evidence that Lucina's child was not from her marriage to Reynolds Cahoon. You can't just make an assumption based on nothing. There would have to be some evidence that Lucina had been engaged in a sexual liaison with someone other than Cahoon, but there is none. If someone gets married in late 1841 or early 1842 and has a child in 1843, there is no reason to believe the child is not a product of that marriage. 

And frankly, there's nothing unusual about people not marking exact dates. Indeed, Meg is untroubled that "the date when Nancy [Winchester] married Joseph is unknown." She accepts the marriage as fact and then surmises that "something traumatic" happened because Nancy "never consummated her marriage with Heber C. Kimball." How do we know this? Because she didn't bear any children to Heber, though Meg apparently discounts the possibility of miscarriage or stillbirth. She insinuates the trauma was sexual, but then Nancy did bear a child to her third husband when she was nearing 40.  

Yes, this is past ridiculous and shows such sloppy research and conclusions on Meg's part.  

Every single chapter I've looked at in her book is full of weak conclusions that are really just her opinions or fabrications of what might have happened "if", with no evidence or sources to back them up.

[jkwilliams]

48 minutes ago, ALarson said:

I'm still waiting for your evidence for or sources stating that Adelbert Kimball was not Heber's son.

But, let's look at Lucina Roberts Johnston.

Who do you believe was the father of her daughter if it wasn't Reynolds Cahoon?  Please provide sources to support your belief too.

By the way, according to the Rochester's ship roster, Sarah Noon traveled alone from Britain, arriving in New York April 20, 1841. A William Noon arrived in New York in November of that year, but his birth date is about 10 years off.

[jkwilliams]

8 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Yes, this is past ridiculous and shows such sloppy research and conclusions on Meg's part.  

Every single chapter I've looked at in her book is full of weak conclusions that are really just her opinions or fabrications of what might have happened "if", with no evidence or sources to back them up.

Yep, I will just issue a CFR for Meg to produce any evidence whatsoever tying Lucina Roberts Cahoon to Higbee or Bennett or any suggestion that her daughter was not the daughter of Reynolds Cahoon.

This is exactly what I meant when I said I had asked for documentary evidence of a number of assertions on Meg's blog, and she had provided only one documentary source. If one is going to propose something happened, there needs to be some evidence supporting it. Throughout Meg's book and blog, proposals are made based on no evidence, and that is not good enough, especially if you are proposing something radically at odds with what the known documentary evidence tells us.

[jkwilliams]

17 minutes ago, ALarson said:

I've seen it stated different ways (that Sarah joined the church in England, left her husband and migrated to America in 1841, or joined the church, migrated and left her husband) and I'll try to find sources that support whether or not William came over.  But either way, that was in 1841.

So again I ask, what evidence do you have that Heber was not the father of Adelbert Kimball?   

This is not true.  There would be nothing wrong with Joseph consummating some of his marriages to his plural wives, including his marriage to Sylvia Sessions.

*****(And please do not add words of your own to my quotes again.)

.

The only thing the DNA evidence proves conclusively is that Brian Hales was wrong in asserting that Sylvia and Windsor had been through a "pioneer divorce" and were estranged. 

[ALarson]

5 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

By the way, according to the Rochester's ship roster, Sarah Noon traveled alone from Britain, arriving in New York April 20, 1841. A William Noon arrived in New York in November of that year, but his birth date is about 10 years off.

Thanks!  Hopefully Meg will see this.  

I did see where she traveled from England on the same ship with Brigham Young (and I believe Heber C. Kimball.too).

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Thanks!  Hopefully Meg will see this.  

I did see where she traveled from England on the same ship with Brigham Young (and I believe Heber C. Kimball.too).

One correction: the departure was April 20, 1841, not the arrival. According to Wilford Woodruff's journal:

Rochester, 21 Apr 1841
Journal of Wilford Woodruff
Seven of the Twelve with 120 Saints & 160 other about 280 in all got our baggage on board of the ship to set sail, but the wind being contrary we staid on shore.
20th April 1841 I went on board of the ship Rochester in the morning in company with Elders B. [Brigham] Young, H. [Heber] C. Kimball, O. [Orson] Pratt, W. [Willard] Richards, W. [Wilford] Woodruff, J. [John] Taylor & G. [George] A. Smith of the Twelve. R. [Reuben] Hedlock High priest 120 Saints, 160 of the world 20 of the crew, 2 mates (porter & steward) Captain Woodhouse, 1 carpenter, 1 cook, 2 stewards asking 307 souls in all. We took the parting had with Elders P. [Parley] P. Pratt & O. [Orson Hyde] Hide & a multitude of Saints who stood upon the dock or quay to see us start. 

ETA: Sarah's descendants say she left her husband behind in England because of his alcoholism and traveled with her two daughters. Just found the daughters, Harriet (born 1830) and Betsy (born 1835). 

Edited June 24, 2016 by jkwilliams

[ALarson]

7 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

Yep, I will just issue a CFR for Meg to produce any evidence whatsoever tying Lucina Roberts Cahoon to Higbee or Bennett or any suggestion that her daughter was not the daughter of Reynolds Cahoon.

This is exactly what I meant when I said I had asked for documentary evidence of a number of assertions on Meg's blog, and she had provided only one documentary source. If one is going to propose something happened, there needs to be some evidence supporting it. Throughout Meg's book and blog, proposals are made based on no evidence, and that is not good enough, especially if you are proposing something radically at odds with what the known documentary evidence tells us.

I think Meg has many CFR's on the table here (and on another thread).  Let's see if she supplies the references asked for.

[ALarson]

On 6/18/2016 at 10:25 PM, Meg Stout said:

I think Emily and Eliza Partridge (and the Lawrence sisters) had shown themselves to be unwise, for example telling Jane Manning in early 1844 about being Joseph's wives. Emily and Eliza had been sufficiently indiscreet that they, along with Eliza Snow, were know amongst the Strikers (Bennett's buddies who had engaged in illicit intercourse) as "Joseph's wives."

CFR 

Also, I'm issuing a CFR for the reference to "Bennett and his Strikers" in The Expositor.  You've used The Expositor as a reference for this and I'd like to see the quote.