Joseph Smith's Polyandry?

[Glenn101]

45 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

https://runtu.wordpress.com/2012/08/08/joseph-smith-and-sexual-polyandry/

ETA: I am not saying any of this is conclusive. My point, as I said, is that there is no evidence affirming nonsexual polyandry. 

Second part has never been in dispute. Can't prove a negative.

First part. Runto admitted that his brain exploded years ago while participating on this board. 

 

 

[jkwilliams]

1 minute ago, Glenn101 said:

Second part has never been in dispute. Can't prove a negative.

First part. Runto admitted that his brain exploded years ago while participating on this board. 

Why am I still here, then? 

Either way, showing that some marriages were not intended to be consummated would not be proving a negative. 

[Meg Stout]

11 hours ago, juliann said:

 This illustrates why you are getting so many objections to your methodology. You have no basis to assume this well known event isn't....well known. Especially by this group who have been providing you documentation of your errors at every turn. There is a search function on this board and you could have seen within seconds that Martha Brotherton was discussed as early as 2005.

Now that is just silly. You seem to have a hard time admitting when you are demonstrably wrong.

You are not one of the Nauvoo women who lived through this. Mormon Enigma is written though the viewpoint of Emma rather than the men.

Hi juliann and John,

I am delighted that you knew the Martha Brotherton incident occurred in December 1841. This is something I had been unable to find, and Brian Hales kept telling me that it couldn't have occurred prior to some later point in 1842. So I had to dig around until I found the mention that the Brothertons came with Joseph Fielding, the discussion from Martha's sister that her parents and Martha left 9 weeks after arriving in Nauvoo, and the identification of the Brothertons in the Nauvoo census.

For better or worse, the fine historical work you appear to have been doing on this board does not come up in search engines, and as I didn't even know Mormon Dialogue was a thing until this week, I would not have been able to access what you have indicated.

As for my difficulty admitting I am wrong, that is likely due to any number of habits I've developed as an eldest daughter of a Chinese man who then went into an engineering career in an area where women haven't been permitted to perform military service until recently. On the other hand, I am learning the ropes here (e.g., things like how to edit (though that function doesn't seem to be working for me anymore)).

With regards to Mormon Enigma, it is a book written by women and focusing on Emma. It is not a novel, so to say that it is written through her viewpoint (implying POV) isn't correct. There are numerous places where the authors impose their beliefs regarding Emma's feelings onto the discussion. I find it interesting that the authors pretty much ignore Elvira Annie Cowles, who as governess to Emma's children and one of Joseph's plural wives should have been covered in more detail.

[Meg Stout]

13 hours ago, Calm said:

Using the Prices' work to support her claim that Snow was seduced by Bennett appears to me to violate several of her own posted standards of scholarship:

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/67690-joseph-smiths-polyandry/?do=findComment&comment=1209634882

"Evaluate the Evidence before Finalizing a Conclusion

1. Treat all sources with appropriate reservations

2. Don’t dismiss counter-evidence without scholarly consideration

3. Be even-handed in treatment of evidence

4. Identify speculation when suggesting conclusions

5. Correctly transcribe or translate documents. Omissions or elisions

   should be used to clarify evidence, not alter it

6. Weigh the authenticity of all accounts

7. Consider the motives of historical actors"

Hi Calm,

I was aware of the Prices' work, but I had come up with the hypothesis that Eliza's reported pregnancy might have been caused by someone other than Joseph Smith prior to learning of what Wilhelm Wyl wrote. I can't remember if that is a thing I documented on one of my blogs or not. I might have documented it sometime, possibly in 2008, because I was delighted to find that someone over a hundred years earlier had come up with the same idea. Now that I know who Wyl was, I suppose I shouldn't have been so delighted. His book really is a piece of nasty work. But I didn't come to my conclusion because of Wyl and I won't abandon it merely because Wyl proponed it.

I dismiss many of the conclusions the Prices' arrive at after considering them in light of other things. In a similar manner, I have dismissed many of the conclusions folks here take as undisputed truth.

It is said, "A thing worth doing is worth doing poorly." I don't take the fact that you (plural) find me to be arguing my case poorly as an indication that I should stop. I will attempt to do better in future. In case you are thinking "the phrase is 'A job worth doing is worth doing well...,'" it turns out that isn't the original phrase. I suspect that is just the way the mothers of the world transformed the original statement.

As is the case with all scholars, there are some facts of which I was unaware, like the passenger lists for the Rochester, which could have shown me that Sarah Peak Noon traveled to America without her husband. As it happens, that one fact doesn't impact my reconstruction, since it didn't matter to me if William Noon was the father of Adelbert or not.

So a task for this weekend is to go find all the CFRs for this thread and the Preface thread and reply to them. I'll also throw in the dozens of CFRs John requested a couple of years ago, toning up my responses to better match the expectations of this group.

Enjoy the weekend!

[jkwilliams]

FWIW, we are talking about documentary evidence, not "undisputed truth." 

[JulieM]

2 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi Calm,

I was aware of the Prices' work, but I had come up with the hypothesis that Eliza's reported pregnancy might have been caused by someone other than Joseph Smith prior to learning of what Wilhelm Wyl wrote. I can't remember if that is a thing I documented on one of my blogs or not. I might have documented it sometime, possibly in 2008, because I was delighted to find that someone over a hundred years earlier had come up with the same idea. 

I'm not sure you know what "documented it" means ("to support or accompany with documentation").

Do you have a source for this or is it just a hypothesis (as you also state above)?

And, I'm glad you're working on the CFRs  

Edited June 25, 2016 by JulieM

[ALarson]

2 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

As is the case with all scholars, there are some facts of which I was unaware, like the passenger lists for the Rochester, which could have shown me that Sarah Peak Noon traveled to America without her husband. As it happens, that one fact doesn't impact my reconstruction, since it didn't matter to me if William Noon was the father of Adelbert or not.

If you want to be accurate, it should definitely matter since you have claimed in your writings that William Noon may have been the father of Adelbert (rather than Heber C. Kimball).  Now you know that is not true, will you correct this in your book or on your blog?

[Calm]

8 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

 As it happens, that one fact doesn't impact my reconstruction, since it didn't matter to me if William Noon was the father of Adelbert or not.

This is one of my concerns about your work, though I will be happy if you can prove my impression wrong.  It seems to me that the few places where you have accepted correction  in your knowledge of the facts, there is an immediate dismissal of the importance of the correction, as in it never really matters to your thesis rather than taking the time to go back and reevaluate the whole in terms of the new information before coming to a conclusion.

I have seen this happen in others, where they have created a whole scenario around an idea that came to them due to one piece of information that surprised or even shocked them and then guided their thought process, interpreting everything through the new paradigm/theory.  But when the original piece of information is demonstrated to be false, they make no effort to start over but point instead to all the conclusions/interpretations they have chosen since then without a recognition that their interpretations have all been filtered through a bias based on a false premise.  

If Sarah Noon is removed as a likely candidate as being pregnant by someone besides her plural husband, what are the implications if you no longer use her for support?

Edited June 25, 2016 by Calm

[juliann]

This blog attempts to analyze reactions to polygamy and sorts scholars into camps http://www.wheatandtares.org/21435/debating-polyandry-with-brian-hales/   It could use a bit more nuance but I don't think we will make gains in the study of polygamy until the underlying ideology is understood. He uses the typical broad brush approach to so-called apologists who exist in undefined "conservative" hives,  but the blog is a wonderful conversation starter (and I do have to thank Meg for providing that as well.)

 

Quote

 

The recent DNA findings regarding the paternity of Josephine Lyon have sparked renewed interest in the question of Joseph Smith’s polyandry: was it sexual or non-sexual? Brian Hales is the leading scholar advancing the “non-sexual polyandry” theory. Yet Hales finds himself virtually alone among scholars on this question, as illustrated in this visual he created. Because his theory is the only one in line with the conservative LDS mainstream, he has become an apologist for Joseph Smith on behalf of the church. This visual makes it seem like he is the lone faithful scholar willing to stick up for Joseph Smith in the face of scholastic prejudice. But this is not exactly true. In the minds of more liberal scholars and members, the sexual-polyandry theory actually redeems Joseph Smith’s character.

How Sexual Polyandry Vindicates Joseph Smith

Polygamy is almost universally detested, especially by Mormons. But Mormons differ in why they detest polygamy. Here are the two main reasons:

1. It feels sexually unholy, akin to promiscuity.
2. It feels unfair to women.

The first reason is an example of what morality scholar Jonathan Haight would call “conservative morality,” and the second “liberal morality.” Conservative morality emphasises the importance of purity and authority while liberal morality emphasises equality and fairness.

If Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry, he is redeemed from the 2nd objection. Suddenly polygamy is no longer unfair to women. Women can have more than one husband, just as men can have more than one wife. Liberal-leaning members could look at sexual polyandry as a vindication of Joseph Smith’s ultimate objectives regarding plural marriage. Polygamy could have been in the service of what Joseph Smith saw as an egalitarian, if overly-utopian sexual ideal. But conservative members might feel the opposite. If the idea of polygamy already feels sexually unholy, the idea of sexual polyandry feels doubly so, as bad as the hippy love communes of the 60s.

 

 

 

Edited June 25, 2016 by juliann

[Calm]

Iow, what brought Sarah Noon to your attention?  Was it just that Kimball was linked with BY when they visited Brotherton and then you looked to see if there was a candidate in his marriages who could fill your requirements?  

"Sarah Peake was born in 1811 in England. Sarah married William Noon in 1829, and William accompanied Sarah and her children to Nauvoo when Sarah converted to Mormonism. After arriving with his family in Nauvoo, however, William abandoned Sarah and his children, returning to England. It seems extreme for William to make the trip from England only to turn around and go back. Something powerful must have happened to alienate him.

The converts arriving in Nauvoo from England and elsewhere were not rich. We know the Bennett’s seducers were targeting widows, but they had also shown a taste for new or prospective converts fresh off the boat, as attested to with regards to Elenor and Rachel Kingsley. These new converts would have less experience with the gospel and would more easily accept illicit intercourse as a possible secret teaching. ⁹ If Sarah had been induced to participate in illicit intercourse, perhaps to ensure enough food for her family, the discovery of this betrayal could certainly have prompted William Noon to leave."

So now you know there was nothing "powerful" that alienated William Noon to leave.  The only other link is that she conceived during the time you state Bennett's group was active.  How many other women in Nauvoo conceived during that time?  Given the possibilty that she was married to Kimball at the time of conception, do you still believe it is appropriate to include her in your list of "wives of sorrow"?

Edited June 25, 2016 by Calm

[Calm]

Another of the "wives of sorrow" is included solely based on poor record keeping:

"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."

So now poor recordkeeping is a sign of illicit activity.  The records were intentionally kept poorly in order to cover conceived out of wedlock children.  Did you make any effort to see if records were poorly kept in other cases, including nonmarriage or birth records or did you assume this didn't matter?

[Calm]

"It seems likely that when Philinda arrived in Nauvoo, she would have remained close to Catherine Fuller, another woman widowed at Haun’s Mill. Therefore it seems possible that Philinda became involved in the illicit intercourse practiced by Bennett’s men, given that Catherine Fuller’s home was a particular gathering place for these men, and site of frequent sexual conquests...

However William Clayton recorded a conversation he’d had with Joseph in 1843 regarding delicate matters, recording that Knight “went to loose conduct and [Joseph] could not save him.” 5 Clayton’s note raises the possibility that Vinson Knight himself had become a member of Bennett’s group, possibly being brought to believe that allowing the women to participate in illicit intercourse in exchange for food was an approved plan by Joseph for taking care of the needs of indigent women..

He explained to her that he had taken some fruit and vegetables to the widow, Mrs. Levi Merrick, whose husband had been killed at Haun’s Mill, M[iss]o[uri]. He also explained to her that he had been told to enter Plural Marriage. 6That if he had to, this Sister Merrick would be the one he could help best. He must have been greatly relieved when Martha replied, ‘Is that all.'”

http://www.millennialstar.org/wives-of-sorrow/

So a possible but undocumented friendship between women who were both made widows at the same time (how many other women were widows from the Missouri events?) and a vague comment about "loose conduct" along with an expressed interest in having an unfortunate widow as a plural wife gets Phillinda included in the list.

[Calm]

The next of the "wives of sorrow":

"With Lucy we have an echo of Sarah Peak Noon – a young mother abandoned by a husband who had accompanied her to Nauvoo. It’s possible that William Seeley merely left and Brigham Young extended the young Lucy his protection. Or it’s possible that William left because Lucy had been induced to participate in illicit intercourse as a means to supplement the food and funds William was squandering with his drunken ways. A third option, that the drunken, abusive William Seeley would have been recruited to participate in Bennett’s band, seems unlikely. Bennett seemed to recruit men of power, influence, and discretion."

We have a perfectly reasonable explanation of a young widowed mother needing a father but you still see it as appropriate to drag the family into a sex ring, though it doesn't matter to you whether it is the husband or the wife.  How does that not scream out to you "whoa, I may be taking this whole thing too far!"?

[Calm]

The very first wife on the list is Mary Clift.  Here there is actually some evidence not based on "what if this means?" conjecture.

"In October 1842 a baby boy, Jason, was born to Mary Clift, herself an English convert from Gloucester. In the family histories, Jason is noted as being the child of Theodore Turley, as are the three additional children Mary would go on to bear prior to her death in Salt Lake City, but only her last daughter would survive to adulthood. Mary, having buried all her previous children, died within a week of giving birth to this last child. Because of Jason’s birth, it is presumed that Theodore Turley took Mary Clift to be his plural wife in January 1842.

Unfortunately, we know that Mary Clift gave testimony in August and September 1842 attesting that she had been seduced by Gustavus Hills around the time she was involved in the Nauvoo Choir. Gustavus Hills had also spoken to Esther Smith about engaging in illicit intercourse, a fact to which Esther similarly attested in September 1842. 4

Thus the very first supposed plural marriage that didn’t involve Joseph Smith is known to be a reaction to the seductions of Bennett’s ilk."

While I do think it is important to make sure there are no other Mary Clifts in town (Mary is a common name and extended families often joined together), it seems likely given the name and time of pregnancy this is the same woman.  While the conclusion Turley chose her as a wife because she was in need is very reasonable, is there any indication that Joseph Smith directed him to choose her and it was not simply his own kindness or the kindness of his wife Frances Ann Kimberly that drove the choice.

If any of the trained historians on the board (there are several who have/are working on getting degrees and who have extended experience in the field) are reading this post, it would be nice to have input on if it is appropriate to state this conclusion as "thus...is known to be".

So it would appear to me outof your list of "wives of sorrow" for others besides JS, out of your five candidates only the first is strong and the rest are imo primarily speculation and should be removed from consideration.  Establishing a pattern based on one example is very poor historical methodology.

[Calm]

Joseph's "wives of sorrow"...just going to post the reasonings I find suspect:

"There is no hint on January 6th that Joseph’s marriage to Agnes was a reaction to Bennett. However Agnes fit the profile of the kind of woman Bennett and his men sought out. Clarissa Marvel would be questioned for spreading rumors about Agnes’ character. And Agnes would later write Joseph F. Smith hinting that she could tell him things he knew nothing about" [evidence purely 'profiling' based on one person's possible gossip]

"Mary Elizabeth was someone Joseph had attempted to persuade of plural marriage late in 1841, before he appears to have learned about Bennett’s activities. However the circumstance of Mary’s sealing to Joseph smacks of the investigation. The sealing is performed by Brigham Young with Heber C. Kimball in attendance. Mary also hinted that she could tell Joseph F. Smith things about the past that he didn’t know." [presence at marriage of two people she theorised but hasn't proven were involved with Bennett...so what?  They were also apostles and close friends which is more than enough to justify their presence, and the 'hinting of things' now seems to be established as code words for "sex ring" as if there could be no other more likely reason.]

"As wife of the druggist, Sylvia was in a position to assist the investigation into the activities of Bennett’s men, either as they sought drugs to assist in seductions (e.g., laudanum) or drugs and herbs to inhibit pregnancy." [why not just ask the druggist? Perhaps you think he would be reluctant to implicate himself?  And yet if that isthe reason you are comfortable with implying his wife would be willing to betray him and than she gets rewarded with a sealing to JS.]

" However the fact that she never consummated her marriage with Heber C. Kimball and remained in her parents home for the rest of her life, even after bearing a child with a third husband when she was nearly 40, hints that something traumatic happened to her. I hypothesize this could have occurred if Nancy happened upon an illicit liaison between one of Bennet’s cronies and Clarissa Marvel. If Nancy was abused or seduced by the Bennett ring before May 1842, she would have been only 13 years old at the time.". [So only the fact that she was childless until very late in her life demonstrates she was abused when she was 13.  how many other women have been childless until their late 30s?  Why not just a medical issue?]

"Researchers have inferred Sarah was married to Joseph Smith prior to July 1842 because she stands as witness for other women who marry him. Sarah, like Elizabeth Davis Durfee, would have herself sealed to Joseph Smith posthumously. However Sarah’s role appears to be that of an investigator rather than a lover.". [Sarah must be an investigator based on the fact we know nothing about her possible marriage?]

"Delcena was a widow with six children to feed. Delcena was also related to Mary Heron, who appears to have been the first woman seduced by Bennett, increasing the likelihood that Delcena had been seduced as well, widow that she was." [Widow with children, therefore must have been involved in sex ring]

 

[Calm]

Still from thesame link:

"This publication coincided with Eliza being asked to leave the home of Sarah Cleveland, where she had been staying. Such a poem could only have been inserted into the paper by someone wishing to harm Joseph, implying that Eliza had presented to poem to someone previously involved in Bennett’s group engaging in illicit intercourse. Eliza would attest that she became Joseph’s wife on June 29, shortly after Bennett’s departure from Nauvoo, with Sarah Cleveland as witness and Brigham Young officiating. Wilhelm Wyl would assert in 1885 that Snow had become pregnant with Bennett’s child, an assertion Snow would never openly deny." [interpretation of ambiguous poetry plus lack of denial of a vicious gossip made two years before her death at age 83 demonstrates she was in love with Bennett and pregnant by him]

"I’ve already discussed Martha, but to summarize, it appears her husband had gone “to loose conduct” and was possibly one of the members of Bennett’s group, engaged in illicit intercourse. Thus Joseph’s marriage to Martha would have been similar to the marriage of Theodore Turley to Mary Clift – a goodly man protecting a woman who had been connected with a scoundrel." [again poor widow protected from sex ring fallout...though no solid demonstration beyond a vague quote about her husband as evidence, was Bennett's group the only form of loose conduct in 41 and 42 going on in Nauvoo?]

So apparently (because I need to check the claim) we have two wives who can be solidly said to have been involved in the discussion of plural marriage..,which you have assumed means an investigation into Bennett's group and connections there.  Even if we give you these two and your investigation outside of the High Council, that is two out of 11 that should be used to establish your premise before looking at others to see if they did not contradict and possibly could be accounted for by your theory.  Two wives whose involvement could be fully accounted for by other reasons (plural marriage was controversial enough to need gentle introduction on its own.

Speculation is not evidence.

[Calm]

Your "wives of sorrow" section is a major support of your core theory, is it not?  If it is removed, can your core theory not collaspe?

[JLHPROF]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

The next of the "wives of sorrow":

"With Lucy we have an echo of Sarah Peak Noon – a young mother abandoned by a husband who had accompanied her to Nauvoo. It’s possible that William Seeley merely left and Brigham Young extended the young Lucy his protection. Or it’s possible that William left because Lucy had been induced to participate in illicit intercourse as a means to supplement the food and funds William was squandering with his drunken ways. A third option, that the drunken, abusive William Seeley would have been recruited to participate in Bennett’s band, seems unlikely. Bennett seemed to recruit men of power, influence, and discretion."

We have a perfectly reasonable explanation of a young widowed mother needing a father but you still see it as appropriate to drag the family into a sex ring, though it doesn't matter to you whether it is the husband or the wife.  How does that not scream out to you "whoa, I may be taking this whole thing too far!"?

Bravo!  Calm is exactly right.

1. It’s possible that William Seeley merely left and Brigham Young extended the young Lucy his protection. SPECULATION WITH NO SOURCE
2. it’s possible that William left because Lucy had been induced to participate in illicit intercourse as a means to supplement the food and funds William was squandering with his drunken ways.  SPECULATION WITH NO SOURCE
3. A third option, that the drunken, abusive William Seeley would have been recruited to participate in Bennett’s band, seems unlikely. NEGATIVE SPECULATION WITH NO SOURCE

See - this is NOT how books with historical merit are written.  Three theories with no historical evidences.
You could just as easily say "It's possible but unlikely that President Tyler made a secret trip to Nauvoo and seduced Lucy" and it would have as much truth to it.

[ALarson]

18 hours ago, Calm said:

Your "wives of sorrow" section is a major support of your core theory, is it not?  If it is removed, can your core theory not collaspe?

This will be interesting to see, because Meg definitely needs to make some changes in her book and update her blog (if she wants her work to be accurate after reading all you've posted above).  We'll see if she's willing to do that now.  With the traffic this site gets, many will be watching to see how she reacts.

Great work here, Calm.  Impressive! 

Edited June 26, 2016 by ALarson

[Glenn101]

On 6/24/2016 at 9:01 PM, jkwilliams said:

Why am I still here, then? 

Either way, showing that some marriages were not intended to be consummated would not be proving a negative. 

We both are still here because we are addicted/obsessed/compulsed (I made that one up) about matters LDS, although probably not for the same reasons.

Agreed. We have not proven anything, either positive or negative. But at least your disagreement is done agreeably.

Glenn

[Glenn101]

I wanted to revisit the Patty and Sylvia Sessions sealings to Joseph Smith again to explore what were the understandings of the people involved in those situations. In previous posts I linked to an article posted on Family Search, part of which perports to be an excerpt from a personal history or recollections of Ezekiel Clark, the second husband of Sylvia Sessions. It can be found at https://familysearch.org/photos/stories/5105941. I have reached out to the person that posted this information to try to determine the source(s) he has responded but has not provided me with a copy of the documents. I am hoping that this can be accomplished. 

Here is the pertinent part:
"One of the "Brethren", as she called her old friend from Salt Lake, visited us on his way to an Eastern Mission. Afterward I found her in tears and demanded to know why she always seemed so unhappy after seeing or receiving letters from her "Mormon" friends. It was then that I received some astonishing news. She told me that she was a "sealed wife" of Joseph Smith, her Prophet. I had heard rumors of polygamy being practiced in Illinois, but didn't know what it meant. She explained it to me. Joseph, the Prophet, had been given the commandment to take other wives in a "Celestial marriage" ceremony, that sealed them for time and eternity. In 1842, he told Sylvia's mother and father that he had been given Patty's name, as one of those he was to be sealed to for eternity. Since she was already married, the ceremony would not constitute a marriage for time, as the others were to be, but only for Eternity. David had given his permission and the sealing was made, with Sylvia as a witness. Since the main reason for this restored ordinance was for posterity for the Prophet Joseph, and he was killed just two years later, without additional increase from these women, those same women were then married to Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball and others of the presiding Elders. The children born from these unions would, in reality, be the posterity of Joseph Smith, having been born "under the covenant of that Celestial marriage." I was more astonished as she continued.. Since Patty was beyond the child bearing years when the "sealing" was performed, there was only one way Joseph would have a posterity from her lineage. It would be necessary for Sylvia to be sealed to Joseph, in the Nauvoo Temple, with Heber C. Kimball being proxy. She and her husband, Winsor Lyon, were asked to pray for a  confirmation of this commandment of the Lord. Winsor, through some disagreement with the leaders, had been cut off from the membership, a short while before. But after their fervent prayers had been answered, he asked for re baptism and gave his consent for the proxy ceremony and for the children born to them, to be indeed, posterity for Joseph. The last two children born to them, who died after our marriage, had been born under that covenant. But then so were my three children!"

From what Ezekiel says there, those who were sealed to Joseph while already married civilly to another had no expectations of conjgal relations. The sealings were for eternity only. That, at least, seemed to be the understanding that Sylvia had concerning the matter.

Now, if we can only obtain some kind of proof of the provenance of that information.

Glenn

[Nevo]

2 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Now, if we can only obtain some kind of proof of the provenance of that information.

I wouldn't hold my breath. This is almost certainly fiction (and very bad fiction at that). 

[Calm]

It reads rather modern (I thought that when I first read it), more relaxed than much of the formal reading of the time as I remember it.  Then there is the liberal use of "".  Is that consistent with the time period.

[Meg Stout]

Hi folks,

Thank you so much for the additional information regarding William Noon and the timing of the Brotherton's arrival in Warsaw. Also, I will explain why I suggest it is plausible that a 30-year-old man whose cousins were already married might have wished to marry a sweet and comely and seemingly single woman in the household he'd lived in for over a year.

As few of you have bothered looking at the book, at least some of the comments are reacting to what I posted back in 2013/2014. Some of those details are already updated, such as the acknowledgement that it is more likely than not that Joseph Smith consummated his marriages to Emily Partridge and Malissa Lott, with other such consummations possible. This is why the book didn't repeat my use of the title Faithful Joseph, since so many inferred from the blog series title that I required a Joseph who had remained entirely sexually faithful to Emma Hale.

I would like to specifically respond to juliann's comment regarding the postulated modification to Eliza's poem Conjugal, a comment she has mentioned more than once:

On 6/13/2016 at 5:29 PM, juliann said:

I read enough of her stuff on M* to be horrified.  She insisted that a letter or word in one of Eliza's poems had been altered which proved that it was actually written about a former lover.(She came up with the word she needed it to have said.) The problem is she came to this conclusion without viewing the original document and having no background whatsoever in analyzing handwriting if she had.  If I remember correctly, Stout apparently thinks the Nauvoo women were fooling around so much JS had to rescue them with polygamous marriages.   

I requested that the Church History Library digitize Eliza's journal, which they were kind enough to do. The link to the digitized images is 

https://eadview.lds.org/dcbrowser/MS%201439/

The poem I’m interested in is on images MS 1439_f0001_00009.jpg and MS 1439_f0001_00010.jpg

It is worth noting that the reason I postulated that the poem had been modified had to do with my hypothesis that Elvira Annie Cowles and Jonathan Harriman Holmes might not have consummated their civil marriage until after Joseph Smith's death. Therefore I found the poem to be an oddly sublime celebration of what, I hypothesized, was a pretend marriage.

Though the modification wasn't exactly what I had hypothesized, the poem was clearly modified. In a way, the modification is even "better" for my thesis than my uninformed musings could have imagined.

 

The third word in the second stanza is now "rays', but was previously something that started with "a" and ended in "s". The terminal "s" in rays already demonstrates that Eliza formed her lower case s with a downward tail, but we see that consistently in many instances of lower case "s" in this poem (streams, waves, courses, drops, vows).

There is a faint mark above "rays", but we see by looking at the prior page that this is almost certainly the ink from the prior page bleeding through. This image was a quick attempt to show the pertinent portion of the prior page. Obviously careful registration of the images of the two pages would be required to satisfy the skeptic.

Given the possibilities for words starting with "a" and ending in "s" that could possibly fit the space, "angels" rises to the top of the list. I can't think of any other word that could fit into such a poem as well as occupy the requisite amount of physical space on the page. Feel free to suggest alternatives if you think of something else.

This is what I think the original poem may have looked like:

Regardless of all my other hypotheses and methods, this modification to Eliza's original poem is worthy of study.

While the modification may only represent a poet's willingness to scrape away at a page to improve the scansion of her poem, the possibility or even likelihood that the original word was "angels" together with the mention that this poem was written after a stirring sermon on resurrection (1 Cor. 15:12) suggests that this poem written by Eliza is documenting in fall of 1842 the future union of a man to his deceased spouse in eternity, the kind of reunion Joseph Kingsbury would write about having been promised in 1843 when he "agread" to a pretended marriage to Sarah Whitney.

Given that the re-purposed poem was dedicated to Jonathan suggests that Jonathan is the widower being promised eternal union with a deceased spouse. From the standpoint of ordinance, this promise was realized in the Nauvoo temple when Elvira Annie Cowles stood as proxy for Marietta Carter's eternal sealing to Jonathan Harriman Holmes.

Though the bulk of this thread was focused on Joseph's possible polyandry with Sylvia Sessions, the theme of pretend husbands is germane to the civil marriages into which both Elvira Annie Cowles and Sarah Ann Whitney would enter during Joseph's lifetime.

[Meg Stout]

5 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi folks,

Thank you so much for the additional information regarding William Noon and the timing of the Brotherton's arrival in Warsaw. Also, I will explain why I suggest it is plausible that a 30-year-old man whose cousins were already married might have wished to marry a sweet and comely and seemingly single woman in the household he'd lived in for over a year.

As few of you have bothered looking at the book, at least some of the comments are reacting to what I posted back in 2013/2014. Some of those details are already updated, such as the acknowledgement that it is more likely than not that Joseph Smith consummated his marriages to Emily Partridge and Malissa Lott, with other such consummations possible. This is why the book didn't repeat my use of the title Faithful Joseph, since so many inferred from the blog series title that I required a Joseph who had remained entirely sexually faithful to Emma Hale.

In case it isn't obvious from the context, the beginning part of my post from last night was addressing the modifications I plan to make to the book, based on the additional insight provided by commentary on this thread. I had written it in a way that made that clear, but then I closed my browser window accidentally. I see that my attempt to repeat but I'd originally written is not as clear as I thought it was.