Joseph Smith's Polyandry?

[Meg Stout]

On 6/24/2016 at 11:19 AM, 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.

Here is the first instance where I was asked for a CFR. Not that there weren't other instances where someone said "Prove it." But this was the first instance of CFR other than defining the term and chastising me for offering my book.

I have covered this before. It is not as though there is a contemporary document that states "the Widow Johnson yielded to illicit intercourse." But she was a woman whose husband had died in 1838 (familysearch merely indicates 1838 and Ohio River Valley for Peter Henry Johnson's date and place of death) and had three surviving children to support. In the wake of the illicit intercourse scandal, Lucina is taken into the household of Reynolds Cahoon, who was 16 years her senior.

Given the purported purpose for plural marriage (to raise up seed), is it not odd that two of the three women who produce children likely conceived in 1842 are widows well into their childbearing years taken into the homes of older men? Lucina had already born 6 children and was ~36 at the time of her marriage to Reynolds Cahoon who was ~52. Sarah Peak, notably without protection of a husband, had already born 3 children and was ~30 when she conceived Adelbert. Kimball was 41.

The third plural wife known to have produced a child conceived in 1842 was Mary Clift (27, English immigrant, later known as the plural wife of Theodore Turley, 14 years her senior), and we do have her detailed testimony before the High Council, accompanied by the testimony of her reported seducer, making it clear that this child was the product of an illicit liaison.

At the same time we have the testimonies of Catherine Laur Fuller Warren (widow at the time of the seductions, mother of 5, aged 36), Sarah Searcy Miller (widow at the time of the seductions, mother of 7 and 27 years old), Margaret Nyman (father deceased, 29 years old), Matilda Nyman (father deceased, likely 27 years old), and Esther (Dutcher?) Smith (married, 31, mother of three, and apparently not seduced despite being pressured to yield) testifying that they had been aggressively taught that it was acceptable to engage in unlawful intercourse.

Those here who wish may certainly reject that there is any reason to be suspicious of these three early births that have been attributed to legitimate plural marriage. And you may assert that you are not the ones who bear any responsibility for explaining why we should accept as unsuspicious births to indigent single mothers taken in by much older men. But for anyone willing to take on the challenge, please explain what kind of reasoning would explain these two women as the first to produce children under plural marriage, given that the third birth in this timeframe was documented as being produced by unlawful intercourse.

Regarding the lack of documentation in record-keeping obsessed Mormondom, I am guided by the experience of an acquaintance who never celebrates their wedding anniversary, because the were married late enough that their oldest child could not have been conceived after the wedding. So I am alert to suspicious absences of information. Particularly when we are talking about the very first children reportedly born within the restored practice of plural marriage.

On 6/24/2016 at 11:58 AM, ALarson said:

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.

As ALarson answered and I confirmed, the term striker was used in the Expositor to describe sexual predators. The term striker is an archaic synonym for debaucher. The Expositor attributed this sexual debauchery to Joseph Smith and good men who had taken responsibility for vulnerable women. However the Expositor itself was produced by men who had been identified as teaching the acceptability of unlawful intercourse, including Chauncy Higbee. I am the first, to my knowledge, to use the phrase "Bennett and his Strikers."

[Meg Stout]

On 6/25/2016 at 3:37 PM, Calm said:

Speculation is not evidence.

Hi Calm,

You might not have noticed, but what I was doing was examining every instance of plural marriage we have reason to believe had occurred in 1842. I was not cherry-picking cases that seemed suspicious, I was showing how every reported plural marriage involving a man other than Joseph Smith involves a woman with children who did not have a husband, with the exception of Mary Clift, where we have testimony stating that her pregnancy was the result of unlawful intercourse.

Sarah Peak Noon came to my attention merely because she is one of these women reported to have become a plural wife in 1842. Therefore I cannot drop her from the list of women discussed in that chapter because I can't undo the fact that she conceived Adelbert in 1842.

I can select a different title for that chapter, and I can make sure to emphasize that this is an examination of every known plural marriage to occur in this first year when plural marriage is introduced.

[jkwilliams]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

Something nature oriented that can kiss...flowers, animals, wind, flames

"Acorns" is too short and only romantic for squirrels.

Two auroras kissing in the sun...no wonder she changed it!

That seems likelier to me, too. Thanks for the hard work in sleuthing. Either way, it's still a big stretch to take a single word in a poem as a basis for rewriting Eliza Snow's entire personal history.

[Meg Stout]

7 hours ago, Calm said:

Seriously, please listen to me.  Just change that phrasing to "Eliza composed the poem "Conjugal" with this possible original phrase" or something along those lines.  This is not a hill to die on.  Your research will appear to be more credible if you are cautious until you can get someone who does this stuff for a living to look at the actual manuscript and possibly take high resolution pictures so that the actual layering of ink or whatever they call it can be examined.  You have to go in and edit that section anyway because of the next page not showing up as anything but black.

Hi Calm,

The next page showing up as black is a glitch with your instantiation of Adobe Acrobat. It happens to me from time to time as well. The page that shows up black is random and will be corrected when you reboot.

I do think the proposed examination of Eliza's poem and the edit would make a great research project for someone. Certainly someone (Mormon or not) would be interested in examining as a dissertation topic the earliest suspected origins of the practice of Celestial marriage, including the topic of pretend husbands. They can cite amateur Meg Stout as proponing a theory and then proceed to go all CSI with detailed examination of my claim. As for candidate words other than "angels" I point folks to http://nounsstarting.com/with-a/. Also, it seems the noun must not only start with a and end with s but also include a penultimate letter with some sort of vertical element, such as d, f, h, i, j, l, t. So neither acorns or auroras, for example, are credible based on the digitized example before us.

As for the language I use in my book, this is something I can certainly alter, to emphasize that I don't yet know with certainty that the original word was angels, just as prior to MHA this year it wasn't possible to know with certainty that Josephine had not been fathered by Joseph Smith.

[Meg Stout]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

I have appointments for the next three days and family from down under in town as well I only get to see once a year, so while this has been fun, not likely to be repeated in the next while.  Might continue to read the book (taking notes elsewhere so as not to flood this and other threads more than already.  If MegS is planning chapter by chapter on the board as she has done with the preface that would probably work best for me and I won't just jump here and there depending on what catches my eye.

Hi Calm,

Enjoy your time with family!

[jkwilliams]

24 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Here is the first instance where I was asked for a CFR. Not that there weren't other instances where someone said "Prove it." But this was the first instance of CFR other than defining the term and chastising me for offering my book.

I have covered this before. It is not as though there is a contemporary document that states "the Widow Johnson yielded to illicit intercourse." But she was a woman whose husband had died in 1838 (familysearch merely indicates 1838 and Ohio River Valley for Peter Henry Johnson's date and place of death) and had three surviving children to support. In the wake of the illicit intercourse scandal, Lucina is taken into the household of Reynolds Cahoon, who was 16 years her senior.

Given the purported purpose for plural marriage (to raise up seed), is it not odd that two of the three women who produce children likely conceived in 1842 are widows well into their childbearing years taken into the homes of older men? Lucina had already born 6 children and was ~36 at the time of her marriage to Reynolds Cahoon who was ~52. Sarah Peak, notably without protection of a husband, had already born 3 children and was ~30 when she conceived Adelbert. Kimball was 41.

The third plural wife known to have produced a child conceived in 1842 was Mary Clift (27, English immigrant, later known as the plural wife of Theodore Turley, 14 years her senior), and we do have her detailed testimony before the High Council, accompanied by the testimony of her reported seducer, making it clear that this child was the product of an illicit liaison.

At the same time we have the testimonies of Catherine Laur Fuller Warren (widow at the time of the seductions, mother of 5, aged 36), Sarah Searcy Miller (widow at the time of the seductions, mother of 7 and 27 years old), Margaret Nyman (father deceased, 29 years old), Matilda Nyman (father deceased, likely 27 years old), and Esther (Dutcher?) Smith (married, 31, mother of three, and apparently not seduced despite being pressured to yield) testifying that they had been aggressively taught that it was acceptable to engage in unlawful intercourse.

Those here who wish may certainly reject that there is any reason to be suspicious of these three early births that have been attributed to legitimate plural marriage. And you may assert that you are not the ones who bear any responsibility for explaining why we should accept as unsuspicious births to indigent single mothers taken in by much older men. But for anyone willing to take on the challenge, please explain what kind of reasoning would explain these two women as the first to produce children under plural marriage, given that the third birth in this timeframe was documented as being produced by unlawful intercourse.

Regarding the lack of documentation in record-keeping obsessed Mormondom, I am guided by the experience of an acquaintance who never celebrates their wedding anniversary, because the were married late enough that their oldest child could not have been conceived after the wedding. So I am alert to suspicious absences of information. Particularly when we are talking about the very first children reportedly born within the restored practice of plural marriage.

As ALarson answered and I confirmed, the term striker was used in the Expositor to describe sexual predators. The term striker is an archaic synonym for debaucher. The Expositor attributed this sexual debauchery to Joseph Smith and good men who had taken responsibility for vulnerable women. However the Expositor itself was produced by men who had been identified as teaching the acceptability of unlawful intercourse, including Chauncy Higbee. I am the first, to my knowledge, to use the phrase "Bennett and his Strikers."

I don't find it suspicious at all that women who entered into plural marriages conceived. I'm not sure why I'm supposed to find that suspicious. Yes, Mary Clift was apparently involved sexually with Bennett, as were the others who testified in the high council proceedings, but you have absolutely nothing tying Lucina Roberts Johnson to Bennett or any alleged seduction. Indeed, that neither she nor Sarah Noon were called before the high council suggests that they weren't involved with Bennett. So, I will consider my CFR to be unanswered, as you have nothing to tie Lucina Johnson (or Sarah Noon) to Bennett, the Higbees, William Smith, or any of the other men involved in "illicit intercourse."

What you are telling me is that you have only your suspicions, and nothing else. I know of a family where all three daughters were pregnant at the same time. The older two were pregnant by their husbands, but the youngest, who was 16, was the victim of rape. Using your logic, the two older sisters must have been rape victims. 

Historians often use hunches and guesses to explore possible interrelations and causation, but honest, professional historians don't assert their hunches without supporting documentation. I understand that you think I have some kind of personal grudge against you, but that is not the case, My objections have nothing to do with you as a person and everything to do with your methodology. 

[ALarson]

1 hour ago, Meg Stout said:

As ALarson answered and I confirmed, the term striker was used in the Expositor to describe sexual predators. 

This is not true.  And it most certainly did not associate the term "Strikers" with Bennett.

[ALarson]

1 hour ago, Meg Stout said:

Regarding the lack of documentation in record-keeping obsessed Mormondom, I am guided by the experience of an acquaintance who never celebrates their wedding anniversary, because the were married late enough that their oldest child could not have been conceived after the wedding.

Was Heber C. Kimball married to Sarah Peak Noon and Reynolds Cahoon married to Lucina Johnson "late enough that their" child "could not have been conceived after the wedding"?  CFR on this.

[jkwilliams]

2 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Was Heber C. Kimball married to Sarah Peak Noon and Reynolds Cahoon married to Lucina Johnson "late enough that their" child "could not have been conceived after the wedding"?  CFR on this.

Again, what is odd or suspicious about women, ages 30 and 36, roughly, conceiving children after marriage?

[jkwilliams]

1 hour ago, ALarson said:

This is not true.  And it most certainly did not associate the term "Strikers" with Bennett.

I found two references to "strikers" in Mormon-related publications from the 19th-century (all others are quoting the Expositor).

Quote

I wish to beg a place in your columns for the insertion of this article, as I am deprived of the privilege of speaking through the Mormon oracles (papers.) I do this, to correct the evils that now exist among that people denominated Saints in Nauvoo -- a place that for the last six months has been a resort for rogues and scoundrels, and a covert for thieves and murderers. Jack Reding, the supposed murderer of Arvine Hodge, is one of Brigham Young's strikers, and has been under the protection of Young during the past summer, in Nauvoo, and is now hid there unless he has recently fled or been taken into custody. It is well known that there is a gang of murderers and thieves, whose members are scattered up and down the Mississippi river. (William Smith, Missouri Reporter, 25 October 1845)

In 1839 the Mormons founded the city of Nauvoo (the beautiful) in Hancock county, Illinois. The city was phemenonal in growth; rose as if by magic, so that in five years it contained a population of 15,000. During the "Hard Cider" campaign of 1840 the Mormons commanded a vote and held the balance of power in Illinois. Joe Smith was wined, dined and feasted by heelers and strikers of both parties. His people, driven from a Democratic state by a Democratic governor and refused redress by a Democratic president, Smith's celebrated memorial against Missouri was introduced into the senate by Henry Clay.  (John C. Elliot, "Slayer of Joe Smith, the Mormon Saint," Hamilton [Ohio] Daily Republican, 29 August 1892)

Neither of these uses "striker" to mean "sexual predator." The first seems to mean something like what we would call "muscle" or an "enforcer" when talking about criminal enterprises. The second associates "strikers" with "heelers," which Merriam-Webster defines as

Quote

a henchman of a local political boss

a worker for a local party organization; especially :  ward heeler

So, in both cases, the word means something like "henchman," not "sexual predator," and indeed "henchman" fits better in context in the Expositor. 

Apparently, this usage derives from the "striker," who is, according to Merriam-Webster, "a blacksmith's helper who swings the sledgehammer." The blacksmith does the skilled work, while the striker provides the brute force. 

Edited June 28, 2016 by jkwilliams

[Calm]

English is a flexible language, but not that flexible IMO.

[Calm]

7 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi Calm,

The next page showing up as black is a glitch with your instantiation of Adobe Acrobat. It happens to me from time to time as well. The page that shows up black is random and will be corrected when you reboot.

I do think the proposed examination of Eliza's poem and the edit would make a great research project for someone. Certainly someone (Mormon or not) would be interested in examining as a dissertation topic the earliest suspected origins of the practice of Celestial marriage, including the topic of pretend husbands. They can cite amateur Meg Stout as proponing a theory and then proceed to go all CSI with detailed examination of my claim....

As for the language I use in my book, this is something I can certainly alter, to emphasize that I don't yet know with certainty that the original word was angels, just as prior to MHA this year it wasn't possible to know with certainty that Josephine had not been fathered by Joseph Smith.

I think it is much more likely someone will eventually examine her poetry up close and personal because they are doing research on her as a writer/poet who has no idea of your claim unless they came across it doing a literature review that includes google.  Unless you significantly alter your work, anyone suggesting to their advisers they use it as the starting point for a research project will be directed to come up with another thesis, imo.  I do not say this to be cruel, but because you come across as wanting to be taken seriously and I totally applaud and admire that ambition.  But if you want the professionals and even those amateurs who have delved into the topic in significant depth to view your work as something besides fiction laden with a few facts here and there, you need to do the work and that does not just mean putting time and effort and even looking at original sources, but more than that doing all those things effectively...which includes having the same skepticism you are telling other scholars they need to have in that quote from your work I cite in the other thread (about few scholars being able to resist their own personal paradigms from getting in the way of good research...paraphrase, of course).

I look forward to seeing the change to more cautious language in this case.  I hope you will consider seriously applying the same standard throughout your work.

[Calm]

JK, Mary Clift was involved with Gus (can't remember spelling of full name) Hills, iirc.  I believe the language is clear enough that they condemned him as the father, though they don't quote her claim itself, iirc, but paraphase it in the minutes.  Whether or not she was also involved with other men, including Bennett, I don't think it is clear for her, though I need to double check that.

[jkwilliams]

9 minutes ago, Calm said:

JK, Mary Clift was involved with Gus (can't remember spelling of full name) Hills, iirc.  I believe the language is clear enough that they condemned him as the father, though they don't quote her claim itself, iirc, but paraphase it in the minutes.  Whether or not she was also involved with other men, including Bennett, I don't think it is clear for her, though I need to double check that.

True enough. It was Gustavus Hills, and iirc, the accusation was that he learned about "spiritual wifery" from Bennett. 

[Calm]

Back to the poem subject.

It is a poem about love and forever marriage presented to Elvira and Johnathan, not Elvira and Joseph.

In what way does this poem even come close to supporting the idea of a pretend marriage? It is much better evidence for Eliza believing the relationship between Elvira and Johnathan was meant to be a full, loving relationship including a physical nature, given how she describes streams blending, etc.

Even your alleged original construction with angels has nothing to do with pretend marriages, as you yourself indicate in pointing out it likely refers to eternal marriage (with his late wife and Holmes as the angels).

So why are you using it?

This appears to be a fundamental problem with your paradigm, just as you point out in others.  You cannot see how the very poem you are using contradicts your claim of a pretend marriage.

And then, simply because Eliza lost the child, she gets dumped as the bride and replaced with Elivira because after all a home has been built and a marriage planned.

"With a possible November death of the child Eliza carried, there would no longer be a need for Jonathan to marry Eliza. But the cabin was built, and a marriage was expected. Elvira Annie Cowles, Eliza’s friend and the woman who had cared for Jonathan’s daughter since the death of Marietta Carter [Holmes], would stand by Jonathan’s side when Joseph performed the ceremony on December 1, 1842."

http://www.millennialstar.org/eliza-and-the-stairs/

[Calm]

From "Pretend Husbands":

"I have put before you all I can to show why this poem warrants additional investigation. As this poem relates to my direct ancestors, I have a family interest in the answer. I welcome any interpretations of this poem, a contemporary record to the marriage of Jonathan and Elvira in what appears to have been a “pretend” marriage, similar to that of Joseph C. Kingsbury and Sarah Ann Whitney.

I suggest that when Eliza originally wrote the poem in her journal (September 1842), she expected that she would be the woman protected in a pretend marriage with Jonathan Holmes. But that at some point prior to December 1842 an event occurred that eliminated her need to be protected in a pretend marriage. Thus the tears and the modification of the poem."

These are the "tears" she is using as evidence here:

"Aside from splotches that could be traces of tears"

Which kind of ignores the splotches/smudges that can be seen elsewhere in the journal though MegS sees it as unusual (I am assuming she means in appearance).  Not seeing it myself in regards to smudges/splotches.

http://www.millennialstar.org/the-pretend-husbands/

[hope_for_things]

9 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi Calm,

You might not have noticed, but what I was doing was examining every instance of plural marriage we have reason to believe had occurred in 1842. I was not cherry-picking cases that seemed suspicious, I was showing how every reported plural marriage involving a man other than Joseph Smith involves a woman with children who did not have a husband, with the exception of Mary Clift, where we have testimony stating that her pregnancy was the result of unlawful intercourse.

Sarah Peak Noon came to my attention merely because she is one of these women reported to have become a plural wife in 1842. Therefore I cannot drop her from the list of women discussed in that chapter because I can't undo the fact that she conceived Adelbert in 1842.

I can select a different title for that chapter, and I can make sure to emphasize that this is an examination of every known plural marriage to occur in this first year when plural marriage is introduced.

I think the early Nauvoo history on polygamy in 1841 & 1842 sounds very interesting.  The Masonic lodge wasn't founded until March of 1842, and the theological teachings around celestial marriage and sealing for eternity didn't appear until later.  I'm not sure we have evidence of these concepts being taught until 1843 or later.  So, this makes makes me question what the purpose of early polygamy was for, if these theological concepts didn't appear until later in the history.  

[Calm]

10 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi Calm,

You might not have noticed, but what I was doing was examining every instance of plural marriage we have reason to believe had occurred in 1842. I was not cherry-picking cases that seemed suspicious, I was showing how every reported plural marriage involving a man other than Joseph Smith involves a woman with children who did not have a husband, with the exception of Mary Clift, where we have testimony stating that her pregnancy was the result of unlawful intercourse.

Sarah Peak Noon came to my attention merely because she is one of these women reported to have become a plural wife in 1842. Therefore I cannot drop her from the list of women discussed in that chapter because I can't undo the fact that she conceived Adelbert in 1842.

I can select a different title for that chapter, and I can make sure to emphasize that this is an examination of every known plural marriage to occur in this first year when plural marriage is introduced.

This may have been already posted, but my Ipad says no...

So as far as I can see MegS is rejecting the plural marriage was practiced to take care of the widows and orphans claim for plural marriage was practiced by taking care of the fornicating widows.  And evidence is lost or never kept records.

Given the number of lost records, the need to redo numerous baptisms and proxy work because of poor record keeping, it hardly seems that lack of detailed records was enough of an anomaly to suggest in these two cases it was intentional, especially if there is no there evidence and that there is plenty of evidence that men were marrying widows of childbearing age both plurally and monogamously in the community without the widows producing children shortly....but perhaps all these women just miscarried.

----

To MegS, my problem with your work is not cherry picking (though you dump evidence too easily when accepting other aspects of claims, such as in the example of Eliza and the Stairs), it is that you are trying to include everything as if mass adds credibility even when there is no actual evidence to connect stuff...such as your claim that "Conjugal" supports pretend husbands and or placing widows with children without any other evidence as involved in the "illicit intercourse" scandal.

It comes across as careless at the very least.

 

[Calm]

Continuing previous post...

It is not enough enough to look at every plural marriage in Nauvoo.  You need to look at the monogamous ones as well to see if there are different patterns. For example, you need to ask questions like are there widows with children that are marrying single men who are older, are there lousy records for them as well, are they having children in their first year of marriage that might be actually conceived before the marriage, is there any reason to assume that the current husband is not the father in that case?

[Meg Stout]

In response to my assertion that "the term striker was used in the Expositor to describe sexual predators "

22 hours ago, ALarson said:

This is not true.  And it most certainly did not associate the term "Strikers" with Bennett.

ALarson, the men described as Strikers in the Expositor were certainly portrayed as sexual predators. As I mentioned, those authoring the content of the Expositor wished to persuade the people of Nauvoo that Joseph Smith was the terrible person. Their audience was thoroughly convinced that Bennett was a reprobate, so the authors of the Expositor would not have had any interest in tying the activities of their so-called strikers to John C. Bennett.

As for the definition of the term striker, that is something that I realized at some point after I began using the term striker for Bennett's acolytes/followers/etc.

[Meg Stout]

11 hours ago, Calm said:

Continuing previous post...

It is not enough enough to look at every plural marriage in Nauvoo.  You need to look at the monogamous ones as well to see if there are different patterns. For example, you need to ask questions like are there widows with children that are marrying single men who are older, are there lousy records for them as well, are they having children in their first year of marriage that might be actually conceived before the marriage, is there any reason to assume that the current husband is not the father in that case?

Hi Calm,

You make an excellent point. And I'm sure you realize that the effort required to evaluate the totality of marital activity for a city of thousands in 1842 is daunting, to say the least.

I do have access to Lyndon Cooks book compiling the Deaths and Marriages in Nauvoo. But this does not necessarily extend beyond Nauvoo. So marriages and deaths involving Mormons in the Plains or in Iowa or hamlets near Warsaw (where Elvira's sister died in May 1841) are not necessarily recorded.

Also, there is no comprehensive and centralized listing of births.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that those who did not remain with the LDS branch of the Mormon movement tend to disappear, as they were not as dedicated to keeping records. I have seen this multiple times, perhaps best illustrated by the fact that Catherine Laur Fuller's oldest son (though enumerated in the 1840 census and listed in the 1842 census) was unknown to most researchers at the time I found his name in the 1842 census in February 2016.

One can certainly request that I "Round up the usual suspects", but ironically it is precisely because I am looking at all of the plural marriage activity that I am finding noteworthy circumstances.

One of the next assignments on my self-assigned task list here was to look at the 80 women who become plural wives in the year after Joseph's birth to develop a profile on the sort of woman who became a plural wife in that important developmental period of establishing Celestial marriage. The 1846 temple sealings are already fairly easy to understand.

[Meg Stout]

15 hours ago, Calm said:

From "Pretend Husbands":

"I have put before you all I can to show why this poem warrants additional investigation. As this poem relates to my direct ancestors, I have a family interest in the answer. I welcome any interpretations of this poem, a contemporary record to the marriage of Jonathan and Elvira in what appears to have been a “pretend” marriage, similar to that of Joseph C. Kingsbury and Sarah Ann Whitney.

I suggest that when Eliza originally wrote the poem in her journal (September 1842), she expected that she would be the woman protected in a pretend marriage with Jonathan Holmes. But that at some point prior to December 1842 an event occurred that eliminated her need to be protected in a pretend marriage. Thus the tears and the modification of the poem."

These are the "tears" she is using as evidence here:

"Aside from splotches that could be traces of tears"

Which kind of ignores the splotches/smudges that can be seen elsewhere in the journal though MegS sees it as unusual (I am assuming she means in appearance).  Not seeing it myself in regards to smudges/splotches.

http://www.millennialstar.org/the-pretend-husbands/

Hi Calm,

The manner in which that first page, including the first stanza of Conjugal, has been retouched is atypical of Eliza's other pages for those first months of that journal. Perhaps the darker ink on several spots were not caused by tears. It is a thesis that can't be proved without destructive testing, which would not be permitted on such a document. But I am sure we can come up with a metric to demonstrate that this page is unique, such as:

Number of words edited by scraping

Number of letters re-inked

I have done that analysis myself but did not record the results other than to note that there are no other instances of scraping used to edit prior to that in this journal, nor would there be for several more months. There is no other page in that span where we see so many letters that appear to be re-inked.

[Meg Stout]

17 hours ago, Calm said:

Unless you significantly alter your work, anyone suggesting to their advisers they use it as the starting point for a research project will be directed to come up with another thesis, imo.  

The lovely thing is that I can, indeed, alter my work. But your statement here displays an interesting academic snobbery.

Recall also that for the most part you are pulling from my blog and not from my book. I will not edit the body of those blogs, as I consider that they represent in themselves a sort of history regarding the development of my theses. I can certainly add introductions or afterwords to point folks to the updated content.

[Meg Stout]

22 hours ago, jkwilliams said:

I found two references to "strikers" in Mormon-related publications from the 19th-century (all others are quoting the Expositor).

Neither of these uses "striker" to mean "sexual predator." The first seems to mean something like what we would call "muscle" or an "enforcer" when talking about criminal enterprises. The second associates "strikers" with "heelers," which Merriam-Webster defines as

So, in both cases, the word means something like "henchman," not "sexual predator," and indeed "henchman" fits better in context in the Expositor. 

Apparently, this usage derives from the "striker," who is, according to Merriam-Webster, "a blacksmith's helper who swings the sledgehammer." The blacksmith does the skilled work, while the striker provides the brute force. 

Who knew that I would need to cite the dictionary where I found the assertion that striker was an archaic synonym for debaucher. That will be on my list of things to do as time permits.

Your sources don't exclude the use of striker as debaucher, though they are not as clear as the use in the Expositor, which seems to define the term as a sort of sexual henchman.

Speaking of the reported sexual connotation of striker, it seems the etymology is not hard to figure out, given the original term of a man who repeatedly swings his hammer.

[jkwilliams]

3 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Who knew that I would need to cite the dictionary where I found the assertion that striker was an archaic synonym for debaucher. That will be on my list of things to do as time permits.

Your sources don't exclude the use of striker as debaucher, though they are not as clear as the use in the Expositor, which seems to define the term as a sort of sexual henchman.

Speaking of the reported sexual connotation of striker, it seems the etymology is not hard to figure out, given the original term of a man who repeatedly swings his hammer.

I know the archaic definition. What you need to establish is that the archaic meaning was intended in the Expositor. As I showed, the use of "striker" at that time referred to a henchman. If you have contemporary examples with that archaic meaning, I am all ears.