Joseph Smith's Polyandry?

[Jeanne]

1 hour ago, Thinking said:

You do realize that birth control was possible in the early 1800's?

This is true.  I have heard..and please correct me one way or the other..that Dr. Bennett provided services under those circumstances..and then some.

[JLHPROF]

3 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

We need a nice picture of the two. 

Which two?
Sylvia Session Lyon

Josephine Lyon Fisher

 

 

 

[Jeanne]

2 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Which two?
Sylvia Session Lyon

Josephine Lyon Fisher

 

 

 

Well...she is definitely her mother's daughter!  On the off shoot here..but why didn't people smile back then???

[ALarson]

24 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

 I feel this Meg Stout's blog shows she is in the camp of hoping Joseph Smith was a polygamist in spirit only.

Meg Stout may be a decent historian, but I remember when she came up with the ridiculous theory that when Emily Partridge admitted under oath to having "carnal intercourse" with Joseph, she could have been speaking of passing a plate of meat to him or "meat commerce".  Stout seems to be willing to go to great lengths to avoid looking at the actual testimonies and writings regarding this topic.

Again, she could be an excellent researcher or writer on other topics....but this caused me to loose respect for her or take her serious.

Edited to add what Stout wrote:

 

Quote

 

It all boils down to the one admission from Emily, where she responded “Yes sir.” when asked if she had engaged in carnal intercourse with Joseph Smith. But recall that this Emily had been the wife of Brigham Young, had lived through the culture wars of the 1870s and later, when her people were being put in jail for polygamy, when women were going on the underground with fake identities to avoid being forced to testify against husbands and fathers.

Had Emily not replied “Yes sir.” to that question, she believed that the temple lot of prophesy would be awarded to Joseph’s sons and their Church and therefore forever made unavailable to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Besides this, Emily was by then 70 years old, and knew her way around the English language. Carnal refers to meat. Intercourse refers to commerce or trade (ever visited Intercourse, PA?). Therefore “carnal intercourse” would also be a legitimate description of passing Joseph a platter of turkey or chicken or mutton or beef at a meal, an activity the young Emily had almost certainly engaged in.

 

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Edited June 12, 2016 by ALarson

[Duncan]

45 minutes ago, rpn said:

I'm not sure how much we understand that JS and his followers thought that being sealed to the most righteous people they knew was their way to heaven.   Pres. Wilford Woodruff received revelation in the 1980's directing people to only be sealed to their own ancestors, having realized that the way it had been from the beginning was not what God had meant (see intro to manual of his teachings, and temple lesson therein).

1890's! I knew Pres. Woodruff was old but not that old! tee hee! interestingly Pres. Heber C. Kimball never really believed, I guess, the whole idea of adoption

Edited June 12, 2016 by Duncan

[Duncan]

23 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

Well...she is definitely her mother's daughter!  On the off shoot here..but why didn't people smile back then???

the picture took too long to take and you can't smile for 5 minutes or longer without difficulty, "come on henry take the......picture already!!!!!"

[canard78]

2 hours ago, SteveO said:

I don't know anything about that, and we aren't discussing history from the far more recent and reliable 1940s--Am I to assume that you're on record as saying every historical document from Nauvoo and Kirtland are infallible?  That all the minutes taken were recorded faithfully? We don't even give that kind of credibility to the standard works.

Of course not. I'm not saying that at all. 

[TheSkepticChristian]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

  Thus it leaves open the question of what she meant.  

I have a question. We now know Sylvia's statement is ambiguous,  she probably meant that Josephine was the spiritual daughter. I just simply wonder if 19th century accounts (or even ancient accounts) of "I had a vision" "I saw God" "I saw an angel" are also ambiguous? How can we tell they are literal? How is that not a double standard?  

11 hours ago, SteveO said:

Both

Good! 

[ALarson]

8 minutes ago, TheSkepticChristian said:

I have a question. We now know Sylvia's statement is ambiguous,  she probably meant that Josephine was the spiritual daughter.

That's one possibility, but wouldn't Josephine have already known that?   I'd need to study their history again, but was Josephine unaware of the fact that her Mother was sealed to Joseph for eternity?  (Serious question for you...or anyone here).  

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Edited June 12, 2016 by ALarson

[Johnnie Cake]

19 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Meg Stout on her latest blog reporting from the Mormon History Association reports that DNA testing reveals that Josephine Lyon is not the biological daughter of Joseph Smith. Thus far, DNA testing has found no biological children of Joseph Smith with women that were sealed to him while married to other men. 

Meg's blog can be found here.

Glenn

I think the implications of these DNA results are even more disconcerting and begs the question of why would Sylvia Sessions Lyon believe her daughter was fathered by Joseph Smith in the first place and it also puts a dagger in Brian Hales assertion the Sylvia was separated from her husband Winsor Lyons when she and Joseph were sealed.  

Sylvia, at least believed she was having relations with Joseph and that he had fathered her daughter when in fact it had been a union with her husband within the same timeframe as the union with Joseph that resulted in the baby.  She evidentially was involved with both men at the same time

Edited June 12, 2016 by Johnnie Cake

[Calm]

2 hours ago, ALarson said:

Meg Stout may be a decent historian...

Again, she could be an excellent researcher....

.

She is neither, imo, having read her reconstruction of Joseph's plural marriages.  She is a writer of fiction.

[ALarson]

Just now, Calm said:

She is neither, imo, having read her reconstruction of Joseph's plural marriages.  She is a writer of fiction.

Thanks, Calm.  I value your opinion greatly.  I am really not familiar with Meg Stout other than reading some of her writings on this one topic and I'm not impressed with her theories.  

 

[cinepro]

2 hours ago, ALarson said:

Meg Stout may be a decent historian, but I remember when she came up with the ridiculous theory that when Emily Partridge admitted under oath to having "carnal intercourse" with Joseph, she could have been speaking of passing a plate of meat to him or "meat commerce".  Stout seems to be willing to go to great lengths to avoid looking at the actual testimonies and writings regarding this topic.

Again, she could be an excellent researcher or writer on other topics....but this caused me to loose respect for her or take her serious.

Edited to add what Stout wrote:

 

.

I don't understand the full context of her "meat commerce" comment, but I always took it as a brilliant bit of satire.  Are you saying there is a chance it was a serious proposition?

[cinepro]

14 hours ago, Eek! said:

I agree, Joseph Smith taught some brilliant concepts, and in my mind he really stands out for that. 

My understanding is that there has been no confirmation of Joseph having sired children by anyone other than Emma, so maybe it's not just his Polyandry that we ought to re-examine, but his practice of Celestial Marriage altogether... especially if its justification was to "raise up seed". 

The lack of progeny certainly raises questions, and in my opinion could cast doubt on all the testimonies from women in the late 1800's who claimed to have been the wife of Joseph Smith in word and deed. 

In my mind there is some question as to whether Joseph Smith's version of plural marriage was really the same thing that Brigham Young attributed to him, taught, and practiced.  

You may want to research the context in which the interviews with Joseph's wives in Utah were done. 

Quote

For most of his career, [Joseph Smith III] denied that his father had been involved in the practice and insisted that it had originated with Brigham Young. Smith served many missions to the western United States where he met with and interviewed associates and women claiming to be widows of his father, who attempted to present him with evidence to the contrary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Smith_III

 

Joseph Smith's son was desperate to prove exactly what you are suggesting. The only difference is that the women who claimed to be married to his father were still alive, so he could ask them directly, and he did. What you're suggesting is a huge conspiracy that not even Joseph Smith III could unravel.

Or, they were telling the truth as far as their experiences went. 

I think the latter is more likely.

Edited June 12, 2016 by cinepro

[Jeanne]

2 hours ago, Duncan said:

the picture took too long to take and you can't smile for 5 minutes or longer without difficulty, "come on henry take the......picture already!!!!!"

I didn't even think of that..no wonder they look kind of bored and sad. 

[Calm]

Quite possibly it was serious.  She 'edited' a poem by Eliza R. Snow to imply she had the hots for Bennett and claimed that was likely the original construction and that Snow rewrote it to apply to something else.  She went to check out the actual document in hopes that she could find evidence of erasures but didn't change her mind when she didn't.  I don't remember seeing her ever accept a correction of her claims, she fitted what she learned to her theory, not the reverse.  Her theory was that Joseph married most of his plural wives to protect them from the stigma of having been seduced by Bennett and others and contracting VD, thus their marriage to him somehow protected their reputation and allowed them to be honorably married and still not pass on the VD to anyone else because of course no sex....even though the marriages were secret.  Other women he married as a reward for their efforts in helping with the detective work.  Only very few were marriages of love, her own ancestor being one of those, of course.  Everything that happens, including the creation of the RS, is for thepurpose of rooting out those involved in Bennett's evil.

I will later go back and reread her theory and see if she has thought better of it or if my memory of her theory is overstated.  My memory says fictional writing was a hobby for her, that she had some training in that but nothing in history.  She got into studying it looking for material to write a fictional book on her ancestor.

[ALarson]

20 minutes ago, cinepro said:

I don't understand the full context of her "meat commerce" comment, but I always took it as a brilliant bit of satire.  Are you saying there is a chance it was a serious proposition?

Yes, she seemed very serious about this theory and even defended it in blog entries.  However, I remember reading where she has later expressed that even some of her own family members were not fond of her opinion that "carnal intercourse" could have meant passing the platter of meat to Joseph.   

Edited June 12, 2016 by ALarson

[Calm]

I had forgotten she assumed Snow was pregnant by Bennett:

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

[jkwilliams]

19 minutes ago, cinepro said:

I don't understand the full context of her "meat commerce" comment, but I always took it as a brilliant bit of satire.  Are you saying there is a chance it was a serious proposition?

No, it was dead serious. Her theory is that the wives were actually "married" only in the sense that Joseph took them into his protection and they served as a secret group of detectives to root out the evil "spiritual wifery" going on in Nauvoo. 

I'm not making this up. 

[Tacenda]

3 hours ago, ALarson said:

Wow.  How did you sit there and not say anything (maybe you did or maybe it just wasn't the time or place...)?

It's unbelievable to me that anyone who is a serious historian or apologist or even church member who has studied church history, can believe that Joseph did not have relations with at least some of his plural wives.  I just don't get the double standard (between the standard for Joseph and all other members & Prophets who lived polygamy).  We also know that men were having relations with their plural wives as sanctioned by Joseph while he was still alive.  

Why the double standard?

That's why I was skeptical at first with the findings, I wondered if Ugo was hoping for this outcome all along, and skeptical as to how accurate the findings were.  That puts me with those on this board that will only look at the faith promoting answers.  And will discount anything even smelling of looking bad for the church.  I feel this lady's blog shows she is in the camp of hoping Joseph Smith was a polygamist in spirit only.  And wonder if Ugo might be too.  But I'm not even sure about that notion so I should just shut up, haha.  

Also, not to your post, but I'm going to have to speak with a relative of Josephine Lyons, who is addicted to genealogy,and ask what she thinks. Because she was quite sure that Josephine's father is Joseph Smith.  

 

 

Edited June 12, 2016 by Tacenda

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, Johnnie Cake said:

I think the implications of these DNA results are even more disconcerting and begs the question of why would Sylvia Sessions Lyon believe her daughter was fathered by Joseph Smith in the first place and it also puts a dagger in Brian Hales assertion the Sylvia was separated from her husband Winsor Lyons when she and Joseph were sealed.  

Sylvia, at least believed she was having relations with Joseph and that he had fathered her daughter when in fact it had been a union with her husband within the same timeframe as the union with Joseph that resulted in the baby.  She evidentially was involved with both men at the same time

I agree, I wonder how those in attendance at the MHA didn't see it!  

Edited June 12, 2016 by Tacenda

[Calm]

Nothing I have read from Ugo, either publicly or privately, indicates to me he cared one way or the other about his findings, but instead he was just highly invested in finding out what the science could tell him.  You really should stop suggesting his bias influenced him to come up with his conclusion and thus caused him to lie about his findings because that is what would need to have happened.

[ALarson]

7 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Also, not to your post, but I'm going to have to speak with a relative of Josephine Lyons, who is addicted to genealogy,and ask what she thinks. Because she was quite sure that Josephine's father is Joseph Smith.  

If you speak to them, ask if they are still going to continue to pursue their own DNA study for this too.  I had read the family was doing their own research and DNA testing.

Edited June 12, 2016 by ALarson

[Tacenda]

4 minutes ago, Calm said:

Nothing I have read from Ugo, either publicly or privately, indicates to me he cared one way or the other about his findings, but instead he was just highly invested in finding out what the science could tell him.  You really should stop suggesting his bias influenced him to come up with his conclusion and thus caused him to lie about his findings because that is what would need to have happened.

I'm sorry, that is unfair of me.  

[Jeanne]

20 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Meg Stout on her latest blog reporting from the Mormon History Association reports that DNA testing reveals that Josephine Lyon is not the biological daughter of Joseph Smith. Thus far, DNA testing has found no biological children of Joseph Smith with women that were sealed to him while married to other men. 

Meg's blog can be found here.

Glenn

I would like to know what Brian Hales would have had to say had the DNA proved that she was Joseph's daughter.  What kind of explanation he had ready for Sylvia's estrangement from her husband..interesting still.  The results of this said DNA test hasn't changed some fundamental questions.