Reluctant Polygamist: Preface

[Gray]

44 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Gray,

You are echoing what others are inferring, that my preference for physical evidence might suggest that I don't also value testimony.

I do value testimony. I just kick it around a bit harder before giving it a provisional place in the puzzle.

All well and good, but what of the special pleading? 

Edited June 23, 2016 by Gray

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I think there's plenty of room for giving kudos for trying, even if the result has bad conclusions.  I dont' think piecing together Joseph's polygamy is all that easy.  But in the end, it feels to me like instead of putting Joseph's life on trial her goal is to say though polygamy Joseph didn't do too bad.  It feels like a weird argument to hold to and effectively does the opposite of putting Joseph's life on trial. 

You are preaching to the converted, I don't understand polygamy in any age, but I am not writing a book about it. But, knowing as I do the flaws that all men and women suffer from, the glory be to God that he can use to do do anything. I am inspired by Joseph because of what he did dispite his "real or precieved" weaknesses. So the glory be to God and to his Son Jesus Christ, not to the flawed men they inspire or use to inspire us. 

[Meg Stout]

4 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Where is the claim by Jonathan that he did not consummate his marriage between December 1, 1842 and June 27, 1844?

Jonathan's daughter, grandchildren, and neighbor wrote that Jonathan had not been Elvira's husband until after Joseph's death. The dates represent the date of Jonathan's public marriage to Elvira and Joseph Smith's death.

The "late in life" comment is based on when John Fish Wright arrived in Utah, which was in the 1860s. This is also around the time that Marietta Holmes was married, when her name was recorded as Marietta Smith, and a hand other than the recorder wrote a big slash through "Smith" and wrote "Holmes" next to it.

As the records of temple marriages during the 1860s are not publicly available, I can't point you to a quotable source other than my memory of seeing that record when I visited the LDS Family History Library, where such records can be viewed.

[Meg Stout]

7 minutes ago, Gray said:

All well and good, but what of the special pleading? 

Hi Gray,

While I don't weight all the evidence in the same manner you do, I don't ignore evidence. I do kick it around a bit, but in the end I don't have a problem with the possibility that Emily and Joseph consummated their union.

There are other stories that have alternate possible causes. Mentioning that there are alternate causes is not ignoring data.

[Meg Stout]

37 minutes ago, jkwilliams said:

By her standards, there is no evidence that Bennett had sex with anyone. 

Hi John,

There is apparently no physical evidence that Bennett had sex with anyone. But there is detailed and contemporary and extensive written testimony that Bennett had sex with several women.

[Guest]

20 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi cinepro,

There is abundant first person testimony that Joseph taught the doctrine that plural marriage was permissible.

There is first person testimony that Joseph participated in ceremonies sealing him to women other than Emma. These testimonies include individuals who did not follow Brigham Young to Utah. James Whitehead, who remained in the Illinois area, would tell the Smith brothers in 1864 that he had personally witnessed Emma participate in ceremonies where Joseph was sealed to other women.

Emily Partridge in 1894 agreed when asked if she'd had carnal intercourse with Joseph Smith.

Malissa Lott indicated that she had been Joseph's wife in very deed. R. C. Evans, in his 1920 book about why he left the RLDS Church, claimed Malissa Lott had told him about Joseph's desire to sire a child with her, and the single sexual encounter that took place between them.

There are other testimonies that some claim consistitute proof that Joseph engaged in sexual relations with individuals other than Emma. Some of these may be true. But I don't accept that all indicate Joseph Smith had sex with the woman. In particular, I don't agree that Mary Heron should be added to the list of Joseph Smith's conjugal wives merely because her son-in-law indicated she was frigged by someone named Joseph.

Meg, quick question...Using this method in examing the life of Joseph Smith, has it occurred that if wrong about Joseph, you may be tarnishing the lives of innocent women and sisters in the gospel? Joseph is a BIG target struck constantly on the Internet, and part of his calling. But (as I am sure you would agree) when a woman is falsely accused (even in passing) of sexual misbehavior, she is assaulted yet again. 

[cinepro]

30 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Hi cinepro,

There is abundant first person testimony that Joseph taught the doctrine that plural marriage was permissible.

No objective proof though?  Sounds like it probably didn't happen then.

[ALarson]

33 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

Jonathan's daughter, grandchildren, and neighbor wrote that Jonathan had not been Elvira's husband until after Joseph's death. The dates represent the date of Jonathan's public marriage to Elvira and Joseph Smith's death.

The "late in life" comment is based on when John Fish Wright arrived in Utah, which was in the 1860s. This is also around the time that Marietta Holmes was married, when her name was recorded as Marietta Smith, and a hand other than the recorder wrote a big slash through "Smith" and wrote "Holmes" next to it.

As the records of temple marriages during the 1860s are not publicly available, I can't point you to a quotable source other than my memory of seeing that record when I visited the LDS Family History Library, where such records can be viewed.

Do you see then that you shouldn't make definitive claims that Jonathan told his children and grandchildren stories or that he claimed that he didn't consummate his marriage until after the Prophet's death?

That one of his grandsons wrote:

“When Joseph Smith was martyred, [Jonathan with others] buried his body and later moved it to a more secure resting place. Certain it is that after the Prophet's death,  probably at his direction, my grandfather married one of his (Joseph Smith) plural wives, Elvira Annie Cowles Smith.”

Or that a neighbor did this:

In 1931 John Fish Wright’s son, William, brought a letter to LDS Church Headquarters. The letter read: “I was well acquainted with two of Joseph’s wives, LaVina and Eliza…  Before Joseph was shot, he asked Jonathan Holmes if he would marry and take care of LaVina, but that if LaVina wanted him to take care of her he would take her. He would fill that mission to please his Father in Heaven.”

And from those, you conclude and write as if it's fact, this:

Quote

Yet in the case of Jonathan Holmes and Elvira Annie Cowles, we have Jonathan's (admittedly late) story to his children and neighbors that he was not Elvira's husband until after Joseph's death, despite the ceremony Joseph Smith performed uniting Jonathan and Elvira as husband and wife on December 1, 1842. Jonathan and Elvira were together behind closed doors for months prior to her reported sealing to Joseph Smith on June 1, 1842.

And this:

Quote

The case history of Jonathan and Elvira demonstrates that in at least one case the legal husband claimed he had not been consummating his marriage from December 1, 1842 to June 27, 1844.

You will not be taken seriously as a historian or as a writer (except of fiction).  What you quote from the grandson and neighbor could just be their opinions and not have come from Jonathan at all, do you get that?  And there is no record that Jonathan made the claim you say he made (regarding not consummating his marriage).

It makes me wonder if all of your writing, theories and conclusions are based on what you think may have happened or what you wish had happened without any documented sources or evidence? Because I've only picked out a few of your conclusions and there are holes in each one of your theories that are easily disputed.

.

 

Edited June 23, 2016 by ALarson

[Calm]

Breaking attempted silence...there appears to be a typo for the date of JS and ECH's sealing...not meant to be June 1,1842, but 1843.  Even if corrected in another post, Meg S should probably edit that to prevent further misunderstanding.

[JulieM]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

I would like to see the quote from Johnathan Holmes' story to his children abt not being her husband, etc.

You might have a long wait 

After reading through this thread, I have to conclude that this quote doesn't exist.

[Calm]

14 hours ago, Meg Stout said:

 

Here we run into the quandary of fertility. Joseph's virility is established in the many children he engendered with Emma Hale. There is no question (based on the DNA spotlight that has shone on that family) that Joseph produced Emma's children who lived to bear children of their own. By extension, there is no reason to doubt Joseph fathered Emma's other children.

Elvira Annie Cowles conceived her first child in February 1845, months after Joseph's death and coincidentally the month that Emma asked Jonathan to help relocate Joseph Smith's remains....

. I am merely postulating (in this point) that the rather clear lack of sex occurring prior to 1845 in the marriages of Elvira Holmes might be extensible to other plural marriages involving Elvira's husband Joseph Smith.

The problem with assuming lack of children means lack of sex is that there are plenty of medical reasons that it may take a number of years for a first child to be born, but then little effort for additional children.

I can't copy this post on this subject from two years ago, sorry:

 

[Meg Stout]

11 minutes ago, Calm said:

The problem with assuming lack of children means lack of sex is that there are plenty of medical reasons that it may take a number of years for a first child to be born, but then little effort for additional children.

I can't copy this post on this subject from two years ago, sorry:

 

And if we were only talking about one woman, I would have to agree. But this happens with many of the women who were Joseph's plural wives.

[Nemesis]

Is this thread for discussion or a plug for a book?  We allow one but not the other so let's make sure future threads are for discussions.  

nemesis 

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, Meg Stout said:

And if we were only talking about one woman, I would have to agree. But this happens with many of the women who were Joseph's plural wives.

What number is "many" exactly?  How many of his wives were sealed to him, married to another man and did not have children for a few years, that had several on a regular basis?

Btw, 20% of couples who needed help with fertility treatments the first time around didn't need it the second time.  That is a substantial percentage.

[Meg Stout]

5 hours ago, Nemesis said:

Is this thread for discussion or a plug for a book?  We allow one but not the other so let's make sure future threads are for discussions.  

nemesis 

Hi Nemesis,

This is not a plug for a book in the sense that I am trying to drive sales, as I have made the PDF of the book available for free download:

http://www.millennialstar.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Reluctant-Polygamist-5th-edition.pdf

I have contended on the Joseph Smith Polyandry thread that I bring a new and valid perspective to Joseph Smith's practice of plural marriage. The response to that is available to read.

The book arose out of my research into my own ancestors, seven couples involving men who were technically "polygamists." One of my ancestors was the Smith governess, who was sealed to Joseph Smith in 1843, six months after Joseph had performed a ceremony publicly marrying her to a widower.

As the discussion on the Joseph Smith Polyandry thread was becoming focused on things other than the original topic, it had been suggested we take it elsewhere, I started the Meg Stout Introduction thread in the Social Hall, as I was not yet able to start any other sort of discussion at the time. When it was pointed out to me that I did now have enough posts to qualify me to open up a thread in the Main Discussion area, I started this thread, as intended by me to be the first in a series of threads that would walk through the matter in parallel with how the book handles the subject.

The matter of Joseph Smith's beliefs, teachings, and practice of Celestial marriage are core to why the LDS Church is a unique and vibrant religion. The modern Church has only recently begun to open up about its history on this matter. Per Gregory Prince, this is due in large part to Elder Boyd K. Packer's acknowledgement shortly before his death that the Internet had made it unwise to attempt to control the conversation through obfuscation.

The print book is priced well below the cost of other comparable books, as I am not pricing it to make a profit.

My whole desire in this is to help explore the actions and motivations of Mormonism's founding prophet at a time when it is taken for granted by many that he was a coercive sexual predator. It takes time to peel back decades and even more than a century of careless history, both on the part of the faithful as well as those who actively attempt to denigrate Mormonism.

I am open to guidance on how mormondialogue.org wishes this handled.

 

[Calm]

One rule...never use a paraphase when a quote would be better...such as your Paraphase of Prince's paraphase of Elder Packer's allged comment about obfuscation.

That is a CFR btw.

[Meg Stout]

5 hours ago, Calm said:

What number is "many" exactly?  How many of his wives were sealed to him, married to another man and did not have children for a few years, that had several on a regular basis?

Btw, 20% of couples who needed help with fertility treatments the first time around didn't need it the second time.  That is a substantial percentage.

When we speak of modern infertility, are we certain that this has not been impacted by factors specific to modern life>

In the case of Joseph Smith's marriages to women who were not Emma Hale, we have a sufficiently small number that statistics can't be conclusive. Yet with the exception of the disputed pregnancy of Eliza Snow, which her poetry suggests might not have been engendered by Joseph Smith, none of the wives who didn't have husbands conceived during Joseph's lifetime.

In the case of women who were married to other men who were Latter-day Saints, the women did not conceive during the timeframe when it appears they had actually covenanted with Joseph. For Sarah Whitney, it is documented that her husband considered their union a pretend marriage. For Elvira Annie Cowles, documents from her daughter, grandchildren, and a neighbor indicate that her husband claimed he wasn't married to her until after Joseph's death, despite the clear documentation that a ceremony had occurred marrying her to her civil husband prior to her sealing to Joseph Smith.

In the cases of Zina Huntington and Marinda Nancy Johnson, they had conceived at least one child before entering into covenant with Joseph Smith. Then they did not conceive again until after Joseph had died.

The date of Lucinda Pendleton's sealing to Joseph is not known. Though Compton speculated it occurred in 1838, other researchers have proposed that she didn't covenant with Joseph until after the 1840 birth of her child.

Esther Dutcher [Smith] conceived a child during Joseph's lifetime, which child was born after Joseph's death. The date of Esther's covenant with Joseph is not known, but as she appears to have been the Esther Smith who testified in fall 1842 of being pressured to participate in illicit intercourse in spring 1842, I have proposed that a Joseph Smith who was covenanting with women in part to teach them the true nature of Celestial marriage in contrast to the illicit intercourse of John C. Bennett may have covenanted with Esther Dutcher [Smith] in 1842. The dynamics of the sexuality of Esther Dutcher's conception of her son, Joseph Albert Smith, are sufficiently undocumented as to preclude responsible hypothesis, particularly as Joseph Albert Smith's descendants haven't attempted to determine via DNA testing whether their ancestor was engendered by Joseph Smith.

I haven't completed the statistical study of the fertility patterns of Joseph's plural wives subsequent to his death. However Louisa Beaman was immediately and excessively fertile in the short time she had between marrying Brigham Young and dying of cancer in 1850. Elvira Annie Cowles was consistently fecund after February 1845. Several of Joseph's wives had babies who died at Winter Quarters, including Lucy Walker, Elvira Cowles, and Emily Partridge. Olive Frost's alleged/reported child who died with her in October 1845 suggests she was not infertile.

As I've mentioned, a more interesting study is the population of plural wives married to men other than Joseph Smith. Of the dozens of men who entered into plural marriages prior to Joseph's death, three appear to have engendered children in May 1843, the month when Celestial marriage was "openly" taught, including Emma's sealing to Joseph and Hyrum's embrace of Celestial marriage. Three additional children were engendered after the fall 1843 prohibition on practicing plural marriage appears to have been relaxed. As I say, this is a formal study I have not yet completed wrt to children born to plural wives after Joseph's death. But I provisionally suspect that few if any children were engendered with plural wives between June 27, 1844 and September 1844, when Brigham Young apparently gave the go ahead for men to marry plural wives, including becoming levitate husbands to Joseph's widows.

[Calm]

Rather than just listing off a bunch of data, interpretations and conclusions, you need to provide sources that allow for readers to check the accuracy and context of your claims.

So another CFR based on typical requirement for the board.  Want to save time, imagine you are writing an article for people who adore footnotes and thorough documentation..because many of us do.

Robert F Smith and Kevin Christensen have developed the posting their ideas to a fine art if you are looking for examples.

[Meg Stout]

21 minutes ago, Calm said:

One rule...never use a paraphase when a quote would be better...such as your Paraphase of Prince's paraphase of Elder Packer's allged comment about obfuscation.

That is a CFR btw.

Gregory Prince made the comment during a discussion at his home in the past month or so of his then-forthcoming book on Leonard Arrington (now published). It was clear Greg was referring to Elder Packer. I don't have an eidetic memory, so I could not produce a quote.

[Meg Stout]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

Rather than just listing off a bunch of data, interpretations and conclusions, you need to provide sources that allow for readers to check the accuracy and context of your claims.

So another CFR based on typical requirement for the board.  Want to save time, imagine you are writing an article for people who adore footnotes and thorough documentation..because many of us do.

Robert F Smith and Kevin Christensen have developed the posting their ideas to a fine art if you are looking for examples.

Hi Calm,

Thank you for the advice.

I understood you to be suggesting that a possible reason women didn't conceive until after Joseph's death is that a significant number (20%) of individuals who suffer from infertility are able later able to be fertile without assistance. Your question, I perceived, constituted a hypothesis that at face value appeared to negate the value of the reasonable conjecture I had put forward regarding Elvira Annie Cowles, suggesting that the lack of children from her marriage to Jonathan in December 1842 until conceiving in February 1845 was potentially a common and understandable lack of fertility followed by unimpeded fertility.

20% is significant. But the CDC (http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nhsr/nhsr067.pdf) says 6% of modern married women are currently unable to conceive after a year of unprotected married sex. According to a Time summary of these results, the higher infertility rate (8.5%) in the 1980s was associated with factors like smoking and pelvic inflammation, which should not have been common problems in Nauvoo. So let's say 6% of Nauvoo's women were infertile and 20% subsequently began to conceive without problem. 20% of 6% is roughly 1%. Suggesting that the reproductive history of Joseph's wives, specifically Elvira, is likely due to a condition experienced by only 1% of women seems an insufficient explanation.

Rather than initially going to the CDC's infertility statistics, I went to my book (many footnotes and thorough documentation) to answer your question. Unfortunately, my book did not answer the exact question you had posed, so I could not simply cut and paste the appropriate tables, paragraphs, and associated footnotes. So I was going deeper to my memory of the hours of research I had done into each of these women and their reproductive histories. As I mentioned, there are unknown hours of addition research that I plan to do, because the striking difference in fertility of plural wives during Joseph's life and after his death has been noted by others (e.g., Bergera in his Earliest Polygamists article, George D. Smith in his extensive appendix regarding the hundreds of Nauvoo polygamists and their wives and children).

In summary, I was attempting (apparently poorly) to demonstrate that it is implausible that infertility alone could explain the dearth of children conceived by plural wives during Joseph's lifetime, particularly paired with the men's ability to engender children with their legal wives and the plural wives' later ability to conceive after Joseph's death.

Edited June 24, 2016 by Meg Stout

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Meg Stout said:

Gregory Prince made the comment during a discussion at his home in the past month or so of his then-forthcoming book on Leonard Arrington (now published). It was clear Greg was referring to Elder Packer. I don't have an eidetic memory, so I could not produce a quote.

Then you should provide the context rather just stating it as if it were fact and not your memory of a conversation so people can decide how they will choose to weigh it.

[Meg Stout]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

Then you should provide the context rather just stating it as if it were fact and not your memory of a conversation so people can decide how they will choose to weigh it.

To clarify, this was not a conversation. It was a presentation of Greg's book to one of the study groups he holds in his home on roughly a monthly basis. So there were roughly three or four dozen people hearing this in addition to me.

I didn't attend Greg's presentation regarding his book at MHA. I suspect the manner in which the Church handles history in the past couple of years may have come up in that hour-long presentation as well.

[Calm]

There are multiple reasons that women might have delayed first full term pregnancies, some that I listed in the post I linked to.  It is not uncommon, for example, for multiple miscarriages to occur, especially during times of emotional and physical stress.  I know a number of women who had several before being able to have their first even with modern medicine helping out, something not available at that time.  But they didn't often record miscarriages so it appears as if the woman was never pregnant. One would need to make a survey of such issues, determine the norms for that era for the various circumstances, see if they might apply to each instance before drawing any credible conclusions limiting as the most likely reason a woman didn't have a child while living with her husband to be nonconsummation of the marriage.

The 20% related to those receiving modern fertility treatments.  There is no reason to use that number to apply to stats of that time period.  It was merely a demonstration that we should never assume a woman's abilty to bring a child to full term is consistent throughout her life.  For example my mother had two miscarriages, three kids every other year, a break of 7 years and the two more every other year.  I managed to get pregnant the first time we tried, but had to wait eight years to get my second.  I know another woman who had six or eight miscarriages and then after giving up, had two on her own within two years.

Perhaps an easier way would be if you can find some data on the general and local population indicating age of marriage and years of marriage at time of first birth and following births to see if there is enough of a pattern for the time period to be able to draw conclusions for one marriage based on another.  There are probably a few other variables you need to include.  Best to work with someone who knows what needs to be looked at and controlled for in these types of medical historical studies.  Until you demonstrate there is enough consistency statistically to extrapolate, your "rosetta stone" application is pure speculation and worthless, imo.

[Meg Stout]

13 minutes ago, Calm said:

There are multiple reasons that women might have delayed first full term pregnancies, some that I listed in the post I linked to.  It is not uncommon, for example, for multiple miscarriages to occur, especially during times of emotional and physical stress...

Until you demonstrate there is enough consistency statistically to extrapolate, your "rosetta stone" application is pure speculation and worthless, imo.

The most germane population includes Elvira's progenitors and her descendants. In none of those cases prior to 2000 of which I am personally familiar was there a history of initial infertility or miscarriage.

In the case of my daughter, her inability to conceive for years after marriage was a cause of significant anger, since prior generations have been able to conceive without any problem, often within the first month or week of engaging in sex.

To produce that data (the extensive multi-generational analysis of Elvira's progenitors and descendants), would start to involve reproductive details for living persons, and that is not something I feel comfortable doing. The public data is available at FamilySearch.

Why is it not "pure speculation and worthless" when people assert that Joseph had sex with his plural wives who had legal husbands?

Edited June 24, 2016 by Meg Stout

[Calm]

If they were to use speculation about the behaviour of one family and then used that speculation as the standard for other families as you have done, I would most definitely say the same thing.