Historical Monogamy Doctrine website

[Pyreaux]

9 minutes ago, Diamondhands69 said:

Marrying pregnant women?? Who’s getting them pregnant if it ain’t him? 

Depends. Joseph's first plural wife was Zina Jacobs, who was already 7 months pregnant with her husband, Henry Jacobs', baby Zebulon Jacobs. DNA matches too. 

[Calm]

20 minutes ago, Diamondhands69 said:

Marrying pregnant women?? Who’s getting them pregnant if it ain’t him? 

Their husbands.

[Tacenda]

13 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Depends. Joseph's first plural wife was Zina Jacobs, who was already 7 months pregnant with her husband, Henry Jacobs', baby Zebulon Jacobs. DNA matches too. 

Here's a thread from MD long ago about it. https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/60760-the-misinformation-around-zina-diantha-huntington-jacobs-smith-young/

 

[Diamondhands69]

25 minutes ago, Calm said:

Their husbands.

Sooo he is marrying other men’s wives? Where’d the hubby go? 

[webbles]

Some notes:

• #31 references Hyrum's speech on May 14, 1843 as a refutation against the angel.  I've always found that speech to be proof of the angel story.  If the angel story is true, then Hyrum would have been hearing about it.  At this time, he was anti-polygamy.  He wasn't yet introduced to it by Joseph.  So, he would be trying to root out the polygamy.  And in the course of that, he would hear the story.  So, he gets up on May 14 and publicly decries it.  If the angel story wasn't circulating, then I'm not sure Hyrum would have referenced it.
• #46 - there's a bit more to Fanny Alger than just what William McLellin said.  There's Oliver Cowdery's 1838 letter to his brother where he references it.  And the church court minutes where they discussed it.  Something absolutely did happen with Fanny Alger.  Whether it was an affair or a marriage, that is debatable.
• #47 - It makes it seem like Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith were buddy-buddies until after Joseph's death.  But Joseph had requested Sidney to be removed from the First Presidency in 1843.  And there's the cryptic journal notes on May 12-13, 1842 and June 28, 1842 which show a breakdown in their relationship and there is mention of Bennett.  This would be around the time that Bennett later said that Joseph was proposing to Nancy.
  • I think it is a bit of a red-herring to say that Brigham Young wasn't Joseph's right-hand man.  Sure, he wasn't.  But Brigham wasn't the first person to learn about polygamy marriage either.  So not sure why that matters.
• #49 - It is Sarah Noon and it would be nice to have documentation on this cohabitation.
• #74 - That graph is misleading.  Heber Kimball had a child in 1842 with his second wife (Sarah Noon).  I'm guessing it isn't in there because she says they are cohabitating and not an actual sealing, though the child was born in Nauvoo and not on the mission.  There's probably other children she is missing since she is only focusing on two men.

 

I think the biggest problem is #57.  She is not denying any of the sealings.  Just denying that sex was involved.  That feels like a stretch.  And unfortunately, she is trying to say that sealings were just a link between families, except that sealings between parents and children and the law of adoption had yet to be done (none of those sealings would occur until after Joseph died).  The first sealings were always between a man and a woman.  And one man to multiple women.  The idea of sealings that will link families together is a later understanding of the sealing power.

And I think Hyrum's sealings is the problem in her argument.  Hyrum was sealed to both his deceased spouse and his living spouse.  So, eternal polygamous relationships (not just sealings between people) were expected.  Not much of a leap to bring it into the mortal realm.

 

[webbles]

16 minutes ago, Diamondhands69 said:

Sooo he is marrying other men’s wives? Where’d the hubby go? 

It depends.  One husband was a known front.  He even demanded payment for it after the trek to Utah.  Other wives appear to have been sealed to Joseph and then stayed with their other husband.  And some wives appear to have left their current husband after the sealing with Joseph.  Lots of theories and I don't think any can be proven at this point.

[Diamondhands69]

2 minutes ago, webbles said:

It depends.  One husband was a known front.  He even demanded payment for it after the trek to Utah.  Other wives appear to have been sealed to Joseph and then stayed with their other husband.  And some wives appear to have left their current husband after the sealing with Joseph.  Lots of theories and I don't think any can be proven at this point.

Hmm. And this is a celestial practice supposedly. Wow

thanks

[webbles]

47 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

Depends. Joseph's first plural wife was Zina Jacobs, who was already 7 months pregnant with her husband, Henry Jacobs', baby Zebulon Jacobs. DNA matches too. 

Louisa Beaman was sealed a few months before Zina.  I think Joseph might have courted Zina before Louisa, though, and it was before she was married to Henry.

[Pyreaux]

31 minutes ago, webbles said:

Louisa Beaman was sealed a few months before Zina.  I think Joseph might have courted Zina before Louisa, though, and it was before she was married to Henry.

That's Information based on Joseph B Noble boasted claim, who makes other claims that checked out to be not true, while his scholarly grandson who wrote a biography says Joseph B Noble is terrible at remembering dates. Don places Louisa Beaman the next year's April 5th.

[webbles]

9 minutes ago, Pyreaux said:

That's Information based on Joseph B Noble boasted claim, who makes other claims that checked out to be not true, while his scholarly grandson who wrote a biography says Joseph B Noble is terrible at remembering dates. Don places Louisa Beaman the next year's April 5th.

Is this in a book or online?  Because https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/louisa-beaman/louisa-beaman-evidences/ shows 1841.

[Pyreaux]

29 minutes ago, webbles said:

Is this in a book or online?  Because https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/louisa-beaman/louisa-beaman-evidences/ shows 1841.

New research by Don Bradley, he lays it out in that video I posted om page 2.

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, Diamondhands69 said:

Hmm. And this is a celestial practice supposedly. Wow

thanks

Hm? You'd rather if he had to have wives that they shouldn't be just wives in name only, that they shouldn't be allowed to have and live with their own legal husbands and they shouldn't have children? I don't see how Joseph's Polygamy-lite is worse than historically-normal polygamy (Abraham-Brigham).

[Calm]

2 hours ago, webbles said:

Is this in a book or online?  Because https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/louisa-beaman/louisa-beaman-evidences/ shows 1841.

FAIR presentation has its transcript up.  The biggest point against it being 1841 is it was known he got dates wrong and gave multiple ones for the marriage, but he was quite clear about where it took place, which wasn’t built until 1842.

https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023/knowing-brother-joseph-how-the-historical-record-demonstrates-the-prophets-religious-sincerity

Quote

So, why is it that we put things in this order? Since it’s sort of anomalous, we want to ask the question, “Why do we believe this in the first place? Why do we put Louisa Beaman first?”

Now the person who performed the marriage, Joseph B. Noble (who was a brother-in-law of Louisa) reported in later statements that he performed Joseph Smith’s marriage to her, a claim for which we find further documentation. There is no reason to doubt he performed the marriage. However, he further claimed that this was Joseph’s first plural marriage, which is questionable, and that the marriage was done April 5, 1841 — which we will also question. (By the way, he also claimed to have the first child born in polygamy, and that’s demonstrably not the case; that was Heber C. Kimball.)…

Quote

Noble actually gives a variety of dates. The reason April 5, 1841 became the popular date is because that happened to be the date in the affidavit that Andrew Jenson had. But there are other affidavits, there are other statements, and they give two different days of the month, two different months (April and May), and three different years ranging from 1840 to 1842. In fact, the only thing these dates have in common is they are all in the spring.

The Crucial Detail

That detail — that they’re in the spring — is the card that brings the whole house down. In the Temple Lot Case, Noble was asked to testify, and he was all over the map and the dates that he gave for the marriage, but then they asked him, “Where did it occur? I know you don’t remember when it occurred, but how about where did it occur?” And he says, “it was in Nauvoo,” and the person says, “At whose house?” and he says, “At mine.” But research by Gary Bergera indicates that Noble “moved his family, including presumably Louisa, to Nauvoo sometime after September 1841.” I also found that the descendant biographer found the same thing and says the same thing in the biography:

“Later in 1841 [after September], the Noble family moved to Nauvoo and lived in a temporary log house prior to the construction of their permanent home.”[iii]

He says Noble moved his family, including presumably Louisa, to Nauvoo sometime after September 1841. And the descendant biographer says it was after that point that he built his house.

If Joseph was married to Louisa Beamann at the Noble’s house at Nauvoo, and the Noble family didn’t move to Nauvoo till after September 1841, and the marriage occurred in the spring, then the spring in which it occurred could not have been the spring of 1841. So, we move that one back to 1842 and that changes the order of these early marriages.

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Pyreaux said:

New research by Don Bradley, he lays it out in that video I posted om page 2.

Quit pushing the video ….FAIR had it first and better!  No interruptions from the peanut gallery and  a transcript.

 

 

[PortalToParis]

3 hours ago, webbles said:

• #46 - there's a bit more to Fanny Alger than just what William McLellin said.  There's Oliver Cowdery's 1838 letter to his brother where he references it.  And the church court minutes where they discussed it.  Something absolutely did happen with Fanny Alger.  Whether it was an affair or a marriage, that is debatable.

 

The video that was linked to that section was one by Hemlock Knots that talks of Oliver Cowdery's involvement, did you see it? What do you think of their assessment? (It's only about 15 minutes)

 

[PortalToParis]

3 hours ago, webbles said:

I think the biggest problem is #57.  She is not denying any of the sealings.  Just denying that sex was involved.  That feels like a stretch. 

From what I've heard, this theory of sealings isn't something that's only argued by this website, but has also been put forward by Richard Lyman Bushman and by the authors of josephsmithspolygamy.org and the Gospel Topics Essay, stating, "They may have created eternal family bonds or links;" and "Joseph Smith taught that a genuine plurality of husbands, called "polyandry," was adultery. There is no indication he was hypocritical in this regard."

I don't think anyone thinks that there was sex involved with Dr. Bernhisel's sealings, and those also took place during Joseph's life (in 1843):

Maria Bernhisel, sister; Brother Samuel’s wife, Catherine Kremer; Mary Shatto, (Aunt); Madalena Lupferd, (distant relative); Catherine Bernhisel, Aunt; Hannah Bower, Aunt; Elizabeth Sheively, Aunt; Hannah Bower, cousin; Maria Lawrence, (intimate friend); Sarah Crosby, intimate friend, [deceased] . . . ; Mary Ann Bloom, cousin.”                                                                                                                                                                        Brown, “Early Mormon Adoption Theology,”

 

 

[PortalToParis]

4 hours ago, webbles said:

Heber Kimball had a child in 1842 with his second wife (Sarah Noon). 

The graph says it's showing "confirmed polygamous children", and from what I've understood Sarah's child then was not confirmed to be Kimball's. I know that there's this excerpt from the Joseph Smith's Monogamy paper about it:

The data for the next child, Adelmon or Adelbert Kimball, is conflicted, but Adelmon was born about Oct 1842 and died Apr 1843. He was born to Sarah Peak, the first alleged plural wife to Heber C Kimball. Before Sarah married Heber, she was married to William Noon. William and Sarah moved to Nauvoo from England in 1841, but for unknown reasons, William abandoned his family and returned to England. William and Sarah are shown in various sources to have had three children. Their final child was named Adelmon, born in 1842, and died Apr 1843. 9 In other sources Sarah Peak is shown to have given birth to a child named Adelbert with her new husband, Heber C Kimball. This child is also shown to have been born in Oct 1842 and died in Apr 1843. However, it’s not possible for Sarah to have delivered two children who were born and died at the same time and fathered by two different men. The conclusion, then, is that it’s the same child (as some family histories show). Adelmon was either the son of William Noon and later claimed by Kimball to be his; or, Adelmon was Kimball’s son but was easily explained as the last child conceived with William Noon before William abandoned his family. http://anonymousbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/JosephSmithsMonogamy1.pdf

But whether you argue him to have been Kimball's child or not, either way there certainly still was a very large polygamous baby boom post-martyrdom. The graph only shows Brigham and Heber, so you're right that it's incomplete. The Joseph Smith's Monogamy paper says that there were a total of 14 polygamous children born during 1845-1846 -- but I think that only proves the point of her argument further.

(But I love that you took notes! As far as cohabitation documentation for Sarah Noon-not-Moon, I remember there being a letter written by her to Brigham Young that I read a while ago that I'll go try to find again.)

 

[webbles]

1 hour ago, PortalToParis said:

The video that was linked to that section was one by Hemlock Knots that talks of Oliver Cowdery's involvement, did you see it? What do you think of their assessment? (It's only about 15 minutes)

The video shows that there is more to Fanny Alger than just what William McLellin said.

I also want to point out that Joseph could easily have explained the "girl business" to the high council by stating that he was sealed to her.

[webbles]

52 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

I don't think anyone thinks that there was sex involved with Dr. Bernhisel's sealings, and those also took place during Joseph's life (in 1843):

Maria Bernhisel, sister; Brother Samuel’s wife, Catherine Kremer; Mary Shatto, (Aunt); Madalena Lupferd, (distant relative); Catherine Bernhisel, Aunt; Hannah Bower, Aunt; Elizabeth Sheively, Aunt; Hannah Bower, cousin; Maria Lawrence, (intimate friend); Sarah Crosby, intimate friend, [deceased] . . . ; Mary Ann Bloom, cousin.”                                                                                                                                                                        Brown, “Early Mormon Adoption Theology,”

 

 

Dr. Bernhisel's sealings were to deceased woman.  None of those were alive.  You can see the journal entry at https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/journal-december-1842-june-1844-book-3-15-july-1843-29-february-1844/152.  It says:

Quote

The following named deceased persons were sealed to me (John M. Bernhisel) on Oct. 26th, 1843 by Pres. Joseph Smith.

You'll notice that all of them are women.  All the sealings that Joseph were performed or authorized was between a man and 1 or more women, either deceased or alive.

55 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

From what I've heard, this theory of sealings isn't something that's only argued by this website, but has also been put forward by Richard Lyman Bushman and by the authors of josephsmithspolygamy.org and the Gospel Topics Essay, stating, "They may have created eternal family bonds or links;" and "Joseph Smith taught that a genuine plurality of husbands, called "polyandry," was adultery. There is no indication he was hypocritical in this regard."

That is dealing with the polyandrous relationships.  And it isn't a general explanation for all them or for the rest of the wives.  You need to look at each of the women.

For instance, one of his wives is Agnes Coolbrith Smith.  She was the widow of Joseph's brother, Don Carlos.  How does marrying his brother's wife create a family bond or link any stronger than the brotherly bond he already has?  This marriage looks more like a levirate marriage.

Fanny Young (Brigham Young's sister) looks like it might be a family bond or just being nice to a woman who worried that she wouldn't have a husband after her death (her husband had died as a non-member).

Sarah Ann Whitney (daughter of Newel Whitney) was possibly a family bond but also possibly was a true marriage.  The purported revelation (earliest copy is circa 1870) telling Newel how to perform the ceremony talks about their (Joseph and Sarah) posterity.  Then, oddly, she married Joseph Kingsbury a few months later.  He (Joseph Kingsbury) appears to have been a "front husband" and would later send a bill to President John Taylor:

Quote

Nov 23, 1880, Joseph C. Kingsbury asked John Taylor that an $8000 debt to the church be remitted in consideration of services he had rendered in Nauvoo, and after leaving there, to the Prophet Joseph, in keeping one of his wives, Sarah Whitney, daughter of Bishop N. K. Whitney.

 

[Diamondhands69]

3 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Hm? You'd rather if he had to have wives that they shouldn't be just wives in name only, that they shouldn't be allowed to have and live with their own legal husbands and they shouldn't have children? I don't see how Joseph's Polygamy-lite is worse than historically-normal polygamy (Abraham-Brigham).

He shouldn’t marry other mens wives. Pack it up however you want that is adultery right there if he had sex with any who were married to other men. Also I believe dc 132 states specifically a women is only to have one husband. 
 

I guess that what you get when you get caught doing all this and have to get revelation all if a sudden to justify it. 
 

his whole program was as messed up as a football bat. 

[webbles]

1 hour ago, PortalToParis said:

But whether you argue him to have been Kimball's child or not, either way there certainly still was a very large polygamous baby boom post-martyrdom. The graph only shows Brigham and Heber, so you're right that it's incomplete. The Joseph Smith's Monogamy paper says that there were a total of 14 polygamous children born during 1845-1846 -- but I think that only proves the point of her argument further.

There was a baby boom but that is kind of expected.  Joseph didn't marry his first polygamous non-polyandrous wife until early 1842.  By the end of 1842, there would be 5 men who had married a polygamous wife (besides Joseph, the other 4 only married one polygamous wife).  So, it wouldn't be very likely to find many children in 1842 or early 1843 just because of how few marriages there were.  They would also be trying to figure out how to make the marriages work (such as how does the other wife visit without gossip?).  Then in 1843, we have more marriages so you should expect to see a few more babies.  1844 has even more marriages and so the number of babies should increase.  And it will keep increasing.  The fact that her chart doesn't show any of the babies before the martyrdom makes it look like everyone was waiting for Joseph to die before having kids.

[webbles]

11 minutes ago, Diamondhands69 said:

He shouldn’t marry other mens wives. Pack it up however you want that is adultery right there if he had sex with any who were married to other men. Also I believe dc 132 states specifically a women is only to have one husband. 
 

I guess that what you get when you get caught doing all this and have to get revelation all if a sudden to justify it. 
 

his whole program was as messed up as a football bat. 

I'd recommend you read the transcript from Don Bradley's talk at https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/conference/august-2023/knowing-brother-joseph-how-the-historical-record-demonstrates-the-prophets-religious-sincerity

He actually left the church because he felt that Joseph was a fraud.  He continued as a researcher of Joseph Smith and was asked by Brian Hale to find all of the sources dealing with polygamy (Brian Hale wrote a 3 volume series on polygamy and talks about all of this nitty gritty stuff.  Highly recommend).  In the course of researching about polygamy, Don changed his mind about Joseph Smith.  He rejoined the church because he no longer saw Joseph as a fraud.

[PortalToParis]

26 minutes ago, webbles said:

Quote

The following named deceased persons were sealed to me (John M. Bernhisel) on Oct. 26th, 1843 by Pres. Joseph Smith.

You'll notice that all of them are women.  All the sealings that Joseph were performed or authorized was between a man and 1 or more women, either deceased or alive.

Ah, I was not aware that the sealings were posthumous. Though they of course still were not being sealed to him as "eternal wives". A man-woman sealing could have been about sealing women to nuclear/extended/adopted priesthood families, rather than being a kind of marriage. Why couldn't every sealing performed between two people who were not legally married have been a platonic sealing? I understand that's not the long-held narrative, but why *couldn't* it be a possible alternate narrative of what actually happened?

32 minutes ago, webbles said:

Nov 23, 1880, Joseph C. Kingsbury asked John Taylor that an $8000 debt to the church be remitted in consideration of services he had rendered in Nauvoo, and after leaving there, to the Prophet Joseph, in keeping one of his wives, Sarah Whitney, daughter of Bishop N. K. Whitney.

I understand why this is taken as evidence of Joseph's polygamy, but I can *also* see how this could be an example of polygamy being posthumously attributed to Joseph Smith. It wasn't until 1880 that he asked for compensation, when sealings and church marriages were being openly taught to be equal-and-the-same things by the church, even superseding legal marriages. The church was teaching that legal husbands had no claim to their wives in the next life if the wife was sealed to another man; that the legal husband was only a 'placeholder'. Kingsbury could very well have been demanding payment out of nothing more than defiance to what was being taught.

Overall, I still think that any much-later recollections or dealings regarding Joseph's polygamy can be explained by later false beliefs and teachings mixed with some people lying. (Regardless of which side you pick to be on, some people were lying.) I can see why others would draw a different conclusion of history than this website does, but I still think the site gives a *possible* alternate narrative, (though of course it's not comprehensive with only a-hundred-or-so section points.)

Though that's all history stuff, what did you think of its arguments of polygamy not being a doctrinally sound practice?

[PortalToParis]

42 minutes ago, webbles said:

The fact that her chart doesn't show any of the babies before the martyrdom makes it look like everyone was waiting for Joseph to die before having kids.

I think there were two other maybe-polygamous children born previous to the martyrdom, one of whom died in infancy, and the other doesn't have the mother confirmed as a polygamous wife:

The birth of the Clayton child is supported by some historical evidence. There is an entry in William Clayton’s journal on Feb 18, 1844 referencing the birth of a child to Margaret Moon, Clayton’s first plural wife... George Noble, was born just a few months before Joseph died. There is, however, very little information to analyze the parents’ relationship. The mother, Sarah Noble, died in 1847 while attempting to trek west... He is shown in multiple histories as being the first child born from a polygamous marriage...

But I think the other parts of the Joseph Smith's Monogamy paper argue the point well:

...it’s puzzling that over the course of 3 years (1842-­1844) there were 25 men working to father children with 40 different women and only 2 children could be mustered. As an example of this anomaly, consider the case of Brigham Young. Young sired 57 children throughout his life but was unable to produce a polygamous child until a year after Joseph died despite allegedly entering polygamy in 1842 and having 4 polygamous wives at the time of Joseph’s death in June 1844. By contrast, Brigham’s legal wife, Mary Ann Angell, bore him a child in 1842 and 1844. If it’s true that these men were practicing plural marriage at Joseph’s behest, there should have been many births during this time period. George Reynolds, a secretary to the First Presidency, hypothesized about the low birth rate as follows:

"The facts that you refer to are almost as great a mystery to us as they are to you; but the reason generally assigned by the [plural] wives themselves is, that owing to the peculiar circumstances by which they were surrounded, they were so nervous and in such constant fear that they did not conceive." Reynolds does not dispute the lack of children. Instead he asserts that conception was simply prevented by fear. However, it seems implausible that nearly all 40 women would be so distressed over a period of 3 years that conceiving was virtually impossible. As Bergara points out, during this same period of time before Joseph’s death, there were 14 children born by the legal wives of the alleged polygamists. Consider also that this same group of polygamous men would produce 14 births from their polygamous wives (from 1845-­1846) very shortly after Joseph died. If fear was enough to prevent conception while Joseph was alive, it seems unlikely that the persecution and violence that followed his death would lead to the collective reduction of fear sufficient to allow conception. It seems more likely that those who practiced polygamy during Joseph’s lifetime either abstained from sexual intercourse or took other steps to avoid conception. The stunning lack of polygamous children during Joseph’s lifetime and subsequent explosion of polygamous children after his death make more sense in a setting where some were secretly practicing plural marriage without Joseph’s consent.

 http://anonymousbishop.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/JosephSmithsMonogamy1.pdf

[webbles]

21 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

Ah, I was not aware that the sealings were posthumous. Though they of course still were not being sealed to him as "eternal wives". A man-woman sealing could have been about sealing women to nuclear/extended/adopted priesthood families, rather than being a kind of marriage. Why couldn't every sealing performed between two people who were not legally married have been a platonic sealing? I understand that's not the long-held narrative, but why *couldn't* it be a possible alternate narrative of what actually happened?

You don't know that they weren't sealed to him as "eternal wives".  It could be either way.

The problem with saying that sealings could be platonic was that there were no sealings between two men, two women, father/child, mother/child.  The only sealings were between man and women.  I think a better explanation is that sealings == marriage (either in this life or the next).  The concept of sealings expanding beyond marriage didn't occur till after Joseph died when Brigham was inspired to start the "Law of Adoption".  Then, that was later changed to have sealings between parents and children.

27 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

I understand why this is taken as evidence of Joseph's polygamy, but I can *also* see how this could be an example of polygamy being posthumously attributed to Joseph Smith. It wasn't until 1880 that he asked for compensation, when sealings and church marriages were being openly taught to be equal-and-the-same things by the church, even superseding legal marriages. The church was teaching that legal husbands had no claim to their wives in the next life if the wife was sealed to another man; that the legal husband was only a 'placeholder'. Kingsbury could very well have been demanding payment out of nothing more than defiance to what was being taught.

Kingsbury never really considered her his wife.  After Joseph died, she was married to Heber C. Kimball.  He never had claim on her.

29 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

Overall, I still think that any much-later recollections or dealings regarding Joseph's polygamy can be explained by later false beliefs and teachings mixed with some people lying. (Regardless of which side you pick to be on, some people were lying.) I can see why others would draw a different conclusion of history than this website does, but I still think the site gives a *possible* alternate narrative, (though of course it's not comprehensive with only a-hundred-or-so section points.)

I agree that the "section points" is a really bad way to lay it out.  The points bounce all over the place and aren't coherent.  And sure, I don't have a problem with people who think that Joseph Smith wasn't a polygamous.  But I find it awkward to both argue that he was sealed to women while arguing that he wasn't married to them.  Especially when she also accepted at least one polygamist: Hyrum.  She accepts Hyrum's sealing to both his dead wife and his living wife.  That makes Hyrum an eternal polygamist.

32 minutes ago, PortalToParis said:

Though that's all history stuff, what did you think of its arguments of polygamy not being a doctrinally sound practice?

I'll go through them but I didn't find them very strong.  It isn't really new.  The RLDS argued much of that for over a century.