Why 1820? Doesn't 1823 Make More Sense?

[webbles]

41 minutes ago, Frank11 said:

The church has already officially admitted everything for 10 years, the only thing still in dispute is who he had sex with or not. But I don't think that sex is so relevant in this case. 
You're right: “That's just ludacris.” 

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2014/11/11/363324816/mormon-church-admits-founder-joseph-smith-had-up-to-40-wives

I think linking directly to the article on the church's website would be better for Dario_M - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

Also, the article doesn't admit that Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives.  There's no mention of a count of his wives in the article.  Not sure why NPR thought that the article said that.  The article just says that Joseph married several women and by the time of his death, there were approximately 29 men and 50 women who had started practicing polygamy.

[Tacenda]

13 hours ago, Dario_M said:

Pardon? Why do you think that?🤷‍♀️

I find it difficult to understand yeah. 

That's what has been written in certen documents. You don't know or those aaccusations are true or false. You haven't been there 200 years ago to witness Joseph Smith being together with 30 wives. There's also no video proof. Because camera's didn't didn't exist yet at that time. 

Seriously... everyone can write something about another person. Especially if they don't like that person. And Joseph Smith wasn't the most pupulair person. He had a lot of enemies. What let his enemies to write something bad about him to bring him in a bad light? Or exaggerate his situations? 

Or another explenation. It can be a false testimony. 

Maybe you should look up the meaning of the word "fraud" ones again. 

I just wonder. How do you know their reasoning? Or do you have the ability to look into their heads perhaps? 

There are plenty of fanatics who later on criticize everything. And i mean just every-thing about the LDS community. Ones so fanatic in the church. Then suddenly they hate the church leave the church and make it their mission to spread as much negativaty as possible. It is that super strong change of mind of those folks that i find hard to follow. 

 

They had photography back then. This photo turned up not too long ago of Joseph Smith, according to this article. 

https://www.thechurchnews.com/2022/7/22/23278321/church-statement-photo-of-joseph-smith-found-in-locket/

[Frank11]

1 hour ago, webbles said:

I think linking directly to the article on the church's website would be better for Dario_M - https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng

Also, the article doesn't admit that Joseph Smith had up to 40 wives.  There's no mention of a count of his wives in the article.  Not sure why NPR thought that the article said that.  The article just says that Joseph married several women and by the time of his death, there were approximately 29 men and 50 women who had started practicing polygamy.

You have to dig a layer deeper, as treasure hunters would say:

Footnote 24: Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40. See Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 2:272–73.

 

[Devobah]

Wow we got off track very quickly…

[Dario_M]

10 hours ago, Frank11 said:

The church has already officially admitted everything 

I have no idea why though. Bevore those 10 years nobody in the church didn't even knew this either. The church probably just agreed with all those angry people at some point because they where under all that presure. But in my opinion the church can not say for sure or this is all true or not. The Church may have many things, like temples everywhere around the world. But they are not in possesion of a time machine to get back in time 200 years in time. 

[Dario_M]

9 hours ago, Tacenda said:

They had photography back then. This photo turned up not too long ago of Joseph Smith, according to this article. 

https://www.thechurchnews.com/2022/7/22/23278321/church-statement-photo-of-joseph-smith-found-in-locket/

Oh cool! That photo looks a lot like Joseph Smith. I didn't know that they had photography at that time. Must be a really new discovery at that time though. They still did potraits a lot more then taking photo's. 

Edited December 5, 2024 by Dario_M

[Dario_M]

13 hours ago, webbles said:

Brigham Young had 56 wives.

56 wives? I don't believe that. 

13 hours ago, webbles said:

Most of the women that are considered to be Joseph's wives was documented by Andrew Jenson and Joseph Fielding Smith (son of Hyrum Smith, nephew of Joseph Smith).  Both of them probably started documenting the wives because of statements by Joseph Smith III (son of Joseph Smith, cousin of Joseph Fielding Smith) that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. 

Okay then he injoyed more then 1 wive. Seriously...i don't really care. Till this day there are still some members of the LDS community who practise plural marriage. 

13 hours ago, webbles said:

So, a lot of the proof is from the women themselves. 

They still could have lied. But to be honest i don't really care that Joseph Smith had more then 1 wife. This doesn't turns me against the LDS community. But let me tell you 1 thing. I'm not like the church getting myself pressured be nobody to admit any of this stuff. I don't let myself pressure by nobody to feel a serten way, act a serten way, or let myself be influenced by others. So i'm not gonna admit any of the things some of you are telling me right now. It also doesn't change my ways. I still believe in the church and in Joseph Smiths revelations. And that's the end of it. 

13 hours ago, webbles said:

For example, Zina Diantha Huntington was married to Henry Jacobs by Joseph Smith on March 7, 1841.  While married, she was sealed to Joseph Smith on October 27, 1841.  She later became the third Relief Society President (after Emma Smith and Eliza Snow) and she also was a wife of Brigham Young.  She was well known to be sealed to Joseph while she was alive and people interviewed her.  She signed an affidavit on May 1, 1869 that said that she was sealed to Joseph Smith.  In an interview in 1898, she also affirmed that she was sealed to Joseph Smith.

People didn't do interviews at that time because they had no camera's (only photograpy) to film it all or any other medium to record anything that can be said in an interview. The only thing they had where scriptures. Scriptures that claimt that Joseph Smith married wives from other marriages. Those are only words on a piece of paper. How reliable are those pieces of paper? Not very reliable in my opinion. So i don't let that affect me. Futher more i'm not gonna react on any more comments about this subject for now. It ruins this actual topic that wasn't even supposed to be about this stuff. I just said something and yet again i get ex mormons after me for it. It makes me nerves to feel like i constantly need to defend my point of view. Yesterday i had a really bad panic attack because of all the emotions i got by having this disscusion. 

Edited December 5, 2024 by Dario_M

[Dario_M]

7 hours ago, Devobah said:

Wow we got off track very quickly…

Yeah i'm so sorry. I didn't start it though. But at least i'm gonna stop having this discussion about this subject futhermore in this topic. 

Edited December 5, 2024 by Dario_M

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

56 wives? I don't believe that. 

You are likely imagining the way kings and others had harems. Plural marriage was not like that. Sometimes there were sexual relationships, sometimes not.  Brigham had 57 children with 16 of his wives.  Sometimes he was just sealed to them and didn’t live with them.  He married some because they asked him to be married for some reason.  Others he persuaded to marry him and possibly even pressured some, but plenty of women told him “no” including some who later changed their minds.

There were also a number of divorces for those who practiced plural marriage which were relatively easy for the women to get, the men not so easy.  Google says ten of Brigham’s wives divorced him.  I know of only one that was nasty, but my opinion was she was an exception in many ways, she had already married, had two children and divorced that husband before her family told her to marry Young.  It seems her reason to marry him was the financial benefit…which was an acceptable reason at that time when women were not allowed to be very independent.  She also insisted on having a large property of her own.  He had no children with her.  She divorced BY after a few years.  She went on to another marriage where he had been married when she stayed in their home, whether or not anything happened that led to him getting divorced and marrying her is unknown as far as I know.  She later divorced him.  She is probably the best known as she wrote an anti Mormon book and gave lectures for a time (probably the smartest way to support herself and her two children) and others used her story for their books.

For Brigham the 56 number would have been the total number, not at one time.  Though he had more than enough at one time to raise eyebrows, I am not trying to downplay the fact he had a massive number of wives, just trying to be accurate.  It is extremely well known in the Church and I thought was the most commonly known thing about the early Church known all over the world.

It is best to read the Church’s essay on it and then the Saints text that I think I pointed you to before.  It will tell the story in a faithful way with good historical evidence.

My view:  The vast majority of Saints participating in plural marriage were marrying because they saw it as a command from God and believed that eternal posterity (having children and them having children forever and ever) was the purpose of eternal existence…which got understood to mean it was good for men to have more wives to have more children and the wives benefited from being part of the husband’s eternal kingdom.

Women even came at times and asked to be married to many leaders and wealthy men, especially single female immigrants that lacked families to help support them.  Parents wanted their children married/sealed to spiritual leaders as well as they saw this would help their families in the eternities.

The Church was new and not all revelation was clear and some of the reasoning filling in the gaps of knowledge went a bit wonky imo.

Brigham Young’s marriages are pretty well documented. 

Wikipedia has a chart of those mostly confirmed.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Brigham_Young's_wives

If you are interested, the best way to learn this is reading the Church essay and then if you want, come here and ask for what you don’t understand rather than insisting stuff isn’t true.

Edited December 5, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

Till this day there are still some members of the LDS community who practise plural marriage. 

If by this you mean when their first wives are dead or they are divorced, but still sealed, that is accurate.  If you mean that they are involved in more than one living marriage, that is wrong. They would be excommunicated if this was discovered.

[Calm]

1 hour ago, Dario_M said:

People didn't do interviews at that time because they had no camera's (only photograpy) to film it all or any other medium to record anything that can be said in an interview.

They wrote down interviews, had court testimonies documented, wrote in journals, told family members. 

Specifics can be debated, but those who deny that Joseph had any plural wives are ignoring some quality documentation.  
 

As far as we know there were no children from these relationships, so the marriages/sealings were unlikely to have been undertaken because Joseph was crazy about sex.

My view:  Joseph wanted to create a celestial family that imo included those he cared about as family even when he wasn’t related to them by blood…he wanted to be brothers with them in more than just name and he thought he could do this by marrying their sisters and daughters and even in the beginning their wives (I doubt he had sex with them as the first women he was sealed to were mostly married and quite pregnant at the time.)

[Frank11]

On 12/3/2024 at 4:52 PM, Dario_M said:

* That's what some people who leave the church wanna believe (or better say, use that as an excuse in my opinion). Just as an excuse to leave the church. Well i find that those people better just be truthfull towards others and themselves, and admit the real reasons why they leave the church (wich can be anything, doesn't really matter what reason it is). But don't spread lies about Joseph Smith and use that as the reason you know (btw i'm not talking about you! But some of the individuals who are doing that). I find that so unclassy.

22 minutes ago, Dario_M said:

Yeah i'm so sorry. I didn't start it though. 

You actually opened another topic with your comment above*, but I think this one is hugely important for the LDS community and Mormon families.
It shows that even among faithful members, very different historical beliefs continue to exist. If there is not even some agreement on the historical basis, there is no way to evaluate the facts.

[Calm]

2 hours ago, Dario_M said:

Bevore those 10 years nobody in the church didn't even knew this either.

You are mistaken about this.  Scholarship in this area has been taken place all along.

Tons of people knew it when I was young.  Polygamy was a point of pride for many members, we were always comparing which polygamous families we all came from and that included back to Nauvoo (Theodore Turley for me, he lived across the street from Joseph and would go out on his porch at times to hear Joseph preach…or so the family story goes) .  Of course it was understood if Joseph was telling his friends to be plurally married, he would be setting an example.

  My guess is extensive discussion of Joseph’s plural marriages fell out of favor in the 70s and 80s when we had a surge in new converts who didn’t have this link to history plus Emma, his first wife, got popular and their marriage was portrayed as a beautiful romance (which it might have been, but it was rocky too), the ideal marriage.  Since they fought a lot over plural marriage, people avoided talking about it as much.  But it never completely disappeared.

Emma didn’t have a great reputation when I was young because she hadn’t come west and then supported her son as president of the RLDS church, which we weren’t friendly with at the time.

Joseph’s marriages have always been taught in the Church History manuals for college kids, though briefly in the one previous to Saints, first published in 1989.  Had quite detailed versions in the one before that one though, iirc my husband took the class in early 80s, can’t remember if we were dating or married at the time.  The textbook had a chapter dealing with it, including the time where Joseph went through sealings twice because he didn’t want to tell Emma he had already been sealed to the two young women she chose for him during a period she was resigned to the idea.

And it has always been talked about in the wards I have been in.  It does not surprise me if there are wards elsewhere in the world where such discussions didn’t take place as teacher manuals discouraged much discussion about plural marriage even when discussing Sec 132.

Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness made plural marriage a popular topic again imo and that was published in 1997.

I still am confused that some people could read Sec 132 and not realize that Joseph was involved in plural marriage.  It makes no sense to me.

Now if they weren’t members and thought Sec 132 was a fraud, it made sense, but if they accepted eternal marriage because they believed the scripture, it really surprises me they didn’t pick it up since God is giving Joseph instructions.

Edited December 5, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

An example of the Church teaching about Joseph’s wives from 1973:

Quote

Many of the experiences Eliza had yearned for as a woman had been denied her or thwarted. Her beloved husband, the Prophet Joseph Smith, had been cruelly murdered after only two short years of marriage. 

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1973/09/eliza-r-snow-first-lady-of-the-pioneers?lang=eng#title1

Here is another from 1978:

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1978/12/the-newel-k-whitney-family?lang=eng#p14
 

“10 In obedience to the command of the living prophet, Newel and Elizabeth Ann gave their daughter Sarah Ann in marriage to Joseph Smith. Nearly a year later, Joseph Smith dictated the general revelation about the eternity of marriage and the nature of plural marriage, and Newel asked to have his own copy, a providential request, since the first copy was destroyed. Thus, Newel’s desire to have the word of the Lord has blessed the entire Church by preserving what is now Section 132 [D&C 132] in the Doctrine and Covenants.11

The Whitneys gave their daughter into the system of plural marriage and received into their family other plural wives. Newel K. Whitney was almost fifty years old when he entered plural marriage.”

Edited December 5, 2024 by Calm

[Calm]

Just came across an article from David Bitton, a historian, from ‘77 that paints a more realistic picture of life in the early Church, including plural marriage, though brief given the length of the article.  Doesn’t mention Joseph’s marriages, but does mention Nauvoo.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1977/02/great-grandfathers-family?lang=eng

Quote

Then, along with economic privation and an absent father, was for some the institution of plural marriage. Starting during Joseph Smith’s own lifetime but limited to a few dozen families until its official announcement in 1852, plural marriage brought a powerful new challenge to the equanimity of Latter-day Saint family life. Never could it be said that a majority of Latter-day Saint families were polygamous families. If each mother and her children are considered as a single family unit, the percentage reaches something like 10 or 15 percent. These families, by and large, tended to include the most prominent families within Latter-day Saint society.

While there were many examples of success, of harmony, of love, of delightful “aunty” relationships with the plural wives of one’s father, it should also be said that for some the plurality of wives created tensions and unhappiness. “My wives have not spoken to each other for many months,” wrote one husband in 1856. We do not have a thorough study of divorces in Mormon families, polygamous and monogamous, but we do know that permanent separation ended some nineteenth-century marriages. Obviously plural marriage for most meant even more fatherly absence than had existed before. In the words of Professor Eugene Campbell of Brigham Young University, “Many of the normal problems of marriage, such as finance, personality adjustment, sexual relationships, jealousies, child-rearing and discipline were all magnified in plural marriages.”

These factors—those presenting special challenges to Mormon families—are not the whole picture. But they are part of the picture. In the actual recorded experiences of family life we discover, not surprisingly, that behind our surface impression of harmonious, loving families—the families of the family portraits existed most of the challenges which threaten family life today. The point is that in the past century neither the family life of Americans and Europeans generally, nor that of the Latter-day Saints, was as free of problems as we have tended to believe.

 

[Tony uk]

Hello

 

I do not wish to get involved in this topic to much, as I admit, it is not my area of influence. If there were any marriages, possibly more out of convenience rather than in the more traditional context of marriage that people are more familiar with. Maybe if a female had lost her husband, in the circumstances of death. Then maybe Mr Smith or Mr Young 'Married' to take care of them financially or through housing.  Either way taking care of the widow so to speak. Where as in this day and age, there are other ways for people to be looked after.

[Calm]

42 minutes ago, Tony uk said:

Hello

 

I do not wish to get involved in this topic to much, as I admit, it is not my area of influence. If there were any marriages, possibly more out of convenience rather than in the more traditional context of marriage that people are more familiar with. Maybe if a female had lost her husband, in the circumstances of death. Then maybe Mr Smith or Mr Young 'Married' to take care of them financially or through housing.  Either way taking care of the widow so to speak. Where as in this day and age, there are other ways for people to be looked after.

While there was some of this (and in the past this reason was used a lot to explain it, I think members my parents’ age and younger felt more comfortable with that idea), it wasn’t the primary reason in the majority of plural marriages, both for leaders and the ‘common folk’.  In the journals of my ancestors, in several cases it was the first wife who went to the husband and told him it was time to take a second wife and told go talk to the Bishop about it.  In one case she even picked the woman, who she felt was respectable and would be a good companion.

In Evidences and Reconciliations, a quite popular book back in its day for LDS shelves by John Widtsoe, which I inherited he discounts all usual the speculations as there weren’t actually a lot of unmarried women or widows around according to the census, for one example from memory.  

It was likely there were a few cases of these among Brigham’s family as he was married to some of Joseph’s widows and both Joseph and Brigham married women who were older than they were iirc.

In most church writings it is described as a command of God and that was why they did it.

 

Edited December 5, 2024 by Calm

[Tony uk]

6 minutes ago, Calm said:

While there was some of this (and in the past this reason was used a lot), it wasn’t the primary reason in the majority of plural marriages, both for leaders and the ‘common folk’.  In the journals of my ancestors, in several cases it was the first wife who went to the husband and told him it was time to take a second wife and told go talk to the Bishop about it.  In one case she even picked the woman, who she felt was respectable and would be a good companion.

It was likely there were a few cases of these among Brigham’s family as he was married to some of Joseph’s widows and both Joseph and Brigham married women who were older than they were iirc.

In most church writings it is described as a command of God and that was why they did it.

 

Many thanks for that Calm. I am learning as I go. 

[Frank11]

7 minutes ago, Tony uk said:

 If there were any marriages, possibly more out of convenience rather than in the more traditional context of marriage that people are more familiar with. Maybe if a female had lost her husband, in the circumstances of death. Then maybe Mr Smith or Mr Young 'Married' to take care of them financially or through housing.  Either way taking care of the widow so to speak. Where as in this day and age, there are other ways for people to be looked after.

For Mr. Young, one could perhaps accept this, although it does not apply to the case of Zina Huntington either.
It could only be applied to Mr. Smith in a few cases. The women who were already married were provided for and the women/teenagers who lived with their parents were also provided for.
I think if a society can set up a banking system, then they could have set up a care system for the needy through the church. 

[Tony uk]

9 minutes ago, Frank11 said:

For Mr. Young, one could perhaps accept this, although it does not apply to the case of Zina Huntington either.
It could only be applied to Mr. Smith in a few cases. The women who were already married were provided for and the women/teenagers who lived with their parents were also provided for.
I think if a society can set up a banking system, then they could have set up a care system for the needy through the church. 

I accept what you say, I was speaking from the outside looking in.

[Tony uk]

I learntl as I go, and open to more knowledgeable people on the subject informing me about the correct way. 

[Tacenda]

6 hours ago, Dario_M said:

Oh cool! That photo looks a lot like Joseph Smith. I didn't know that they had photography at that time. Must be a really new discovery at that time though. They still did portraits a lot more then taking photo's. 

Yes, for sure. This is a fairly recent discovery. I never thought I'd see an actual photo of Joseph Smith. There are many of the apostles but not of him until I think now, which I found odd. Why there were so many of others but not Joseph. 

[teddyaware]

17 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Yes, for sure. This is a fairly recent discovery. I never thought I'd see an actual photo of Joseph Smith. There are many of the apostles but not of him until I think now, which I found odd. Why there were so many of others but not Joseph. 

Daguerreotype photography was a very new technology in the early 1940s. The rarity of the daguerreotype process in the early 1840’s is the reason why there are few existing daguerreotype photographs of anybody or anything from the early 1840’s. Add to this the fact that Nauvoo was a frontier backwater in the early 1840s, and the fact that most of the apostles who were alive when Joseph Smith was killed lived to see the 1850s, when daguerreotype photography had become much more popular and available, and the non-mystery mystery is solved.

[webbles]

6 hours ago, Dario_M said:

They still could have lied. But to be honest i don't really care that Joseph Smith had more then 1 wife. This doesn't turns me against the LDS community. But let me tell you 1 thing. I'm not like the church getting myself pressured be nobody to admit any of this stuff. I don't let myself pressure by nobody to feel a serten way, act a serten way, or let myself be influenced by others. So i'm not gonna admit any of the things some of you are telling me right now. It also doesn't change my ways. I still believe in the church and in Joseph Smiths revelations. And that's the end of it. 

I am a member of the church.  I also believe in Joseph Smith's revelations and in the church.  I don't have a problem with Joseph Smith's polygamy.  I believe he was commanded by God to practice polygamy.  I don't see the church "admitting" to polygamy.  As Calm showed, there has always been resources put out by the church about his polygamy.  We just rarely talked about it in Sunday School so many members didn't learn about it.  But I knew about his polygamy since I was at least 8 years old.

You can believe in Joseph Smith and also accept that he practiced polygamy.  I think most members of the church do.

[Dario_M]

38 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

Yes, for sure. This is a fairly recent discovery. I never thought I'd see an actual photo of Joseph Smith. There are many of the apostles but not of him until I think now, which I found odd. Why there were so many of others but not Joseph. 

How did you find out that Joseph Smith had a real photo from himself? 📸