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Zina Diantha Hunington Jacobs


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Posted

Here is a chronology timeline of when Brigham Young, Joseph Smith, Henry Jacob, and Zina Huntington were born:

Brigham Young was born on June 1, 1801

Joseph Smith was born on December 23, 1805

Henry Jacobs was born on May 5, 1817

Zina Huntington was born on January 31, 1821

As we can see from this, Henry Jacobs was a lot more of Zina

Posted
Brackite said: And I find it very offensive that a Man who already had at least 12 wives of his own has to go out and steal another man
Posted
Perhaps the real reason why Henry's other marriages didn't last was because Henry truly never got over Zina. Henry was truly in love with his wife Zina, even after she left him (probably with Brigham Young persuading her to) to be with the Big time Polygamous Man Brigham Young. Henry also loved his two little boys a lot.

So now we are doing the thinking for Henry, too? I'll bet those other marriages didn't last because he snored.

And I find it very offensive that a Man who already had at least 12 wives of his own has to go out and steal another man
Posted
Henry Jacobs did Not deserve to have his family taken away from him.

Any decent man would have just handcuffed Zina to the kitchen stove.....uppity woman.

Oh puhleeze :P

Is this the new spin, Zina was a sassy independant woman? There was no divorce, therefore Zina had no right to take Henry's children away from him. Even sassy independent women don't do that.

Posted
This is a classic example of "presentism" where destruction of a press seems incredible to us today, yet in those days there were 18 other printing presses destroyed about the same time as the Nauvoo press. Indeed a couple of years earlier the LDS press was destroyed. Seems like it was "the thing to do" back then. Anyways, what happened in those 18 others cases? Arrests? Incarcerations? Murders?

We should look to see what happened to the presses of Elijah Lovejoy who was just slightly down river from Nauvoo.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/nov07.html

Here are two quotes from that Web site.

----------------------------

On November 7, 1837, Elijah Parish Lovejoy was killed by a proslavery mob while defending the site of his anti-slavery newspaper The Saint Louis Observer. His death deeply affected many individuals who opposed slavery and greatly strengthened the cause of abolition.

--------------------------------

Mobs had destroyed Lovejoy's presses on a number of occasions, but when a new press arrived in November 1837, the violence escalated. No sooner was the new press off-loaded from the steamboat Missouri Fulton than a drunken mob formed and tried to set fire to the warehouse where it was stored. When Lovejoy ran out to push away a would-be-arsonist, he was shot.

Posted
Henry Jacobs did Not deserve to have his family taken away from him.

Any decent man would have just handcuffed Zina to the kitchen stove.....uppity woman.

Oh puhleeze :P

Is this the new spin, Zina was a sassy independant woman? There was no divorce, therefore Zina had no right to take Henry's children away from him. Even sassy independent women don't do that.

I think the spin here is that people try to use Zina to vilify Brigham and Joseph. Nowhere in the historical record do we have anything that suggests this is warranted. We talk about Brigham "stealing" Zina as if she doesn't have a mind of her own or isn't a real person. The decision was Zina's. She made statements about it in court. Why can't we accept what the woman says about it?

Posted
Oh, and by the way... Can you find anywhere where Henry characterizes the event as "stealing" his wife and children? I haven't seen one critic come up with such a quote. If Henry doesn't characterize it as such, and the other players in the event don't, then why do you think you are justified in doing so?

Allen:

I don't have a quote from Henry, but I do have the following:

1. As far as I know, Henry was the only man ever legally and lawfully wedded to Zina;

2. As far as I know, Henry and Zina never legally divorced;

3. In Mt. Pisagh, Iowa, as Henry, Zina and family were on their exodus from Nauvoo, Brigham Young said the following to Henry: "Brother Jacobs, the woman you claim for your wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit";

4. BY then sends Henry on a mission to England;

5. At Mt. Pisagh, while Henry is gone to England, Zina and family lives with her father;

6. While Henry is in England, however, Zina makes her way to Winter Quarters and begins to cohabit with Brigham Young;

7. When Henry returns from mission (and while in New York on his way back), he learns that Zina no longer considers them married; according to Oliver Huntington (Zina's brother), Henry is very distraught over this development; Henry continues to send her letters professing his love for her and their two sons;

8. Zina eventually gets to SLC and continues as BY's plural wife for the remainder of his days, and bears a daughter by Brigham.

Allen, you are correct that I don't have any quote with the words "stole" or "steal" in them, but when I review the above facts I can't help but conclude that is exactly what happened in Mt. Pisgah, Iowa. Brigham's comments to Henry there make clear (at least to me) that Brigham was taking Henry's wife and sons, instructing him to go and find another family because this one was now his (Brigham's). And to make sure Henry didn't give him any trouble, especially when Brigham and Zina began to cohabit as husband and wife, Brigham sent Henry to the other side of the world. Try as you might, I don't see any way for Brigham to come out of this sordid affair smelling like a rose.

Posted

<Try as you might, I don't see any way for Brigham to come out of this sordid affair smelling like a rose.

OK, let's go back to BY's statement:

"Brother Jacobs, the woman you claim for your wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him.

(she does not belong to you in eternity. she is sealed to JS, not to you)

"I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property.

(I have a stewardship over Joseph Smith's affairs, and I intend to fulfill that stewardship in this matter)

"You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit"

(Again, she is not your eternal mate, and to continue to keep her is not in your best interests, nor hers. I advise you to get over it, learn to accept matters as they are, and to find an eternal mate who will suit your needs and personality.)

You call this a "sordid affair" because, presumably, you see BY as someone full of sexual desire, desiring sex wherever he can find it.

On the other side, I see Brigham Young as a spiritual leader, a prophet. I see him as an individual who sees his responsibility, and has the courage to do his duty regardless of how unpleasant it would be, and how it appeared to others.

I may not agree on how he handled the situation, but he did what he felt needed to be done.

Posted
The destruction of the press was not the cause of JSJr.'s "real problems" which led to his assassination, but it was indeed the pretext seized upon by his enemies to justify the assassination.

I went back and looked, and my recollection was correct:

Dallin Oaks wrote in "The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor," Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1965), 890-91, that "there was no legal justification in 1844 for the destruction of the Expositor press."

It was the destruction of the press that caused a warrant for "riot" to be issued against JS and others. They went to Carthage on this original writ, for which they posted a $500 bail; but while in Carthage, another writ was issued for "treason," relating to JS's declaring martial law in Nauvoo and calling out the Nauvoo Legion. But legal irregularities occurred and they were held in Carthage (probably illegally), which is where they were when murdered (Source: Dallin Oaks & Marvin Hill, Carthage Conspiracy, pages 15-18 (U. of Ill. Press 1979)).

My point is that it was the destruction of the Expositor press that was the catalyst for JS and others being forced to go to Carthage to answer the writ of "riot," which they never left alive. And the slander the Expositor was printing, which JS was trying to stop, dealt with his polygamous lifestyle. Thus, many believe it was polygamy that led to JS's murder.

Posted
Is this the new spin, Zina was a sassy independant woman? There was no divorce, therefore Zina had no right to take Henry's children away from him. Even sassy independent women don't do that.

And this is the new defense to make sure women are silenced? If they aren't willing potted plants they are "sassy". Blech.

Posted
Try as you might, I don't see any way for Brigham to come out of this sordid affair smelling like a rose.

That is because you think women are potted plants. How you can be so completely oblivious to how insulting this is in this day and age is amazing. Those who continue to step over Zina and all of the others who had the audacity to speak for themselves look as if you have stepped back another century. I'm actually beginning to find it a little creepy.

Posted
Thus, many believe it was polygamy that led to JS's murder.

Were other groups of that era who were experimenting with living styles murdered?

Posted
Rollo Tomasi said: 1. As far as I know, Henry was the only man ever legally and lawfully wedded to Zina;

2. As far as I know, Henry and Zina never legally divorced;

Hi, Rollo. You and I have both been around the block with Zina, Henry, and Brigham. You and I both know where each other stand on this, so I won't rehash all the material, ad infinitum, even for the benefit of Brackite. (I assume that he/she can read.)

As I was reading through your response, your above-quoted words seemed to jump out at me, and I thought I would toss something into the mix here.

You said "as far as I know," which I believe to be correct. As far as anyone knows, Zina and Henry were legally and lawfully married. We assume that they were "legally and lawfully married" because they were (1) in a traditional monogamous marriage, (2) lived together as husband and wife, and (3) referred to each other as husband and wife.

A natural outgrowth of this is that we assume that Henry and Zina, when it came time to get married, trotted down to the county clerk's office, got their marriage license, went to someone legally recognized to perform marriages, and were married.

Do we know this to be true, however? This could also be an example of the fallacy of presentism. Just because the process mentioned above is what we do today in order to be "legally and lawfully married," that doesn't mean that the same process was followed in the early 1840s.

It is just as possible that Henry and Zina did not get a piece of paper that says "it's OK to get married" and then follow the state-approved process. They could have simply gone to someone that they recognized as having ecclessiastical authority and been married by that person, without benefit of a state-approved license.

If such is the case, and such an ecclessiastical marriage (without state involvement) is still "legal and lawful," why wouldn't a divorce be just as "legal and lawful" in territorial Iowa when overseen by both Henry and Zina's ecclessiastical leader--Brigham Young?

Do you have any information that the above scenario isn't what happened? If it did happen this way, that would go a long way to explain why Zina moved in with Brigham (she considered herself married to him and no longer married to Henry) and why Henry never accused Brigham of stealing his wife (he recognized the validity of an ecclessiastical divorce).

Thoughts?

-Allen

Posted
A natural outgrowth of this is that we assume that Henry and Zina, when it came time to get married, trotted down to the county clerk's office, got their marriage license, went to someone legally recognized to perform marriages, and were married.

Do we know this to be true, however?

Allen:

The only evidence I know of indicates that Henry and Zina were legally and lawfully wedded. I have never read or heard anyone contend otherwise. If you have any contrary evidence, please share.

The only evidence I know of indicates that Henry and Zina never legally divorced. I have never read or heard anyone contend otherwise. If you have any contrary evidence, please share.

Imo, you are assuming an awful lot, when you have no evidence that Henry and Zina were anything other than a legally married couple.

Posted
A natural outgrowth of this is that we assume that Henry and Zina, when it came time to get married, trotted down to the county clerk's office, got their marriage license, went to someone legally recognized to perform marriages, and were married.

Actually they were married in Nauvoo by LDS church authorities.

Marriage Information: Huntington, Zina Diantha (Female) Spouse: Jacobes, Henry Bailey

Date: March 7, 1841

Place: Nauvoo, Hancock, IL, USA

by John C. Bennett

I don't think you could realistically claim they were not married properly as it was performed by the very church we belong to. :P

Interestingly she was sealed to Joseph on 27 October 1841

Posted
Marriage Information: Huntington, Zina Diantha (Female) Spouse: Jacobes, Henry Bailey

Date: March 7, 1841

Place: Nauvoo, Hancock, IL, USA

by John C. Bennett

Just to add:

John C. Bennett was the mayor of Nauvoo at the time he married Henry and Zina Jacobs (having been elected on Feb. 1, 1841), and pursuant to the Nauvoo Charter, he was authorized under Illinois law to marry them. Thus, not only were Henry and Zina legally and lawfully wedded in the eyes of the LDS Church (Bennett was Assistant President of the Church at the time), but also in the eyes of the law.

Posted

Here is possible scenario:

Zina and Henry get married. At some point, perhaps even before the marriage, Aina and JS agree to be sealed together, with Henry's knowledge and consent.

After the death of JS, Zina and Henry are going out west. BY feels that this is a real mess now that JS is gone, and he needs to clean it up. So, he advises Henry to get himself a "real" wife -- someone to whom he can be sealed for eternity, and BY takes Zina into his care as the custodian of JS's affairs.

Today we see marriage and sealing as part of one "package", but it is not. A widow may have been sealed to her deceased husband, but marries a second one after the death of the first.

In this case, it may be unusual, but certainly feasible that there was an agreement among all the parties that Henry's marriage was for time only.

Posted
Rollo said: Imo, you are assuming an awful lot, when you have no evidence that Henry and Zina were anything other than a legally married couple.

I'm not assuming that; please don't put words in my mouth.

The only thing I was questioning is whether "legally and lawfully" in the 1840s means the same thing that we assume it means today.

They could have been married by a religious leader, without a marriage license, and it still would have been legal and lawful. By the same measure, however, they could have been divorced by a religious leader, without a divorce decree by a judge, and it still have been considered "legal and lawful" in the Iowa territory.

-Allen

Posted
Yaanufs said: I don't think you could realistically claim they were not married properly as it was performed by the very church we belong to.

I do think they were married properly, and I never claimed they weren't. I was questioning the process by which they were married. I don't think we can assume it was the same process we follow today.

-Allen

Posted
Rollo Tomasi said: John C. Bennett was the mayor of Nauvoo at the time he married Henry and Zina Jacobs (having been elected on Feb. 1, 1841), and pursuant to the Nauvoo Charter, he was authorized under Illinois law to marry them. Thus, not only were Henry and Zina legally and lawfully wedded in the eyes of the LDS Church (Bennett was Assistant President of the Church at the time), but also in the eyes of the law.

Just because Bennett was mayor doesn't mean that he was functioning as such when he performed the marriage. (But I believe you already know this.) If, in the eyes of the people, ecclessiastical authority had primacy over earthly titles, then in their eyes (including Bennett's) the ecclessiastical authority is what was used to perform the marriage. Later, the same ecclessiastical authority (having primacy over whatever "law" was extant in the Iowa Territory) would, in their eyes, have been sufficient for a proper divorce.

-Allen

Posted
The only thing I was questioning is whether "legally and lawfully" in the 1840s means the same thing that we assume it means today.

They could have been married by a religious leader, without a marriage license, and it still would have been legal and lawful. By the same measure, however, they could have been divorced by a religious leader, without a divorce decree by a judge, and it still have been considered "legal and lawful" in the Iowa territory.

See my post above about their being married by the Mayor of Nauvoo (and, within the Church, the second-in-command to JS). Do you have any evidence, whatsoever, to refute this, or to suggest they were not legally and lawfully under the laws of Illinois?

EDITED TO ADD:

Just read your last post. Are you being serious? So, the Mayor of Nauvoo was not marrying them under his authority as Mayor of Nauvoo? I don't know how to respond to that. Again, I ask you, do you have ANY evidence that Henry and Zina Jacobs were anything other than a legally and lawfully wedded couple? Of course, you don't, so why all the silly assumptions?

Posted
The destruction of the press was not the cause of JSJr.'s "real problems" which led to his assassination, but it was indeed the pretext seized upon by his enemies to justify the assassination.

I went back and looked, and my recollection was correct:

Dallin Oaks wrote in "The Suppression of the Nauvoo Expositor," Utah Law Review 9 (Winter 1965), 890-91, that "there was no legal justification in 1844 for the destruction of the Expositor press."

It was the destruction of the press that caused a warrant for "riot" to be issued against JS and others. They went to Carthage on this original writ, for which they posted a $500 bail; but while in Carthage, another writ was issued for "treason," relating to JS's declaring martial law in Nauvoo and calling out the Nauvoo Legion. But legal irregularities occurred and they were held in Carthage (probably illegally), which is where they were when murdered (Source: Dallin Oaks & Marvin Hill, Carthage Conspiracy, pages 15-18 (U. of Ill. Press 1979)).

My point is that it was the destruction of the Expositor press that was the catalyst for JS and others being forced to go to Carthage to answer the writ of "riot," which they never left alive. And the slander the Expositor was printing, which JS was trying to stop, dealt with his polygamous lifestyle. Thus, many believe it was polygamy that led to JS's murder.

Content and Context, my dear RT.

I, if you will recall, agreed with your recollection of what Oaks wrote. You, however, jumped to conclusions from that written word.

Your conclusion was that the press' destruction was the cause of JSJr.'s death, implying thereby an act of hubris on his part.

I said the conlusion was wrong, because JSJr.'s enemies had every motivation to kill him and had tried many times. Moreover, he had been hauled into Court many times on warrants of arrest to answer charges in Illinois arising out of the horrors of Missouri, only to have the Illinois courts (specifically the Nauvoo courts) quash the arrest warrants on petitions for habeas corpus.

Don't get caught up in the procedural history. Look rather at the who and the why. JSJr. was killed in Illinois because the people in Missouri would never, ever give up their bloodlust, and they had plenty of people in Illinois ready willing and able to lend a hand.

Posted
I said the conlusion was wrong, because JSJr.'s enemies had every motivation to kill him and had tried many times.  Moreover, he had been hauled into Court many times on warrants of arrest to answer charges in Illinois arising out of the horrors of Missouri, only to have the Illinois courts (specifically the Nauvoo courts) quash the arrest warrants on petitions for habeas corpus.

Don't get caught up in the procedural history.  Look rather at the who and the why.  JSJr. was killed in Illinois because the people in Missouri would never, ever give up their bloodlust, and they had plenty of people in Illinois ready willing and able to lend a hand.

What I meant (if not clear, then I apologize) was that the destruction of the Expositor was the catalyst that sparked the immediate events that led to JS's murder. He never would have been in Carthage on June 27th BUT FOR the destruction of the Expositor.

Dallin Oaks and Marvin Hill explain on page 15 in Carthage Conspiracy:

"This act [the destruction of the Expositor] infuriated the non-Mormons of Hancock County, who saw it as a final act of contempt for their laws. The Quincy Whig denounced the 'HIGH-HANDED OUTRAGE' and said that if this was a speciman of 'Mormon attitude toward law and rights it is not surprising that the Missourians were raised to madness and drove them from the state.'"

I hope this better explains my argument. The destruction of the Expositor was indeed an act of hubris, by the outraged Mayor of Nauvoo (remember, the slander in the paper was about him, by and large), as well as illegal.

Posted
Rollo Tomasi said: See my post above about their being married by the Mayor of Nauvoo (and, within the Church, the second-in-command to JS). Do you have any evidence, whatsoever, to refute this, or to suggest they were not legally and lawfully under the laws of Illinois?

I suspect that I have just as much evidence to suggest they weren't "legally and lawfully" married under the laws of Illinois as you do to suggest they weren't "legally and lawfully" divorced under the laws of the Iowa Territory. :P

This is beside the point, however. I'm NOT saying they weren't legally and lawfully married. I am saying that "legally and lawfully" back in 1840 is different than "legally and lawfully" today. Today, if I want to get married, I have to follow state law and get a license. Did they in 1840 Illinois? I don't know. I suspect that it was much "looser" then, and that a piece of paper wasn't necessarily needed.

It is reasonable to assume that if Zina and Henry considered themselves married when their religious leader said they were married (and the State of Illinois may have agreed), then it is reasonable that they considered themselves divorced when the same religious authority said they were divorced.

I know we don't view that as "proper" today. Why? Because today we have well-established procedures that need to be followed. I'm simply questioning if the same procedures we follow today were in place in the Iowa Territory while Henry and Zina were there. If the same procedures were not in place, then we are all (myself included, up to this point) engaging in the fallacy of presentism.

I'm not saying this is what happened; I am simply positing a hypothesis and asking if anyone has evidence to disprove it. I have seen none, yet.

Rollo Tomasi said: Just read your last post. Are you being serious? So, the Mayor of Nauvoo was not marrying them under his authority as Mayor of Nauvoo? I don't know how to respond to that. Again, I ask you, do you have ANY evidence that Henry and Zina Jacobs were anything other than a legally and lawfully wedded couple? Of course, you don't, so why all the silly assumptions?

You didn't reread my post very carefully, did you? I said that I was not saying they weren't legally and lawfully wedded. Here; I'll say it again: I believe that Henry and Zina were legally and lawfully wedded. Feel better? Are we again focused?

The question, one more time, is what constituted "legally and lawfully" in the 1840s. If a couple could be legally and lawfully married just by a religious leader pronouncing them husband and wife, do you have any evidence that their belief (and the laws of the Iowa Territory) wouldn't allow for the same religious leader to pronounce their marriage ended?

-Allen

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