Timeline
Chronology
Every one of the fifty-five women gets her own dated entry here — her name, her age that day, what the ceremony actually granted — set among the revelations, the sermons, the federal statutes and the deaths that surround them. Read downward and you are reading fifty-five women's lives being rearranged, mostly in their teens and twenties, mostly within a few months of one another: four in Joseph Smith's lifetime, thirty-four in the twenty months after the martyrdom, then a long tail across Utah.
The marriage entries are generated from the research table and the quotations from the quotes page, so this page cannot fall out of step with either. Dates are given as the sources give them — some are exact, some are a month, one is "before 1853".
1801
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1 June 1801
Born in Whitingham, Vermont
John and Abigail Young's ninth child, into a poor farming family that moved repeatedly across New York's burned-over district. He had perhaps eleven days of formal schooling and worked as a carpenter, painter and glazier.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 1.
1824 1 marriage
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8 Oct 1824
Miriam Angeline Works no. 1
His first wife, married when he was a 23-year-old carpenter in New York. She contracted tuberculosis and was an invalid for years; Brigham carried her to her chair each morning, cooked and kept house around her, and she died in 1832, months after both were baptized.
1824 civil marriage1832 died— temple sealing confirmed
Johnson Table 1; Turner p.134
1832
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14 April 1832
Baptised, after two years reading the Book of Mormon
He is 30, married, with two small daughters and a wife already seriously ill.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 1.
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September 1832
Miriam dies, and he is a widower at 31
Tuberculosis. He had carried her to her chair each morning and kept house around her for years. She never saw Nauvoo and never knew polygamy. Fourteen years later he would be resealed to her by proxy, and his whole adopted kingdom sealed to them both.
Johnson, Dialogue 20:3 (1987), Table 1; Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 1.
1834 1 marriage
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10 Feb 1834
Mary Ann Angell no. 2
Not a plural wife - he married her as a widower two years after Miriam died. She raised Miriam's two children with her own six, and held the White House separately from the Lion House.
1834 civil marriage— temple sealing confirmed1882 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner pp. 138-39
1835
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14 February 1835
Ordained an apostle
One of the original Quorum of the Twelve, at 33.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 2.
1836
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3 April 1836
The sealing keys, in the Kirtland temple
Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery record a vision in which Elijah confers the keys to bind on earth and in heaven. For seven years it is a doctrine with almost no practice attached. It is the authority every sealing on this site rests on.
Doctrine and Covenants 110.
1839
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1839
The English mission
He leads the Twelve to Britain, arriving desperately ill and leaving with thousands of converts and a printing operation. The mission makes his reputation and builds the network that will later put him at the head of the church.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 3.
1841
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1841
Joseph Smith begins sealing plural wives in Nauvoo
Quietly, and denied in public for another eleven years. Several of the women sealed to Joseph Smith in these years appear later on this list as Brigham Young's wives.
Compton, In Sacred Loneliness (1997); Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy (2013), vol. 1.
1842 1 marriage
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1842
His first attempt at plural marriage fails
Martha Brotherton, seventeen, refuses him, leaves Nauvoo and publishes her account of being taken to a room above Joseph Smith's store and offered exaltation. She is not on any list of his wives, and her account was the first published exposure of Nauvoo polygamy.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 5.
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14 June 1842
Lucy Ann Decker no. 3
His FIRST plural wife, married by Joseph Smith himself. She was 20, he was 41.
1842 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1891 died
Johnson Table 1 (date 14 June; Johnson's prose says 17 June - use 14 June, per Lucy's own affidavit)
1843 2 marriages
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12 July 1843
The revelation on plural and eternal marriage is written down
Now Doctrine and Covenants 132. It promises exaltation to those married under it, sanctions plural marriage, and warns the first wife who refuses to consent that she will be destroyed. It is the charter for everything that follows on this site. Joseph Smith is killed eleven months later.
Doctrine and Covenants 132.
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2 Nov 1843
Augusta Adams Cobb no. 4
The most quotable and most miserable. A Boston society woman who LEFT her husband and five of her children to follow Brigham to Nauvoo, was sealed to him without ever being civilly divorced, and buried her infant son on the journey.
1843 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed
Johnson Table 1; Turner pp. 137-38, 192-93
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2 Nov 1843
Harriet Elizabeth Cook no. 5
Married the SAME DAY as Augusta Adams; each woman's affidavit names the other as a witness, alongside first wife Mary Ann Angell. A 19-year-old convert with no relatives in Nauvoo.
1843 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1898 died
Johnson Table 1; Bergera, Dialogue 38:3 pp. 55-56
1844 11 marriages
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8 May 1844
Clarissa Caroline Decker no. 6
SIXTEEN years old; he was 42. Lucy Ann Decker's younger sister - the second Decker daughter in the family.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1889 died
Johnson Table 1; RSC Journey West glossary
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27 June 1844
Joseph Smith is killed at Carthage
Brigham Young is in the eastern states. Within ten weeks of his return he begins marrying at a pace he never approached in Joseph Smith's lifetime - four wives in the two years before the martyrdom, then thirty-four in the twenty months after it.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 5.
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8 August 1844
The succession, in the grove at Nauvoo
The Twelve prevail over Sidney Rigdon. Many present later recalled Brigham Young appearing or sounding like Joseph Smith as he spoke.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 5.
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Sept or Nov 1844
Emily Dow Partridge no. 7
Daughter of the martyred Bishop Edward Partridge, whom she watched dragged off and tarred and feathered when she was nine. She and her sister Eliza lived in Joseph Smith's house as teenagers, married him secretly in March 1843, then married him AGAIN two months later when Emma chose them - and were expelled from the house when Emma turned.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1899 died
Johnson Table 1; Compton ch. 18; Marquardt, JMH 34:3 pp. 135, 153
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10 Sept 1844
Clarissa Ross no. 8
Turner calls her Brigham's FIRST marriage after Joseph's murder - a little over ten weeks after Carthage. She was 30, stepdaughter of his friend Isaac Chase.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1857 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 133 (facsimile)
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19 Sept 1844
Louisa Beaman no. 9
MORMONISM'S FIRST DOCUMENTED PLURAL WIFE - sealed to Joseph Smith in April 1841, the ceremony that started everything. Brigham married her nine days after Clarissa Ross, at his own house.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1850 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 133; Compton ch. 3
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3 Oct 1844
Eliza Roxcy Snow no. 10
THE most consequential woman in 19th-century Mormonism after Emma. Poet, intellectual, Relief Society general president, founder of the Primary and the Deseret Hospital - Brigham was known to defer to her on church policy.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1887 died
Johnson Table 1 entry 10 and n. 10 (p. 66) - POSITION AND DATE NOW CONFIRMED from the printed table; BYU Studies, 'The Lion and the Lioness' (Derr); Compton ch. 13
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3 Oct 1844
Elizabeth Fairchild no. 11
Sealed the SAME DAY as Eliza R. Snow - Johnson's table gives both 3 October 1844, and Brigham's journal has her as 'Betsey Farechil[d]es' at Snow's sealing.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1855 divorce or separation1910 died
Johnson Table 1 entry 11 and n. 11 (p. 66) - DATE, DEATH YEAR AND LATER HUSBANDS NOW CONFIRMED from the printed table; Johnson pp. 63, 65
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8 Oct 1844
Clarissa Blake no. 12
She wrote Brigham an ACROSTIC POEM and a love letter shortly after the sealing - one of the very few documents in which a plural wife describes her own feeling at the moment of marriage: 'my heart is like a bird let lo[o]se from a long and close confinement and soars aloof on joyful pinions.' On his role: 'Onward to guide us, to celestial joys... Upward thou will rise, and we will follow on.' Johnson's table gives her birth year as 1796, making her five years older than Brigham - exactly as his prose says.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed
Johnson Table 1 entry 12 and n. 12 (p. 66) - POSITION, DATE AND BIRTH YEAR NOW CONFIRMED from the printed table; Turner pp. 134-35 and n. 56; Johnson p. 63. PRIOR MARITAL STATUS CONTESTED
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9 Oct 1844
Rebecca Holman no. 13
One of three wives Brigham married on three consecutive days (8, 9 and 10 October 1844) - the 'busy stretch' Turner mentions. She died at Cutler's Park, Nebraska, during the exodus, and is recorded in the 1846-49 death and burial register there.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1849 died
Johnson Table 1 and n. 13
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10 Oct 1844
Diana Severance Chase no. 14
HER MARRIAGE IS THE BEST EVIDENCE THAT THESE SEALINGS WERE CONSUMMATED. On 10 October 1844 Brigham and Heber Kimball visited Ezra Chase, sealed Ezra to his wife for eternity, and then each married one of Ezra's daughters - Brigham took Diana, Kimball took Charlotte.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1849 divorce or separation1886 died
Johnson Table 1, nn. 14, and p. 65; Turner p. 135
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31 Oct 1844
Susannah (Susan) Snively no. 15
A Virginia-born convert who came to Nauvoo in 1842. Childless.
1844 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1892 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 15; Compton, JMH 25:2 biographical register
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7 Nov 1844
Olive Grey Frost no. 16
A widow of Joseph Smith who died in Nauvoo before the temple sealings - hers is THE ONLY marriage from this cohort never confirmed in the temple, because she did not live to see it open. Her sister Mary Ann Frost Pratt wrote the only real biographical sketch of her.
1844 sealed to him1845 died— never confirmed
Johnson Table 1 entry 16 (1816-45) and n. 16, against his prose p. 63; Tanner, Joseph Smith and Polygamy p. 47. TABLE PREFERRED OVER PROSE
1845 5 marriages
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15 Jan 1845
Mary Ann Clark no. 17
Sealed to Brigham while apparently continuing to live with her non-Mormon first husband, who later left her. Her exit is one of the few in Brigham's own words, because she put it in writing from Kanesville, Iowa, on 18 June 1851: 'I wish you to release me from all engagements with you for time and eternity....' The request was granted.
1845 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1851 divorce or separation
Johnson Table 1 n. 17 and p. 65; Compton, JMH 25:2; Turner p. 193
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16 Jan 1845
Margaret Pierce no. 18
One of the most poignant timings in the whole list: she had been married to Morris Whitesides for SIX MONTHS when she was sealed to Brigham in January 1845 - and her first husband died of consumption ONE MONTH LATER. She was sealed to Whitesides for eternity and to Brigham for time, so she kept her dying husband forever and got an earthly protector at the same moment.
1845 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1907 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 18; Turner pp. 136, 140
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16 Jan 1845
Mary Harvey Pierce no. 19
Married on the SAME DAY as her sister Margaret - Brigham's diary records a visit to Robert Pierce's home on 16 January 1845 and several scholars date both sealings to that day. She died in March 1847 during the Winter Quarters period; Eliza R.
1845 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1847 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 19; Turner n. 57
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9 March 1845
The Relief Society is shut down
Speaking at Nauvoo, he tells the brethren that if they see women "huddling together" they should veto it, and that women "never can hold the keys of the Priesthood apart from their husband." The Relief Society is not generally reorganised until 1867. Eliza R. Snow, sealed to him five months earlier, eventually leads it.
Contemporary minutes, 9 March 1845, B. H. Roberts Foundation archive.
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9 March 1845
“They never can hold the keys of the Priesthood apart from their husband”
They never can hold the keys of the Priesthood apart from their husband. When I want Sisters or the Wives of the members of this church to get up Relief Society I will summon them to my aid, but until that time let them stay at home.
Brigham Young, Nauvoo, 9 March 1845 - contemporary minutes, B. H. Roberts Foundation archive
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30 Apr 1845
Emmeline Free no. 20
THE LOYALTY TRANSACTION. In spring 1845 John D.
1845 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1875 died
Turner pp. 135-36; Johnson Table 1 n. 20; RSC BY Chronology (30 Apr 1845)
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22 May 1845
Mary Elizabeth Rollins no. 21
THE CLEAREST CASE THAT 'WIFE' MEANT SOMETHING OTHER THAN MARRIAGE. Sealed to Joseph Smith in February 1842 while married to Adam Lightner, a non-Mormon who never joined.
1845 sealed to him— temple sealing confirmed1913 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 21 and p. 66; Turner p. 134
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December 1845
The Nauvoo temple's upper rooms go into use
The building is unfinished and the Saints are weeks from expulsion. The Twelve work almost round the clock; thousands of endowments and sealings are performed in about six weeks. Nineteen of his fifty-five wives are sealed to him in this window.
Lisle G. Brown, Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings.
1846 19 marriages
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1846
Robert Pierce adopted son
Ritual son - and Young's father-in-law twice over, because his daughters MARGARET and MARY PIERCE were both Young's wives.
1846 adoption sealing— not established
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) p. 140
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early Feb 1846
James B. Woodward adopted son
Ritual son, sealed as an adopted child together with his wife - whom Young then married two days later.
1846 adoption sealing— not established
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) pp. 132, 140; Johnson pp. 63, 64
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January 1846
Anointed king and priest; Mary Ann Angell made queen and priestess
Heber C. Kimball anoints Mary Ann Angell "Queen & Priestess unto her husband" while Brigham Young is made "King and Priest". She afterwards stands proxy for the dead Miriam Works in sealing after sealing, and repeatedly presents new wives to her husband at the altar. The first wife's consent was structurally required, and she gave it for decades.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, pp. 138-39.
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Jan-Feb 1846
Isaac Morley adopted son
Ritual son AND, simultaneously, an adoptive father to three men of his own - so he was Young's child and another family's parent at the same time.
1846 adoption sealing— lapsed
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) Table 1 n. 1; Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) p. 160
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14 Jan 1846
Margaret Alley no. 22
ONE OF ONLY TWO. Johnson is explicit about the Nauvoo temple wave: 'Of this group, only two, Margaret Alley and Zina Huntington, bore him children.' Nineteen sealings in five weeks and two reproductive marriages.
1846 sealed to him1852 died
Johnson p. 61 ('only two, Margaret Alley and Zina Huntington') and Table 1 n. 22; Turner p. 134
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15 Jan 1846
Olive Andrews no. 23
A widow of Joseph Smith sealed to him for eternity with Brigham standing proxy, then to Brigham for time - the standard two-step of that fortnight. The Nauvoo temple register records her under 'Smith, Olive Andrews (for time).' Beyond the ordinance record, very little survives about her.
Johnson Table 1 n. 23; Brown, Nauvoo Sealings (register cross-ref)
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15 Jan 1846
Emily Haws no. 24
A case Turner uses to show that a temple sealing often changed NOTHING on the ground. She was legally married to William Whitmarsh when she was sealed to Brigham in mid-January 1846 - and in mid-FEBRUARY, a month later, she completed a property transaction as Whitmarsh's wife.
Turner p. 136; Johnson Table 1 n. 24
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21 Jan 1846
Martha Bowker no. 25
Came west, lived in Brigham's household, died childless in 1890 at 68. Recorded in the Nauvoo temple register as sealed to him on 21 January 1846, the same day as sixteen-year-old Ellen Rockwood.
1846 sealed to him1890 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 25; Brown, Nauvoo Sealings
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21 Jan 1846
Ellen Rockwood no. 26
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD - the youngest of the entire Nauvoo temple wave, and the youngest wife Turner names. On 16 December 1845 Brigham personally brought her through the veil into the celestial room along with Augusta Adams and Eliza R.
1846 sealed to him1866 died
Turner pp. 132, 134, 139; Johnson Table 1
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25 January 1846
He adopts eight couples under the law of adoption
Adults sealed to him as sons and daughters, John D. Lee among them - Lee afterwards calls him his "father in Israel". They are sealed to Brigham AND to the dead Miriam Works, making a woman who died in 1832 the ritual mother of his adopted kingdom. The practice sets leaders competing over who can gather the largest family.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, p. 139; Stapley, JMH 37:3 (2011).
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25 Jan 1846
John D. Lee adopted son
Ritual son - and the closest of them.
1846 adoption sealing— cancelled
Jonathan A. Stapley, 'Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism', Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (Summer 2011): 53-117, Table 1 (p. 66 of the print run) Table 1 and nn. 38-39, 87; Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) pp. 139, 160
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25 Jan 1846
Albert Perry Rockwood adopted son
Ritual son, adopted FOUR DAYS AFTER Young was sealed to Rockwood's sixteen-year-old daughter Ellen.
1846 adoption sealing— lapsed
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) pp. 132, 139
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25 Jan 1846
George D. Grant adopted son
Ritual son, and a witness to how the system actually worked.
1846 adoption sealing— lapsed
Turner, Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet (2012) pp. 135-36, 139
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28 Jan 1846
Jemima Angell no. 27
His FIRST WIFE'S SISTER. Widowed by her first husband and no longer living with her second, she was sealed to Brigham on the same day as his two mothers-in-law.
1846 sealed to him1869 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 134 and n. 56. PRIOR HUSBAND CONTESTED
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28 Jan 1846
Abigail Marks (Works) no. 28
HIS MOTHER-IN-LAW. The widowed mother of Miriam Works, Brigham's first wife, who had died fourteen years earlier.
1846 died1846 sealed to him
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 134 and n. 52
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28 Jan 1846
Phebe Morton no. 29
HIS OTHER MOTHER-IN-LAW, and at 69 or 70 the OLDEST woman he ever married - this is the '66' in Turner's line that his wives ranged in age 'from sixteen to sixty-six' (she was older still by Johnson's birth year of 1776). Long estranged from her husband James Angell, who was still living.
1846 sealed to him1854 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 134 and n. 56
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28 Jan 1846
Cynthia Porter no. 30
Sixty-two or sixty-three years old, with a living or former husband named Weston. Sealed in the same 28 January batch as the two mothers-in-law - a day that looks less like marriage than like a welfare and kinship operation conducted at speed.
Johnson Table 1; Brown, Nauvoo Sealings (register cross-ref)
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31 Jan 1846
Mary Eliza Nelson no. 31
Widow of John P. Greene, the Nauvoo marshal (and the man whose household first received a Book of Mormon that reached the Young family).
1846 sealed to him1850 divorce or separation1885 died
Johnson Table 1 and p. 65; Turner p. 193
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31 Jan 1846
Rhoda Richards no. 32
SIXTY-ONE at the sealing, and she left one of the most quoted explanations any plural wife ever gave: 'In my young days I buried my first and only love, and true to that affiance, I have passed companionless through life: but am sure of having my proper place and standing in the resurrection, having been sealed to the prophet Joseph, according to the celestial law.' She had been sealed to Joseph in 1843 at 59. Sister of Apostle Willard Richards and Brigham's own first cousin.
1846 sealed to him1879 died
Johnson Table 1; Compton ch. 25; Sunstone 111
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February 1846
The exodus west begins
The first wagons cross the frozen Mississippi while sealings are still being performed.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 6.
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2 Feb 1846 (Turner: possibly spring 1845)
Zina Diantha Huntington no. 33
THE CASE THAT WILL NOT RESOLVE. Married Henry Jacobs in March 1841; accepted Joseph Smith's proposal seven months later and KEPT LIVING WITH HENRY, bearing him a son two months after the sealing.
1846 sealed to him1901 died
Turner pp. 134, 136-37; Compton ch. 4; Johnson pp. 61, 63 and Table 1; Bradley & Woodward, JMH 20:1
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3 Feb 1846
Amy Cecilia Cooper no. 34
Sealed as Brigham's thirty-fourth wife and then went HOME. By December 1847 she was back in Northbridge, Massachusetts, and Augusta Adams Cobb wrote to her there - a remarkable letter in which Augusta pronounces a blessing on her and then SEALS IT: 'This blessing dear sister I seal upon your head in the name of Jesus C by virtue of the priesthood vested in me amen.' A plural wife claiming priesthood authority in writing, to another plural wife, in 1847.
Johnson Table 1 n. 34; Turner n. 56; O'Donovan, JMH 38:2 p. 11
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3 Feb 1846
Mary Ellen de la Montague no. 35
THE COLD OPEN OF THE WHOLE STORY, AND THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE LIST WHO WAS HIS ADOPTED DAUGHTER FIRST. On 17 January 1846 she was the lone passenger in Brigham's new omnibus carriage when the horses went through a Nauvoo bridge; she ran to his house, he got out of bed, hauled the horses out one at a time and washed them with whiskey to stop them stiffening.
1846 adopted as his daughter1846 sealed to him1846 divorce or separation
Turner pp. 132, 140 and n. 64; Johnson pp. 63, 64 and Table 1 n. 35. TURNER AND JOHNSON READ THE DIVORCE DIFFERENTLY - both recorded above
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3 Feb 1846
Julia Foster no. 36
A full-circle case. Brigham CONVERTED her back in 1833, then MARRIED HER OFF to Jonathan Hampton - and now, thirteen years later, stood proxy for her eternal sealing to Hampton and became her husband 'for time' himself.
1846 sealed to him1891 died
Turner p. 134; Johnson Table 1 n. 36
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3 Feb 1846
Abigail Harback no. 37
Fifty-five or fifty-six at the sealing, with a prior husband named Hall. She died in 1849, during or just after the migration.
1846 sealed to him1849 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 37 (source: 'Nauvoo Sealings and Adoptions,' p. 577)
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3 Feb 1846
Mary Ann Turley no. 38
Eighteen or nineteen at the sealing. Heber Kimball's journal records her on 20 December 1845, six weeks before the temple ceremony, suggesting an earlier arrangement.
1846 sealed to him1851 divorce or separation1904 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 38 and p. 65; Turner p. 193
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6 Feb 1846
Naamah Kendel Jenkins Carter no. 39
Sealed in the last days of temple work, 6 February 1846 - two days before the veil and altar came down and the records were packed for the journey. She lived a long life in Utah, dying in 1909 at 88.
1846 sealed to him1909 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 39
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6 Feb 1846
Nancy Cressy no. 40
BORN IN 1780 - she was SIXTY-FIVE OR SIXTY-SIX at the sealing, and the oldest woman by birth year that Brigham ever married apart from Phebe Morton. She was twenty-one years OLDER than her husband.
1846 sealed to him1872 died
Johnson Table 1; Brown, Nauvoo Sealings (register cross-ref)
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13 December 1846
The first divorce
Mary Woodward, ten months after the sealing. Ten of the fifty-five marriages end in divorce or a documented separation; most of the women who left had never been part of his household.
Johnson, Dialogue 20:3 (1987), p. 65.
1847 3 marriages
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10 Feb 1847
Jane Terry no. 41
Married at Winter Quarters in February 1847 and dead within the year. Her second husband had been a George W.
1847 died1847 sealed to him
Johnson Table 1
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20 Mar 1847
Lucy Bigelow no. 42
Sixteen or seventeen when she and her SISTER Mary Jane were both sealed to Brigham on the same day at Winter Quarters. The sisters' paths then diverged completely: Lucy bore him three daughters, ran his St.
1847 sealed to him1905 died
Johnson Table 1; Quinn App. 6 ('3 ch, in will')
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20 Mar 1847
Mary Jane Bigelow no. 43
Started west with Brigham's company in 1848 and TURNED BACK. Divorced him in 1851, among the first divorces the church formally recorded, and married twice more.
1847 sealed to him1851 divorce or separation1868 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 193; Johnson p. 65
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24 July 1847
Into the Salt Lake Valley
The pioneer company arrives. Clarissa Decker, married to him in 1844, is one of three women in it.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 7.
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27 December 1847
Sustained as President of the Church
Three and a half years after the martyrdom, at Winter Quarters.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 7.
1848 1 marriage
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18 Apr 1848
Sarah Malin no. 44
Married at Winter Quarters in April 1848, just before the main body went west. Quinn records her with no children and NOT named in Brigham's will - the combination that usually marks a sealing which never became a household relationship.
1848 sealed to him1858 died
Johnson Table 1 and p. 62 ('both Sarah and Mary Jane later left him'); Quinn App. 6 ('*Sarah M. Guckin (Malin) 1848 (no ch)')
1852 2 marriages
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29 August 1852
Plural marriage announced publicly, after a decade of denial
Orson Pratt is assigned to make the case in a special conference in Salt Lake City, and the 1843 revelation is printed. "Celestial marriage" enters general use as a name for the practice. Every denial issued in Nauvoo is thereby retired.
Orson Pratt, discourse of 29 August 1852, Journal of Discourses 1:53-66.
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3 Oct 1852
Eliza Burgess no. 45
An English convert who had worked as a servant in the Young household before becoming a wife - a pattern that recurs across Mormon polygamy and rarely gets named. She bore him one son and was named in his will.
1852 sealed to him1915 died
Johnson Table 1; Quinn App. 6 ('Eliza Burgess 1852 (1 ch), in will')
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16 Dec 1852
Mary Oldfield no. 46
Fifty-nine at the sealing, with a living husband, Eli Kelsey. No children, not in the will, no household.
1852 sealed to him1875 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 46; Quinn App. 6 ('*Mary Oldfield (Kelsey) 1852 (no ch)')
1853 1 marriage
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before 1853
Eliza Babcock no. 47
Endowed in the Nauvoo temple on 10 January 1846 as a teenager, sealed to Brigham at some point before 1853, and divorced in September 1853. She married twice more.
1853 sealed to him1853 divorce or separation1868 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 47 and p. 65; Turner p. 193
1855 1 marriage
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1855
The Lion House is finished
Built beside the Beehive House to hold a large part of the family under one roof, with a shared dining room and a nightly prayer. It is the household everyone pictures - and most of his wives never lived in it.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 9.
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10 June 1855
Catherine Reese no. 48
Fifty-one at the sealing, with a prior husband, Zepheniah Clawson. No children, not in the will.
1855 sealed to him1860 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 48; Quinn App. 6 ('*Catherine Reese (Clawson, Egan) 1855 (no ch)')
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22 November 1855
He ordains two of his sons apostles - one of them eleven years old
Brigham Young Jr., eighteen, and John Willard Young, eleven. Both ordinations are private. Joseph Fielding Smith later wrote that these ordinations "were never presented to the Church or any body of the Church for a sustaining vote."
Andrew Jenson, Church Chronology (1899), p. xxviii; Compton, "Development of Presidential Succession", Dialogue 35:4.
1856 1 marriage
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1856
The Reformation
A season of rebaptism, public confession and ferocious preaching, during which plural marriage is pressed on the membership harder than at any other point, and blood atonement is preached from the stand.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 10.
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14 Mar 1856
Harriet Barney no. 49
Previously married to W. H.
1856 sealed to him1911 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 49; Quinn App. 6 ('Harriet E. Barney (Sagers) 1856 (1 ch), in will')
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21 September 1856
“I will set every woman at liberty”
I wish my own women to understand that what I am going to say is for them as well as others ... I am going to give you from this time to the 6th day of October next, for reflection, that you may determine whether you wish to stay with your husbands or not, and then I am going to set every woman at liberty and say to them, Now go your way, my women with the rest, go your way. And my wives have got to do one of two things; either round up their shoulders to endure the afflictions of this world, and live their religion, or they may leave, for I will not have them about me. I will go into heaven alone, rather than have scratching and fighting around me. I will set all at liberty. "What, first wife too?" Yes, I will liberate you all.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 4 - discourse of 21 September 1856
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21 September 1856
“It is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children”
Now recollect that two weeks from to morrow I am going to set you at liberty. But the first wife will say, "It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;" then I say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children.
Journal of Discourses, vol. 4 - discourse of 21 September 1856
1857
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September 1857
The Utah War, and Mountain Meadows
Federal troops march on Utah. On 11 September a Latter-day Saint militia and Paiute allies massacre about 120 emigrants at Mountain Meadows. John D. Lee - adopted into Brigham Young's family in 1846 - is the only person ever executed for it, twenty years later.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 11; Walker, Turley and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Oxford, 2008).
1859
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1859
“Men will have to be sealed to Men, untill the Chain is united from Father Adam”
Men will have to be sealed to Men, untill the Chain is united from Father Adam down to the last Saint.
Brigham Young, 1859, quoted in John G. Turner, Brigham Young - Pioneer Prophet (Harvard, 2012), p. 404
1861
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1861
“There is no Bill of divorce required in the case”
Also there was another way in which a woman could leave a man - if the woman preferred another man higher in authority & he is willing to take her, & her husband gives her up - there is no Bill of divorce required in the case, it is right in the sight of God.
Brigham Young, 1861 speech, preserved in two manuscript versions; quoted in Dialogue - A Journal of Mormon Thought 29:2, p. 44
1862
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1 July 1862
The Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act
Congress makes plural marriage a federal crime in the territories. Enforcement is negligible during the Civil War. Brigham Young is never prosecuted under it.
Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, 12 Stat. 501 (1862).
1863 1 marriage
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24 Jan 1863
Harriet Amelia Folsom no. 50
THE LATE-LIFE FAVOURITE. Twenty-four to his sixty-one - THIRTY-SEVEN YEARS his junior - and he married her in January 1863 in OPEN VIOLATION of the federal Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act, weeks after Governor Harding had publicly warned the Mormons to obey it.
1863 sealed to him1910 died
Johnson Table 1 n. 50; Turner p. 325; Quinn App. 6 ('no ch, in will')
1864
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4 February 1864
Three sons ordained apostles, privately, in the Lion House
Joseph Angell Young and Brigham Young Jr. are ordained and John Willard Young's earlier ordination confirmed - all in his private room, all before any vacancy existed in the Quorum of the Twelve, and, as Joseph Fielding Smith put it, "without the knowledge of the other general authorities." The clearest surviving evidence that he hoped a son would succeed him.
Compton, Dialogue 35:4, pp. 127, 148; Balmer, JMH 30:1 (2004), p. 65.
1865 1 marriage
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8 Jan 1865
Mary Van Cott no. 51
Twenty-three; he was sixty-three. He moved her and her mother into a house he bought in Provo, partly meaning to spend more time there himself.
1865 sealed to him1884 died
Johnson Table 1 and p. 62; Turner p. 375. TOTAL-CHILDREN COUNT CONTESTED: Turner 58, Johnson 57; Quinn App. 6 ('1 ch, in will')
1866
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19 August 1866
“If it is wrong … the Lord will reveal it by and by”
If it is wrong for a man to have more than one wife at a time, the Lord will reveal it by and by, and he will put it away that it will not be known in the Church.
Journal of Discourses 11:268 - discourse of 19 August 1866
1868 1 marriage
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7 Apr 1868
Ann Eliza Webb no. 52
'WIFE NO. 19' - by far the most consequential departure.
1868 sealed to him1873 divorce or separation1874 left the church
Johnson Table 1, pp. 57, 63 (excommunication 10 Oct 1874; 'She was actually number fifty-two'); Turner p. 375; Quinn App. 6 ('no ch, divorced 1875')
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9 October 1868
Brigham Young Jr. enters the Quorum of the Twelve
Thirteen years after his private ordination. He later presides over the Quorum from 1901 to 1903, one step from the presidency at his death.
Jenson, Church Chronology (1899).
1869 1 marriage
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10 May 1869
The transcontinental railroad is completed
Utah's isolation ends. Non-Mormon population, federal attention and national press coverage of polygamy all increase sharply from this point.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 13.
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3 July 1869
Elizabeth Jones no. 53
Widow of Dan Jones, the celebrated Welsh missionary. Known as the 'Welsh Queen' for her generosity to poor Welsh emigrants, and Brigham praised her publicly.
1869 sealed to him1895 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 376
1870 1 marriage
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8 May 1870
Lydia Farnsworth no. 54
Sixty-two at the sealing, with a living husband. Turner notes she 'had long wanted to be Brigham Young's wife' - one of several women who pursued the connection for years before it was granted.
1870 sealed to him1897 died
Johnson Table 1; Turner p. 376; Quinn App. 6 ('*Lydia Farnsworth (Mayhew) 1870 (no ch)')
1872 1 marriage
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8 Dec 1872
Hannah Tapfield King no. 55
HIS LAST MARRIAGE, and a pure eternity-only sealing. A Cambridge-born English writer and poet who joined the church in 1850 and came to Utah in 1853 WITH her non-Mormon husband, who never converted.
1872 sealed to him1886 died
Johnson Table 1 and p. 66; Turner n. 56; Crawley, Descriptive Bibliography v.3
1873
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1873
Ann Eliza Webb leaves him and sues
Five years after the marriage. Her divorce suit runs for years, produces a contempt ruling against him, and puts the finances of his household into open court.
Young, Wife No. 19 (1875); Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 15.
1874
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23 June 1874
The Poland Act
Strips the territorial probate courts of most jurisdiction and hands prosecutions to federal judges, making the Morrill Act enforceable for the first time.
Poland Act, 18 Stat. 253 (1874).
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10 October 1874
Ann Eliza Webb is excommunicated
She goes on to tour the country lecturing against polygamy, addresses members of Congress, and is widely credited with pushing federal opinion towards the Edmunds Act.
Johnson, Dialogue 20:3 (1987), pp. 57, 63.
1875
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1875
Wife No. 19 is published
The only full-length published autobiography by any of the fifty-five, and a hostile one. For 150 years the most-read first-person account of being married to Brigham Young has been by the woman who left him - which is a reason to notice that the other fifty-four had no comparable platform, not a reason to discount her.
Ann Eliza Young, Wife No. 19 (Dustin, Gilman & Co., 1875).
1877
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23 March 1877
John D. Lee is executed at Mountain Meadows
Shot by firing squad on the site, twenty years after the massacre, having been adopted into Brigham Young's family in 1846 and cut off from the church in 1870. His confessions implicate Young, who dies five months later.
Walker, Turley and Leonard, Massacre at Mountain Meadows (Oxford, 2008); Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 16.
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6 April 1877
The St George temple is dedicated, and adoption sealings resume
The first temple completed in Utah. Adoption sealings, dormant for thirty years, are allowed again - but he makes no attempt to rebuild the extended family organisation of Winter Quarters, and says nothing publicly about the doctrine.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, p. 404.
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29 August 1877
He dies in Salt Lake City, aged 76
Of peritonitis, probably from a ruptured appendix. He leaves twenty-three surviving wives, about fifty-seven children by sixteen mothers, and an estate whose division runs for years in the courts. Fourteen women are named in his will.
Turner, Pioneer Prophet, ch. 16.
1879
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6 January 1879
Reynolds v. United States
The Supreme Court upholds the Morrill Act, ruling that the free exercise clause protects belief but not practice. It remains the foundational American case on religious exemption, and it was a test case the church itself arranged.
Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1879).
1882
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22 March 1882
The Edmunds Act
Makes "unlawful cohabitation" a crime - no marriage need be proved - disenfranchises polygamists and voids the territorial voter rolls. More than a thousand men go to prison over the decade, and many go underground.
Edmunds Act, 22 Stat. 30 (1882).
1887
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3 March 1887
The Edmunds-Tucker Act
Dissolves the church as a legal corporation, seizes its property, abolishes woman suffrage in Utah (granted in 1870), and compels wives to testify against husbands. It is the measure that breaks the practice financially.
Edmunds-Tucker Act, 24 Stat. 635 (1887).
1888
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1888
Zina D. H. Young becomes general president of the Relief Society
Sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity and to Brigham Young for time in 1846, she leads the organisation her husband had shut down in 1845 until her death in 1901. Eliza R. Snow, also one of the fifty-five, had led it before her.
Derr, Beecher and Cannon, Women of Covenant (Deseret Book, 1992); Bradley and Woodward, Four Zinas (Signature, 2000).
1890
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25 September 1890
The Manifesto
Wilford Woodruff announces the end of new plural marriages, thirteen years after Brigham Young's death. It is presented as advice rather than revelation and accepted by conference on 6 October. Plural marriages nonetheless continue to be performed.
Official Declaration 1, Doctrine and Covenants (1890).
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October 1890 onward
Afterwards: the new plural marriages nobody announced
Between the Manifesto and 1904, plural marriages continue to be solemnised - in Mexico, in Canada, on the ocean, and in Utah - with the knowledge of members of the First Presidency and the Twelve. The practice the Manifesto was understood to have ended carries on for fourteen more years.
Quinn, "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904", Dialogue 18:1 (1985).
1894
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1894
The law of adoption is retired
Wilford Woodruff receives a revelation directing Latter-day Saints to be sealed to their own ancestors rather than to prominent leaders. The kingdom-building logic behind the 1846 adoptions is formally abandoned after half a century.
"Sealing", Church History Topics, churchofjesuschrist.org.
1904
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1904
The Smoot hearings, and the Second Manifesto
Reed Smoot's election to the Senate triggers four years of hearings into whether the church had really stopped. On 6 April 1904 Joseph F. Smith issues the Second Manifesto, this time attaching excommunication. Apostles John W. Taylor and Matthias Cowley resign in 1905 over it; Taylor is excommunicated in 1911.
Proceedings before the Committee on Privileges and Elections... in the Matter of the Protests against the Right of Hon. Reed Smoot (US Senate, 1904-07); Quinn, 'LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904', Dialogue 18:1 (1985).
1910
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1910
The line hardens
The church begins excommunicating members who enter new plural marriages. The groups that refuse - later the FLDS and others - date their separation from this period, and still hold Brigham Young's teaching on the subject as binding.
Quinn, 'LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904', Dialogue 18:1 (1985).
1997
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1997
The Sunday School manual puts his wives in the singular
The Church publishes Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young for Sunday instruction. Where he told church leaders to set an example "before your wives and your children", the manual prints "before your [wife] and your children" — and again, "instruct his [wife] and children in this lesson of self-government". The brackets are there, in the standard scholarly form that marks an edited word. The manual's one-page historical summary names his marriage to Miriam Works and his remarriage to Mary Ann Angell, and does not mention the other fifty-three marriages or his family life at all.
Critics read it as erasing his polygamy from the material most members actually study. FAIR, answering for the defence, makes three points: the brackets openly signal the change, the singular makes the counsel applicable to a church that no longer practises plural marriage, and in these particular passages he is addressing other men about their wives rather than describing his own household. All three are fair, and the sentence still reaches a Latter-day Saint reader as though the man who said it had one wife.
What is not in dispute is what happened next. The following manual in the same series, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (1998), added a line its predecessor had not carried: that the summary "omits some important events in his personal life, including his marriages (plural marriage was being practiced in the Church at that time)". FAIR itself calls that note "almost certainly directed at detractors of the Brigham Young manual". The criticism changed the next book.
Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Brigham Young (1997); FAIR, "The CES Letter Rebuttal, Part 60" and "Alleged whitewashing of polygamy in Church history"; Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph F. Smith (1998), Historical Summary.
The same thing as a shape
One bar per year from 1824 to 1872, its height the number of marriages that year. The spike is Nauvoo after the martyrdom: 19 in the tallest year alone. Hover any bar for the year and the count.
Every entry on this page carries its source. The short forms — Johnson Table 1, Turner, Pioneer Prophet, and the rest — are set out in full, with somewhere to buy or read each one, at works cited.
Bars are drawn from the same 55 rows as the timeline above, so the chart cannot drift from the table. Years with no marriage show a hairline.