Prototype. Nobody named on this site has agreed to take part in it — what that means.
The Wives of Brigham Young 55 women, named — and given back their own words

The vocabulary

Marriage, sealing and adoption

Almost every argument about Brigham Young's wives is really an argument about vocabulary. The number is disputed because the word wife is disputed. A woman could be sealed to him for eternity while married to another man for this life, and appear on his list without ever sharing a house, a bed or a surname with him. Another woman could be married to him for time only, bear his children, run his household, and have no eternal claim on him at all.

This page defines the terms, in the order they arrived, and says when each definition held. It is the page to read before the list of wives or the numbers.

The short version

Nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint marriage was not one thing. It was a stack of separate claims, and a ceremony could grant any combination of them:

Modern temple marriage fuses all three into a single ordinance. In the 1840s they came apart, and they came apart in public, on the record, in the Nauvoo temple, in about six weeks.

Where it came from

The sealing power is traced in Latter-day Saint teaching to a vision in the Kirtland temple on 3 April 1836, in which Elijah is said to have conferred keys to bind on earth and in heaven (Doctrine and Covenants 110). For seven years it was a doctrine without much practice. The revelation that turned it into a marriage system was dictated on 12 July 1843 and is now Doctrine and Covenants 132 — the "new and everlasting covenant of marriage", which both promises exaltation to those sealed under it and sanctions plural marriage.

Joseph Smith had by then been practising plural marriage for several years; he was killed on 27 June 1844, eleven months after the revelation was written down. Almost everything on this site happened afterwards, under Brigham Young, and that sequence matters: the theology was young, and Brigham Young was making much of it up as he went.

The six weeks that produced most of the list

The Nauvoo temple was never finished, but its upper rooms were put into use in December 1845, and the Latter-day Saints then had a few weeks before the mobs and the winter forced them out. Between December 1845 and February 1846, working sometimes around the clock, the Twelve performed thousands of ordinances.

Nineteen of Brigham Young's fifty-five wives were sealed to him in that window. Most of those sealings are the reason the word "wife" strains: many were women with no household connection to him before or after, and in several cases the sealing was explicitly for eternity only, to a woman who kept living her own life. The register of who received what, and on what day, was published by Lisle G. Brown as Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings (Smith-Pettit, 2006), and it is the document behind most of the "sealing type" column on this site.

The types of sealing

There were four recognisable patterns, and they carry very different meanings.

Time and eternity. The full claim: a marriage in this life that the ritual asserts continues after death. This is what most people picture, and it covers 17 of the 55 rows here — fewer than a third.

Sealed to another man for eternity, to Brigham Young for time. The woman's eternal bond belongs to someone else, usually a dead man, very often Joseph Smith. Brigham Young takes responsibility for her in this life only. Seven women on the list were sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity and to Brigham Young for time; eight in all were Joseph Smith's widows. This arrangement was not thought scandalous. It was thought generous.

Eternity only. A bond asserted for the next life with no claim at all on this one. The woman does not move in, does not take his name in practice, and has no economic relationship with him. Whether this is a marriage is exactly what Turner, Johnson and Quinn are disagreeing about when they say 53, 55 and 56.

For time only. The reverse: a working marriage with no eternal claim, usually because her eternal claim was already placed elsewhere.

Twenty-three rows read "not recorded". That is not a shrug; it means the Nauvoo registers do not state a type. It is the single largest value in the column.

Polyandry

Fourteen women on this list were legally married to a living man at the time they were sealed to Brigham Young, counted strictly as Turner defines it in his endnote 56. Turner names fifteen; the extra one, Amanda Barnes Smith, is not on Johnson's list at all, and the reason is settled.

The term needs care. "Polyandry" here does not usually describe a household with two husbands in it. In most of these cases the woman continued living with her legal husband, and the sealing was an eternal claim that the participants did not believe conflicted with an earthly marriage — the two were held to operate on different planes. In a handful of cases, including Lucy Ann Decker, the first husband was present in Nauvoo and Brigham Young was making payments to him.

What the record almost never states is how the first husbands felt about it. Treat any confident claim in either direction with suspicion.

Adoption

The most alien idea on this page, and the one that explains the strangest row in the data.

The law of adoption sealed adult church members to prominent leaders as sons and daughters — not because they were orphans, but to graft them into a priesthood lineage. Latter-day Saints whose own parents had not converted could not be sealed to them; adoption gave them a place in a chain that was understood to run back to Adam. George Laub wrote in his diary that "this order of Adoption will Link the chain of the Prieshood in such a way that it cannot be seperated."

On 25 January 1846 Brigham Young adopted eight couples, including John D. Lee, who afterwards called him his "father in Israel". Adopted families were real social units: they travelled together, farmed together, and fell out with each other. The practice produced open competition between leaders over who could gather the largest kingdom, and it was effectively abandoned within a couple of years, revived at St George in 1877, and formally replaced in 1894 when Wilford Woodruff received a revelation directing Latter-day Saints to be sealed to their own ancestors instead.

And once, on this list, adoption and marriage touched. Mary Ellen de la Montague Woodward was sealed to Brigham Young as his adopted daughter, and married to him two days later, in February

  1. One row out of fifty-five — but it is the clearest single demonstration that these rituals

were categories being invented in real time, not a settled system.

Divorce, separation and cancellation

Brigham Young granted divorces readily and said so. A "divorce" in this context was usually a certificate he wrote himself; Utah's territorial law was also unusually permissive. Ten of these marriages ended in divorce or documented separation, the first being Mary Woodward on 13 December

  1. Augusta Adams Cobb asked for one and was refused.

The theological asymmetry is worth naming. Cancelling a sealing was, and remains, a different act from ending a marriage — one dissolves an eternal claim and requires the church president, the other ends a household. That two-tier structure is why several women on this list separated from Brigham Young, remarried inside the church, and are still counted among his wives.

What happened afterwards

Plural marriage was defended publicly from 1852, prosecuted federally from 1862 and in earnest after 1882, and officially discontinued by Wilford Woodruff's Manifesto in 1890 — though plural marriages continued to be performed until a Second Manifesto in 1904. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has published its own accounts of this history in its Gospel Topics essays and its Saints volumes, and where this site's reading differs from theirs it says so rather than implying agreement.

Sealing itself did not go away. It is still the central ordinance of Latter-day Saint temples. What went away was plural marriage in this life, the adoption of adults into leaders' lineages, and the routine separation of a woman's eternal claim from her earthly one.

Glossary

Every term used on this site, defined once. Words in this vocabulary changed meaning between 1843 and 1894, so each entry says when the definition held.

Sealing 1836 onward

An ordinance asserted to bind a relationship beyond death, performed under authority traced to a vision of Elijah in the Kirtland temple on 3 April 1836. In the 1840s a sealing could bind a wife to a husband, a child to a parent, or an adult to an unrelated leader. Today it binds only spouses and parents to children.

Doctrine and Covenants 110; "Sealing", Church History Topics, churchofjesuschrist.org.

New and everlasting covenant of marriage from July 1843

The doctrine set out in the revelation dictated 12 July 1843, now Doctrine and Covenants 132. It promises exaltation to those married under it and sanctions plural marriage. It is the legal charter for everything on this site.

Doctrine and Covenants 132.

For time

A claim on this life only — cohabitation, children, support, a household. A woman married to Brigham Young "for time" might have her eternal claim placed with another man entirely, usually a dead one.

For eternity

A claim on the next life only. No household, no children, no economic relationship necessarily follows. Whether a woman sealed to Brigham Young for eternity only is his wife is the argument that produces the counts 53, 55 and 56.

Time and eternity

Both claims at once — what a modern temple marriage is. Seventeen of the fifty-five rows here.

Polyandry as used on this site

A woman sealed to Brigham Young while legally married to another living man. Counted strictly as John G. Turner defines it in endnote 56 of Pioneer Prophet: married to another man at the time of the sealing. Fourteen women on Johnson's list qualify. It usually did not mean two husbands in one household — in most cases the woman stayed with her legal husband and the sealing was understood to operate on a different plane.

Turner, *Brigham Young: Pioneer Prophet* (Harvard, 2012), n. 56, pp. 441-42.

Law of adoption 1846 to 1894

An ordinance sealing adult church members to prominent leaders as sons and daughters, to graft them into a priesthood lineage understood to run back to Adam. Members whose own parents had not converted could not be sealed to them, and adoption was the substitute. Brigham Young adopted eight couples on 25 January 1846, John D. Lee among them. The practice produced competition between leaders over who could gather the largest kingdom, lapsed within a few years, was revived at St George in 1877, and was replaced in 1894 when Wilford Woodruff directed Latter-day Saints to be sealed to their own ancestors instead.

Jonathan A. Stapley, "Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism", *Journal of Mormon History* 37:3 (2011); Turner, *Pioneer Prophet*, pp. 139, 404; "Sealing", Church History Topics.

Proxy sealing

A sealing performed with a living person standing in for a dead one. Brigham Young was resealed to his dead first wife Miriam Works by proxy in January 1846, with Mary Ann Angell standing in her place. It is also what happened with Amanda Barnes Smith, who is often wrongly listed as his wife: she asked to be sealed for eternity to the dead Joseph Smith and Brigham Young reluctantly stood proxy.

Turner, *Pioneer Prophet*, pp. 138-39, 238.

Second anointing from 1843

The highest Nauvoo ordinance, in which a man was anointed king and priest and his wife queen and priestess to her husband. In January 1846 Heber C. Kimball anointed Mary Ann Angell "Queen & Priestess unto her husband" while Brigham Young was made "King and Priest".

Turner, *Pioneer Prophet*, pp. 138-39; Brown, *Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings*.

Celestial marriage 1852 to about 1890

In nineteenth-century usage, frequently a synonym for plural marriage; in modern usage, temple marriage whether plural or not. The shift is deliberate and dates from the anti-polygamy prosecutions, when leaders began insisting that it was eternal marriage, not plurality, that they urged on members. Read the word by its date.

Plural marriage

The practice of a man being married to more than one living woman at once. "Polygamy", "plurality of wives", "patriarchal marriage" and, in the earliest Nauvoo years, "spiritual wifery" all appear for the same thing; the terms are not interchangeable across decades.

The Manifesto 1890

Wilford Woodruff's declaration of 1890 announcing the end of new plural marriages. Plural marriages nonetheless continued to be performed until a Second Manifesto in 1904.

Johnson's Table 1

Jeffery Ogden Johnson, "Determining and Defining 'Wife': The Brigham Young Households", Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 20:3 (Fall 1987), Table 1, pp. 65-71. The only comprehensive published list of Brigham Young's wives, and the spine of this site.

Free to read at dialoguejournal.com.

Not documented here

An honest blank. It means no source in hand established the fact. It never means zero, and it never means no. The number of these blanks is the argument for the book.