Dynastic sealings
Every adoptive family in the Nauvoo temple
Jonathan Stapley's Table 1, complete. Sixteen couples and one man adopted 211 people between them — 111 men and 100 women. Nearly a third of the whole practice ran through one family.
Several of these adoptive parents were dead at the time. The column below says "parents", and it is easy to read the rows as households. They were not. A name here means a position in a priesthood lineage, and a dead woman could hold one as readily as a living one.
Names in italics were dead at the time of the sealing. Hover one to confirm.
| Adoptive parents | Men | Women | Total | Share | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brigham Young / Miriam Works | 31 | 29 | 60 | Miriam had been dead fourteen years. The adoptees were sealed to a living man and a dead woman. | |
| Heber C. Kimball / Vilate Murray | 20 | 18 | 38 | ||
| John Taylor / Leonora Cannon | 14 | 13 | 27 | ||
| John D. Lee / Aggatha Ann Woolsey | 12 | 10 | 22 | Lee was the temple recorder, which gave him access; he and Aggatha were themselves adopted to Brigham and Miriam Young. In 1848 Young complained that Lee 'electioneered also & disgusted me - & men were sealed to him who expected to be sealed to me.' | |
| Hyrum Smith / Jerusha Barden | 7 | 5 | 12 | BOTH were dead - the only row in the table where that is true. Hyrum was murdered at Carthage in June 1844; Jerusha, his first wife, had died years earlier. Stapley notes they nonetheless 'received many posthumous adoptions', which is why he rejects lack of time as the explanation for Joseph Smith's near-absence as an adoptive parent. | |
| Willard Richards / Jennetta Richards | 5 | 6 | 11 | ||
| Winslow Farr / Olive Hovey Freeman | 3 | 5 | 8 | Farr was the only adoptive father who was not a member of the Council of Fifty. | |
| Brigham Young / Augusta Adams | 3 | 3 | 6 | A second Young family line, with a living plural wife rather than the dead Miriam. | |
| Newel K. Whitney / Elizabeth Ann Smith | 3 | 3 | 6 | ||
| Alpheus Cutler / Lois Lathrop | 2 | 2 | 4 | ||
| John Smith / Clarissa Lyman | 1 | 3 | 4 | ||
| Amasa Lyman / Mariah Louisa Tanner | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| George Miller / Mary Catherine Fry | 2 | 1 | 3 | ||
| Isaac Morley / Lucy Gunn | 3 | 0 | 3 | Morley and Gunn were themselves adopted to Brigham and Miriam Young. | |
| Robert B. Thompson / Mercy Rachel Fielding | 1 | 1 | 2 | Adopted to Hyrum and Jerusha Smith. Thompson died in 1841 and was the only adoptive father who was not a polygamist. | |
| Samuel Bent / Mary Kilborn | 1 | 0 | 1 | ||
| Joseph Smith no adoptive mother | 1 | 0 | 1 | ONE. Exactly one person was adopted to Joseph Smith, by proxy, against sixty-six to Brigham Young. Stapley calls Smith's near-absence as an adoptive parent the most striking feature of the Nauvoo adoptions. NO ADOPTIVE MOTHER - DO NOT PAIR HIM WITH EMMA. Stapley's table lists Joseph alone; the one adoption was performed by proxy for a dead man, and Emma Smith took no part in the 1846 temple work at all. She had broken with the Twelve, stayed in Nauvoo and never came west. Rendering this row as 'Joseph and Emma' would be false, and it would also bury Stapley's actual point. |
Who was dead, and how we know. Stapley's own note on Table 1 reads "Italicized names are deceased individuals." We reproduce his markings exactly: 7 of the people named in this table were already dead when the adoptions were performed, across 6 rows. Only one row has both parents dead — Hyrum Smith and Jerusha Barden, who nonetheless received many posthumous adoptions.
- Miriam Works — Dead fourteen years. Sixty people - the largest adoptive family in the temple - were sealed to a living man and a dead woman.
- Joseph Smith — Murdered June 1844. His single adoption was by proxy, and he has no adoptive mother beside him.
- Hyrum Smith — Murdered at Carthage with Joseph.
- Jerusha Barden — Hyrum and Jerusha are the one row where BOTH adoptive parents were dead, and Stapley notes they 'received many posthumous adoptions'.
- Jennetta Richards — Willard was living; his wife was not.
- Mary Kilborn — Samuel Bent was living at the sealing - he died later in 1846.
- Robert B. Thompson — Died 1841; Stapley states this in prose, at his note 38. His widow Mercy Rachel Fielding was living.
Everyone else in the table was living, by the absence of italics. The four column headings are italic too, but that is table styling, not a death marker.
NO, and Stapley says so in as many words. Stapley, in as many words:
except for six aberrant adoptions, all of the adoptive mothers in the Nauvoo Temple were the first wives of the adoptive fathers, and Emma Smith did not participate in the completed temple
Stapley, JMH 37:3, p. 67 of the print run
This is now a sourced sentence rather than an argument from silence. It also explains the table's shape: adoptive mothers were FIRST wives, which is why Brigham Young's main line runs through the long-dead Miriam Works rather than a living wife. It is the reason Brigham Young's largest line runs through Miriam Works, dead since 1832, rather than through any of the living women he was married to in 1846.
17 rows, 16 couples. Stapley says sixteen couples; the seventeenth row is Joseph Smith, who is listed without a wife because the single adoption to him was by proxy. Brigham Young also appears TWICE - once with the dead Miriam Works and once with the living Augusta Adams - so rows and couples are not the same count. Assert on couples. Rows are ordered by size, largest first; the table is Stapley's, the ordering is ours. Note that the sixteen couples involve only fifteen distinct men — Brigham Young appears twice, once with the dead Miriam Works and once with the living Augusta Adams.
Why one family is so much bigger
Brigham Young's 66 is not a rounding difference. He was President of the Quorum of the Twelve and the man running the temple, and the ritual flowed toward him. Six of the men he adopted can be named; the rest are counted but not identified in the published record.
The source for the whole table is Jonathan A. Stapley, "Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism", Journal of Mormon History 37:3 (2011).