By Jerald and Sandra Tanner

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Tom Green, a modern-day polygamist in Utah, was given a five-year prison sentence on August 25, 2001. Green might never have come to the attention of the state if he had kept a low profile. Instead, he appeared on various television programs and granted numerous interviews, explaining his polygamist life-style. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

NEPHI—Polygamist Tom Green’s bragging on tabloid TV shows that he is married to five women and has fathered dozens of children finally may have caught up with him. . . .

“I will never regret standing and publicly defending my religious beliefs,” Green told The Salt Lake Tribune. “I’m being prosecuted because I am a polygamist who stood up.”

Also Thursday [April 19, 2001], the Utah Court of Appeals rejected Green’s appeal of another judge’s ruling that his marriage to wife Linda Kunz is valid—a crucial point for prosecutors in the bigamy charges.

. . . The ruling about Green’s marriage does not resolve the bigamy counts, and prosecutors still must prove those charges beyond a reasonable doubt, the court said in dismissing the appeal.

Green also did not file his appeal by court deadlines, the judges noted. During the hearing in Nephi, Kunz called herself “Head wife” and added, “If our family was a business, I’d be the CEO.” She explained that meant, among other things, she is in charge of deciding who will spend each night with Green.

. . . Green was ordered to stand trial on the bigamy charges last year. But [4th District Judge Guy] Burningham granted a new preliminary hearing after Juab County Prosecutor David Leavitt filed an amended complaint alleging the admitted polygamist has continued to break bigamy laws.

In court Thursday, Hannah Bjorkman—who married Green in a civil wedding in 1991, but divorced him four years later testified that she is still married to Green “in my heart.” Bjorkman added all of the women considered themselves to be Green’s wives, regardless of status in the eyes of the state. . . .

Green is also charged with first-degree felony rape for allegedly fathering a child with Kunz, then 13, in 1986. Kunz later became Green’s wife. That charge could be dropped if Bucher [Green’s attorney] can prove the rape allegation had been reported to the police before 1986. That would mean the 10-year legal deadline, or statute of limitations, then in effect had expired. (Salt Lake Tribune, April 20, 2001, p. D3)

On May 19, 2001, the Salt Lake Tribune reported:

PROVO—Avowed polygamist Tom Green—the subject of Utah’s first polygamy trial in nearly five decades— was convicted late Friday on four counts of bigamy and one count of criminal nonsupport.

. . . The 8-person jury reached the verdict in less than three hours. Interestingly,

Green recalled in testimony his transformation from a missionary with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to a believer in what he called “Mormon fundamentalism.”

“The process began in my teens as I studied . . . the history of my faith, the history of my state,” Green said

Polygamy was practiced for several decades during the 1800s by Mormon pioneers, but was abandoned by the church in 1890. . . . [Juab County Prosecutor David] Leavitt has said he did not know Green existed until he saw him bragging on “Dateline NBC” about his living arrangements. . . . “The reality is that the state of Utah makes criminal more than one wife because it hurts people,” Leavitt said, telling jurors that Green took three of his wives when they were only 14.

The Salt Lake Tribune reported the following:

PROVO—With a rueful smile, convicted polygamist Tom Green blew a kiss to his five tearful wives and a handful of his 30 children before deputies escorted him from court to Utah State Prison for up to 5 years. . . . [This] marked the first time since the 1940’s that a Utah polygamist was sent to prison for violating the state’s anti-bigamy law. . . . Green, 53, was sentenced to up to 5 years on each of four counts of felony bigamy and one charge of criminal nonsupport, and was ordered to pay $78,868 in restitution. . . .

[Judge] Burningham, who acknowledged his own polygamous heritage during Friday’s court proceeding, ruled Green’s prison sentences will run concurrently. . . . (Salt Lake Tribune, August 25, 2001, pp. A1 and A10)

Ironically, the Juab County Prosecutor, David Leavitt (brother of Utah State Governor Mike Leavitt) is also descended from early Mormon polygamists. The Salt Lake Tribune commented:

Modern-day polygamists—like Green, himself a former church missionary—are excommunicated for entering into plural marriages. . . . Leavitt and his older brother, Gov. Mike Leavitt have polygamous ancestors. (Salt Lake Tribune, May 19, 2001, p. A5)

The Salt Lake Tribune also reported that the state Attorney General’s Office is pursuing other possible cases against Utah polygamists.

Green is the first polygamist to be convicted since the 1953 raids on a polygamist group in southern Utah:

. . . Utah’s estimated 30,000 polygamists, . . . have never forgotten a 1953 raid on the polygamous enclave of Short Creek on the Utah-Arizona border. The incident became a public relations nightmare for state and federal officials as fathers, mothers and children were forcibly separated. (Salt Lake Tribune, August 25, 2001, p. A10)

While the Salt Lake Tribune estimated Utah’s polygamists at 30,000, the total number of polygamists is hard to determine. Maxine Hanks reported:

Utah usually ignores polygamy, hoping it will go away. But its scope and problems have grown and “festered like cancer,” according to an ex-wife . . . Today, there are a dozen major clans consisting of hundreds of families. And there are small independent groups. . . . Estimates vary widely, but insiders claim that Mormon fundamentalism may involve 60,000 people scattered from Canada to Mexico across seven Western states. Most of them are practicing some form of polygamy. (Salt Lake Tribune, June 7, 1998)

Incest and Abuse

The Salt Lake Tribune reported on another polygamist group, the Kingstons:

. . . Two years ago, [S.L. County District Attorney David] Yocum’s office successfully prosecuted polygamist David Ortell Kingston on two charges of incest—a felony for having sex with a niece in a closed polygamist society. Kingston, a key member of Salt Lake County’s largest polygamist clan, was ordered to serve two consecutive terms of up to 5 years in prison and fined $10,000. And Kingston’s brother, John Daniel Kingston was sentenced to 7 months in jail for beating his daughter with a horsewhip after she fled the arranged marriage to her uncle. But Yocum did not pursue charges on bigamy. David Zolman, a former lawmaker from Taylorsville who often defended polygamists on Capital Hill, says violent crimes such as the Kingston’s should be prosecuted but that consenting adults, such as Green and his five wives, ought to be left alone. He says plural marriage in Utah is here to stay and that Green’s trial has galvanized polygamists statewide. (Salt Lake Tribune, May 20, 2001, p. A14)

Although Mr. Zolman defended polygamy when it is between consenting adults, he failed to mention that Tom Green’s current first wife, Linda, was only 13 when he “married” her.

Green was first married as a regular Mormon. When he got interested in practicing polygamy his wife divorced him. He later married Beth, who had a daughter named Linda. He then married that step-daughter.

Next he married Shirley (age 15), Beth’s niece. Then he married Shirley’s mother, June. Later June’s other daughter, LeeAnn, married Green. The total of Green’s wives in 1993 was seven: Beth and daughter Linda; June and daughters, LeeAnn and Shirley; and Cari and Hanna (sisters). Older wives Beth and June later left the relationship, leaving Green with his current five wives, all at least two dozen years younger than him (see Salt Lake City Magazine, March/April, 1993, “Plural Lives: Inside Polygamy in the ‘90’s,” pp. 52-101).

The women were once a part of another polygamist group. The Salt Lake Tribune reported:

Shirley Beagley, 31, one of Green’s wives, testified Wednesday that she was raised in the polygamous enclave of Colorado City, Arizona. She said she married Green at age 15 in a “religious ceremony.” (Salt Lake Tribune, May 17, 2001, p. A8)

While Mr. Green only claims five wives today, he has had up to ten in all (Salt Lake Tribune, May 20, 2001, p. B1).

In a television interview with Green’s wives, Shirley explained that she and her mother, June, were simultaneously pregnant with Green’s children and both delivered on the same day (Dateline, June 22, 2001).

Polygamy in Other Areas

The Salt Lake Tribune carried the following story on polygamy in Arizona:

PHOENIX—Anyone thinking that polygamy is limited to a remote and obscure strip along the Arizona-Utah line beyond Grand Canyon should think again: How about metro Phoenix?

Take James Timpson of suburban Tempe, a 26-yearold Arizona State University psychology major who wears his hair in a surfer’s ponytail, drinks Corona beer and puts in long hours at his job as a computer salesman

Timpson is a practicing polygamist, one of several in metropolitan Phoenix who believe keeping more than one wife is a mandate from heaven. Timpson has three.

Arizona authorities have taken no significant action toward consensual polygamist marriages since 1953, when a disastrous police raid on the polygamist settlement of Short Creek—now Colorado City, just across the border from the Utah town of Hildale— resulted in a wave of negative publicity that helped drive Republican Gov. Howard Pyle from office.

“Polygamous or plural marriages, or polygamist cohabitation, are forever prohibited within this state,” says Arizona’s constitution, written in 1910.

But the Marcia County Attorney’s Office will prosecute only if there is evidence the husband defrauded his wives financially, Bill FitzGerald said. “We don’t think the public interest is served by prosecuting,” added Bill Ekstrom, the top prosecutor in Mohave County, where an estimated 5,000 practicing polygamists still live in what was Short Creek.

Tens of thousands of people in western United States practice polygamy. There is no way to gauge how many of them are in Phoenix, . . . Timpson was raised with 65 biological brothers and sisters in Colorado City, said to be the home of the largest polygamist assembly in North America today (Salt Lake Tribune, May 20, 2001, p. A15)

Another article relating to the Colorado City group told of the escape of a teenage girl:

A 15-year-old girl who ran away from her polygamous family saying she wanted to avoid an arranged marriage maintained she just looks for a chance to live a normal life and get an education. . . . she has not been allowed to attend school since the sixth grade. . . .

The girl believed she would be forced to marry 45-year-old Warren Jeffs, acting church president [of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints] . . . (Salt Lake Tribune, April 7, 2001, p. A1)

Polygamy is not just a phenomena of the United States. The following newspaper article appeared in the Saturday, September 30, 2000, edition of the York Daily Record:

VANCOUVER, British Columbia—A polygamous community in Southern British Columbia is part of a U.S. probe into the arranged marriages of underage American girls. In Utah last week Ron Barton was hired by the state attorney general’s office to investigate tax evasion, welfare fraud, and child sexual abuse, domestic abuse and other crimes in “loose” societies, such as tax protest groups, white supremacist organizations and polygamist sects.

One of the largest of the polygamist sects is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Located primarily in Hildale, Utah, and neighboring Colorado City, Ariz. it has an estimated 8,000 to 12,000 members. The sect has an enclave at Lister, British Columbia, with 800 to 1,000 members.

Ex-members of the sect and a child advocacy group have asked Utah authorities to investigate the movement of young girls between Arizona, Utah and British Columbia. They say the arranged marriages are increasing because the church’s leaders have predicted that the end of the world is near. The Lister enclave is headed by businessman Winston Blackmore, 44, who has 30 wives and 80 children, The Vancouver Province newspaper reported.

Joseph Smith and Polygamy

Although many members of the Mormon Church are familiar with polygamy in early Utah, they usually are not aware of the beginnings of plural marriage under Joseph Smith. Richard Van Wagoner explains that Joseph Smith first introduced the idea of polygamy in 1831, just a year after starting his church:

It is difficult to determine exactly when Joseph Smith first felt compelled to practice polygamy. W. W. Phelps recollected three decades after the fact in an 1861 letter to Brigham Young that on 17 July 1831, when he and five others had gathered in Jackson County, Missouri, Smith stated: “It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites [Indians] and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just.” Phelps added in a postscript that “about three years after this was given, I asked brother Joseph, privately, how ‘we,’ that were mentioned in the revelation could take wives of the ‘natives’ as we were all married men?” He claimed that Smith replied, “In the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah; and Jacob took Rachel, Bilhah and Zilpha, by Revelation.” (Mormon Polygamy: A History, by Richard S. Van Wagoner, p. 3)

Joseph Smith’s practice and teaching on polygamy were only known to a small circle of friends and was kept secret from the community. This led to speculation and charges of adultery. In response to these charges, a section on marriage and denouncing polygamy was added to the 1835 edition of the Mormon’s scriptures, Doctrine and Covenants:

Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. (Doctrine and Covenants, 1835 ed., Sec. 101)

This denial of polygamy was in every edition of the Doctrine and Covenants until 1876, when it was replaced with section 132 commanding polygamy. Even though Smith was already practicing plural marriage in the 1830’s he did not give his polygamy revelation (Sec. 132) until 1843.

George Smith provides the following discussion of Joseph Smith’s 1843 revelation on polygamy:

On July 12, 1843, Joseph Smith dictated a ten-page revelation to his private clerk, William Clayton, which indicated that he meant to “restore” the ceremonies and cultural patterns of ancient Israel. The revelation on plural marriage, or “celestial marriage” as it was called, claimed to restore the practice of

“Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon having many wives and concubines . . . a new and everlasting covenant” in which “if any man espouse a virgin . . . [or] ten virgins . . . he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him.” (D&C 132:4, 61, 62).

A few months earlier, Clayton recalled, Smith “also informed me that he had other wives living besides his first wife Emma, and in particular gave me to understand that Eliza R. Snow, Louisa Beman, Desdemona W. Fullmer and others were his lawful wives in the sight of heaven.” In fact, by the time of the 1843 revelation Smith had married at least twelve women besides his legal wife Emma, and a dozen of his most trusted followers had also taken plural wives. (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, vol. 27, no. 1, Spring 1994, pp. 7-8, “Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841-46: A Preliminary Demographic Report,” by George D. Smith)

B. Carmon Hardy, in Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, discusses the response to Smith’s revelation:

That plurality of wives was the most important intent of the communication [D&C 132] is clear from the reasons that led Joseph to dictate it. The opening lines expressly indicate that it was an answer to the prophet’s inquiry as to why ancient men of God were justified in taking plural wives and concubines. . . . Commencing with the examples of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, affirming the sealing authority of God’s appointed and applying it to marriage for eternity, Joseph was instructed to “do the works of Abraham” and his wife Emma to accept them. The ancient patriarchs had taken wives and concubines “and it was accounted unto . . . [them] for righteousness . . . and they have entered into their exaltation . . . and sit upon thrones, and are not angels but are gods.” More than this, the Lord stated that “those who have this law revealed unto them must obey the same.”

Whatever accounted for the prophet’s decision to dictate on the matter, its portrait of the universe as a field for dominion by the patriarchal family had begun to take form . . . Not all were favored . . . with a presentiment of the doctrine’s divinity. And much of the dissent dividing the church in the spring of 1844 dated from refusal to accept the revelation and the obligations enjoined by it. Some of this arose from the sense of betrayal an associate like William Law could feel. Law had previously stood by Joseph, publicly denying rumors of church-sanctioned polygamy. By the spring of 1844, however, the church’s leadership was rent with ugliness and accusation. Not only did some refuse to accept the revelation on plural marriage, but charges of adultery and attempted seduction were traded. Violence was threatened. And, feeding on reports of scandal, the non-Mormon press made the most of it. Social structure in Nauvoo was becoming dangerously tangled.

Then, while under indictment from a Carthage, Illinois, grand jury for adultery and polygamy but secure at home and among friends, Joseph was confronted with the publication by several disaffected members of the Nauvoo Expositor. Charging the Mormon leader with abuses of power and economic manipulations for private gain, the paper was primarily an attack on the personal morality of the leader and his brother Hyrum, including the revelation about and practice of polygamy. The seduction of young women, the ruination of innocent reputations, and the secrecy of sexual liaisons in the name of religion were all charged. Pleading for repentance by the brothers, asking that the old friendships and old orthodoxies be restored, the Expositor’s authors acknowledged the jeopardy they invited by their disclosures but hoped the venture, which promised future evidence in support of their allegations, would be protected by the freedoms of press and religion.

Fearful of the paper’s effect if it were permitted to continue, the city council held an extraordinary meeting with Joseph presiding, condemned the publication as a nuisance, and issued an order to wreck the press that printed it. Those responsible for the Expositor left town in fear, seeing to it that Joseph and others were charged in Carthage with instigating to riot and destruction of property. After some hesitation and considerable parleying involving Governor Thomas Ford, the prophet with several associates surrendered to authorities in Carthage to await trial. In the late afternoon of 27 June 1844, a mob of assassins with blackened faces stormed the jail, shot Joseph and Hyrum to death, and left John Taylor, one of their companions, terribly wounded. (Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage, B. Carmon Hardy, pp. 10-11.)

Polygamy was kept secret until the Mormons settled in Utah. In 1852 Apostle Orson Pratt was appointed to make the announcement on plural marriage in an LDS meeting (Mormon Polygamy: A History, p. 85).

Plural Marriage Illegal

Prosecutor David Leavitt stated:

“I am sure that my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents would approve of my actions,” Leavitt said. . . . “Polygamy is against the law in Utah.” (Salt Lake Tribune, May 20, 2001, p. A14)

Ironically, polygamy was against the law in Illinois when the early Mormons began practicing it. This was the reason for its great secrecy and the adamant denials of the doctrine and practice by Joseph Smith. Richard S. Van Wagoner provides the following information:

Polygamy, a criminal act under the 1833 Illinois Anti-bigamy Laws, was so unacceptable to monogamous nineteenth-century American society that Smith could introduce it only in absolute secrecy. Despite Smith’s explicit denials of plural marriage, stories of “spiritual wifery” had continued to spread. (Mormon Polygamy: A History, p. 18)

In 1833 the state of Illinois passed a law making bigamy illegal:

Sec 121. Bigamy consists in the having of two wives or two husbands at one and the same time, knowing that the former husband or wife is still alive. If any person or persons within this State, being married, or who shall hereafter marry, do at any time marry any person or persons, the former husband or wife being alive, the person so offending shall, on conviction thereof, be punished by a fine, not exceeding one thousand dollars, and imprisoned in the penitentiary, not exceeding two years. It shall not be necessary to prove either of the said marriages by the register or certificate thereof, or other record evidence; but the same may be proved by such evidence as is admissible to prove a marriage in other cases, and when such second marriage shall have taken place without this state, cohabitation in this state after such second marriage shall be deemed the commission of the crime of bigamy, and the trial in such case may take place in the county where such cohabitation shall have occurred. (Revised Laws of Illinois, 1833, pp. 198-199)

Thus we see that Joseph Smith, living in Illinois in the 1840’s, was privately practicing and teaching a doctrine that was not only illegal but also in direct contradiction to the 1835 Doctrine and Covenants. In addition to this, records indicate that many illegal plural marriages took place after the LDS Church issued the 1890 Manifesto, supposedly stopping the practice. There is a list of 262 plural marriages between 1890 and 1910 among the prominent LDS people in the back of the book, Solemn Covenant, by B. Carmon Hardy. (See also “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904,” by D. Michael Quinn, Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, Spring 1985, pp. 9-105.) Of this number 131 men had served on a mission, been a Branch President, Bishop, Stake President or Apostle.

Number of Wives

In 1887, LDS Assistant Church Historian Andrew Jenson made a list of 27 women who were sealed to Joseph Smith before his death (Historical Record, vol. 6, 1887, pp. 233-234). More recent research, however, has led to a longer list. Todd Compton stated:

I have identified thirty-three well-documented wives of Joseph Smith, which some may regard as an overly conservative numbering . . . Historians Fawn Brodie, D. Michael Quinn, and George D. Smith list forty-eight, forty-six, and forty-three, respectfully. Yet in problematic areas it may be advisable to err on the side of caution. (In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, p. 1)

Compton also noted that Joseph Smith wanted to marry even more women. He noted that Joseph Smith “proposed to at least five more women who turned him down.” On the dust jacket of his book, we read:

Mormons today have little idea about their founder’s family life. . . . Fewer know of his contempt for traditional marriage and Victorian morality.

To understand these issues, Todd Compton has painstakingly researched and recovered the life stories of the women aged fourteen to fifty-four—whom the prophet loved and married and whose salvation he guaranteed. In their own accounts, the wives tell how difficult it was to accept this secret—shared marriage—and to forfeit their dreams of meeting and falling in love with a man of their choice. What they received were tainted reputations among the uninitiated and, ultimately, their husband’s violent death.

These were colorful, tragic figures. After the martyrdom, one of the widows became a nun; another joined the prophet’s first wife in the Midwestern anti-polygamy reorganization; and some abandoned Utah for California. Most were claimed by the twelve apostles, who fathered their children but proved unreliable as husbands, resulting in more than one divorce.

The widows experienced sadness as they contemplated what they had become. One reticently revealed on her deathbed that her child, Josephine, was the prophet’s daughter—a whispered confidentiality that only underscored the secrecy that still surrounds these women’s identities a half-century later.

Thirty-three extraordinary lives began with promise and devotion and ended almost uniformly in loneliness. The great consolation these women held was that their sacrifices had been for God. Whatever reward they received, it was not of this world.

Teen Brides and Married Women

Joseph Smith’s wives ranged in age from fourteen to fifty-six. Todd Compton recounts: “Having married Joseph Smith at the age of fourteen, Helen Mar [Kimball] is the youngest of Smith’s known wives” (In Sacred Loneliness, p. 487).

Helen had not been Smith’s first pick from the Kimball family. He had earlier asked Apostle Heber C. Kimball for his wife, Vilate. When Heber was unwilling to give up his wife, Joseph turned to his daughter, Helen.

The fact that Joseph Smith asked for other men’s wives was acknowledged in a sermon in 1854 by Jedediah M. Grant, second counselor to Brigham Young. In this sermon he stated:

When the family organization was revealed from heaven—the patriarchal order of God, and Joseph began, on the right and on the left, to add to his family, what a quaking there was in Israel. Says one brother to another, “Joseph says all covenants are done away, and none are binding but the new covenants; now suppose Joseph should come and say he wanted your wife, what would you say to that?” “I would tell him to go to hell.” This was the spirit of many in the early days of this Church. . . .

What would a man of God say, who felt aright, when Joseph asked him for his money? He would say, “Yes, and I wish I had more to help to build up the kingdom of God.” Or if he came and said, “I want your wife?” “O Yes,” he would say, “here she is, there are plenty more.”. . . Did the Prophet Joseph want every man’s wife he asked for? He did not . . . If such a man of God should come to me and say, “I want your gold and silver, or your wives,” I should say, “Here they are, I wish I had more to give you, take all I have got.” (Journal of Discourses, vol. 2, February 19, 1854, pp. 13-14)

Todd Compton frankly discussed the issue of Joseph Smith’s practice of polyandry, marrying women who already had husbands:

Polyandry is one of the major problems found in Smith’s polygamy and many questions surround it. Why did he at first primarily prefer polyandrous marriages? In the past, polyandry has often been ignored or glossed over, but if these women merit serious attention, the topic cannot be overlooked . . . A common misconception concerning Joseph Smith’s polyandry is that he participated in only one or two such unusual unions. In fact, fully one-third of his plural wives, eleven of them were married civilly to other men when he married them. If one superimposes a chronological perspective, one sees that of Smith’s first twelve wives, nine were polyandrous. So in this early period >polyandry was the norm, not the anomaly . . . Polyandry might be easier to understand if one viewed these marriages to Smith as a sort of de facto divorce with the first husband. However, none of these women divorced their ‘first husbands’ while Smith was alive and all of them continued to live with their civil spouses while married to Smith . . . In the eleven certain polyandrous marriages, only three of the husbands were non-Mormon (Lightner, Sayers, and Cleveland) and only one was disaffected (Buell). All other husbands were in good standing in the church at the time Joseph married their wives. Many were prominent church leaders and close friends of Smith. . . .

These data suggested that Joseph may have married these women, often, not because they were married to non-members but because they were married to faithful Latter-day Saints who were his devoted friends. This again suggests that the men knew about the marriages and permitted them. (In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 15-16)

One of Smith’s polyandrous marriages was to Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs. Smith had taught eighteen-year-old Zina about plural marriage and proposed to her but she put him off. She was being courted by a “handsome, eligible twenty-three-year-old” named Henry Jacobs. “On 7 March 1841, twenty-year-old Zina married Henry Jacobs.” Smith would not attend their marriage. He next approached Zina’s brother, Dimick, to talk to her about becoming his plural wife.

In October 1841, Smith sent him [her brother Dimick] with an unwelcome message to force Zina to a decision. “Joseph said, Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle [plurality of wives] and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.” (Four Zinas: A Story of Mothers and Daughters on the Mormon Frontier, by Martha Bradley & Mary Woodward, pp. 107-115)

Under such religious pressure, Zina submitted to become Smith’s secret plural wife. She also continued in her marriage to Henry, a devout Mormon.

Zina does not record if she and Joseph consummated their union, although Zina later signed an affidavit that she was Smith’s wife in “very deed.” (Four Zinas, p. 115)

Joseph Smith’s death did not end Zina’s struggles with polygamy and polyandry, “on 2 February 1846, Henry Jacobs witnessed the sealing of his twenty-five-year-old wife, Zina, for time to Brigham Young, who was twenty years her senior” (Four Zinas, p. 132). According to Illinois law, not only would Joseph Smith have been guilty of bigamy but so would his various wives who were already married.

Marriages Consummated

Many members of the Mormon Church find it difficult to believe that Joseph Smith had multiple wives and even harder to believe that he had sex with anyone other than Emma. The evidence, however, is clear. Todd Compton wrote:

Emily Partridge Young said she “roomed” with Joseph the night following her marriage to him, and said that she had “carnal intercourse” with him. (In Sacred Loneliness, p. 12)

Other early witnesses also affirmed this. Benjamin Johnson wrote:

On the 15th of May . . . the Prophet again came and at my hosue [house] ocupied [sic] the Same Room & Bed with my sister that the month previous he had ocupied with the Daughter of the Later [late?] Bishop Partridge as his wife.” According to Joseph Bates Noble, Smith told him he had spent a night with Louisa Beaman . . . Many of Joseph’s wives affirmed that they were married to him for eternity and time, with sexuality included. (In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 13-14)

False Prophets

The first seven presidents of the Mormon Church, proclaimed to be prophets of God, were involved in breaking the law, polygamy, polyandry, adultery, deception and perjury. All 15 presidents of the LDS Church have been involved in a massive cover-up regarding these issues. Although Joseph Smith died on June 27, 1844, his teaching on plural marriage continues to affect thousands of people today. As long as the LDS Church continues to print Section 132 in their Doctrine and Covenants and does not renounce the doctrine of polygamy, the sad practice will continue to spread.

Jesus Himself warned us to beware of “false prophets,” and instructed us that we will “know them by their fruits” (Matthew 7:15-16). Mormons need to face the fact that one of the “fruits” of Mormonism is the wide spread practice of polygamy today. Joseph Smith’s secret, illegal doctrine is directly responsible for the vast number of people who are trapped in polygamy and who have never had a chance to know the truth.

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