Martha Brotherton

[_KimberlyAnn]

Since BCSpace and other Mormon Sunday School teachers have been inoculating members by teaching about various first vision accounts, Book of Mormon translation methods, etc., I'd like to know when they're going to cover the details of Nauvoo-era polygamy, specifically the cases of women who rebuffed Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. I'd suggest starting with Martha Brotherton.

I knew nothing of Martha Brotherton until I began closely examining Mormonism. I was appalled by what happened in her case.

I think the Martha Brotherton episode should be covered in Young Women's and Young Men's classes. The young women should realize what happens to girls who don't obey the prophet. Licked cupcakes are nothing compared to "mean harlots." Best to learn that lesson early.

KA

[_Pokatator]

KA you just hit a bullseye!!!!!

I'd have a heart attack if I saw that in an approved manual.

[Bedlamite]

Since BCSpace and other Mormon Sunday School teachers have been inoculating members by teaching about various first vision accounts, Book of Mormon translation methods, etc., I'd like to know when they're going to cover the details of Nauvoo-era polygamy, specifically the cases of women who rebuffed Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. I'd suggest starting with Martha Brotherton.

I knew nothing of Martha Brotherton until I began closely examining Mormonism. I was appalled by what happened in her case.

I think the Martha Brotherton episode should be covered in Young Women's and Young Men's classes. The young women should realize what happens to girls who don't obey the prophet. Licked cupcakes are nothing compared to "mean harlots." Best to learn that lesson early.

KA

http://sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/UK/miscUK01.htm#080042

Note 2:... Elisabeth Brotherton (1816-1897) was the writer of the two letter extracts published by the Star. Although she testifies that her sister Martha lied about spiritual wifery at Nauvoo, Elisabeth herself become the second plural wife of Apostle Parley P. Pratt in June or July of 1843 at Nauvoo -- this was six months after his arrival back in America, after leaving his editor's post at the Star. Like her parents, Martha H. Brotherton soon returned (reportedly via Boston) to England, where she passed away in 1864. After he heard of her death, Brigham Young quietly had the deceased Martha sealed to him, on August 1, 1870, "for eternity" -- "beyond the veil."

Note 3: In several months that followed, before his departure from England, the Star's editor appears to have overlooked his fellow Apostle's reporting on Martha H. Brotherton, as published in the Aug. 27, 1842 issue of The Wasp. There William Smith reports that "in these United States... John C. Bennett, the pimp and file leader of such mean harlots as Martha H. Brotherton and her predecessors... flourish with impunity!" Apostle Smith neglects to indicate exactly when it was that Sister Brotherton became a prostitute, with John C. Bennett as her pimp, however. In her July 13, 1842 affidavit, Miss Brotherton states "I had been at Nauvoo near three weeks, during which time my father's family received frequent visits from elders Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, two of the Mormon apostles; when early one [Saturday] morning [Young said] ..."brother Joseph has had a revelation from God that it is lawful and right for a man to have two wives." According to the Apr. 15, 1842 issue of the Times and Seasons, on Thursday, Apr. 7, 1842, at the spring conference in Nauvoo, Hyrum Smith "spoke concerning the elders who went forth to preach from Kirtland... [and] then spoke in contradiction of a report in circulation about Elder Kimball, B. Young, himself, and others of the Twelve, alledging that a sister had been shut in a room for several days, and that they had endeavored to induce her to believe in having two wives." It appears likely that the Saturday on which Miss Brotherton places the attempted seduction was Mar. 26, 1842. It must have taken a couple of days for "the report" Hyrum repudiates to have been "in circulation," before William Clayton was inspired to write to the Saints back in England, reporting the apostasy of the Brotherton family on Mar. 30, 1842 -- then Hyrum Smith gave an official public response for the LDS Church on Apr. 7th. Since Miss Brotherton says that the attempted seduction occurred "near three weeks" after the family's advent in Nauvoo, their arrival in that place may have been about the first week of March -- thus, they did not arrive with the Chaos Saints, on the Ariel on Mar. 27, 1842, and probably never were a part of that LDS immigrant group. Thus, the time range during which Martha H. Brotherton could have been a prostitute under the pimping of John C. Bennett seems to have been about early March, 1842 (when she arrived in the region of Nauvoo) and August, 1842, when the Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints so identified ---- that is, unless the Apostle was not telling the truth in this matter.

Note 4: See also the testimony of John McIlwrick, Mary Brotherton McIlwrick, and We Elizabeth Brotherton in the Nauvoo Wasp broadside "extra" of Aug. 31, 1842, where Martha's two LDS sisters and her brother-in-law denounce her as "a deliberate liar;" as "a wilful inventor of lies;" and a circulator of "lies of a base kind, concerning those whom she knew to be innocent." These family members also accuse Martha as acting outside of "common decency," by "lying on the top of a young man when he was in bed," etc.

Note 5: The editors of the Latter Day Saints' Millennial Star were still insisting that there was nothing remotely similar to polygamy, plural marriage, spiritual wifery, or the patriarchal order of marriage being practiced in the LDS Church, nor among its leaders, nor within its priesthood, as late as its issue for Jan. 15, 1850, wherein Elder Thomas Smith professed: "...12th LIE: Joseph Smith taught a system of polygamy... 13th LIE: That Joseph Smith tried to seduce Martha Brotherton... Martha Brotherton's sister sent a letter, stating that Martha was a liar; William Clayton did the same. Both are published in the Millennial Star, Vol. 3, pages 73, 74." The top leadership of the RLDS Church (Community of Christ) still refuse to make any official admission of Joseph Smith's secret polygamy. Neither the LDS Church nor the RLDS Church have ever retracted the officially issued statements of 1842, claiming that Sister Martha H. Brotherton was a liar and a whore.

UD

[_cinepro]

They could even tell the story of Rachel Ivins, who was invited to meet with Joseph but declined his invitation for fear of being asked to participate in polygamy. She later married Jedediah Grant, and their son, Heber became prophet. Heber recalled that his mother told him that on "hearing the [Joseph Smith] was teaching plural marriage and that he undoubtedly was going to propose marriage to her," she told the messenger "she would 'sooner go to hell as a virtuous woman than to heaven as a whore."

(Heber J. Grant to Ray O. Wyland, Dec. 12, 1936, LDS Archives as cited in the book "Navuoo Polygamy", page 235.

Smiley added.)

[_Droopy]

Licked cupcakes are nothing compared to "mean harlots." Best to learn that lesson early.

And best to check our sources no?

[_Uncle Dale]

Licked cupcakes are nothing compared to "mean harlots." Best to learn that lesson early.

And best to check our sources no?

The Wasp
Vol. I. - No. 19.
Nauvoo, Hancock Co., IL
Sat., Aug. 27, 1842.

REMARKS.

We are generally prepared to meet almost any thing in the way of persecution and abuse, but must say for once, that we are forced to read and to give to our readers the above touch, as a finishing stroke of moral depravity, that exceeds all we have ever seen. It is doubtful whether there can be found on record, from the days of Adam down to the notorious nineteenth century, so candid a confession of a wicked man's heart. If we take the meaning of the editor, our citizens were in hopes," that is, all the inhabitants of the State of Illinois, about a half a million we suppose, wishing, or wanted, or expected the Mormons to resist the law of the land as an excuse, for us to have destroyed or expelled them, SANS SOUCI, from the State.

Ye wise, and virtuous, ye Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, yes, all ye professing christians of Illinois; Judges, Generals, and officers from the highest to the lowest, in the state, and the rest of ye editors, too, listen, and give heed to the voice of your leader, your compatriot, your brother American! aye, pay attention this once if never again! If HE (Joseph Smith) HAD RESISTED, WE SHOULD HAVE HAD THE SPORT OF DRIVING HIM AND HIS WORTHY CLAN OUT OF THE STATE en masse. Shades and spirits of the Revolution! is this one of the legatees of liberty? Is this one of the watchmen to conduct an American press, and give tone to public opinion? If so the silence of his brother christians will manifest it; and the silence of the public functionaries will acknowledge it; and the silence of the press will sanction it, -- and the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, will be left to the mercy of God and God only! Aye! while Rhode Island is destroying her own offspring like voracious swine, while mobs are shedding blood and burning houses in Piladelphia, and rioters are taking vengeance on national birth rights in Cincinnati and calamity follows calamity in all the world, Thomas C. Sharp as an aid to Ex-Gov. Boggs who stands at the head of mobocracy and extermination, in these United States, and John C. Bennett, the pimp and file leader of such mean harlots as Martha H. Brotherton and her predecessors from old Jezebel, whom the dogs eat; may flourish with impunity! O virtue! once the white robe of millions of freemen! how art thou alid aside to make sport for the black coats who drive innocent men, women and children from one state to another! O liberty! once the boasted asylum of the oppressed! -- "Where are the charms that sages have seen in thy face?" Where is thy pledge for all nations to come and set under their own vine and fig tree, where there should be none to molest or make afraid? ...

BENNETT'S LETTERS. -- We have read the fifth and sixth letters of Dr. Bennett, and can only say like the old adage: a fool's bolt is soon shot. The fifth letter is made up of the cogitations of disappointed ambition. That want of candour, virtue, meekness, charity, and temperance, which has hitherto destroyed the Doctor's prospects, wherever he has tarried for the time being, and left his writings, an aching void in the estimation of honest men, runs through this letter like the chill fever and leaves it a pale paced sample of western debility. The sixth letter is what purports to be a copy of a letter from Joseph Smith to Miss Nancy Rigdon, without date, name, or proof, and if it had these, is, upon the whole, more moral than Bennett ever was or will be of himself, -- but we hope the community are not yet quite so far from a common course of Justice and propriety as to take Bennett's word for the truth or or fallacy of the curious thing. Joseph Smith is not the author. -- The fact is, candid people begin to see what Bennett's stuff, with his help meets of harlot's affidavits, bolstered up with bombast and promises of more disclosures, amounts to! It gives Bennett a living and talllers tales. It puts us in mind of a boy, who, when the first snow fell in the fall, took up a pewter quart basin full, and setting on a hot fire, exclaimed, I will soon melt me a hogshead of water; but upon turning round, saw to his surprise, his basin melted, and his snow evaporated! So the Doctor, (last heard of in the State of New York,) will soon find that the same fire that melted his disclosures will melt him, and leave a continual pain to his soul, sharper than the sting of a serpent's tooth!

----------------
Note: "...John C. Bennett, the pimp and file leader of such mean harlots as Martha H. Brotherton and her predecessors from old Jezebel..." -- This statement in The Wasp represents the harshest possible charge, by the LDS Church at Nauvoo, against its former, faithful member, Miss Martha H. Brotherton of Lancashire, England. Apostle Smith's editorial statement provides no details as to just how it was that John C. Bennett served as the "pimp" for the newly arrived British convert, prior to the Church officials' offhanded dismissal of her claims (made against top Mormon leaders) just prior to the opening of the spring 1842 General Conference at Nauvoo. Possibly The Wasp's editor was insinuating that Brotherton only became an active prostitute following the publication of her report of the attempted seduction upon her body, carried out by Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, and Joseph Smith, Jr., in Smith's office at Nauvoo. For an affidavit, by an English acquaintance of Miss Brotherton, defending her virtue and honor, see the letter of Thomas Smethurst in the July 27, 1842 issue of the Pittsburgh Morning Chronicle. Nearly a decade later, LDS Elder Thomas Smith continued to refute claims of polygamy among the Mormons, writing in the Church's official newspaper: "...12th LIE: Joseph Smith taught a system of polygamy... 13th LIE: That Joseph Smith tried to seduce Martha Brotherton... Martha Brotherton's sister sent a letter, stating that Martha was a liar; William Clayton did the same. Both are published in the Millennial Star, Vol. 3, pages 73, 74." (LDS Millennial Star, XII -- Jan. 15, 1850 -- pp. 29-31).

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/LD ... htm#082742

UD

[Guest]

Excuse the post in your thread and you can have it split off.

No, the "leader" should learn to recognize the difference between a "mean harlot" and a woman that grew up being taught to think for herself.

Best to learn that lesson early. :)

[_quaker]

So do people understand 'mean whore' as an accusation that Brotherton was a promiscuous person or as a comparison to a whore-pimp relationship?

[_Amaterasu]

So do people understand 'mean whore' as an accusation that Brotherton was a promiscuous person or as a comparison to a whore-pimp relationship?

Hmmm... I thought it's that she was labeled that because she rejected the prophet. She was assigned a label that didn't fit her. Right? That's my understanding from reading up on her.

[_bcspace]

Didn't Martha Brotherton (and Nancy Rigdon as well) change her story from being locked in a room for days to being locked in a room for ten minutes?

And despite John Bennett's claim to have witnessed Martha being locked up, wouldn't there have been dozens of people in that tiny store throughout the day to witness or hear her cries for help?

And didn't Bennett himself claim to have been locked in a room himself and wasn't that claim also contradicted by other witnesses? Bennett seems more like the typical vindictive yellow journalistic exmo of today's message boards than a credible witness.