Percentage of membership in polygamy

[_zeezrom]

I've heard people say multiple times that only 5% of the LDS membership was involved in polygamy at it's height in the mid to late 19th century.

Here is a website where that claim is made:

http://www.allaboutmormons.com/misconce ... lygamy.php

However, if you follow the link where the author states 5%, you find some different numbers.

The link posted is: http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions ... gamy.shtml

And there, it says the percentage was around 20% to 25% of membership according to 'Plural Marriage', Encyclopaedia of Mormonism, Macmillan 1992.

Has anyone looked into this? What did you find?

Thanks,

Zee.

[_DarkHelmet]

I'm not sure how many did, but why would Mormons want to downplay the percentage? Wasn't polygamy a symbol of obedience to the new and everlasting covenant? Why would so many men refuse to enter into polygamous marriages? I realize LDS today are embarrassed by it, but if it was a sacred covenant among the most righteous in the 19th century, you would think it would be a good thing that lots of people practiced it.

[_Inconceivable]

I'm not sure how many did, but why would Mormons want to downplay the percentage?..

..I realize LDS today are embarrassed by it, but if it was a sacred covenant among the most righteous in the 19th century, you would think it would be a good thing that lots of people practiced it.

5% would also play into allegation that only the elite (the leadership) were available players.

I suppose that a new convert falling off the turnip truck wouldn't have a snowball's chance for a covey of bed warmers unless he had a bombshell of a daughter to trade favors with.

I don't know if everyone is embarrassed about polygamy. Russel Nelson has 1 living and one waiting for BOTH of them on the other side of the Reaper.

[_Nevo]

Arrington and Bitton, in The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (2d ed., 1992), estimated that "no more than 5 percent of married Mormon men had more than one wife; and since the great majority of these only had two wives, it seems reasonable to suppose that about 12 percent of Mormon married women were involved in the principle" (199).

Claudia and Richard Bushman suggested in Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (2001) that, though the figures varied widely over time and from place to place, "perhaps 9 percent of the adult male population were involved" (65).

More recently, Carmon Hardy has written:

During the 1880s, Mormon representatives in testimony before Congress stated that no more than 1 or 2 percent of the church’s membership was polygamous. Church authorities in their sermons, missionaries abroad, and guides on Temple Square almost to the present time have repeated these figures. We now know, owing to work by [Larry] Logue, ["Ben"] Bennion and others, that the actual number, depending on the years and location, likely averaged between 15 and 30 percent.

— B. Carmon Hardy, "That 'Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living:' Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Polygamy," UHQ 73, no. 3 (2005): 215-216.

So according to the best recent estimates, between one sixth and one third of nineteenth-century Mormons lived in polygamous households at some point. The vast majority of nineteenth-century adult Mormon males (perhaps upward of 90 percent) never practiced polygamy. Furthermore, the number of plural marriages peaked in the 1850s and declined steadily after that, so the practice wasn't as all-pervasive as many suppose.

[_Ella Menno]

The vast majority of nineteenth-century adult Mormon males (perhaps upward of 90 percent) never practiced polygamy.

I would have to agree with that. There were loads of LDS men who went off to be cowboys in central and southern Utah when they weren't allowed to be married to the LDS girls. One side of my family comes from a cowboy who was born LDS but was basically kicked out of the community along with several of his brothers.

No, not everyone was required to practice polygamy, but I'm relatively certain that those in leadership positions were highly likely to do so. Does anyone have the stats on the percentage of women who practiced polygamy?

[_John Larsen]

Arrington and Bitton, in The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (2d ed., 1992), estimated that "no more than 5 percent of married Mormon men had more than one wife; and since the great majority of these only had two wives, it seems reasonable to suppose that about 12 percent of Mormon married women were involved in the principle" (199).

Claudia and Richard Bushman suggested in Building the Kingdom: A History of Mormons in America (2001) that, though the figures varied widely over time and from place to place, "perhaps 9 percent of the adult male population were involved" (65).

More recently, Carmon Hardy has written:

During the 1880s, Mormon representatives in testimony before Congress stated that no more than 1 or 2 percent of the church’s membership was polygamous. Church authorities in their sermons, missionaries abroad, and guides on Temple Square almost to the present time have repeated these figures. We now know, owing to work by [Larry] Logue, ["Ben"] Bennion and others, that the actual number, depending on the years and location, likely averaged between 15 and 30 percent.

— B. Carmon Hardy, "That 'Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living:' Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Polygamy," UHQ 73, no. 3 (2005): 215-216.

So according to the best recent estimates, between one sixth and one third of nineteenth-century Mormons lived in polygamous households at some point. The vast majority of nineteenth-century adult Mormon males (perhaps upward of 90 percent) never practiced polygamy. Furthermore, the number of plural marriages peaked in the 1850s and declined steadily after that, so the practice wasn't as all-pervasive as many suppose.

You are cheating your numbers by not counting children. Suppose I marry 4 women and have 5 children by each woman. How many members of my family are involved in polygamy? The Church might say that only 20% of my household was involved in polygamy but the truth of the matter is that 100% of my family was involved.

This also ignores all of the infrastructure it took to maintain and encourage polygamy. The marriage sealers, the bishops and stake presidents that encourage it, the marriage arrangers and of those who otherwise encourage or enabled the practice.

To suggest that the religious principle of plural marriage was only embraced by a small minority of the population is deceptive and duplicitous.

[_Nevo]

You are cheating your numbers by not counting children. Suppose I marry 4 women and have 5 children by each woman.

I believe the 15–30 percent figure does include children. Remember that this is an average. The actual numbers were often quite different, depending on the time and place.

In Katherine Daynes's study of Manti, she counted the men, women, and children in polygamous families, and widows of polygamists, on censuses between 1850 and 1900. Her findings were as follows:

Census Year | Percent in Polygamous Families

1850 - 24.9
1860 - 43.1
1870 - 36.0
1880 - 25.1
1900 - 7.1

Daynes notes that these findings "are near average levels elsewhere in 1860, 1870, and 1880." Of course, there were still local variations. In 1880, for example, the number in polygamous families was as high as 66.6 percent in Orderville and as low as 4.6 percent in Panaca.

Daynes supplies some other interesting statistics as well:

• over one third of women marrying for the first time between 1847 and 1869 (the peak period of polygamous practice) became plural wives.
  
  
• slightly more than half of women born before 1852 and married first in Utah were in polygamous marriages at some point in their lives.
  
  
• almost half of immigrant women who first married in Utah from 1847 to 1869 became plural wives.
  
  
• only about one-tenth of women marrying for the first time between 1870 and 1890 became plural wives.

(See Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001], 100-101, 114).

To suggest that the religious principle of plural marriage was only embraced by a small minority of the population is deceptive and duplicitous.

Perhaps. But whether or not the principle was embraced, even at its height it was never practiced by a majority of Church members (to the dismay of the leaders, no doubt).

[_madeleine]

Daynes supplies some other interesting statistics as well:

• over one third of women marrying for the first time between 1847 and 1869 (the peak period of polygamous practice) became plural wives.
  
  
• slightly more than half of women born before 1852 and married first in Utah were in polygamous marriages at some point in their lives.
  
  
• almost half of immigrant women who first married in Utah from 1847 to 1869 became plural wives.
  
  
• only about one-tenth of women marrying for the first time between 1870 and 1890 became plural wives.

(See Kathryn M. Daynes, More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 [Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001], 100-101, 114).

[/quote]

I think this reflects what I see in my own genealogical records. Those who were involved very early in Mormonism were polygamists. Their children, for the most part, were not.

[_Joseph]

Percentage of membership in polygamy: 15-35%.

Percentage of membership who lie about polygamy: 92-97.6%.

[_moksha]

Has anyone looked into this? What did you find?

Thanks,

Zee.

This would require us to use more than the 10% of the brainpower allotted through the common misperception of sayings. If you don't believe this, then you are steadying the forum and the moderators would never lead us astray since the mantle is greater than the column width. Seek Ye to be therefore so-so.