Scholar Todd Compton was among the first to fully document Smith’s wives in his 1997 book, “In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith.” Now he has a second book, “In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents,” that shares the women’s perspectives in their own words.
Here are excerpts from The Salt Lake Tribune’s latest “Mormon Land” podcast in which Compton discussed Smith, his wives (some in their early teens and some married to other men), what their marriages were like, their level of intimacy, whether any children resulted and more.
How many of Joseph Smith’s wives were you able to document?
I ended up with 33 wives that I felt could be really well documented. I had another little list of possible wives, and then I had another list of wives who had early proxy marriages to Joseph Smith. But there were these 33 that I concentrated on that I felt were really solid.
https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2022/10 ... d-was-not/
How many of Smith’s wives were married to other men?
Polyandry is where one woman is married to two men at the same time. When I was starting my research, I found out this was going on in a number of Joseph Smith’s marriages. I was really interested in documenting it and finding out what was really going on here. I found out that the women always stayed with what I call “the first husband.” They had children with their first husband and continued to live with him at the same time they were married to Joseph Smith.
How many of the 33 fell in that category?
About a third. And it’s really interesting when you get the chronology. I found out that the first 10 were polyandrous with a couple of exceptions. After that, Joseph Smith married single women with a couple, again, exceptions.
that's quite a number.
Were there some eternity-only marriages among Joseph Smith’s 33 plural marriages?
Some modern historians have pursued the idea that all of these marriages that I call polyandrous marriages to Joseph Smith were for eternity only. I have not found [convincing] evidence myself that supports this adequately.
Have you been able to document that Joseph Smith had sex with some of these plural wives? If so, how many and did any children ever result?
Again, here’s the issue of evidence. I put the burden on people to document that there were no sexual relations. You expect it in a marriage…. It became an issue later in Utah when the RLDS church [Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, now Community of Christ] rejected the idea that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. And so, they sent missionaries out to Utah. These were often sons of Joseph Smith [who believed] that maybe sometimes he had these marriages, but they weren’t real marriages and there were no kids as a result. The Mormon church felt that it had to document that there were some children. And so, there were some affidavits [where]… some of the wives of Joseph Smith that were still alive documented it. There were attorneys who were asking these questions. They said, yes, we had sexual relations with Joseph Smith. Not in those words. It isn’t all 33. You know, many of them had died by this time. One of the polyandrous wives, Sylvia Sessions, told her daughter Josephine that she, Josephine, was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Nauvoo polygamy, as I said, was secret polygamy. And Joseph Smith was not living in the same home with these wives. He was not having frequent sexual relations with these wives, and Emma was not sympathetic to polygamy. And so, as a result of all these things, he did not have many plural children. However, one, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner said that she knew three or four of Joseph Smith’s children who grew up under other names.
Sounds like an enlightening read for the Holidays.
