Joseph and Fanny-Asking for Will's Opinion in Particular

[_Brackite]

Is it just me, or is this entire post barely coherent?

Dude, cut back on the hard stuff. Stick to beer or wine until you can build up a little more tolerance.

I have Never drank any hard liquor in My Lifetime? Have You ever drank hard Liquor before, Within Your Lifetime?

( I do admit that I have drank a tablespoon Nyquil, for many nights before, but I haven't drank a tablespoon of Nyqil, in over three Months. Nquil contains 10% alchohol. Hard liquor contains at least 20% alchohol. )

[_DarkHelmet]

Even during the height of Mormon plural marriage, very few men had what could be characterized as “many” wives. I don’t have the numbers in front of me at the moment, but I’m fairly certain you could count on your fingers the men who had more than seven wives. Of the 15% or so of LDS men who entered into polygyny, most had only two or three wives.

This sounds about right. With roughly 50/50 ratio of men to women, it would be impossible for every worthy Mormon man to have a harem. Even with so many men dying during the trek West, and with all the thousands of Mormon men killed by the mobs back East, if you had a 60/40 ratio, or even a 70/30 ratio of women to men it would still be impossible for every Mormon male to have a decent sized harem.

[_Brackite]

Brackite your post cracked me up..thanks...

You are Welcome, Miss Taken!

[Anonymous]

What Oliver Cowdery very likely meant by this, is that Joseph Smith had sex with Fanny Alger. I don't think that Oliver Cowdery quite fully understoond that Joseph Smith and Fanny were Religiously Married when Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger had sex.

I also see No reason why Fanny Alger would have a problem with having sex with Joseph Smith, within their Religious Marriage. She likely very much enjoyed the sex she got from Joseph Smith. Women enjoy sex basically and virtually the same as men do.

I have Never drank any hard liquor in My Lifetime? Have You ever drank hard Liquor before, Within Your Lifetime?

[size=85] ( I do admit that I have drank a tablespoon Nyquil, for many nights before, but I haven't drank a tablespoon of Nyqil, in over three Months. Nquil contains 10% alchohol. Hard liquor contains at least 20% alchohol. )

Hi Brackite,
Your comments are cracking me up too.

Hello Seven,

I have also read Bachman's Review of Todd Compton's Book, 'In Sacred Loneliness', several Years ago. My Opinion on Bachman's Review of Todd Compton's Book, 'In Sacred Loneliness', is that it was a very horrible and a very terrible Review.

Here is the Link to the Respone by Todd Comton to Bachman's horrible and terrible Review:

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Oracle/ ... prol8.html

Yeah, it was a horrible review. I was fresh out of Chapel Mormonism when I read it, and even at that stage was able to see all the spin and apologetic crap he was dumping on Compton's work. The tone of the article was also a turn off.

Todd Compton's response to the FARMS review was exellent.

[_Seven]

"DonBradley"
Hi Seven,



Yes, there's evidence that Joseph Smith was talking about polygamy as early as 1831.

Do you believe he was practicing polygamy prior to receiving the sealing keys in 1836? If other members of the inner circle were, then it seems reasonable to conclude that Joseph was. Fanny seems the most likely.

Don wrote:

Yes, Mosiah Hancock's testimony of a marriage performed by his father probably should be rejected if his dating of the incident is rejected; and, yes, this would take away what has been put forward as the best argument that Joseph and Fanny were married.

Why do you reject the testimony of Levi? Is the date of Clarissa's wedding incorrect? I have a hard time throwing out this evidence.
You also reject Benjamin Johnson's testimony that Roger quoted showing a marriage before 1836 because it's poor quality? I'm curious how you came to reject these sources.

Are you able to place where Fanny was living from April 1836 to when she married Custer in Indiana November 1836?


Don wrote:

However, since my interest isn't apologetic, but historical, I'm not going to weigh a source by its apologetic (or critical) usefulness, but by its evidentiary merit. However, it happens that, fortunately for apologetics, the case for a marriage doesn't rest on Hancock.

I agree. There is the testimony of Chauncey Webb and Ann Eliza Webb. (and I'm looking forward to your article to see the new evidence)

“He [Joseph Smith, Jr.] was sealed there [in Kirtland] secretly to Fanny Alger. Emma was furious, and drove the girl, who was unable to conceal the consequences of her celestial relation with the prophet, out of her house.”

- Chauncey Webb, Ann Eliza’s father, see In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, pp. 34-35

“Although her parents were living, they considered it the highest honor to have their daughter adopted into the prophet’s family, and her mother has always claimed that she [Fanny] was sealed to Joseph at that time.”

- Ann Eliza Webb Young, see In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, p. 34

Note to Nevo: It appears that Joseph taught the plural marriage to Fanny as a sealing.


I believe it's more likely Joseph convinced/coerced Fanny to be "sealed" in a plural marriage sanctioned by God before having sexual intercourse with her, rather than an affair that required him to come up with a revelation to save his reputation. He had been preaching polygamy long before the Fanny Alger incident.

I believe Oliver saw the act as a dirty nasty filthy affair because he didn't buy into Joseph's revalation on plural marriage and saw Joseph's actions for what they were. In some accounts, it seems Oliver was trying to help cover for Joseph's mistakes.
This is why I believe the article on marriage was influenced in part by the relationship with Fanny Alger.
But I also believe there were many rumors circulating from Joseph's teachings on polygamy that would lead to the article as well. Could it be both?

“The worthy couple – the Prophet and his scribe [Oliver Cowdery] – were sorely perplexed what to do with the girl [Fanny], since Emma refused decidedly to allow her to remain in her house; but after some consultation, my mother offered to take her until she could be sent to her relatives.”

- Ann Eliza Webb Young, see In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, p. 34

Don wrote:

And, finally, in that vein, no, rejecting the Hancock account doesn't undo the other, very real evidence for the practice of polygamy in Kirtland.

Is this in the article as well? :) Do you have good evidence of the other inner circle members who were practicing polygamy before 1836? This is a very interesting topic for me.

Your article is going to show that this event below took place in 1836? Thank you for your responses.

“Again I told her [Emma] I heard that one night she missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!! She told me this story too was verily true.”

- William McLellin, 1872 letter to Joseph Smith III, see In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton, p. 35

[_DonBradley]

Seven,

Your perspective on Joseph Smith's relationship with Fanny Alger seem to me very reasoned.

I wrote a long response, which I lost. I've rewritten it below, but in a somewhat more summary form.

I'll offer some of the reasons I reject the Mosiah Hancock account. But first a bit of background on the account: Mosiah Hancock wrote the account as part of an addendum he made to his father's autobiography.

Some reasons:

First, had Levi Hancock been at the dead center of this significant event, it's rather odd that he wrote his entire autobiography without either relating it or hinting at it, leaving it to his son to 'correct' the omission after his death. It's not that Levi doesn't talk some about Fanny Alger, but he certainly doesn't imply anything of the marital swap or performing the marriage.

Second, Mosiah's account in a few ways contradicts his father's own autobiographical writings. And it's easy to see how Mosiah could have garbled some of the actual events of his father's life, as related by his father, into part of his own Fanny Alger story.

Third, Mosiah Hancock's account relates events that occurred the year before he was born. He thus cannot have firsthand knowledge and could presumably only have really known about the events from his father--who curiously failed to even hint at them himself and tends to contradict his son's report.

Fourth, Mosiah Hancock is 'recalling' these events of before his birth some 63 years after their alleged occurrence.

Fifth, Mosiah, in his larger addendum to his father's autobiography (of which his Fanny Alger account is part), defends his memories of the early days against critics who say he was too young to recall such things, citing as evidence for his powers of memory the fact that he has always kept the Word of Wisdom. (Apparently doing so ensures not only that you will walk and not faint but also that you will remember and not confabulate.)

And, sixth, and perhaps most importantly, Mosiah Hancock's Fanny Alger story is completely alien to the monogamous Kirtland context in which it supposedly occurred yet completely at home in the polygamous Utah context in which he recorded it. If you go reread the story, you'll see that the whole context for the "exchange of women" is that Mosiah's mother (Clarissa Reed) had already been living in the Joseph Smith home--and it was therefore naturally expected, according to Mosiah, that she would marry Smith. Levi knows this, so he approaches Joseph with some caution to ask permission to marry her despite Joseph's own presumed intentions. And it is because of this that Joseph is in a position to bargain: I'll let you have Clarissa if you'll get me Fanny....

Mosiah Hancock wrote his narrative as a 62 year old man who had five wives and had lived in Utah for nearly a half century. It would not be surprising if to him, in the polygamous culture of Utah, it were natural for a woman to plurally marry the head of the household in which she resided. But in 1833 Kirtland this would have been an absolute bombshell--expected by no one.

Compton is right to point out that the "exchange of women" described by Mosiah Hancock fits with polygamous cultures. But early Kirtland was not a polygamous culture. It was a thoroughly monogamous culture in which polygamy could only be a scandal to be denounced and would therefore have to be practiced in entire secrecy.

Mosiah Hancock's entire narrative is premised on a polygamous culture that existed around him as he wrote but was not even dreamed at the time of the supposed events he wrote of.

It never happened.

You ask whether I reject Benjamin F. Johnson as a source. I don't. I reject only the notion that he must have been perfectly accurate in relating as an 85 year old man what he recalled of his days as a 17 year old boy. What I question in his account is that he recalled accurately that the rumors he heard about Fanny Alger were in 1835 and while Fanny was still living in the Smith home. How certainly could he date whether his memory was from 1835, 1836, or 1837? Without knowing that he had some definite benchmarks by which to date this memory, how much stock should we put, not in what he remembered, but in the precise dating he applies to that memory?

There is no contemporaneous report of Fanny Alger rumors before her expulsion from the home, nor do any of the other nineteen known sources on the Fanny Alger relationship indicate that such rumors were circulating before Emma abruptly put Fanny out of the house. Indeed, in other accounts that report the source of the rumors that source is Emma's discovery of the relationship and expulsion of Fanny from the house, which I can positively date to 1836.

by the way, in answer to another of your questions, yes, I can trace Fanny Alger throughout the relevant period.

I'll leave my online comments on the subject at that, and write more in my published work.

Don

[_DonBradley]

Hey Again 7,

Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting that the Mosiah Hancock account is of no historical value. I obviously reject his specific story that the marriage occurred as part of an exchange which also involved his parents' own 1833 marriage, and his (consequent) assertion that his father performed the marriage. I think these crucial elements of his narrative are too alien to both his father's own life story and their claimed 1833 context to be taken very seriously.

But Mosiah Hancock was a first cousin to Fanny Alger and therefore in a position to know at least if the family, including his father, understood her to have been married to Joseph Smith somehow and at some time. They plainly did.

I concluded very strongly that his story "never happened," by which I mean his detailed relation of the 1833 swap and the like. This means I decidedly don't believe it happened, and I think the evidence strongly backs me up in that belief. But since this is a belief based on evidence it is amenable to correction by further, contrary evidence. And I'm open to such evidence. But, at least for the time being, it never happened.

Don

[_Brackite]

truth stumbler:

… the Book of Mormon clearly states that God says polygamy "breaks the hearts of his daughters."

No, it doesn’t.

Jacob condemned some of the men in his day for committing “whoredoms.” And it is these “whoredoms” that were the cause of the broken hearts of the wives and daughters in 550 B.C., just as they are today.

He also condemns David’s and Solomon’s practice of having “many” wives and concubines.

I don’t know what constitutes “many,” but I perceive a significant difference between David and Solomon, who had literally dozens and dozens of wives and concubines, and even Brigham Young, who had more wives than anyone else during the era of Mormon polygamy. Of course, even of David and Solomon, the Lord is recorded as saying:

David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.

Therefore, it is clear that there are distinctions to be made, and a blanket condemnation is not appropriate nor justified when it comes to these things.

First, Here is Doctrine and Covenants Section 132, Verse One, and Verses 38 and 39:

Doctrine and Covenants Section 132:1, & 38 & 39:

1 Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph, that inasmuch as you have inquired of my hand to know and understand wherein I, the Lord, justified my servants Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, as also Moses, David and Solomon, my servants, as touching the principle and doctrine of their having many wives and concubines—

...

38 David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin save in those things which they received not of me.

39 David's wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power; and in none of these things did he sin against me save in the case of Uriah and his wife; and, therefore he hath fallen from his exaltation, and received his portion; and he shall not inherit them out of the world, for I gave them unto another, saith the Lord.

Now, Here is Jacob Chapter Two, Verse Seven:

Jacob 2:7:

[7] And also it grieveth me that I must use so much boldness of speech concerning you, before your wives and your children, many of whose feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, which thing is pleasing unto God;

And, Here is Jacob Chapter Two, Verses 23 and 24:

Jacob 2:23 & 24:

[23] But the word of God burdens me because of your grosser crimes. For behold, thus saith the Lord: This people begin to wax in iniquity; they understand not the scriptures, for they seek to excuse themselves in committing whoredoms, because of the things which were written concerning David, and Solomon his son.

[24] Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.

It was Not how or the way how King David and King Solomon had many wives and concubines that was abominable before the Lord God, It is that they just truly actually in fact had many wives and concubines, which was indeed truly abominable before the Lord God. This interpretation is very, very much in harmony with the obvious interpretation of Jacob Chapter Two, Verse 7, which does Not mean it was how or the way how the wives' and children's feelings are exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before God, it means exactly from what it states, is that, the wives, and the children's feelings are indeed truly exceedingly tender and chaste and delicate before the Lord God. King David And King Solomon, in fact truly having many wives and concubines, by itself, is that which was indeed truly abominable before the Lord God.

Conclusion: Jacob Chapter Two, Verses 23 and 24, truly indeed does Contradicts Doctrine and Covenants Section 132, Verse One, and Verses 38 and 39.


And, Here is Jacob Chapter Two, Verses 31 through 33:

Jacob: 2:31-33:

[31] For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.

[32] And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.

[33] For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms, like unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.

[_why me]

Finally, the thirteenth article of faith states, "... if there is anything virtuous, lovely, of good report, or praisworthy, we seek after these things." Yet, the inner circle, had to lie to members, the government, and the community because their behavior was considered so disgusting and immoral? God says, polygamy breaks the hearts of his daughters, something clearly not virtous and praiseworthy.

It is what it is.

~td~

Easy to judge now when much time has passed and when the world has changed. But back then, people were a different breed. We already know that there was much intolerance in American society. The puritan influence is still strong never mind back in the early 1830's. And we need to remember the intolerance shown to the american indian and the african american. Difference was not looked upon kindly.

But you did prove one point that I have made: fanny's reputation remained intact through it all. Her family, future husband, children showed her no disrespect about her relationship with Joseph Smith. It was not viewed as disgusting or immoral. In fact, she chose to keep it private. And this speaks volumes about fanny and how she viewed the relationship and also how her future husband viewed it. Moreover, it is quite interesting to read the posts of the moral cops on this thread. It kinda makes me laugh to hear the condemnation and disgust. You guys sound like Oliver, but I don't think that you guys will come back to the church like Oliver and bear your testimony of the Book of Mormon on your deathbed.

If it is life or death, I do think that you will lie too both to the community and to the government.

[_beastie]

And, sixth, and perhaps most importantly, Mosiah Hancock's Fanny Alger story is completely alien to the monogamous Kirtland context in which it supposedly occurred yet completely at home in the polygamous Utah context in which he recorded it. If you go reread the story, you'll see that the whole context for the "exchange of women" is that Mosiah's mother (Clarissa Reed) had already been living in the Joseph Smith home--and it was therefore naturally expected, according to Mosiah, that she would marry Smith. Levi knows this, so he approaches Joseph with some caution to ask permission to marry her despite Joseph's own presumed intentions. And it is because of this that Joseph is in a position to bargain: I'll let you have Clarissa if you'll get me Fanny....

Many of Joseph Smith's wives lived in his home. They were either servants, or Joseph Smith was their guardian. So obviously this practice was occurring before the Utah period, and it seems equally obvious to me that the select group of men that were aware of Joseph Smith's marital practices would understand that a female living in his home was probably going to become his wife.