Joseph's plural wives: how many, how young

The scale of Joseph's secret marriages, including two 14-year-olds and girls living in his home as wards.

What the Church claims

Traditional teaching presented Joseph as Emma's devoted husband, with plural marriage a Utah-era practice; where admitted, his sealings were portrayed as few, reluctant and largely ceremonial.

Once the evidence is in, this claim: Weak. The facts are conceded by the Church; the dispute is only over motive and consummation, and the conceded facts already contradict the image taught for 150 years.

The record

The Church's 2014 essay: 'Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40'. Todd Compton documents 33; Brian Hales lists 35.
Hales, the leading apologist: 'Joseph Smith was sealed to ten women under that age of twenty. Four were nineteen, three were seventeen, one was sixteen, and two were fourteen'.
Helen Mar Kimball (born 1828-08-22) was sealed in May 1843, which the Church describes as 'several months before her 15th birthday'. She wrote that Joseph promised the step would 'ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father's household', and that she was given twenty-four hours.
Nancy Winchester (born 1828-08-10) was, per Hales, 'fourteen or fifteen'; no sealing date survives.
Several young wives were dependants in Joseph's household: Emily and Eliza Partridge (fatherless, living with the Smiths), Sarah and Maria Lawrence (orphans for whom Joseph was legal guardian), and Lucy Walker, who recorded Joseph's words: 'I will give you until tomorrow ... the gate will be closed forever against you'.
Most marriages fall between April 1841 and November 1843; at least 20 took place in the 17 months from June 1842 (see wives.json).
Evidence of sexual relations exists for roughly a dozen wives, including sworn testimony: Emily Partridge answered 'Yes sir' when asked under oath about 'carnal intercourse'; Malissa Lott said she was a wife 'in very deed'.
No child of a plural wife has been genetically confirmed; seven alleged sons and Josephine Lyon have been excluded.
The 1843 revelation tells Emma to 'receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph' or 'be destroyed', and remains canon.

The moving target

1835-1876: Official statement that 'one man should have one wife'.
20th century: Joseph's plural marriages went essentially unmentioned in Church curriculum.
2014-10: Concedes 30-40 wives, Helen Mar Kimball's age, Emma's partial ignorance and the angel-with-a-sword story; stresses that marriage at such ages 'was legal in that era' and that Helen's sealing was probably 'for eternity alone'.
2018-09: Narrates plural marriage in the main text, framed by angelic command.

The exchange

Hales; Gospel Topics essay; Craig Foster

Teen marriage was legal and not rare on the frontier; Helen Mar's sealing was dynastic and probably unconsummated; there is no evidence of sex with either 14-year-old.

The answer: Legal is not the same as normal: a 37-year-old married man secretly taking a 14-year-old, with her salvation and her family's offered as the inducement and a one-day deadline, was not ordinary 1840s courtship. Absence of evidence of sex is a fair point, but the record was made by people who concealed the marriages altogether; and the ethical problem - religious coercion of a child and of dependants in his own household - does not turn on consummation.

What they get right: Critics who assert as fact that Joseph had sex with Helen Mar Kimball go beyond the evidence; so do labels implying a clinical diagnosis.

Hales; Gospel Topics essay

Joseph was commanded by an angel with a drawn sword and entered polygamy reluctantly; fewer than half the unions were consummated.

The answer: The sword story comes from Joseph via the women he was persuading (e.g. Mary Lightner), so it functioned as a proposal argument, not independent evidence. Twenty-plus marriages in a year and a half is hard to describe as reluctance. 'Fewer than half consummated' still concedes sexual relations with perhaps a dozen women unknown to his legal wife.

Both cases at full strength

The skeptics' case

On the Church's and its best apologist's own numbers, Joseph secretly married 30-40 women in about three years, ten of them teenagers, two of them 14. Several were orphans or wards in his house, approached with deadlines and promises of exaltation for their families. Emma knew of only a few, and scripture still threatens her with destruction for resisting.

The apologetic case

Joseph taught that sealing bound families together for eternity, and many sealings - to older widows, to the wives of friends, probably to Helen Mar - look dynastic rather than romantic. Despite alleged relations with many fertile women, no children are known, and DNA has refuted every paternity claim tested. The women themselves, decades later and under no compulsion, overwhelmingly defended Joseph and testified of spiritual confirmations.

What would change this

Contemporary evidence that Emma knew and consented throughout, or that the under-18 sealings were understood by all parties at the time as next-life-only.

Closely related

Sources

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