I. Introduction
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s 2017 book A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835-1870 (New York: Vintage) is, in her own words, an attempt to piece together a history of plural marriage from the words and works of women. Another book review on women and polygamy, you may ask? Is this journal called SquareTwo or Square0.5? But this book is more than a “polygamy book”—it’s a fascinating history of the Church in general that uses several sources from many women and men. This review, however, will focus on polygamy. [1] Indeed, there exist many biographies of people who lived in that time and lived in polygamous relationships, including the last book I reviewed for SquareTwo, “Recollections of a Handcart Pioneer of 1860: A Woman’s Life on the Mormon Frontier” by Mary Ann Hafen). However, this volume about as close to time travel as I have gotten when it comes to the question of the start of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, because of Ulrich’s unique approach to historical sources.
To help readers understand the feelings and thoughts of people as the practice of polygamy was introduced to and inducted into the early restored Church of Jesus Christ, Ulrich deliberately emphasized day-to-day sources such as diaries, meeting minutes, and letters. She wrote:
“Some historians silently merge documents like these with autobiographies and memoirs written decades later. I have not done that. Retrospective accounts are valuable, but they have to be understood in relation to the conflicts and commemorations that produced them. Since every word written about early Mormonism was, and is, controversial, it is important to know when as well as what people wrote. This is not to say that diaries are more truthful than memoirs, just better at conveying the instability of events as they unfolded. Diarists did not know how things would turn out.”
I found one strength of this approach in a recent interaction I had with my maternal grandmother. We have had some upheaval in our family in recent years. I expressed to her some of my worries about the future, and she simply stated that we needed to rely on Christ and move forward. A few months later, my she sent me her journal from the mid-1970s, when she was in her 30s as I am now, and I found a page where she openly expressed similar worries I had shared with her the other month. Her words made it clear that at the time of writing that entry, she felt unable to fully shake her concerns in exchange for faith. Knowing that she, at the age I am now, felt as anxious and unable to change family challenges, and was struggling to apply faith to those situations, helped me feel like she can understand my feelings. Knowing that she is now as steady in her faith as a rock and capable of facing anything gave me a hope that I will not only survive but become stronger as a disciple of Christ. [2] I feel the same way as I read the words of Vilate Kimball, Phebe Woodruff, and Eliza Snow.
Ulrich did not completely avoid retrospective biographies and memoirs, which is almost impossible because as she said in the book, “A great deal of what women did has been lost because no one wrote it down.” (Ulrich, 361) A hefty endnotes section gives the reader an insight to her sources and has given me a long to-read list on this topic. If she is filling in the gaps of documentation with her own theories, she usually clearly indicates this by including words like “perhaps” or “may,” a delineation which I find particularly valuable in a book exploring such a highly charged topic for many readers.
At times A House Full of Females was unbearably uncomfortable to read and write about, but Ulrich includes so many stories about so many women in this time frame of Church history, I felt compelled to finish it. It is impossible for me to cover all the interesting details or plot lines she included, so I suggest you read it yourself.
I. Marriage and family in the early church
I worshiped as a child and youth in a rural ward in the Pacific Northwest. “Families are Forever” was as commonly sung as “I Am a Child of God” in Primary. We wore emblems of the temple and spoke of temple marriage consistently. Family home evening, family prayer, family scripture, family in general were all repeated as being central to our worship. I never wondered if this was a newer characteristic of the Church. I served a mission in the 2010s, and quickly realized that many people who were drawn to the message of the restored gospel and eternal families were those that came from broken families. Ulrich explains that many of the early Church converts were in similar situations: “In an era of massive migration, converts sought not only spiritual sustenance, but ways of healing ruptures in human relationships.” She discusses throughout the book the lives and situations of many women who abandoned children and husbands, fled abusive or alcoholic husbands with their children, or left families of origin as single women. Before polygamy began in the Church of Jesus Christ, bigamy was not uncommon on the American frontier, as women sought to gather more fully with the Saints by marrying a man who was also a member of the Church without having formally divorced the husbands they left behind. Ulrich states that twenty percent of women who entered polygamy during Joseph’s life had been previously (or currently) married. She also states that divorce rates among polygamous marriages in Utah were three times higher than divorce rates in monogamous relationships.
Prior to polygamy, Ulrich says, “Mormon [marriage] ceremonies looked pretty much like other marriage ceremonies elsewhere in the rural United States except that they seemed more egalitarian. Husband and wife took identical vows…there was no giving the bride away, no ring, no veil, and apparently no promise to obey.” She quotes Joseph Smith’s perspective of one of these weddings from his diary, “I doubt whether the pages of history can boast of a more splendid and innocent wedding and feast than this for it was conducted after the order of heaven.” (emphasis added). [3] Much of this seems to have changed with the advent of polygamy. [4]
II. Some thoughts on polygamy
I’m guessing parts of this book will be old news to many SquareTwo readers, but will have been more shocking to me as I have not made polygamy in the early Church an earnest topic of study. [5] Chapters 4 and 5, which center on the behind-the-scenes action during the era when Joseph began practicing polygamy while denying it to the general Church membership, were particularly painful to read. Journal entries, letters, and court minutes outlined heartrending details of the secrecy and desires that accompanied the start of this practice. I was unaware of most of these accounts prior to reading them in this book. I thought several times that I may not be able to finish the book in time for this review or even be able to write the review because of how angry I felt at the choices and words of so many leaders.
Polygamy began to be established in some form around the same time the endowment was introduced as well as the Female Relief Society was founded. Ulrich frames 1842 Nauvoo by saying “In truth, there were so many secrets in Nauvoo in 1842, and so many rumors, contradictions, and denials, that it is impossible to know precisely what happened and when. There is no question, however, that Joseph had begun experimenting with what people later came to understand as celestial marriage.” These experiments included marriages for time, eternity, or time and eternity [6]; secret marriages with no documentation; marriages that seem to seal a whole family to Joseph instead of just the woman. [7] Although she did not write it in her diary at the time, years later Eliza Snow testified that she was “married or sealed” to Joseph Smith in June 1842. Indeed, Joseph Smith “asked the Relief Society to investigate gossip about his supposed involvement with his widowed sister-in law, Agnes Coolbrith Smith [8]” which they did. At the same time, he and Hyrum publicly denounced and preached against rumors of plural marriage. Additionally, according to Ulrich, “by the time the Society was organized, [Joseph] had likely been sealed to five Nauvoo women.” [9]
I have heard many times that polygamy was a trial to both men and women. [10] Ulrich’s meticulous sourcing helps us glimpse the pain that many felt at the idea. From the perspective of the women, many, of course, felt opposed to the concept, like Lucy Walker (compared it to “a thunderbolt” and her soul “revolted against it). It seems some received spiritual manifestations of the principle’s divinity, like Zina Huntington (she prayed and “received a testimony for my self that God had required that order to be established in this church”). According to a letter from Vilate Kimball to her husband, Parley Pratt’s wife Mary Ann “had been ‘rageing against these things. She told me her self that the devel had ben in her until within a few days past. She said the Lord had shown her it was all right.” Some felt grateful for the opportunity to marry an apostle, with the idea that they would be more blessed by being connected to more highly ranked leaders, and encouraged their friends to do the same (Augusta Cobb). Some did not participate in the practice because they received no witness from the Spirit, that is, they refused on the basis of their own ability to receive inspiration. Ellen McGary said that “My earnest desire, and ever has been to do right and to obey the will of my heavenly Father in all things when I can be made to feel that it is his will and know it for myself and not for another.” [11] She and her husband stayed in California, ostensibly to avoid social pressure to marry more women. Still others left the faith, and wrote and spoke actively against the principle. Others, like Vilate Kimball, lived the law but I don’t think ever truly reconciled themselves to the social structure. After the birth of her last child, a son, she wrote this verse.
“The Lord has blessed us with another Son
Which is the seventh I have Born
May he be the father of many lives.
But not the Husband of many Wives.” [12]
Men were taught and many believed that the more posterity they had through the principle of plural marriage, the more blessed they would be in the eternities. Others claimed to feel horror at the concept, including John Taylor (said it made his flesh crawl) and Brigham Young (said he desired the grave for the first time in his life). Obviously, this did not stop them from practicing polygamy in the future. However, there were others, like William Clayton, who admitted in his (what Ulrich describes as his “astonishingly candid”) journal that “[polygamy] was a favor which I have long desired.” As Joseph Smith’s clerk, he had insight into Smith’s teachings on plural marriage. A few records from his diary still haunt me.
- Clayton’s mother-in-law tried to kill herself after he married another one of her daughters (Margaret) even though Margaret had another man serving a mission courting her to be his first and probably only wife. [13] Joseph told him that Emma was displeased with plural marriage and Clayton’s marriage to Margaret, and Clayton recorded what he said to Joseph: “In the agony of mind which I have endured on this subject I said I was sorry I had done it at which Joseph told me not to say so. I finally asked him if I had done wrong in what I had done. He answered no you have a right to get all you can.” [14] (emphasis added)
- After that conversation, Clayton tried to get a few more women to agree to marry him. A few didn’t work out, but he had hopes to marry the third sister (Lydia) from his first wife’s family. As Ulrich says, “that prospect was dashed when he discovered he had a rival.” Clayton writes in his journal: “President Joseph told me he had lately had a new item of law revealed to him in relation to myself. He said the Lord had revealed to him that a man could only take 2 of a family except by express revelation and as I had said I intended to take Lydia he made this known for my benefit. To have more than two in a family was apt to cause wrangles and trouble. He finally asked if I would not give L to him. I said I would so far as I had anything to do it in. He requested me to talk to her.” [15] (emphasis added) Lydia’s story does not end there, however, because she “rejected both men, explaining that she had promised not to marry while her mother lived. She told Joseph she wanted to ‘tarry with her sisters.’” I wonder if her mothers and sisters helped her develop this answer that would thread the needle of not disobeying a prophet while also avoiding marriage at the ripe old age of 17.
- Clayton was worried about the community, which at the time did not know the behind-the-scenes action of plural marriage, realizing that Margaret (his sister-in-law and second wife) was pregnant. He brought up this concern to Joseph. Clayton recorded, “says he, just keep her at home and brook it and if they raise trouble about it and bring you before me I will give you an awful scourging and probably cut you off from the church and then I will baptize you and set you ahead as good as ever.” [16]
At this point, I had to put the book down for over a week I was so angry and upset. I thought of the Old Testament, not because of polygamy, but because of how messy living the gospel was in that time. Nomads and patriarchs and emotions and battles and famines make that book chaotic, and I find that reading about Church history leaves me feeling a similar chaos.
III. Emma Smith
There are not many sources directly attributable to Emma concerning polygamy, unfortunately, and Ulrich relied greatly on the notes, letters, and diaries of others who refer to her. While I’m grateful for those insights, I have to think that I would not love my life, actions and motivations to be defined solely by others’ perspectives of me, especially in Emma’s setting and situation as the wife of a man who was very powerful in a small and passionate community. As noted above, William Clayton’s journal is one record of reported conversations with Joseph and Emma.
Ulrich states that, in 1843, Hyrum Smith “felt that if [Emma] could read a revelation on the subject, she would be convinced” of polygamy. Joseph dictated the revelation to William Clayton, and Hyrum read it to Emma. Apparently, when he read it to her, she “said she did not believe a word of it.” [17] Ulrich posits that Emma may have been opposed to Joseph’s involvement with other women, but that she was “also concerned about the well-being of her family…The day after recording the revelation, William witnessed an agreement between Joseph and Emma, giving her deeds to a steamboat he had purchased for the Church…and to more than sixty city lots in Nauvoo.” [18] Ulrich suggested that after sixteen years of marriage; bearing and losing his children; sharing what few resources and shelter she had with refugees, family, and friends; enduring rumors of infidelity; petitioning public officials and family members for help; Emma was not risking her and her children’s financial and social well-being if Joseph’s actions led to his arrest or death. She also must have been concerned about the inevitable conundrum of polygamy--how can one man temporally support multiple wives and many children, especially when they had suffered economically so much in years past—and so possibly sought a degree of independence from Joseph in financial matters.
We gain a couple more insights to Emma’s perspective on polygamy from a few sources, according to Ulrich. Emma raised her children teaching them that their father, Joseph, never had any other wives but her. [19] In reference to the “Quorum of the Anointed” or the first initiated and endowed members of the Church, “As the first female initiate, Emma Smith played an important role in blessing and anointing other women. That only legal wives participated during Joseph’s lifetime may have been a condition of her participation. Years later, Bathsheba Smith remembered Emma warning newly anointed sisters, ‘Your husbands are going to take more wives, and unless you consent to it, you must put your foot down and keep it there.’” [20] I feel that someday, Emma will have a powerful story to tell.
IV. Wilford Woodruff
I hadn’t realized before reading this volume that the entire official lifespan of polygamy in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints occurred during President Wilford Woodruff’s life. [21] Because of this, one of the central sources for Ulrich’s book was President Woodruff’s diaries. His daily record sometimes included anecdotes about women, although did not always give the detail about women’s daily lives that we may desire. Indeed, he did not even write the details of his first polygamous marriages until years after they happened. He instead drew symbolic figures to indicate what happened on the day of, and we can only speculate why. (Eliza Snow also did not record her first polygamous marriage to Joseph Smith, Jr. in her journal, although she started her journal the same day. The fact that two prolific writers omitted such a major event from their record made Ulrich wonder if they were instructed not to record it.) Despite some gaps, the sheer volume, consistency, and broad time range of his diaries give a broader context and valuable insights to the lives of women, particularly the life of his wife, Phebe, from the beginning to the end of the polygamy era in the Church of Jesus Christ.
Ulrich used Wilford’s and Phebe’s wedding day to illustrate the surprising egalitarian structure of early, pre-polygamy wedding ceremonies in Church History as mentioned above. From their letters, Phebe and Wilford seemed sincerely attached. She even accompanied him on one of his missions in Europe, although for most of his travels she stayed behind. [22] By 1842, other Apostles had taken plural wives, but Wilford had not yet done so. He only made veiled references to the practice in his journal. [23] In fact, he was sent on another mission that year, and his journal was filled with thoughts of Phebe and his family, and their letters included many expressions of affection and love, including a question from Phebe whether “their affections or hearts should ever be divided in eternity” [24] to which “he responded with a very long poem written in his own tiny printing [that] attested to his love.”
This love, however, did not stop Wilford from taking plural wives, although he “was one of the last Apostles to take a plural wife.” This is possibly because “Phebe…admitted that she opposed polygamy until she became ‘sick and wretched.’ Only when convinced that it was a revelation from God did she accept it. She did not say how long that took.” He also “fathered only one child by a plural wife during Phebe’s childbearing years.” [25] He took his first wife possibly as early as 1846, his housekeeper Mary Ann Jackson. He took Mary Giles Webster as a wife in Winter Quarters, although she died shortly after their sealing. Both Mary’s were mature women, and then he married two “fatherless” [26] girls, Sarah Brown and Emma Smith (niece of Abraham Smoot) (aged fifteen and nineteen years, respectively) in the spring of 1853 on the same day. Sarah gave birth a year after the sealing. In December 1853, he and Mary Ann divorced. Phebe died in 1885 with polygamy under fire, but still being practiced, so Wilford could not attend her funeral. [27] In 1889, Wilford became the fourth president of the Church of Jesus Christ. In 1890 he outlined his thoughts in his journal and the next day issued Official Declaration 1, the beginning of the end of the practice of polygamy in the Church. [28]
V. Conclusion
This book is surely evidence of the truth of Ulrich’s statement: “Women’s voices trouble the old stories.” [29] The Prophet Joseph Smith “promised he would make of the society ‘a kingdom of priests as in Enoch’s day—as in Paul’s day.’” [30] Women as a kingdom of priests? That didn’t seem to fly with President Young. Despite the promises of the Prophet of the Restoration, “when Emma Smith, who was [the Relief Society’s] president, rejected Brigham Young as her husband’s successor, he disbanded [the Relief Society].” [31] Eliza Snow, however, did not leave the minutes and the promises behind in Nauvoo, but followed Brigham Young to the West, carrying with her the precious minutes of the Nauvoo Relief Society. Eventually, Eliza Snow and Sarah Kimball, with the support of Brigham Young, reorganized the Relief Society in Utah starting around 1868. [32] Ulrich writes that they did so “with the confidence born of successfully handling multiple sorrows and losses.”
Eliza penned “The records of this House shall prove/We’re neither slack nor slow.” [33] And the House of Relief Society does have records to show their immense effort. Eliza “used [the minute book] to remind her closest associates of the promises they had received in Nauvoo.” “[Eliza and Sarah] drafted a Constitution for the Relief Society, taught from the original Relief Society minutes [34], circulated a periodical, and wrote and spoke extensively. However, the records are only now becoming available to general members of the Relief Society in the last decade. Bathsheba Smith’s daughters donated the original Relief Society minutes to the Church Archive in 1911, but while they were allowed to be used by Church Historians, they were not permitted to be used or viewed by the general public until the publication of The First Fifty Years of Relief Society, in 2011 digitally but 2015 in print. [35]
Ulrich quoted part of a poem from a Latter-day Saint woman that rings in my soul: “Who cares to hear a womans thoughts?... I wish to hear a womans thoughts.” [36] Painful or soothing, clarifying or troubling, women’s perspectives on history and knowing what leaders said about and to women are the only way through some of the most uncomfortable topics in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We cannot be afraid of it. [37] If we continue to print Section 132 and Official Declaration 1 as scripture in the Doctrine and Covenants, could we also include the Relief Society minutes, at least the sections with the promises for women in the Doctrine and Covenants? Could we include Mary Whitmer’s witness of the Angel Moroni and the plates at the beginning of the Book of Mormon? We revere Joseph Smith as an inspired prophet, and as a Church often defend even his teachings of polygamy, unclear and inconsistent though they were. Why do we publish those teachings as scripture, even though we no longer live the principle of polygamy, but then hide away the promises Joseph made to women that the keys are turned to them and they will be made priests in the kingdom, even as our understanding of temple covenants and priesthood power and authority is broadening? Let us be brave and use all of our sacred records, and books such as Ulrich’s, to help our future generations understand how to live a faithful and courageous life within the complexity of a Church guided by inspired but imperfect men and women.
NOTES:
[1] I hope to write a second review for the subsequent edition of SquareTwo on Ulrich’s thoughts on the priesthood power of women in combination with a review of The Priesthood Power of Women by Barbara Morgan Gardner. [Back to manuscript].
[2] I read this book with a group of women, and one participant mentioned that many women would not want their private letters and diaries read by strangers, as they were not written for that purpose. We discussed the apparently very common practice among our group members’ mothers and grandmothers to burn their journals, perhaps out of embarrassment, perhaps for privacy. Someone suggested that if we could guarantee a 100-year gap between death and publishing of personal records, more women would refrain from a destruction of their own records. In my last review, I encouraged our female readers to at least write a synopsis of their lives. In this review, I beg you not to destroy your personal, in-real-time thoughts, but to leave them to someone who you can trust not to publish them until an agreed upon time. I would suggest, selfishly, to allow the next generation to learn from your life.
[Back to manuscript].
[3] Ulrich, p16 (Joseph Smith Papers 1:165-66 (Jan 20.1836)) [Back to manuscript].
[4] It seems the sealing ordinance may be returning to a more equal view of marriage, in my opinion, based on the changes I’ve observed since 2013, as well as anecdotes from female friends and family. [Back to manuscript].
[5] I remember attending my Joseph Smith History class at BYU by Professor Susan Easton Black. On the first day of class, she stood in front of us and said that hiding the truth about the past can give fear and doubts too much power. She encouraged us to face questions head on and with the Holy Ghost as our guide. She listed a number of things, including Joseph and polygamy and the seer stone and hat combo (I looked around to see if anyone else was surprised by these topics, because I had never even heard of a seer stone). “What is less weird about a Urim and Thumim than a stone in a hat?” she asked. She said that Joseph had been married multiple times, but we don’t quite know how many times. She said he was sometimes married just for time, sometimes just for eternity, and sometimes for time and eternity. Some, but not all, relationships were sexual. She said that in the first Church meetings, wine was used instead of water in the sacrament, and instead of sermons, people would speak in tongues and get down into the aisle and pretend to row to the Promised Land like Lehi and his family. The picture she painted was uncomfortable, unfamiliar. I had a similar feeling reading A House Full of Females. [Back to manuscript].
[6] From what I recollect, my BYU Joseph Smith History class professor, Susan Easton Black, said that from what they can tell (there is little documentation) of Joseph’s marriages, marriages for time were only for mortal life and may have included sexual relationships, marriages for eternity did not include mortal life and probably didn’t have a sexual component, and marriages for time and eternity were for mortal and eternal life and may have included a sexual relationship. Ulrich did say that, surprisingly, in the first few years of polygamy, very few pregnancies occurred, unlike in later years of polygamy. [Back to manuscript].
[7] Confused? Me too. The lack of documentation doesn’t help us sort through the inconsistent “celestial marriage” practices of the mid 1800s in the Church of Jesus Christ. Not all women married or sealed with Joseph lived with him as wives—according to Ulrich, some women were even sealed to Joseph 17 years after he died. Sometimes, the wives were sealed to each other and their husband. “According to the official record, William [Clayton] and his wives, Ruth, Margaret, and Diantha, went into the upper room of the temple [in 1985], where they ‘dressed and went into room No. I and were sealed to each other on the altar by Pres B Young.” This was not, then, a series of unions between one man and a succession of wives, but a sealing that united the entire group.” Pp 131 (William Clayton’s diary Jan. 26,1846) [Back to manuscript].
[8] Agnes Coolbrith Smith was the widow of Joseph’s younger brother, Don Carlos. The evidence is unclear whether she had become Joseph’s wife by the time the Relief Society started to hunt down rumors and protect Joseph’s reputation. Ulrich, p 65. (Hales, Polygamy, 1:22-25, 259, 268-69, 272; 2:326.) Ulrich says that sources show he had been sealed to Agnes in January 1842, but did not clarify the nature of the marriage. Ulrich also said we don’t know if Emma knew about these sealings, but she did work hard to track down sources of rumors about Joseph’s new marriages with the help of the brand-new Relief Society. Ulrich also said that it is unclear whether at this point Emma knew about plural marriage. [Back to manuscript].
[9] Ulrich p 66; Ulrich did not include a source for this claim, that I could identify. [Back to manuscript].
[10] And still is! My simple and sincere mission president shared with his missionaries how polygamy in Church history is one of his greatest ongoing faith struggles.
[Back to manuscript].
[11] Like Joseph said—do as James directs. [Back to manuscript].
[12] Ulrich, p173 (Mary Haskin Parker Richards Diary and Letters, published as Winter Quarters: The 1946-1848 Life Writings of Mary Haskin Parker Richards, ed. Maurine Carr Ward (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1996), 109, (Feb. 10,1847).
[Back to manuscript].
[13] Ulrich, pp 88, 94. Clayton “ ‘conversed’ with [Margaret] ‘on the priesthood,’ a term that for him was becoming a euphemism for plurality…’She is a lovely women,’ he wrote, ‘and desires to do right in all things and will submit to council with all her heart.’ Three days later, she was, in his words, “sealed up by the priesthood by the president and m. [married] to me.’” Once Aaron, her missionary who wanted to marry her came home, she was already pregnant by Clayton. (William Clayton’s Diary, Volumes 1 and 2, April 24, 27, 1843) [Back to manuscript].
[14] Ulrich, pp 96 (William Clayton’s diaries, Volume 2, August 11, 1843)
[Back to manuscript].
[15] Ulrich, pp 98 (William Clayton’s diaries, Volume 2, September 15, 17, 31, 1843) [Back to manuscript].
[16] Ulrich pp 98 (William Clayton’s diaries, Volume 2, September 15, 17, 31, 1843) [Back to manuscript].
[17] Such a statement, I think, should not be taken lightly. Emma married Joseph Smith, Jr. before he received the plates, indeed, was at the Hill Cumorah when he received them. She was his scribe for a time, helped protect the records, bore his children, traveled often, endured tension in her family of origin over her choice of a husband, suffered poverty, illness, and the loss of her children. She is not afraid of hard things in the name of Christ and faith. She was not unfamiliar with revelation, as she was married to the prophet of the Restoration who received many revelations.
[Back to manuscript].
[18] Ulrich pp 92-93 (William Clayton’s diaries, volume 2, July 12, 13, 15, 1843)
[Back to manuscript].
[19] Ulrich cited Maurine Carr Ward, “ ‘This Institution Is a Good One’: The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, 17 March 1842 to 16 March 1844,” Mormon Historical Studies 3 (Fall 2002): 90. [Back to manuscript].
[20] Ulrich, p 109 (Newell and Aery, Mormon Enigma, 172-75. Anderson and Bergera, in Quorum of the Anointed, xxxv, note, “No plural wife received the ordinance prior to Joseph’s death.” Ulrich added a comment that she thinks “this point has received too little attention.” [Back to manuscript].
[21] I find myself wondering how many practices and policies were ended by prophets who served as apostles under the president who instituted them. Obviously, Brigham Young dismantling the Relief Society is another example, although he reinstated in some form later. [Back to manuscript].
[22] At one point, according to Ulrich, while Wilford was on a mission to England during and after the exodus from Missouri, Phebe wrote him in a letter all that she had suffered, including houselessness, severe illness, deep loneliness, and the death of their daughter, Sarah Emma. She wrote “I have to bear my trouble alone no Willford or relative to sympathize with me and can you tell me my dear companion who has a better right to share a part of your attention and kindness than your best friend.” She never sent the letter, but she and her descendants kept it. p36, 49-50 (Letter from Phebe Woodruff to Wilford Woodruff, Sept 19, 1839; July 18, 1840) [Back to manuscript].
[23] Ulrich pp84, 86 [Back to manuscript].
[24] Was this a sign Phebe was concerned about the eternal ramifications of possible additional marriages? [Back to manuscript].
[25] Ulrich, 268 (Tullidge, Women, 413). [Back to manuscript].
[26] Pp287 [Back to manuscript].
[27] I did not catch any reference to the situation of Sarah Brown and Emma Smith at the time of the manifesto. [Back to manuscript].
[28] It appears Wilford Woodruff did not separate from his plural wives in 1890, as the prohibition was understood at the time to mean that no new plural marriages were to be undertaken, but existing plural marriages would not be disavowed.
[Back to manuscript].
[29] Page 32; to me, that remark resembles how the Savior’s ministry troubled the old traditions of the powerful Jewish leaders; not that women are better or more like the Savior, but that He often magnified the stories of those who were silenced to teach truth. [Back to manuscript].
[30] Ulrich, xvi (Nauvoo Relief Society, 22 (March 30, 1842). [Back to manuscript].
[31] Ulrich, xvii; My note: From the perspective of doctrine and practices of our Church today, Brigham and the other apostles should have at least held a council with Emma and her counselors to discuss the challenges the Church had to face after the death of Joseph. [Back to manuscript].
[32] Ulrich shares that in the decade after arriving in Utah, women made a number of societies, including “Indian Relief Societies” in 1854 (Ulrich, 362) that gave them opportunities to serve and influence their communities and speak publicly. However, the Church Relief Society wasn’t formally reconstituted by Brigham Young until 1868. [Back to manuscript].
[33] Ulrich, 363 (“Dedication Hymn,” Eliza R. Snow Poetry, 796) [Back to manuscript].
[34] Ulrich, xvii [Back to manuscript].
[35] Ulrich, xxiv. Her note: “On the history of the manuscript minutes, see Jill Mulvay Derr and Carol Cornwall Madsen, “Preserving the Record and Memory of the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo, 1842-92,” Journal of Mormon History 35 (Summer 2009): 88-117. I have a photocopy of a transcription given to me by a friend sometime after 1982 with a note explaining that the microfilm could be consulted by researchers in the Church Archives but that the typescript was for my files only, and “Under no circumstances is it, or any portion of it, to be copied or loaned.” A digital edition of the Nauvoo Relief Society Minutes was made available in 2011 in JSP. The minutes are now in print in The First Fifty Years of Relief Society: Key Documents in Latter-day Saint Women’s History, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr, Carol Cornwall Madsen, Kate Holbrook, and Matthew J. Grow (Salt Lake City: Church Historian’s Press, 2015), a meticulously edited collection that includes other important early records. [Back to manuscript].
[36] Ulrich, 382. (Minutes of the 2nd Meeting of the Ladies Cooperative Retrenchment Society.) [Back to manuscript].
[37] I firmly believe that if these topics are the center and bulk of your daily interaction with gospel topics, you will be spiritually malnourished. Do not invest your time and effort to understand truth over Truth. While I firmly believe historical and social truth is important, even critical, to building Zion, the Truths whispered to me by the Holy Ghost and in the temple are immeasurably valuable. He teaches me confidence, that I can receive my answers from the Almighty God, that I can be made whole through Jesus Christ and His Atonement, and that all that is not fair and not right will be made right in the end. The quiet moments with my scriptures and in prayer are most precious. Thinking about Church history and the experience of women in this Church is also very important because women are in pain or harmful marriages because of the incorrect traditions we have perpetuated over the most recent two centuries the Restored Gospel has been on the earth. Inspiration and information are important helpmeets for one another as we move forward together. [Back to manuscript].
Full Citation for this Article: Bell, Emilee Pugh (2025) "Book Review: A House Full of Females: Plural Marriage and Women’s Rights in Early Mormonism, 1835—1870 by Laurel Thatcher Ulrich," SquareTwo, Vol. 18 No. 1 (Spring 2025), http://squaretwo.org/Sq2ArticleBellFullOfFemales.html, accessed <give access date>.
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