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December 2, 1841

Photograph of Marinda Nancy Johnson (detail), unknown photographer, circa 1860s. Church History Library, Salt Lake City. © by Intellectual Reserve, Inc.

Marinda Nancy Johnson joined the restored Church of Jesus Christ in April 1832, when she was just two months shy of her seventeenth birthday. She and her family were close to Joseph Smith, and several members of the Johnson family became important figures in the early Church. Her parents, John and Alice Johnson, provided a home for Joseph and Emma on their farm in Hiram, Ohio, in 1831–32. Her brothers Luke and Lyman served in the original Quorum of the Twelve assembled in February 1835. It was while living on the Johnson family farm that the Prophet received several revelations in the early days of the Restoration, labored on his inspired translation or revision of the Bible, and it was there that he was brutally mobbed on the evening of March 25, 1832.[1] “During the whole year that Joseph was an inmate of my father’s house,” Marinda recalled later in life, “I never saw aught in his daily life or conversation to make me doubt his divine mission.”[2]

Upon his return from Zion’s Camp in 1834, Marinda married Orson Hyde, who, along with her two brothers, was called to the Quorum of the Twelve in February 1835. Her husband’s calling as an apostle brought with it the responsibility of multiple missions, including a lengthy one to Germany and Palestine that he undertook in 1840–42. While her husband was away on this mission, Joseph Smith received a revelation for Marinda on December 2, 1841. In it the Lord directed Ebenezer Robinson and his wife, Angelina Works, both stalwart Saints in Nauvoo, to provide Marinda and her children shelter until Orson returned from his mission. “On receiving [this] revelation,” Ebenezer recounted near the end of his life, “President Smith came and delivered the message to me, which we readily and ungrudgingly, obeyed. I immediately harnessed my horse to the buggy, and brought sister Hyde and her two little daughters to our home.”[3]

Encoded in the revelation is what appears to be oblique instruction for Marinda to prepare herself to receive Joseph Smith’s recent implementation of plural marriage. “Let my handmaid Marinda hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things whatsoever he shall teach unto her,” the revelation instructs, “and it shall be a blessing upon her and upon her children after her unto her justification, saith the Lord.” Decades later, Marinda remembered the Prophet teaching her “the doctrine of Celestial Marriage” in the fall of 1841 and specifically recalled this revelation being given to her in that context.[4] Sure enough, Marinda would be sealed to Joseph as a plural wife in either April 1842 or May 1843.[5] “I followed the counsel of the Prophet Joseph as above instructed,” Marinda recalled, “and cherish in my heart the hope of reaching the fulfillment of the promises and blessings therein contained.”[6]

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A revelation given December 2, 1841, to Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde.

Verily, thus saith the Lord unto you my servant Joseph Smith, that inasmuch as you have called upon me to know my will concerning my handmaid Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde; behold, it is my will that she should have a better place prepared for her than that in which she now lives, in order that her life may be spared unto her. Therefore, go and say unto my servant Ebenezer Robinson and to my handmaid his wife, Angelina Works—let them open their doors and take her and her children into their house, and take care of them faithfully and kindly until my servant Orson Hyde returns from his mission, or until some other provision can be made for her welfare and safety.

Let them do these things and spare not, and I the Lord will bless them and heal them if they do it not grudgingly, saith the Lord God. And she shall be a blessing unto them. And let my handmaid Marinda hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things whatsoever he shall teach unto her, and it shall be a blessing upon her and upon her children after her unto her justification, saith the Lord.

Notes

[1] See Milton V. Backman Jr., “Hiram, Ohio,” in Joseph: Exploring the Life and Ministry of the Prophet, ed. Susan Easton Black and Andrew C. Skinner (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2005), 195–206.

[2] Edward W. Tullidge, The Women of Mormondom (New York: Tullidge and Crandall, 1877), 404.

[3] “Items of Personal History of the Editor. No. 17,” The Return 2, no. 9 (September 1890): 324.

[4] Marinda N. Johnson Hyde, Statement, circa 1880, [1], MS 23157, Church History Library.

[5] The documentary record is conflicting on the date of Marinda’s sealing to Joseph. Scribe Thomas Bullock recorded sometime after October or November 1843 in Joseph’s Nauvoo-era journal that the sealing took place in April 1842. JSP, J3:59; JSP, D9:7–8. Marinda, however, provided an affidavit on May 1, 1869, that identified May 1843 as the time of the sealing. Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde, Affidavit, May 1, 1869, Affidavits on Celestial Marriage, Book Number 1, 1869, 15, MS 3423, CHL. On Joseph’s plural marriage to Marinda, including a discussion of the issue of the dating of the marriage, consult Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013), 1:272–74, 452–55.

[6] Hyde, Statement, [3].