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July 27, 1842

Top: Engraving of Newel K. Whitney, H. B. Hall and Sons, 1884. Bottom: photograph of Sarah Ann Whitney, Edward Martin, circa 1867. Joseph Smith Papers Project, © by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.josephsmithpapers .org. Joseph Smith Papers Project, © by Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved. www.josephsmithpapers.org.

Between 1835 and his death in 1844, Joseph Smith married between thirty and forty women as plural wives in a practice he said was part of the “restoration of all things” in the latter days.[1] Polygamy—or, more properly, plural marriage or “celestial marriage,” to use the preferred nomenclature of its early practitioners[2]—was one of the Prophet’s most radical and polarizing teachings. For a topic so significant to the early history of the Restoration, the frustrating fact is that our understanding of Joseph Smith’s introduction of plural marriage, as well as many of the details about his personal practice of the same, is surprisingly lacking. For one thing, we don’t even know the precise number of plural wives Joseph married or was sealed to, with estimates ranging between twenty-seven and forty-eight.[3] We also have precious little directly from the Prophet himself explaining why he instituted this practice among the Latter-day Saints and what his relationship was like with most of his plural wives.[4]

For this reason, any document from Joseph Smith providing insight into how and why plural marriage was introduced is of great value. One such document is the revelation now canonized as section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, received on July 12, 1843.[5] This is perhaps the most well-known and arguably the most important Joseph Smith document pertaining to the practice of plural marriage. Another important text is an uncanonized revelation received a year before on July 27, 1842.[6] This latter source, directed to Newel K. Whitney, provides an important glimpse into both the procedural and theological underpinnings of plural marriage as taught and practiced by Joseph Smith.

On that same day the Prophet was sealed to Whitney’s seventeen-year-old daughter Sarah Ann,[7] and the revelation instructs her father on how to perform the marriage ceremony. This is consistent with Joseph Smith’s pattern in other plural marriages where he instructed the one conducting the ceremony,[8] but it is difficult to say whether the instructions received in this revelation were tailored specifically for this marriage to Sarah Ann or if they might have had broader applicability. Some of the procedural methods outlined in this revelation, such as the bride and groom taking each other by the hand, are also present in Orson Pratt’s description of how plural marriage sealings were solemnized in Utah,[9] but once again it is difficult to say how many later ceremonial practices relating to plural marriage can be traced back to Nauvoo. This uncanonized revelation thus provides a significant but still limited glimpse into some of the theological and procedural groundings of plural marriage as practiced in Nauvoo, and when read alongside the canonical revelation received a year later, it helps further clarify this practice among the early Saints.

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Verily, thus saith the Lord unto my servant Newel K. Whitney—the thing that my servant Joseph Smith has made known unto you and your family, and which you have agreed upon, is right in mine eyes, and shall be crowned upon your heads with honor and immortality and eternal life to all your house, both old and young. Because of the lineage of my priesthood, saith the Lord, it shall be upon you and upon your children after you from generation to generation, by virtue of the holy promise which I now make unto you, saith the Lord.

These are the words which you shall pronounce upon my servant Joseph and your daughter Sarah Ann Whitney. They shall take each other by the hand, and you shall say, you both mutually agree (calling them by name) to be each other’s companion so long as you both shall live—preserving yourselves for each other and from all others—and also throughout eternity, reserving only those rights which have been given to my servant Joseph by revelation and commandment and by legal authority in times past. If you both agree to covenant and do this, I then give you, Sarah Ann Whitney, my daughter, to Joseph Smith, to be his wife, to observe all the rights between you both that belong to that condition. I do it in my own name and in the name of my wife, your mother, Elizabeth Ann Smith Whitney, and in the name of my holy progenitors by the right of birth, which is of the priesthood vested in me by revelation, and commandment, and promise of the living God, obtained by the holy Melchizedek, Jethro, and others of the holy fathers, commanding, in the name of the Lord, all those powers to concentrate in you, and through you to your posterity forever.

All these things I do in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, that through this order he may be glorified and that through the power of anointing David may reign king over Israel, which shall hereafter be revealed. Let immortality and eternal life henceforth be sealed upon your heads forever and ever.

Notes

[1] The best in-depth analysis of Joseph Smith’s practice of plural marriage remains Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: History and Theology, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013). See also the more accessible summary treatment in Brian C. Hales and Laura H. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Towards a Better Understanding (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2015). For accessible article-length overviews, see Brian C. Hales, “Joseph Smith’s Practice of Plural Marriage,” in A Reason for Faith: Navigating LDS Doctrine & Church History (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2016), 129–41; Andrew W. Hedges, “Eternal Marriage and Plural Marriage,” in Raising the Standard of Truth: Exploring the History and Teachings of the Early Restoration, ed. Scott C. Esplin (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2020), 309–22. The Church’s Gospel Topics Essay “Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo,” https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org, is also a useful overview of the subject.

[2] See, for example, Orson Pratt, “Celestial Marriage,” in Journal of Discourses, 26 vols. (Liverpool: F. D. and S. W. Richards, 1854), 1:53–66; Emily D. P. Young, “Incidents of the Life of a Mormon Girl,” undated manuscript, 185–18[7], MS 5220, CHL; Joseph Bates Noble, Affidavit, June 1869, 40 Affidavits on Celestial Marriage, Book Number 1, MS 3423, CHL; Eliza Partridge, “Life and Journal of Eliza Maria Partridge Lyman,” 1877, 13–14, Typescript 5–6, typescript MS 9546, holograph MS 1527, CHL; Zina D. Young, “The Prophet's Birthday,” Deseret News, January 12, 1881, 2; Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Autobiography, March 30, 1881, MS 744, CHL. Compare Jeni Broberg Holzapfel and Richard Neitzel Holzapfel, eds., A Woman’s View: Helen Mar Whitney’s Reminiscences of Early Church History (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University, 1997, 481–87; Helen Mar Kimball, “Scenes in Nauvoo,” Woman's Exponent 10, no. 6 (August 15, 1881): 42; Eliza R. Snow Smith, Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret News, 1884), 69–70; Emily D. P. Young, “Testimony That Cannot Be Refuted,” Woman’s Exponent 12, no. 21 (April 1, 1884): 165; Eliza R. Snow, “Sketch of My Life,” in The Personal Writings of Eliza Roxcy Snow, Maureen Ursenbach Beecher (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2000), 16–17; Joseph F. Smith, “Joseph Smith and Celestial Marriage,” Deseret News, June 2, 1886, 6; Emily D. P. Young, Deposition, Temple Lot Case, 350, question 23, MS 1160, CHL.

[3] See the various estimates given in Andrew Jenson, “Plural Marriage,” Historical Record 6, no. 3–5 (May 1887): 219–34, listing twenty-seven wives; Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History: The Life of Joseph Smith, 2nd rev. ed. (New York: Knopf, 1971), 457–88, listing forty-eight wives; Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997), 1–23, listing thirty-three wives; George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy: “. . . but we called it celestial marriage” (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 2008), 573–656, listing thirty-eight wives; Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 2:323–41, listing thirty-five wives. Brodie’s count is inflated by her inclusion of proxy sealings of wives to Joseph Smith after his death.

[4] For instance, we have no firsthand accounts from either Joseph Smith or Fanny Alger, who was likely his first plural wife, on either the details or nature of their relationship. In fact, when Fanny was asked about her relationship with the Prophet, she reportedly demurred, saying, “That is all a matter of my own, and I have nothing to communicate.” Benjamin F. Johnson, to George F. Gibbs, ca. April–October 1903, 33, MS 1289, CHL.

[5] JSP, D12:453–78. See further Newel G. Bringhurst, “Section 132 of the LDS Doctrine and Covenants: Its Complex Contents and Controversial Legacy,” in The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster (Independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2010), 59–86; Craig L. Foster, “Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 and Joseph Smith’s Expanding Concept of Family,” in The Persistence of Polygamy, 87–98; William Victor Smith, Textual Studies of the Doctrine and Covenants: The Plural Marriage Revelation (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2018).

[6] JSP, D10:308–14.

[7] For additional biographical information on Sarah Ann, see Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 342–63.

[8] For instance, much like this revelation directed to Newel K. Whitney, Joseph Smith evidently instructed Joseph B. Noble on how he was to conduct the former’s sealing to Louisa Beaman. Charles Lowell Walker, Diary, June 17, 1883, in A. Karl Larson and Katherine Miles Larson, eds., Diary of Charles Lowell Walker, 2 vols. (Logan: Utah State University Press, 1980), 2:610. He also apparently instructed Levi Hancock on how to perform his marriage to Fanny Alger. Levi Ward Hancock, Autobiography, Part Three, June 6, 1896, 63, MS 570, CHL.

[9] Orson Pratt, “Celestial Marriage,” The Seer 1, no. 2 (February 1853): 31–32.