30 thoughts on “The Plural Wives of Nauvoo”

1. New Post: The Plural Wives of Nauvoo: As I sat around contemplating what I might do in 2015, it o… http://t.co/Rz1BWNf8wT #LDS #Mormon

2. TheMillennialStar: The Plural Wives of Nauvoo http://t.co/rP6kJOYo61 #lds #mormon

3. I am hoping there is a lot more to come.

4. I did some checking in Family Search to verify what you are saying.

   Can you tell me about Rachel Kimball (25 January 1845 – 29 December 1847, 93YH-JB1)?

   She was the daughter of Lucy Walker (1826-1910, KWVH-X95).

   Lucy married Joseph Smith Jr. (1805-1844, KWJY-BPD) on 1 May 1843.

   She later married Heber Chase Kimball (1801-1868, MQNV-FHL) on 8 Feb 1845.

   Is Rachel the daughter of Heber, even though she was born two weeks before Lucy and Heber were married?

   If Joseph died in late June 1844, and Lucy was likely conceived in late April, could Joseph have been the father?

   And why wasn’t a DNA test performed for a descendant of Rachel, to rule out any question of her descent from Joseph, if that test happened for nine other possible children of the prophet, according to a Wikipedia article on the subject?

   Or could we determine whether there was some error with the record keeping or that Heber got Lucy pregnant before he married her?

5. Really looking forward to this

6. Hi sterflu,

   When I check Family Search, I find that the first child attributed to Lucy Walker and Heber C. Kimball is Chase Kimball, born 12 December 1845, fully 10 months after the marriage of Lucy Walker and Heber Chase Kimball. Chase Kimball died that same day. Rachel (KWVG-LTR) is born 25 January 1846. Now this is curious, since Rachel and Chase must (by this dating) have been twins. In fact, it does happen where a woman goes into labor, delivers one of a set of twins, then doesn’t give birth to the other twin until a later period of time. Biologically, this is similar to how antelopes will cast off fetuses before the birth of the other baby antelope(s). A google search of “twins born months apart” yields multiple modern instances of this phenomenon for humans, with the gap between the births ranging from separate months separated by less than 30 days to children born nearly 3 months apart. This is in a day when pitocin and other means can be used to attempt to get the reluctant twin to get born.

   If your instance of Rachel (93YH-JB1) is the correct one, then Chase was conceived while Lucy was nursing Rachel. Possible (Irish twins and all that), but less likely than one might think.

   Rachel died at Winters Quarters, so it is not possible to test her DNA.

   I attempted to merge these two records, but the system will not permit this merge for some reason.

   The KWVG-LTR version of Rachel has more details (a middle name, the rest of Rachel’s family members) than the 93YH-JB1 version, which appears to have been added in complete isolation from all other information.

   A journal entry or other record documenting Rachel’s death at Winter Quarters, which might give Rachel’s age, would be the most compelling bit of data for me, personally.

   Update: Googling a bit more, I find the following on a website for the Watson Clan regarding Rachel Sylvia Kimball:

   Name transcribed from A “Grave” Experience at the Mormon Pioneer Winter Quarters Cemetery. By Carlyle B. Jensen and Gail Geo. Holmes, Published by Authors October 1999. Quoted from with permission of Gail Geo. Holmes. The record is a Commencement to bury in the burying ground at Winter Quarters, North West Corner. Spellings, dates and etc. are as written in the original record – mistakes and all.”

   Stated in record above for, “Rachel Kimball; age 1 yr., 11 mos., 4 days; daughter of Heber and Lucy Kimball; deceased Dec. 29, 1847; disease canker; birthplace Nauvoo, Ill.; birthdate Jan 28, 1845; grave no. 147, footnote states grave 147 is the 1st in row thirteen.” – See more at: http://www.watsonclan.com/getperson.php?personID=I8464&tree=watson#sthash.QbeRnrwJ.dpuf

   This suggests that Rachel was born two years before Dec 29, 1847. Now, the person doing the math here wouldn’t have passed an exam, since they both subtracted 2 years from the year and shifted the date across the year boundary to January, giving a result of January 1845. However if Rachel had actually been born in January 1845, she would have been two years, 11 months old, not 1 year, 11 months old, as stated in the record.

   Rachel Sylvia Kimball, therefore, appears to have been born in January 1846, 19 months after the death of Joseph Smith. Therefore it is clear that Heber C. Kimball was the likely father, and Joseph Smith could not have been the father. It is also clear that Rachel could not have been conceived before the marriage between Lucy Walker and Heber C. Kimball. It would also appear that Lucy Walker had one of those odd twin pregnancies where one child is born more than a month before the other twin.

7. Thanks for catching my mistake in assuming a DNA test could be done for descendants of someone who died in childbirth, although I wonder if a grave could be exhumed for that purpose.

   This website quotes from a 1999 book about the Winter Quarters Cemetery, which is a source of information about Rachel’s possible birth in January 1845:
   http://www.ronsgen.com/getperson.php?personID=I6255&tree=RAS

   You raise an interesting point about the likelihood of getting pregnant while nursing. I know from personal experience it can happen. After my mother gave birth to me, she had her second child exactly one year and one week later. Under the scenario I outlined, Chase was born 10.5 months after the birth of Rachel.

8. Hi sterflu,

   Review the update I posted above regarding the math. The 1999 book indicates Rachel was 1 year 11 months old when she died. That places her birth in January 1846, not 1845. So either the “1 year” should have been “2 year” or “1845” should have been “1846.”

   Given the nature of such mistakes, I submit that it is far more likely that the original recorder got the year wrong rather than the age wrong.

   I don’t believe the grave would be disturbed to satisfy idle curiosity unless a family member were the one who was curious. And even in that event, I imagine that it would require not merely a single curious relative, but a plurality of Kimball/Walker descendants who would have to come to a consensus that it was worth the expense, disruption, and notoriety that such an effort would entail.

   In addition, grave 147 is located in the Winter Quarters cemetery which is currently configured as a memorial (see the Wikipedia article for the Mormon Pioneer Cemetery). It is not located in an open field. Therefore exhumation of the toddler’s body would require permission from the Church. I don’t offhand know where grave #147 is in relation to the various statues and plaques, but the grave of Lucy Elvira Holmes (#161) is located right where the plaque with names is located (if you stand looking at the plaque to read the names, you’re standing on Lucy Elvira Holmes’ grave).

9. Possible outcomes:

   Rachel was born in Jan 1845 and was the daughter of Joseph Smith. Interesting, and would be the only biological proof that Joseph Smith had engaged in sexual relations with someone other than Emma Hale. However given the date of possible conception, this sexual encounter would not have necessarily have been a problem with regards to secrecy from Emma. There also arises the curiosity of Lucy not getting pregnant for nearly a year leading up to April 1844, given that she was sufficiently fertile (in this case) to have conceived Chase while nursing Rachel.

   Rachel was born in 1845 and Heber Kimball was the father. This would indicate that Heber had actually taken Lucy Walker under his protection and was acting as a levirate husband prior to Joseph’s death. However I’m pretty sure Heber Kimball was one of those who was no longer at Nauvoo, campaigning on behalf of Joseph’s bid for the presidency of the United States. He appears not to have returned to Nauvoo until August/September 1844, which would have made Rachel an extreme premie, and therefore unlikely to have survived in that age. It also doesn’t make sense that Heber would have been having sex with Lucy and give a later date for the marriage.

   Rachel was born in 1846 and Heber Kimball was the father. In which case you just spent a lot of effort and notoriety to quash one of the tenuous claims that Joseph fathered children on his plural wives.

   There is no outcome where Rachel was born in 1846 and Joseph was the father.

10. I appreciate you helping me think through the implications and likelihood of the two different birthdates for Rachel.

    You raise an interesting point about Heber not being around to father Rachel in late May 1844, assuming the earlier birth date is correct, because he was helping Joseph with his presidential campaign and did not return to Nauvoo until August or September.

    I think you have covered the possible outcomes quite well.

    But let me point you to a statistical calculation of the odds that twins will be born in different years.

    I hear you saying Chase Kimball (279W-KYR) was born 12 Dec 1845 and Rachel Sylvia Kimball (KWVG-LTR) was born 28 Jan 1846, both to Heber Chase Kimball (MQNV-FHL) and Lucy Walker (KWVH-X95), about 47 days apart.

    According to a guest post at the Freakonomics blog, “the odds a live birth will be of twins born in different years are 1 in 59,200”:

    http://freakonomics.com/2014/02/05/what-are-the-odds-of-twins-born-in-different-years/

    And if the usual set of twins born in different years occurs with one delivery on New Year’s Eve and the other on New Year’s Day, how much more unlikely is it that twins will be born a month and a half apart?

    To be fair, Chase was born eight months after the 8 Feb 1845 marriage between Heber and Lucy, so maybe he was the premie baby and Rachel was carried to full term?

11. All twins are born as “premies.” It’s only a matter of how “premie” the twin is. In modern times, it is suggested that twins be born between 37-38 weeks.**

    On your statistics regarding twins being born in different years, they made a mistake. The actual odds of two living twins being born in December and January is 1 in 1,984,262, given their assumptions.

    However a 2008 German study of over 8000 sets of twins showed that 1.8% were born more than 60 minutes apart.

    Alternately, we can look at mortality data for twins in modern times. The probability that one or more of the fetuses will miscarry or be born before 32 weeks is 18% (looking at MFPR statistics for twins). Given that Rachel and Chase were different genders, they would have been in separate amniotic sacs. Therefore the miscarriage of Chase would have had relatively little impact on Rachel.

    So if we look at Chase and Rachel as twins in separate amniotic sacs where Chase was one of an expected 20% early delivery/miscarriage population, the situation as it presents itself for a possible January 1846 birth for Rachel is not so uncommon as might appear from the freakonomics post.

    ** Even when twins are carried to term, they are tiny because they’ve been sharing the resources that would normally be provided to a singleton.

12. I can even imagine a case where Lucy Walker [Smith Kimball] has miscarried Chase and is given a blessing (or multiple blessings) to keep the remaining twin from sharing Chase’s fate.

13. “..namely that it appears likely that Joseph Smith had sexual relations with few, if indeed any, of his plural wives.”

    Meg, why do you care? It is highly likely that Joseph had sexual relations with many of his wives and there was absolutely NOTHING wrong with it. D&C 132 should put the matter to rest:

    132:61 “And again, as pertaining to the law of the priesthood—if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.”

    Accept that at face value and you won’t have to waste your time digging into Joseph’s personal intimate business – and you’re going to spend 2015 on this?? – a colossal waste of time.

    Jason Rae

14. I care because I love a good historical puzzle. It’s like the reason I care about why Saint Margaret of Scotland got the Witangemot to ban marriage between a widow and her step-son, or the kind of rifle that was used to kill Hyrum and Joseph (almost certainly a Hawken hair-trigger rifle with a caliber between .50 and .68, possibly wielded by Francis Higbee).

    Now, you cite D&C 132:61. And yet many of the women Joseph was espousing as plural wives were not “virgins” either in the sense of someone who has not had sexual relations with another nor in the sense of being young women. And the standard historical interpretation is not consistent with the idea that Emma concurred with all these marriages (though you will find that I actually am persuaded that she was aware of these marriages).

    What is your expertise in this, that you are so certain that this study is a waste of time? Can you recite the histories if Joseph’s several dozen wives from memory, and are you certain that both all those you love are similarly well-versed in these matters and similarly sanguine regarding Joseph’s marital activities?

    So far I’ve seen two upvotes for proceeding, along with a hearty discussion regarding the possibilities regarding Rachel Kimball. You are always free to not read, thereby not wasting your own personal time. Yet you don’t get to veto all activities that you personally find to be a waste.

15. Fair enough. I have no issue with your research per se – it’s the blanket statement:

    “..namely that it appears likely that Joseph Smith had sexual relations with few, if indeed any, of his plural wives.”

    A statement like that makes it sound like if you somehow discovered Zapruder-esque footage of Joseph in the act from Emma’s hidden GoPro that we would have to feel bad or apologize to the world for it. But we wouldn’t.

    I guess I’m confused as to why you would bias your research so much right up front before you even get started especially when it’s absolutely impossible for you know the truth of that statement with certainty.

16. Hi Jason,

    Have you read my 2014 series A Faithful Joseph? It is based on my extended study of the documentation regarding Nauvoo polygamy (discussed in that series) that I base my “blanket statement.”

    You are content to suppose Joseph has no reason to apologize for having sex with any of his dozens of wives. That’s fine.

    I, on the other hand, have been delighted to examine the data and find a Joseph that not only respected the strong convictions of his wife regarding refraining from having sex with plural wives (a scruple Emma did not limit to her husband’s plural wives) and was acting to protect the women he asked to covenant with him.

    It’s actually a bit messed up that Joseph would have honored Emma’s request, speaking from the standpoint of a descendant of one of the women Joseph covenanted with. And yet this is not a fault that fails to align with the data.

    The possibility of Joseph running around having sex with dozens of women, both decades older than him and decades younger than him, women as young as thirteen at the time of the marriage or old enough to have adult children by multiple husbands (several of the women with living husbands) is not consistent with the data.

    Some have supposed that I have an ideological need for Joseph Smith to have been sexually monogamous and therefore biologically faithful to Emma Hale. I have no such need. What I need is an overarching framework that fits all the data.

    So far, that overarching framework fits the data if Joseph was biologically faithful to Emma Hale, with the possible “exception” of consummating select marriages where Emma had given him the plural wife in question (notably Emily and Eliza Partridge, though I find reason to doubt even these marriages were consummated).

    Since it seems pretty obvious that you’re commenting without the background of having read the Faithful Joseph series, please do so. At which point we can continue this discussion.

17. I think an interesting exploration of the history of plural marriage would be an examination of Joseph’s plural marriages in light of Wilford Woodruff’s plural marriages to his deceased female ancestors (he had his male ancestors sealed to him as sons). Wilford’s ancestors, through a process of “transfer of sealings,” were later sealed to one another as they were married in life. I believe this “transfer” began in the early St. George Temple period when sealing practices began to conform more to a more natural order of things. I wonder if any of the other early Church leaders also had their female ancestors initially sealed to them as did Wilford? Certainly, this might shed some light on the living marriage sealings of Joseph, and perhaps others, to so many that were not sexually consumated. Add to this the lateral sealings of so many as children to Church leaders as they began their journey west, I wonder if Joseph had initially taught this to any of these leaders prior to his death? Obviously, with so much “wondering” on my part, you might be just the person, Meg, to address these possibilities just from the knowledge you have.

18. Hi Stephen,

    The only suggested child to parent sealing during Joseph’s lifetime (to my knowledge) was Emma’s suggestion that Jane Manning be sealed to Joseph and Emma as a daughter.

    It appears the child to parent sealing was something otherwise so important that Joseph refused to have it done outside the temple.

    Now when the folks started sealing themselves together in the temple, they were super-pressed for time. Brigham Young instituted a policy that sealings of women to their deceased spouses must include temporal marriage between the living spouse and the proxy (a kind of “god husband” in many cases, since in some of these cases the living woman had a living husband already). Therefore it seems reasonable that people who didn’t have time to “do it right” and didn’t necessarily understand that sealings ought to proceed along biological lines merely performed the necessary ordinances, substituted a living individual as the “relative” rather than doing this via proxy as we do now.

    When it comes to adoptive sealings between living people, that appears to have been an innovation that John D. Lee championed. In his case, he seemed to be setting himself up as the earthly “father” to a wide range of others, who he appeared to feel would then owe him fealty and possibly a cut of their earnings. For most others, it was a matter of convenience, given that actual parents were often not present.

    For example, George Q. Cannon had himself and a large number of other relatives sealed to John Taylor (to whom he was related by marriage). However that sealing is marked in the original as having been cancelled in preparation for George Q. Cannon to seal himself to his own father decades later (I seem to recall it was around the time the St. George temple was dedicated). I do not have any reason to think John Taylor’s participation in “adoptive” sealings was calculated to enhance his own earthly position, as John D. Lee’s sealings were supposed to do.

    In those days, they recorded not only the date of an ordinance, but who was performing the ordinance and the time of day the ordinance was taking place. In the case of the sealing of George Q. Cannon and several others to John Taylor, the ordinance took place in the wee hours of the morning (like 3 am). In light of the intense crush of ordinance work being performed under such duress and stress, it isn’t surprising that they got a few things wrong.

    For more on the kind of panicked, urgent sealings that were being performed, see my discussion of the sealing ordinances performed involving Mary Leamon [Bell] and Hezekiah Peck, in my April 24, 2014 discussion of the scientific method.

    Brian Hales has a very nice chapter talking about the practice of adoptive sealings. I particularly like the dream Brigham had, in which Joseph appeared to him. After much expression of joy and desire that Joseph were still alive, Brigham’s first concern was asking Joseph about the practice of adoptive sealing. In response, the dream Joseph told Brigham to seek understanding by the spirit, that if the people would hearken to the promptings of the spirit in these matters, they would be brought to the truth.

    After the dream, Brigham pretty much stopped teaching adoptive sealings. They continued to occur, but once there were actual temples available for performing ordinances, the number of adoptive sealings diminished quickly to zero.

19. Meg,

    I enjoyed reading the interview with Ralph Hancock at Meridian Magazine.

    It triggered a couple of neurons, though. When I was a freshman at BYU, in Bishop Hedengren’s ward in Chipman Halls in 1980-1981, our Relief Society president was a freshman woman named Meg who was of mixed Anglo and Asian descent. Any chance that was you?

20. Hi Kent,

    Sure was me. I think we were in the 130th ward, and was thinking just this week that I couldn’t remember the name of that bishop… I’ve got the picture of all of us, though. He was rather progressive. Not only did he ask me to be a Relief Society President, even though finding out I was only 17 (and part Asian, as you recall), he released pretty much all of us after the first semester to provide leadership opportunities to others. The new Relief Society president for the BYU 130th ward was 18 and had just been baptized the fall semester (because her parents had refused to allow her to be baptized until it was no longer their right to control such decisions).

21. By the way, it has long been asserted (at least by laymen) that a possible reason Joseph had no children with his plural wives might have been the frequent sexual activity required of a man who was conjugally active with multiple women.

    While it is true that frequent sex reduces the numbers of sperm in semen, those that remain are more likely to be well-formed and swimming in the proper direction. So frequent sex isn’t actually something that would reduce the number of conceptions, and might even improve chances of little swimmers getting to a reproductively productive place. See #3 in the post Sperm 411 over at justmommies.com.

22. You know, I don’t remember who the Relief Society president was that second semester. I remember you, though, partly for your sheepskin jacket.

    I doubt you’d remember me. Tall, skinny, wore glasses, socially very awkward — but that describes half the guys in that ward, inasmuch as it was closely associated with the honors program.

23. Do you have a picture from back then? I am terrible with names. I’m sure I would remember you.

    I don’t recall having a sheep skin jacket – I did have a rabbit fur coat, however.

    I’d forgotten that we were the honors ward (as it were). The year after that I was in a ward that had twice as many men as women (and no sopranos, so as choir director I had an all-male choir). The third year I was in the language ward, living as I did in the French House. Then I worked until going on my mission to Italy, and came home and eventually got a BS in Physics from GMU.

24. Rabbit fur; that’s what it was. It was Tom Wilson that had the sheep skin jacket.

    I have no pictures from my freshman year, but this and this are from not long after getting back from my mission. You may remember Polly Walker and Dave Pimentel as well, but Ginger Johnson wasn’t in our freshman ward. Uh, yeah, socially awkward …

    Got my B.S. from BYU and a Ph.D. in astronomy from Caltech. I decided I was never going to be able to support a family as a professor and went to work at a government laboratory. Finally got married just a few months shy of 30.

25. I don’t recall Ginger from BYU, but I believe she later came to DC. If I recall correctly, my first husband slid into the side panel of her car one icy night, trying to drive out of the Stake Center parking lot. Ah, how our lives are intertwined, if only we could see all.

    I recognize Polly – was she my room-mate? I suppose I could crack open my journals from back then and see if I wrote anything useful.

    One of the things I love about my husband, Bryan Stout, is how non-crazy he was as a never-married man in his mid-thirties. Most Mormon men who haven’t married by their mid-thirties are fairly nutty when it comes to the constant messages to get married. By Bryan was fully supportive of all the sermons, while simultaneously confident in his own judgement regarding whether the women he’d dated would have appropriately been right for him to marry. I recall Bryan had presumed that he would be marrying a previously-married woman who possibly had children, so he had a number of pertinent books on the subject that he had collected, which we studied together as we whiled away the months between engagement and marriage.

    Did you grow up in the Los Alamos area, or am I getting you confused with someone else?

26. That’s me. Back in Los Alamos now.

    I haven’t yet burned all my journals from back then, but it’s tempting. I spent most of the year homesick and depressed.

    “Most Mormon men who haven’t married by their mid-thirties are fairly nutty when it comes to the constant messages to get married.” Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. My wife-to-be managed to look past it. There’s a long story there for another time.

    I think Polly’s roommate first semester was names Susan Jones, and I believe she was the youngest freshman in our class at BYU at age 16. Home-schooled. Have not heard anything about her since that year. Interesting that you met Ginger later on.

    I still get a Christmas letter from Dave every year. He’s doing very well teaching international law. I understand Polly is doing well but am not in direct touch. Mary Lynn Jorgensen is in my ward here in Los Alamos; she married the younger brother of one of my high school friends that I introduced to her roomate, Cindy Merrill.

    Gosh, it’s been a long time, but now the names and memories are flooding back.

27. Awkwardly leaving my first comment here to say hi to Kent and feeling fancy by association to Meg. Kent, I was in your ward when I was a youth, Cindy was one of my YW leaders. I lived down the street from you when you lived in my mother’s ward.
    Emily Briner

28. Emily, I remember you very well. We occasionally hear from Brittany Cheney, who seems to be doing well, but I’ve not kept touch with that many others from that ward. Except Bishop Lucas is apparently directing service missionaries throughout the New Mexico – Arizona area and loving it.

29. Seems appropriate to remark on what a small little Mormon world it can be. How funny. My husband worked in Los Alamos for a few years, he commuted and we lived in Rio Rancho. We run into the Lucas’ when in town sometimes, Chris and his wife, and Stephanie were in our ward in Rio Rancho before we moved. Hope you’re well.
    E

30. I hope both of the Lucas’ children are doing well. Yes, it’s an amazingly small Mormon world.

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