The Millennial Star

Joseph’s Wives: Emma Hale

Meg Stout

From December 2013 to August 2014 I wrote a series of posts on a Faithful Joseph, tracing a plausible history in which Joseph Smith didn’t keep his wife Emma in the dark, and rarely, if ever, engaged in sexual activity with the women he would covenant with.

This is the first post in the series Joseph’s Wives, describing each of the women believed to have been Joseph’s wife based on information from reliable contemporary witnesses. Of these, the first and most important to understand is Emma Hale. I have identified several “tells” which I plan to assess for each wife:

The result will be a visual summary which can be used to assess the nature of Joseph’s marriages over the period of his lifetime. This visual summary and links to the posts describing the individual women will be posted separately.

Any discussion of Joseph’s wives must include Emma Hale, Joseph’s only legal wife, the only wife Joseph publicly acknowledged during his lifetime.

Emma Hale [Smith Bidamon]

Joseph Smith’s first wife was Emma Hale, of Harmony, Pennsylvania.

Emma was born in July 1804, making her 17 months older than Joseph Smith. They were married on January 18, 1827, after Emma agreed to elope with the twenty-one year old Joseph. Emma was twenty-two.

According to Joseph Knight,[ref]Joseph Knight holograph, see Jessee, Dean, Joseph Knight’s Recollection of Early Mormon History, 1976.[/ref] Joseph’s marriage to Emma Hale was informed by revelation. The Angel Moroni had reportedly told Joseph he had to bring someone with him if he was to retrieve the golden plates that contained the record of a lost Christian nation. The first person identified as Joseph’s companion in fetching the plates had been his oldest brother, Alvin. After Alvin’s death, Joseph was informed that he would still have to bring someone, and that he would know them when he saw them.

Emma Hale was that person.

First Child, Alvin

Emma conceived within the year.[ref]It appears Emma conceived right around the time she went with Joseph to retrieve the Golden Plates from the Hill Cumorah. From the time of her marriage until she conceived, she had been with Joseph at his parent’s farm, where he was helping out.[/ref] Her first child was born in June 1828, 17 months after her marriage to Joseph. They named the boy Alvin, after Joseph’s brother. Little Alvin died a few hours after birth. Emma herself nearly died. To compound the family’s misery, the initial pages of the translation of the golden plates were also lost at this time.

The Twins, Thaddeus & Louisa and Joseph & Julia

Roughly two years after she conceived Alvin, Emma became pregnant again, this time with twins. This was a tumultuous time for Emma. Joseph had been tending to the ministry rather than tending to the crops on the farm Emma’s father had allowed the young couple to homestead. Emma’s father evicted Joseph, demanding that Emma leave him. When Emma refused to abandon Joseph, her father indicated that he would rather see her dead than remain with Joseph. Emma never saw her father again.

Joseph and Emma arrived in Kirtland, Ohio. Within a short time, Joseph had received the first version of the revelation that is now canonized as D&C 132, a revelation talking about the need for earthly marriages to be solemnized by God’s word and covenant.

Even though this revelation had come as a result of a question regarding the multiple wives of the Old Testament patriarchs and kings, the focus of this message related to marriage. Emma was Joseph’s beloved, the one he would want to be with in heaven. Given this, I cannot understand why he would keep such an insight from Emma.

On April 30, two sets of twins were born.

Emma gave birth to twins, Louisa and Thaddeus. The twins died later that day. That same day, Julia Clapp [Murdock] gave also birth to twins, Julia and Joseph. Then Julia Clapp [Murdock] died, leaving her husband with five children to raise alone.

Just over a week later, John Murdock brought his infant twins to Emma to raise. Little Joseph died when he was only ten months old, after Joseph Smith Jr. was hauled from the home and tarred and feathered. Little Julia recovered from the illness both twins had been suffering from that fateful night. More than five years after marrying, Emma was left with only one child, a daughter who had been born to another mother.

Emma never talked with Julia about the fact that she was adopted. But in later years others would taunt Julia, telling her she was her Joseph Smith’s bastard by another woman.

A Second Joseph is Born

Around the same time Emma’s adopted son died, Emma became pregnant again. In November 1832, she bore another son. She and Joseph named this boy Joseph, or Joseph Smith III.

According to later stories, Clarissa Reed was helping Emma during this period of time, and there might have been an expectation that Clarissa would become Joseph’s plural wife. Mosiah Hancock, Clarissa’s son, claimed his father, Levi Hancock wished to marry Clarissa, and either Joseph or Levi suggested that Levi’s niece, Fanny Alger, might come to take Clarissa’s place.

Mosiah was raised in a time when polygamy was openly embraced. Mosiah was taught that his cousin, Fanny Alger, had been married to Joseph Smith. Indeed, the most likely reconstruction of all the rumors and tales indicates that Joseph Smith Jr. was married to Fanny Alger in the spring of 1836 when Fanny was 19 years old.[ref]Bradley, Don, Weighing the Case of Fanny Alger, The Persistence of Polygamy, pp. 14-58. Extensive discussion of Fanny Alger can also be found in Compton, Todd, In Sacred Loneliness, pp. 25-42, Hales, Brian and Don Bradley, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, chapters 4-6 & appendix  D, and Hales, Brian and Laura, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy: Toward a Better Understanding, pp. 35-40.[/ref] This means Fanny would have been living with the Smiths for three years.

Many researchers presume that Joseph was carrying on with Fanny Alger during this period of time while Emma remained ignorant of the revelation or the involvement between Fanny and Joseph.

Personally, I think it plausible that young Fanny looked forward to a promised day when God’s power to seal the covenants would be restored. She might have reasonably hoped that power would be granted when the temple was complete. Three years is a long time for a teenaged girl, particularly a girl who is widely liked in a home where many single men stayed over those years.[ref]Many individuals stayed with the Smiths. During the time period in question it is known that Eliza Snow and Jonathan Harriman Holmes were living in the Smith household, as well as the men assisting with the printing office (circa August-September 1835) and unknown numbers of other individuals. At times Emma and Joseph had to sleep in a tent outside, as there were too many people in the home for them to stay inside.[/ref] It was a busy time, including a period of three months when Joseph was gone with a group that would be known as Zion’s Camp. It is perhaps understandable that this would be the only time during Joseph and Emma’s marriage when more than two years passed without Emma giving birth to a child.

Fred and a Farewell

As the temple neared completion, Emma finally again was large with child. The temple was dedicated on Palm Sunday, possibly symbolic of Joseph’s belief that his mission was to prepare the way for the coming of Christ.[ref]Joseph’s boyhood vision of God the Father and Christ had almost certainly occurred on Palm Sunday of 1820, another possible inspiration for scheduling the dedication on Palm Sunday.[/ref] On Easter Sunday, which in 1836 coincided with Passover, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery saw a vision, during which Elijah bestowed the keys of the sealing power on Joseph.

Emma gave birth to another son on June 29, 1836, naming the child Frederick Granger Williams Smith, after Joseph’s counselor in the Church presidency.

Some time around this birth, a fuss arose regarding Fanny Alger, who left the Smith home. In the wake of Fanny’s departure, Emma was so upset that Oliver Cowdery was called in to help calm Emma down. No record remains to be certain what was said, but Oliver left with the impression that a terrible scrape had occurred. He would later hint that Joseph had committed adultery with Fanny. Others would report the relationship had been a marriage, including the newly-wed Webbs, with whom Fanny stayed after leaving the Smith household.[ref]In the 1880s, after a contentious divorce between the Webbs’ daughter and Brigham Young, Chauncy Webb allegedly told anti-Mormon writer Wilhelm Wyl that Fanny had been pregnant. However a Fanny who had conceived no earlier than April 1836 might not have been showing before she left Kirtland (September 1836). Further, she marries Solomon Custer in November 1836, after knowing Solomon for at most two months, and there is no indication of a child being born to Fanny until 1840.[/ref]

Alex and Missouri

The fuss regarding Fanny occurred at the same time as financial failure throughout the region. However those in Kirtland perceived that the failure of their finances was caused by Joseph Smith. The rumors of an inappropriate relationship between Joseph and Fanny combined with the financial disaster to prompt several high-profile converts to defect. For example, nearly half of the men serving as apostles in Joseph’s ecclesiastical organization separated themselves from the Church.

Emma and the majority of Saints fled Kirtland for “safety” in Missouri. But the influx of Mormons made a tense situation in Missouri worse. The “Old Settlers” had been in Missour for a decade before the arrival of the Mormons, and the Old Settlers resented the Yankee ways of these religious, abolitionist newcomers, who voted as a block and promised to complicate Missouri’s ability to enter the Union as a slave state. Further, there were men who the Old Settlers had come to appreciate who had once been Mormons, but had since abandoned the faith. One of these was Oliver Cowdery.

Emma gave birth to another son, Alexander Hale Smith, on June 2, 1838, as the rhetoric became heated, with the Old Settlers burning Mormon homes. Joseph warned the outlying settlements to gather to the main Mormon town of Far West.

Lilburn Boggs, hearing tales that led him to believe the worst of the Mormons, issued an order calling for the Extermination of the Mormons. Properly understood, the order merely demanded that the Mormons leave the state. But violence was in process before the Extermination Order had even been distributed. A group of Missourians attacked the small village of Haun’s Mill, brutally murdering the men and boys and allegedly raping the women. A subsequent confrontation occurred at Crooked River, killing three Mormons, of whom one, Gideon Carter, had his face blown off.[ref]The fact that Gideon Carter’s remains were therefore unrecognizable may have led to the Missouri militia’s report that somewhere between ten of their number to half of their entire force had been foully murdered during the altercation. In fact, only one member of the Missouri militia had died.[/ref] Gideon Carter had been the uncle of the young wife of long-time Smith intimate, Jonathan Harriman Holmes. David Patten, another who died at Crooked River, had been one of Joseph’s apostles. So these deaths were not just unknown members of the Church. The deaths and violence would have terrified Emma.

On November 1, 1838, Joseph Smith gave himself into the custody of the Missouri militia. D&C 122:6 gives a window into the scene: “if with a drawn sword thine enemies tear thee from the bosom of thy wife, and of thine offspring, and thine elder son, although but six years of age, shall cling to thy garments, and shall say, My father, my father, why can’t you stay with us? O, my father, what are the men going to do with you? and if then he shall be thrust from thee by the sword, and thou be dragged to prison…”

Emma and her children, along with the other Mormons, were forced from Missouri. Emma took refuge with a good woman in Quincy, Illinois, Sarah Cleveland. Emma undoubtedly prayed for Joseph’s safe return.

Don Carlos and the City Beautiful

Joseph was allowed to escape from custody in April, 1839. He arrived in Quincy later that month, an emaciated and haunted wreck of his former self. But Emma nursed him back to health. Within a few months, she was pregnant again. A son, Don Carlos Smith, would be born on June 13, 1840, in a log homestead in the new city of Nauvoo, Hebrew for City Beautiful.

Despite the hopeful name, Nauvoo was still a swamp. Illness was common and claimed the lives of too many, including good friend and former Bishop, Edward Partridge.

More frightening, Missouri mobs attacked Nauvoo in August 1840, setting fire to cabins close to the Smith homestead and killing a young mother, Marietta Rosetta Carter [Holmes], bride of Jonathan Harriman Holmes. Marietta had just born a daughter herself, and the little girl died within a month of her mother’s death. It seems likely that Emma could have served as the little girl’s nursemaid in the weeks the infant survived her mother.

As had occurred in Kirtland, Emma’s home was filled with others. Marietta’s older daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, became like a second daughter to Emma and Joseph, though the Smith governess, Elvira Annie Cowles, had the main care for the girl. Sarah was only a few months older than Alex. For the next several years Sarah would live with the Smiths. When Joseph left Nauvoo to go to Carthage jail, he would gather Sarah in his arms and say, “God Bless my little Sarah. You shall live to testify to my name in Zion.”

Nauvoo had no legal protection. In this time of secret terror a seeming blessing arrived in the form of Dr. John Cook Bennett. Bennett was a confident man with many skills, and promised to obtain a strong city charter for Nauvoo. But as one of his first duties, Dr. Bennett stood watch so that the Smiths could safely gather and mourn the passing of Joseph’s father, Joseph Smith Sr.

In time, Emma became wary of Dr. Bennett and his medical skills. It seems likely that neither Emma nor those influenced by her reached out for Dr. Bennett’s assistance the following fall, when death threatened again. A year to the day after Joseph Smith Sr died, his grandson, Don Carlos, Emma’s youngest, would die. Don Carlos’ namesake, Joseph’s brother, had died the previous month of malaria.

Heartache and Dread

Around the time little Don Carlos died, Emma became pregnant again. Nauvoo seemed to be thriving, despite the personal pain that had afflicted the Smith household. In possible fulfillment of Joseph Smith Sr.’s dying blessing, Joseph had finally entered into a covenant marriage with Louisa Beaman. I assert that it is likely Joseph had informed Emma of his intent and action. But if Emma know of this marriage, she kept these things to herself.

Sometime around the time of Don Carlos’ death, Joseph would report that an angel had appeared to him, the third time the angel had appeared. But this time the angel threatened him with a flaming sword, telling Joseph he would be cut off and his people destroyed if he did not move forward and restore the New and Everlasting Covenant. In the year that followed his secret ceremony with Louisa Beaman, Joseph proceeded to perform covenants “marrying” himself to women he had been impressed he should marry over the years, many now married to other men. Again, whatever Emma knew of these “marriages” she kept to herself.

And then the unthinkable occurred. It became clear that men in the city were coercing women to engage in illicit intercourse, reportedly yielding on the report that Joseph said such things were permitted. Emma would have felt powerless, waiting and hoping that the various councils of men could uncover the corruption.

Then Emma’s pregnancy ended in a stillbirth on February 6, 1842. While she would have been still weak from the ordeal, an opportunity presented itself. Sarah Kimball, a member of the Church married to a successful non-Mormon merchant, proposed a woman’s organization to sew shirts for the men working on building a temple in Nauvoo. Meanwhile, the efforts of the male councils had not uncovered the identities of the men behind the seductions.

Emma became president of the new organization, nominated by her one-time protector, Sarah Cleveland. Emma selected Sarah Cleveland and Elizabeth Whitney as her counselors, each a woman who had taken Emma into their homes when she was homeless, each a woman Emma could trust without reservation. Emma selected her governess to be treasurer. Two goodly women, Eliza Snow and Phebe Wheeler, were called to serve as secretaries in the new organization.[ref]Phebe Wheeler disappears from the record almost immediately. In 1843 Phebe would marry Oliver H. Olney, one of the only men to establish a schismatic Mormon sect during Joseph’s lifetime.[/ref]

Emma proceeded directly to use the Relief Society, as the organization became known, to investigate rumors of seduction, to find means to support destitute women, and warn all women to be wary of any teachings that were not completely virtuous. Hundreds of women flocked to join Emma, even when membership in Relief Society required written affidavits from two current members of Relief Society, testifying to the purity of the prospective member.

During this time we have no indication of Emma acknowledging Joseph’s plural marriages, but women who had been her special confidantes are seen investigating the accusations of impropriety, questioning girls about their knowledge of the illicit intercourse (known as spiritual wifery) and standing witness as Joseph covenanted with women. I find it unthinkable that Emma, as president of Relief Society and Joseph’s wife, would be kept ignorant of these matters. There is no record indicating Emma ever felt betrayed by these women who were her closest friends.

In May1842 women finally came forward who testified before the Nauvoo Stake High Council of their seducers. One, Catherine Laur [Fuller Warren], a woman whose husband had been murdered at Haun’s Mill, testified that she had been seduced by Dr. John Bennett nearly a year earlier, before she was induced to accept a handful of men into her bed, including a non-member. Even Joseph’s baby brother, William, had attempted to sleep with the unfortunate widow.[ref]Photocopies of the original testimonies are available in the Valeen Tippetts Avery Papers, housed at Utah State University. Digital copy of these testimonies are in my possession. See also The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes, John S. Dinger editor, 2011, pp.413-426.[/ref]

Even though hundreds of men may have been involved in spiritual wifery,[ref]An estimate of hundreds is based on the accusations printed in the Expositor, which would reprise Bennett’s attempt to claim Joseph was responsible for spiritual wifery. The expositor is available online at http://signaturebookslibrary.org/nauvoo-expositor/, retrieved 20 April 2015. An estimate that there were hundreds of seducers is also supported by the report that two hundred men swore an oath to kill Joseph in March 1844, as recounted in 1884 by Dennison L. Harris, The Contributor, 1884, available online at http://tinyurl.com/1884-Contributor, retrieved June 21, 2014. Also see Dallin Oaks, Following the Pioneers, available online at https://www.lds.org/general-conference/print/1997/10/following-the-pioneers?lang=eng, retrieved June 22, 2014. While some of the seducers were men in positions of power, analysis of autobiographies and minutes of the City Council indicate that some of the seducers were mere teenagers.[/ref] only Dr. John C. Bennett was publicly accused of the wickedness.

Emma’s Ultimatum

1842 ended with complete turmoil, as Dr. Bennett attacked Joseph in print, publishing accusing letters in the Sangamo Journal, the main newspaper for the capital city of Illinois, writing a book containing his accusations, including characterizing Emma as presiding over Joseph’s vast harem (seraglio), and conducting an exhaustive series of lectures throughout the United States attesting that Joseph had been the author of unprecedented and vile sexual activity, as well as murderous treason. Emma, according to Bennett, had been Joseph’s willing accomplice.

Meanwhile, Joseph had been forced into hiding again. When Emma would visit, she knew she risked leading those wishing to harm Joseph straight to his door. Emma campaigned to establish the innocence of her husband, asking the women of Relief Society to stand by her in attesting to his virtue and refuting Dr. Bennett’s tales.

By the end of 1842, women who had become pregnant during the sexual campaign of Bennett’s seducers were delivered of children. Mary Clift is the one well-documented case of a pregnant woman who had been seduced and who would subsequently be married by a different man in the New and Everlasting Covenant. Others are inferred: abandoned mother, Sarah Peak Noon, would be married to Joseph’s confidante, Heber C. Kimball. Emma’s own Relief Society secretary, Eliza R. Snow, would be rumored to have experienced a miscarriage after having been sealed to Joseph Smith and would write of being “Thrown side by side and face to face with that Foul hearted spirit, The faithless, rottenhearted wretch, whose tongue Speaks words of trust and fond fidelity, While treach’ry, like a viper, coils behind The smile that dances in his evil eye.”[ref]For more information, see the posts Wives of Sorrow and Eliza and the Stairs in my Faithful Joseph series.[/ref] One presumes she wasn’t speaking of Joseph Smith, who she proudly and publicly claimed as husband after the death of Brigham Young.

As 1843 dawned, Joseph would begin reaching out to close male followers and young women who had been questioned during the 1842 investigation. Joseph invited Emma to be sealed to him in the New and Everlasting Covenant, to ensure their marriage could last into eternity. But for some reason, God reportedly required that Emma would have to embrace plural marriage as a pre-requisite.

Whether or not Emma might have known about all the covenants Joseph was performing and entering into cannot be known from the available documentation. But in order for her to publicly embrace plural marriage, she would have to be a participant in ceremonies linking plural wives to Joseph. She selected Emily and Eliza Partridge to be these “public” plural wives. These two young women had been secretly sealed to Joseph in March, but the secret sealings would not have served the purpose of showing Emma’s semi-public embrace of “the principle.” But when Emily and Eliza began to act as though they had a right to openly be with Joseph, Emma attempted to curb their ability to be around Joseph.

A breaking point may have occurred when Heber C. Kimball insisted that Joseph become covenant husband to Heber’s fourteen-year-old daughter, Helen Mar Kimball, likely inspired by knowledge that Newel K. Whitney had agreed to Joseph’s covenant union with his daughter, Sarah Whitney. Though it is unlikely the “marriage” to Helen Mar involved anything more than Helen giving up dances and flirting, It is understandable why Emma might have thought Joseph was wrong to contract so many marriages or, in Helen Mar’s case, marry a mere girl.

Emma appears to have threatened divorce if Joseph continued in this vein.[ref]There are multiple possibilities for Emma’s threats and the nature of the desire Emma was granted, however Joseph’s belief that Emma was willing to divorce him over plural marriage is shown by his comments of August 16, 1843, to William Clayon, see An Intimate Chronicle: The Journals of William Clayton, George D. Smith editor, p. 117.[/ref] Possibly in response to this threat, Joseph went away from Nauvoo with Emma, at least temporarily distancing himself from his covenant wives and the responsibilities of Church leadership. But Emma’s idyll with Joseph would be short-lived. Law agents found Joseph and arrested him, intent on returning him to Missouri for trial, pistol-whipping Joseph in front of Emma and her children.

Joseph would eventually win his freedom, based on the extremely protective Nauvoo charter Dr. Bennett had created in 1840. But back in Nauvoo, Emma again became distressed.

Joseph’s brother, Hyrum, having newly embraced the doctrines of the New and Everlasting Covenant, suggested that Emma could be comforted if the revelation were written down. He thought the doctrine was so pure anyone could be convinced of its merits. But the revelation, when written, contained language specific to Emma and the trials of the immediate past. Apparently Joseph had been commanded in June to grant Emma her desire, but now she was to cleave to him. She was told that if she did not accept the women Joseph would covenant with, she would be damned.[ref]See D&C 132:51-57.[/ref]

It is small wonder that Emma demanded Joseph burn the revelation. It has been inferred that she rejected the doctrine of the New and Everlasting Covenant. It is also reasonable that she rejected a document that threatened her damnation. But it is possible that her motivation was the danger such a written document would pose to Joseph’s life, even if acceptable to her under other circumstances. If this last was her motivation, she was wise. A copy of the revelation would be circulated, and it was this written document that would directly lead to the Expositor and Joseph’s death.

Accepting and Rejecting Wives

Following June 1843, Emma is reported to have participated in several other ceremonies where women were sealed to Joseph. Beyond these reports, other women asserted that they had, indeed, been Joseph’s wives during his lifetime, and that Emma had known of the fact that they were Joseph’s wives.[ref]The term “indeed” and “in very deed” has been inferred to refer to the act of consummating marriage. While it is likely that the women who attested to having been Joseph’s wives “in very deed” knew this was an iimplication of their words, that does not mean that they had actually been sexually intimate with Joseph, These women were writing and testifying at a time when Mormonism as they knew it was under attack because Joseph was alleged to not have married other women. In none of these testimonies were the reported wives of Joseph Smith as forthright and explicit as the women who had testified against those teaching illicit intercourse in 1842.[/ref]

Yet in the fall of 1843, four of these women were apparently persuaded to leave. Eliza Snow wrote of a woman verbally abusing her, after which Eliza Snow left Nauvoo for many months. Flora Woodworth had been ceremonially sealed to Joseph, but she would marry non-member Carlos Gove. Emma tried to get Emily and Eliza Partridge to marry other men, and begged Joseph to send them away from Nauvoo. But Emily and Eliza refused to consider marriage to others and Joseph merely sent them away from the Smith household.

While it has long been inferred that Emma’s involvement in these “evictions” was solely prompted by jealousy, evidenced by the fit she threw over the gold watch Joseph had given Flora, historians have not noted that Orange Wight claimed in 1903 that he had known that these exact same women were Joseph’s wives, and had revealed his knowledge to Flora Woodworth’s mother. Orange had been “fully initiated” into polygamy in summer of 1841 after learning that Chauncy Higbee’s uncle was living with two “wives.” This history indicates Orange had been initiated not into Joseph’s confidence but into Bennett’s spiritual wifery. If Eliza Snow, Emily and Eliza Partridge, and Flora were known to be Joseph’s wives amongst those who had practiced spiritual wifery, Joseph’s life was in danger and the entire scheme of spiritual wifery stood to rebound.

Death and Birth

Despite evicting these four for a time, Emma continued to participate in sealings, as when Ruth Vose [Sayers] asked to be sealed to Joseph, her non-member husband giving his blessing to the ceremony as he didn’t believe in eternal marriage but it meant so much to his wife. This likely occurred in February 1844, given Ruth’s report that Hyrum Smith performed the ceremony.

In February 1844, Emma likely conceived her last child. All seemed calm, with the exception of William Law being dropped from the Anointed Quorum the prior month. Eliza Snow returned to Nauvoo, and Emma indicated there was no longer a need for Eliza to stay away.

However Emma might not have understood how alienated William Law had become. Before February was out, Law had recruited hundreds of men to agitate against Joseph Smith and his brother, Hyrum. In a series of meetings during March 1844, the men[ref]The term “men” should be understood to include not just males of voting age, but also teenagers.[/ref] first agreed that Joseph needed to be stopped, suggested Joseph needed to be killed, then swore an oath to kill the brothers. Our insight into the conspiracy ends at this point, as the young men who were reporting on the group to Joseph Smith were unwilling to swear the oath to kill him. They narrowly escaped with their lives.

Several of the men involved in the conspiracy had been involved in the 1842 instances of illicit intercourse. Joseph might not have concerned Emma with the news, but she would have read the allegations in the papers, as Joseph belatedly attempted to cast doubt on their characters by publishing damning testimony from the women they had seduced in 1842.

Papers were published building on the accusations John C. Bennett had made in 1842. The Warsaw Signal rallied those outside Mormonism to attack the Mormon leadership. The Nauvoo Expositor struck from the inside, including information from individuals recently evicted from the Mormon hierarchy, including affidavits from William Law and Austin Cowles. The Expositor questioned Joseph’s bid for the Presidency of the United States, new doctrines associated with the revelation on the New and Everlasting Covenant, and claimed Joseph was participating in the illicit intercourse or spiritual wifery the editors themselves were proven to have committed.

Emma was anguished as Joseph prepared to flee, knowing that Hyrum’s life was forfeit if they stayed. But once Joseph was gone, those remaining in Nauvoo felt they had been abandoned. Emma forwarded the people’s plea for Joseph to return. He did so.

By the end of the month, Joseph and Hyrum were dead, shot by unknown members of a mob while in custody at the county jail in Carthage, Illinois. When the bodies were returned, Emma collapsed over Joseph’s body, sobbing.[ref]See description of Emma’s reaction when Joseph’s body was returned, recounted in Mormon Enigma, written by Valeen Tippetts Avery and Linda King Newell.[/ref]

The Sisterhood of Wives

In Emma’s initial mourning, the women with whom Joseph had covenanted gathered around her. Eliza Snow wrote a poignant poem, describing the joy of the birth of Emma’s final child, David Hyrum, but sorrowing that this son would never know his father.

Within months of Joseph’s death, Brigham Young and Heber Kimball began arranging for Joseph’s covenant wives to be matched with someone who could care for her. There is no record of what conversations might have occurred between Emma and these Church leaders at the time. But as these leaders busily set about establishing levirate marriages to care for Joseph’s extra-legal wives, Emma found that her priorities were not shared with these men.

Emma cared for the financial obligations Joseph had contracted in establishing Nauvoo. She cared about Joseph’s legacy. She cared about raising her sons to be free of spiritual wifery, to know that their father had been innocent of the foul debauchery of which he had been accused. She disagreed with Brigham that Joseph’s possessions were necessarily the possessions of the Church. She declined to give Brigham Young the Egyptian mummies, the papyrus scrolls, the manuscripts of the Book of Mormon, or Joseph’s notes regarding the Bible, Joseph’s Inspired Translation.

By the time the temple was completed, Brigham had put in place a policy that any woman wishing to be sealed to her deceased husband in eternity would have to become the temporal wife of the man who stood proxy. This little-known policy might have had any number of legitimate motives, such as ensuring that no woman was left without earthly protection merely because she wished to link herself to a deceased husband in eternity. Another possible motive could have been gaining control of Emma’s property. Or perhaps it was Emma who declined to have her sealing to Joseph resolemnized, rejecting the possibility that a husband who might persuade her to abandon her resolve to remain near Nauvoo and Joseph’s remains.

In any case, Emma would refuse to participate in the ordinances administered under Brigham Young’s direction in the temple. When the Mormons left Nauvoo under threat of attack, Emma remained in the mid-west. In the years that followed, Emma would resist aligning herself with any Church, until her son, Joseph III, agreed to become head of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (now the Community of Christ).

In 1847 she married a non-Mormon, Lewis Crum Bidamon, a lieutenant colonel in the Illinois militia that attempted to protect the Mormons from the mobs during the Battle of Nauvoo in September 1846. Emma remained with “Major” Bidamon until her death in 1879. Bidamon had married before and had fathered a child out of wedlock. Seventeed years after he married Emma, Bidamon fathered a child on a local widow. Emma took the child into her home to raise. On her deathbed, she insisted that Lewis Bidamon marry the widow, which he did.

Reproductive History

During the 1800s, women typically conceived during the first year of marriage, then produced a child every two years thereafter until they reached their forties. I put together a chart that shows Emma’s reproductive history, showing child death as a black mark in the month of their death, the pregnancy that would produce the child as a yellow bar preceding birth by 9 months (or less, if the birth was premature, either as noted, or due to birth of twins or associated with stillbirth). Each conception also starts a two year clock for the next expected window of conception.

As seen in the chart below, Emma had regularly become pregnant every two years, with the exception of the year Joseph had participated in Zion’s camp. There is no pattern of unusual infertility between Joseph and Emma.

The slight delay between Emma’s marriage and conception of her first son, Alvin, may have been completely natural, based on the lack of privacy of a young couple living in the home of the husband’s parents. Or, given the timing of retrieving the Golden Plates, Joseph and Emma may have agreed between them that she should not be pregnant when that duty had to be performed. Intriguingly, a majority of Emma’s pregnancies appear to have begun in September, around the anniversary of the retrieval of the Golden Plates.

Tells

A few weeks ago I proposed an algorithm by which we could assess the relative claims of women who are considered to have covenanted with Joseph Smith. For Emma we have the following:

 

Absolutely. Emma Hale was unquestionably considered to be Joseph’s wife by all who knew the couple.

Yes, it was well known that Joseph eloped with Emma in January 1827. Emma’s parents embraced Joseph as their son-in-law until the fall of 1830, when Joseph was evicted from the property the Hales had allowed him to farm.

Absolutely, with DNA evidence substantiating the link of Emma’s children to the Smith family.

Absolutely. Emma routinely conceived every two years during her marriage to Joseph, with the exception of the year when Joseph spent so much time away with Zion’s Camp.

Emma chose not to have her sealing to Joseph repeated in the Nauvoo temple.

Emma did not join the LDS believers who traveled west. Yet her reported vision, late in life, telling of being reunited with Joseph and her deceased child, Don Carlos, indicates that she did believe she would be united with her husband and children in eternity, as Joseph had taught.

Yes, Joseph had apparently had a revelation indicating someone would replace Alvin Smith as his assistant in retrieving the Golden Plates. According to Joseph Knight, Emma was the person the revelation was referring to.

This was not a “dynastic” marriage, other than sealing Joseph to the woman he loved, who had stood at his side since the very beginning. Surely Joseph saw sealing himself to his “follower” Emma Hale as more important than any of the other “dynastic” marriage ceremonies linking him to prominent convert families.

 

Name, Age (1844),
Date Married
Emma Smith, 39,
January 18, 1827		 – –

 

Emma’s Final Testimony

Emma’s Final Testimony was recorded in February 1879, less than three months before her death. Several RLDS leaders thought it advisable to obtain Emma’s testimony before it was too late.

If it is understood that there was an epidemic of illicit intercourse that was termed spiritual wifery, which was considered synonymous with “polygamy,” it becomes possible to reconcile Emma’s Final Testimony with the man affidavits and testimonies of the women and men who described covenant marriages between Joseph and women other than Emma.

Question. What about the revelation on polygamy? Did Joseph Smith have anything like it? What of spiritual wifery?

Emma. There was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. There were some rumors of something of the sort, of which I asked my husband. He assured me that all there was of it was, that, in a chat about plural wives, he had said, “Well, such a system might possibly be, if everybody was agreed to it, and would behave as they should; but they would not; and besides, it was contrary to the will of heaven.” No such thing as polygamy or spiritual wifery was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband’s death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of.

[A review of the Nauvoo High Council Minutes for 1842-1844 clearly demonstrates that there were men teaching that it was right to engage in illicit intercourse or spiritual wifery as long as no one found out. William Smith in at least one instance was brought in to confirm that this was a teaching approved by the leaders of the Church. As William was an apostle and Joseph’s brother, his word was highly persuasive. However there is similarly no reason to believe that Joseph Smith himself ever taught that illicit intercourse or spiritual wifery was acceptable.]

Question. Did he not have other wives than yourself?

Emma. He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have.

[Emma was clearly the only legal wife Joseph ever had.]

Question. Did he not hold marital relations with women other than yourself?

Emma. He did not have improper relations with any woman that ever came to my knowledge.

[This leaves the possibility of proper relations with women who had covenanted with Joseph and extra-legal wives who were nonetheless wives in the eyes of God.]

Question. Was there nothing about spiritual wives that you recollect?

Emma. At one time my husband came to me and asked me if I had heard certain rumors about spiritual marriages, or anything of the kind; and assured me that if I had, that they were without foundation; that there was no such doctrine, and never should be with his knowledge or consent. I know that he had no other wife or wives than myself, in any sense, either spiritual or otherwise.

[This statement is curious, as Joseph manifestly was sealed to other women, and Emma is documented by multiple observers as having participated in some of these sealing ceremonies. However Joseph didn’t have any spiritual wives, the term for women who allowed themselves to be bedded without benefit of ceremony.

This could potentially be true if Emma was choosing to define a wife as someone who had sexually consummated a marriage with the husband. The only way she could be so certain Joseph had no such “wives” would be if Joseph asserted that he had never consummated any of his relationships with covenant wives. This is the statement that leads me to explore how Emma might have been telling a version of truth. Because those who study Emma universally describe her to be an unusually honest woman, despite how thoroughly she was villified by Brigham Young and various Utah Mormons in the decades after Joseph’s death.

Another insight arises from the fact that William Smith had joined the RLDS community the prior year. William Smith had been an active participant in spiritual wifery during Dr. Bennett’s time in Nauvoo. Despite Joseph’s attempts to reclaim and protect his brother, William would persist for years after Joseph’s death in the teaching that it was right for a man to have sex with any woman who might allow the man to indulge, under the theory that single women were game, married women who were not “sealed” were game, and any “sealed” woman who was so out of harmony with their sealed husband as to consider sex with another was clearly no longer “sealed” to that man anyway. William’s past excesses were known to those conducting the interview. Emma would not have been able to leave a record of Joseph’s innocence of illegal intercourse by claiming that Joseph had merely covenanted with other women, as even this language had been used by William Smith and others to include full sexuality.

Ultimately, we can no longer presume that Joseph never covenanted with other women. However it is intriguing to consider how this statement of Emma Hale regarding Joseph Smith might be technically true in the face of the evidence.]

Conclusion

Emma Hale was undoubtedly Joseph’s wife. Her decision to remain in the midwest resulted in a gross distortion of her legacy among those who aligned themselves with Brigham Young. However her descendants, many of whom have now embraced the “sect” over which Brigham Young presided, remember the story of how Emma would climb the stairs to her room after evening chores were done, sit in her low rocker, and gaze out the window at the western sunset over the Mississippi River, tears coursing down her face.

Sister Elizabeth Revel explained Emma had told her that Joseph came to her in a vision a few days before her death and said,

“Emma, come with me, it is time for you to come with me.”

Emma related, ‘I put on my bonnet and my shawl and went with him; I did not think that it was anything unusual. I went with him into a mansion, and he showed me through the different apartments of that beautiful mansion.’ And one room was the nursery. In that nursery was a babe in the cradle. She said, ‘I knew my babe, my Don Carlos that was taken from me.’ She sprang forward, caught the child up in her arms, and wept with joy over the child. When Emma recovered herself sufficient she turned to Joseph and said, ‘Joseph, where are the rest of my children.’ He said to her, ‘Emma, be patient and you shall have all of your children.’ Then she saw standing by his side a personage of light, even the Lord Jesus Christ.”[ref]Jones, Gracia N., My Great-Great-Grandmother, Emma Hale Smith, Ensign, August 1992, available online at https://www.lds.org/ensign/1992/08/my-great-great-grandmother-emma-hale-smith?lang=eng, retrieved 22 April 2015.[/ref]

Emma’s second husband, Louis Bidamon, and her children Julia, Joseph III, and Alexander were present when Emma passed away. According to Alexander, Emma seemed to sink away, but then she raised up and stretched out her hand, calling, “Joseph! Joseph!” Falling back on Alexander’s arm, she clasped her hands on her bosom, and her spirit was gone.

[Author’s note: Emma’s life is extensively documented. I have not been able to include nearly as many references as I ought. Feel free to contact me directly or via the notes, and I will make a point to insert references for any assertions you question.]

 

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