The 19th Wife Read online

  “What more can we do?” said Chauncey. He reminded Joseph of their two newborns lost in infancy and Elizabeth’s poor health thereafter. Chauncey knew this child should be Elizabeth’s last.

  “I asked our Heavenly Father the same question,” said Joseph. “What more can I do? Tell me, Dear Lord, what must I do to expand the Kingdom? Over time, the Revelation has made itself clear. Now I must share it with the most faithful, Saints like you.”

  “I’ll have my child,” said Elizabeth. “And if the Lord wants another I’ll have another. And yet another, until He decides I can’t bear more.”

  “You’re a good woman, among the best of the Saints. That’s why I’ve come to tell you what I know.”

  Joseph looked to the ceiling in a moment that suggested he was peering up at the feet of God.

  “Do you recall my words about Abraham and Sarah?” he began. “God ordered Abraham to take another wife. This was not Abraham’s wish, it was not Sarah’s wish, but it was God’s command. And so Sarah told Abraham to take Hagar as his wife, although she was his wife. Was Abraham wrong to do it? Did he commit adultery? No, because it had been commanded of him by God.” Joseph stopped, then turned to Elizabeth. “Sister, do you understand me?”

  Many times before this night, Elizabeth had heard the rumors of Joseph’s marital relations. Faithless people permitted their tongues to flap, going on about a bounty of wives—a dozen, two dozen, some said more. Elizabeth never listened to such talk. It is true, once she witnessed the Prophet driving intimately with a woman who was not Mrs. Smith. Another time she spotted him calling at the door of the widow Mrs. Martin. Yet Elizabeth never permitted such evidence to indent her belief. Now Joseph had come to reveal the rumors were true. The incidents she had witnessed were indeed indiscretions—and she had defended the Prophet when he was indefensible. Even more startling, Joseph was telling her these acts of passion were divined by God! Imagine, Reader, this good woman’s shock and dismay!

  For a long time the room was silent, the evening sun burning low outside. Elizabeth looked up to find her young boys, Gilbert and Aaron, outside peering through the window, eager to catch a glimpse of the beloved Prophet. Their noses were pink and had the look of two fresh buds beneath a glass. Elizabeth shooed them away.

  “As you know,” said Joseph, “we must accept God’s will.”

  The idea of sharing her husband, in the manner of lustful animals sharing a lair, was abhorrent to Elizabeth. She could not accept it as true. She turned in her chair, for she could no longer look at Joseph Smith.

  “Sister Elizabeth, tell me, what do you say?”

  “My husband has a wife,” she said. “Me.”

  The hour was dusk. The room had filled with the silver of the gloaming. Joseph’s face was now obscure, except the blue stones of his eyes. “I’ll tell you, I first resisted this Revelation as well. My dear sweet Emma, she turned against it. She wanted nothing of it. For a long time we denied it. Many nights we prayed over it. Now the time has come to embrace it, for it is the Truth. Consider why the Lord would want us to accept it. Think of what He has planned for the Latter-day Saints. He has chosen us to populate the Earth in preparation for Judgment. To fill the lands with the faithful. To ready His people for—”

  “Stop!” cried Chauncey. “For God’s sake, stop. We don’t want any part of it.”

  For some time thereafter all three were silent, staring at the fire dying on the stone. After many minutes, Joseph said it was time to leave. Before he departed, he made a final attempt.

  “I said the same thing. I begged the Lord to change this Truth. This was the one Revelation I pleaded to be not so. Do you think this is what I wanted? He has commanded it, as with all else. Your regret does not surprise me. I expected no other response. Before I leave I must ask one thing.”

  “My wife has said no,” said Chauncey. “Even if she were to say yes, I would never agree.”

  The quality of his resolve placed him even closer to Elizabeth’s heart. At this moment she felt a love for her husband that surpassed any emotion she had known before.

  “I understand,” said Joseph. “And I ask you to pray over the meaning of God’s love.”

  When Joseph was gone, Elizabeth and Chauncey fell to their knees. They prayed for knowledge, but it did not come, for their hatred of the Revelation would not relent. Chauncey took Elizabeth’s hand. In his fingers she felt his fury. It nearly crushed her bones.

  “Tomorrow I’ll go see him,” he said. “Even if I have to wait all day I’ll tell him we can’t follow this order. The other Revelations guide us to lead a good life, but this one?”

  “He says it’s the Lord’s will.”

  “No, this time Joseph is wrong. He’s using his authority to cover his own personal sins.”

  “If Joseph is wrong about this …” said Elizabeth. Yet she could not finish. The meaning was too heavy to bear.

  “I’ll go tomorrow,” said Chauncey. “And tell him you refuse.”

  “What if he says I’m unfaithful?”

  “Do you believe you are?”

  Yet the next day the events of history preceded Chauncey’s defiance. On June 7 the Nauvoo Expositor published its maiden issue, every inch of its newsprint determined to reveal the truth about Joseph Smith. The newspaper accused him of “abominations and whoredoms.” Most damning of all was the fact that former Saints were printing these stories, men who had once believed in Joseph and yet had come to recognize him as a liar and scoundrel. Each of the newspaper’s two principal editors, William Law and Robert D. Foster, had a particularly damning story to tell. Law, a leading economic advisor to Smith, had learned that Smith had asked his wife—and by this I mean William Law’s wife!—to become a spiritual wife. That is, quite simply, a theologically cloaked manner of inviting a woman to commit adultery. Robert Foster, a contractor, returned home one evening to discover his wife dining alone with the Prophet. She admitted the Prophet was trying to convince her to become a wife. The Prophet was, as they say, seducing women all over town.

  There is no fiercer wrath than that of the cornered animal’s. Joseph was wounded by the Expositor’s revelations. For years his loyal Saints had ignored the rumors of adultery, polygamy, and a Prophet who too often succumbed to lust, but now it was impossible, for the accusations came from friends. Law and Foster were among Nauvoo’s most prominent, known for their honesty and devotion. On that day in June 1844, in the beautiful city of Nauvoo, beneath the high summer sky, there was not a Saint who did not have a cloud of doubt in his heart about Joseph Smith.

  Joseph responded by denouncing the Expositor and the men behind it. This time, however, his denials were not enough. It seems he never considered telling the truth. Instead he gathered his city council, declared the Expositor a civic nuisance, and sent his men to destroy it. A squadron from Joseph’s private militia, the Nauvoo Legion, cousins of the infamous Danites, marched over to the newspaper’s offices, tore apart the press, and burned every copy of the Expositor.

  It must be noted at this time Joseph’s enemies beyond Nauvoo were taking aim. His theocratic rule in Nauvoo had long piqued the political elite throughout the country, stirring up profound animosity and suspicion. Clerical leaders all over Illinois were denouncing the Mormons and their leader as impure. With the Expositor’s unconstitutional destruction, Joseph’s outside enemies had reason to pounce. Threatened by Joseph’s accumulation of power, the Governor of Illinois could no longer tolerate a Prophet of God as a rival. The Governor charged Joseph with riot and treason, ordering his arrest.

  The news of these events came as great confusion to Elizabeth. She prayed for understanding—is it a whoredom and abomination if it is commanded by God? Heavenly Father, tell me.

  Before his arrest Joseph addressed his followers outside the new Temple. Chauncey and Elizabeth stood in the crowd, listening to the Prophet defend himself. “The newspaper lies,” he cried. “The legislature lies. The Governor lies. Next, I tell you, the President of
the United States will lie to you. Show me where in all Nauvoo are these supposed abominations and whoredoms? Where, I ask you? Where? If they are here, I should like to see them for myself and judge them for myself, as should you!”

  These were the last words Elizabeth was to hear from her Prophet. She struggled to perceive their meaning. In her struggle she reached a pitiful conclusion—she was no longer faithful, for now, during Joseph’s time of need, she had abandoned him to doubt.

  The order came for Joseph to submit to the jailhouse at Carthage. At midday on June 24 Joseph and his loyal brother, Hyrum, and several others departed Nauvoo, riding through the Flats. They knew the dangers awaiting them. The hatred for the Saints, and Joseph especially, had grown in recent days. At night, packs of invisible men slit the throats of the Saints’ oxen and burned their crops. They pulled Mormon men from their horses and threatened their wives. They poisoned their dogs. That bright June, the mood in Nauvoo turned dark and perilous.

  Joseph rode to Carthage without force. Emma has since reported he said to her, “I am going like a lamb to slaughter.” At Carthage he spent two nights. The jailer, Mr. Stigall, moved him and the others from the suffocating dungeon to the debtor’s cell on the first floor, which exposed them to assassins, and finally to his own bedroom atop the stairs.

  It was evident to all that the prisoners’ lives were in danger. I do not believe we will ever know if Mr. Stigall, who lived in the jailhouse with his wife and daughters, played a role in the murder, although it is unlikely, for his daughters were present at the time of the attack. He was away from his post when the mob arrived on June 27 in the afternoon. There were between 150 and 200 men, many with faces blackened by coal soot. They stormed the jailhouse, mounted the stairs, and fired through the door into the bedroom. A ball hit Hyrum beside the nose. Joseph lunged to aid his brother, but he was already dead. Soon the attackers broke through the door. Joseph ran to the window—his only escape. It was twenty feet to the ground. He hesitated at the sill. Shots rang out and he took two balls to the back. A rifleman stationed at the water well below shot him through the heart. Joseph plunged out the window to the ground. Willard Richards, a witness and friend, claims the Prophet’s final words were, “Oh Lord, my God!”

  The agony of martyrdom is almost too much to bear. In the early hours, when the loss is fresh, there is no comfort in knowing Glory will live on. We speak of the martyrs of History but we cannot know the actual pain they suffered in their final living hours. They enter the realm of the mythic, but we must never forget these were men like ourselves. When their flesh is torn, they cry out. They suffer as you and I would suffer, although more bravely. Remember Christ. Although I am now an enemy to Joseph’s legacy, I shudder when recalling his pain.

  After Joseph’s murder, his enemies across the county and the state believed the Saints would rise up in revenge. They fled or hid their families and livestock, fearful of Mormon wrath. Yet the Saints did not return violence with violence. Instead they withstood their grief in noble peace. Joseph’s body was set out in the dining room of the Mansion House. Elizabeth, along with her two sons, waited hours to pass by his open coffin to see his historic face one last time. When she saw him, and the depth of his sleep, and truly understood she would not see him again until the Last Day, she wept.

  Three years later, upon departing Nauvoo for the Utah Territory, my mother wrote a Testimony of Faith. She sealed it in a granite box that was buried at the Temple’s foundation, there to be found by a new generation of Saints. Yet before she did so, she crosshatched a draft of her Testimony into a Book of Mormon, which she has since given me. I will quote from it here to describe, in her words, her reaction to the Prophet’s death.

  “I could not summon, neither then nor now, the words to depict the complexities of my grief. My Prophet was gone; but his death had freed me from his loathsome request. Had he spoke the truth throughout his life, erring only in his final days? Was this why he had succumbed to the enemy’s ball? Or were his final words also true and devout? Upon seeing his body laid out, I prayed to God, frightened I had caused Joseph’s fall. Was his murder, I asked, punishment for my doubt? Was I to blame? I feared the truth.”

  Thereafter, throughout the summer, the Apostles fought over who would lead the Church of Latter-day Saints. At the time of Joseph’s death, several, including Brigham, were away on mission, and the matter was not settled until the 8th of August of that year. On that day, at ten in the morning, Brother Sidney Rigdon gathered the community of Saints in a hollow east of the Temple. The day was warm and damp, the flies buzzing in the boughs. The grove could not provide enough shade, and many stood in the shadow of their horses. Brother Rigdon hoped to lead the Saints and asked for their support. At length he preached with honest remorse in his voice. Yet his performance had not convinced the Saints he was their leader. Brigham followed Rigdon, and to describe his appearance I must quote my mother’s Testimony again, for it is in this passage she is at her most eloquent on the mysteries of belief.

  “When Brigham took the stand to describe his grief and his hope for our Church, he inspired our hearts. He began to speak as Joseph had once spoken, adopting his voice and mannerisms, often clearing his throat with the familiar Ah-hem and creating his peculiar whistle. As time passed, Brigham began to appear even more like Joseph, until it no longer seemed he was adopting the voice and expressions of our beloved Prophet—the familiar gestures of his right hand, the movement of body—but in fact the mantle of Joseph had passed to Brigham, and Brigham was now Joseph! In the limp summer haze, there before me, a miracle occurred. I saw Brigham transform into Joseph himself. Upon the stand, where Brigham had stood, stood now our beloved Joseph! As clear as the page before me now, and the lines of ink, our Prophet appeared.

  “Some say it was a trick of the sunlight, or the ghostly way Brigham’s voice traveled through the hollow. Others claim the heat had tampered with our minds; or fresh grief had overcome our reasoning. I understand why they might say such things, yet I write this now to say—I know what I saw. Before me, and the community of Saints, in the dappled light, for one brief moment in Time, Joseph returned, entering Brigham’s powerful body, the two united by the force of God. Chauncey did not see this. My Husband becomes discouraged when I speak of it. Yet I know the fact of it as well as I know anything, for I understand why. Joseph had returned to clear the dark doubt from my heart. And so it came to pass.”*

  By the end of the day the succession was settled. Brigham Young was proclaimed the new leader of the Latter-day Saints. He was forty-three years old, and about to become one of the most influential men in the United States. Elizabeth rejoiced, for her experience told her it was meant to be. A month later, on September 13, 1844, she bore a tiny daughter who came into this world with the voice of a howling angel, I am told. That child, of course, was me.

  * The authoress would like to assert that many eyewitnesses have left similar accounts of an inexplicable vision and that Elizabeth Webb was not unique in seeing that which could not be seen. Even some thirty years later, my mother still claims she experienced the supernatural on that summer day in Nauvoo.

  VII

  WOMEN’S STUDIES

  Women’s Research Institute

  Brigham Young University

  WS 492—Women’s Studies Senior Research Seminar

  Professor Mary P. Sprague

  April 23, 2005

  THE FIRST WIFE

  By Kelly Dee

  1.

  The subject of this paper, Elizabeth Churchill Webb (1817–1884), is not familiar to many. She was an early convert to the Church and the first wife of wainwright Chauncey Webb (1812–1903), whose Nauvoo wagonry played a crucial role in the Exodus (1846–1847). Brigham Young personally chose Chauncey to lead the wagon manufacturing for the Pioneers in their trek to Zion.

  My interest in Elizabeth Webb, however, has less to do with her role in supporting her husband during this historic period. Instead, I am more curious about
her relationship to her daughter, Ann Eliza, who would go on to become Brigham Young’s infamous 19th wife. In the 1870s and 1880s, Ann Eliza (1844–date unknown) became a leading crusader in the fight to end polygamy in the United States. In her battle against plural marriage she became a vocal enemy of both the Church and Brigham, writing a best-selling memoir of her experiences, The 19th Wife (1875). Her book, and especially her attacks against Brigham, continue to divide people today. Given that she was born into the Church, and her parents were faithful members, her deep hatred of Mormonism has surprised and confused many. It is therefore worth investigating her early family life, especially her mother’s attitude to plural marriage. This is why I have chosen Elizabeth Churchill Webb as the subject of my seminar paper. Specifically, I will use two key texts to depict this historic period in her life: 1) Elizabeth’s recently discovered Testimony of Faith1 to narrate the period in her life when she first accepted the doctrine of celestial marriage; and 2) her Exodus diary, written on her journey to Zion in 1848, an insightful document that has sat ignored in the Church archives for more than one hundred years.

  2.

  One day in the fall of 1845, Brigham Young walked to Elizabeth and Chauncey Webb’s small but prominent brick house on the corner of Parley and Granger streets in the central district of Nauvoo known as the Flats.2 The spiritual and political leader of the Latter-day Saints, and successor to Joseph Smith’s title of Prophet, came alone. Such a private visit by Brigham Young, unannounced and unattended by aide, was an unusual event. No doubt Chauncey and Elizabeth were surprised to see him at their door.