The 19th Wife Read online

  Even so, there is no denying plural marriage was an important part of early Church culture. As scholars we must look at it rigorously, understand it honestly, and place it correctly in our heritage. Some present-day Church leaders have dismissed polygamy as a “noncentral” issue, a peripheral “sideshow” to the larger issues of accepting the Restoration of the Gospel, understanding the Revelations, knowing the Lord Christ, and preparing for Salvation. Yet for some nineteenth-century Saints, such as Elizabeth Churchill Webb, plural marriage was so very much a part of their daily lives, of their terrestrial existence, that to label it as “minor” or “noncentral” is to, in effect, cast aside their very earthly experiences as “minor” and “noncentral.” The fact of the matter is many of the men who laid the foundations of today’s Church, including our beloved Prophets Joseph and Brigham, participated in polygamy with astonishing vigor. They sanctioned it, promoted it, spread it, and exalted it. They also lied about it. This is not a criticism, but a fact. Its sting can be lessened by facing it for what it is.

  Just as a long and sustained critical inquiry into slavery has helped to fortify the national psyche and shore up our nation’s moral standing, so too would an examination of our founders’ role in this deplorable practice help clear, at last, the misperception that Mormonism and polygamy remain somehow entwined.

  Make no mistake, our detractors continue to use the issue against us today. Best-selling books, influential newspapers and magazines, and popular television programs investigate present-day polygamy and inevitably connect it back to the LDS Church. We rightly protest such misrepresentation; we reasonably decry the unfairness of the coverage; over and over we try to correct the errors. Yet I believe that our strident denial of any connection has in fact hurt our image in the larger public rather than helped it. The LDS Church has been so intent on distancing itself from polygamy, on letting the world know that we stand adamantly and unequivocally opposed to the institution, that we have ignored its actual role in our own history. By repeating the message “That has nothing to do with us!” we inadvertently minimize the effects it played on our early members, especially its women. This strategy of putting a distance between the Church today and the polygamous acts of our forefathers—while understandable—has been misconstrued by some as whitewashing or even denial. Hence the suspicion and the constant repetition of old stories and rumors. Hence the continuous and harmful misperception that polygamous sects such as the Firsts in Mesadale and the LDS Church are one and the same.

  As scholars we can change this.

  My last reason is more personal. I am the great-great-great-granddaughter of Ann Eliza Young. Although my family has always taken pride in having roots that go back to the Church’s founding, we have also felt shame at being the offspring of such a hurtful apostate. When I was growing up, many in my family would refer to Ann Eliza as “that woman” or simply “her.” They despised her as if they had known her personally. Few had actually read The 19th Wife. “Nothing but a pack of lies,” my grandmother used to say.17

  Despite this, Ann Eliza and her contradictions have long fascinated me. I decided to start my inquiry into her life with her mother, my great-great-great-great-grandmother Elizabeth Churchill Webb. This seemed the best place to begin an effort to unravel Ann Eliza’s true history and legacy. I plan to continue my inquiry into Ann Eliza’s life itself in my graduate studies next year. The research I conducted for this paper is an important foundation for that inquiry. This summer, when I’m in Salt Lake,18 I hope to study a wide range of documents in the Church archives, some of which scholars have never had access to. I hope these texts will provide a fuller portrait of this complex woman and her complicated place in the history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  Lastly, through my research, I hope to determine the fate of Ann Eliza Young. After a second edition of The 19th Wife was published in 1908, there is no further record of her. No one knows when she died, or where, or under what circumstances. There are no obituaries, no estate records, not even a death certificate. At some point after 1908 she simply disappeared. She was once one of the most famous women in America. She changed the lives of thousands of women by fighting to end polygamy, nearly bringing down the Mormon Church in doing so. And yet she has been lost from history without a trace. We simply have no idea what happened to her. Ann Eliza’s death remains a mystery. But mysteries, by their very nature, are meant to be solved.

  1 In 1999, not long after the rebuilding of the Nauvoo Temple began, Church historians were excited to discover a time capsule buried in the original Temple’s foundation. The capsule itself is a granite box, measuring three feet long and two feet wide and one and a half feet tall. An inscription on its stone lid describes the contents to be the Testimonies of Faith, or personal statements of belief, written by a number of Saints departing Nauvoo for Salt Lake in 1846. When Church historians and leaders opened the time capsule at the rededication of the Nauvoo Temple on June 27, 2002, they were disappointed to discover that water had destroyed, or partially damaged, a number of Testimonies, including an estimated twelve pages of the Testimony written by Elizabeth Churchill Webb. While frustratingly truncated, the surviving fragments of Elizabeth’s Testimony provide many insightful glimpses into her outlook during this historic period (1844–1846). Today the document is held in the Family History Center in Nauvoo.

  2 Unless otherwise stated, my source is Elizabeth Churchill Webb’s Testimony. General information about early Mormon history and Nauvoo comes from personal research conducted during my recent spring break trip there. the state; if he did not, the governor could not promise their safety. The Saints’ future was altogether uncertain to everyone except Brigham, who was busy making secret plans for the Exodus that would lead his followers to what was still an unknown destination.

  3 Her real name was Elizabeth Taft, but they called her Lydia to avoid confusion.

  4 See Taft, Lydia, Letters (Family History Library).

  5 Chauncey would end up building between 1,000 and 1,500 wagons used at various stages of the Exodus.

  6 Much of my general information about Brigham comes from Brigham Young: American Moses by Leonard J. Arrington (Knopf, 1985).

  7 To me, this younger Brigham looks a lot like Russell Crowe.

  8 Brigham to Brigham Jr., November 3, 1855.

  9 Although the Saints were preparing to abandon Nauvoo, hundreds of laborers continued to erect the Temple until their last days in Illinois. This effort always strikes me as a profound symbol of their faith in both their Church and Brigham.

  10 In The 19th Wife, Ann Eliza writes about many events in her parents’ lives that took place either before she was born or when she was too young to remember them. According to her public lectures, she wrote about her parents by interviewing her mother and her half-brother, Gilbert, while preparing her manuscript.

  11 The 19th Wife.

  12 See Webb, Gilbert, Diary (Family History Center). Gilbert Webb, Ann Eliza’s half-brother, was an eloquent but infrequent diarist. He is best remembered for his written deposition provided in Ann Eliza’s divorce against Brigham Young in 1873.

  13 “The Other Wife in Pioneer Homes: Recollections of Joy & Sorrow,” edited by the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers (1947).

  14 The most conservative estimate of Brigham’s total number of wives at the time of his death (August 29, 1877) is nineteen. The most liberal estimates are about fifty-six. Many LDS historians have settled on the number twenty-seven.

  15 At the end of The 19th Wife, Ann Eliza poignantly describes returning to Nauvoo to see the Temple ruins.

  16 According to a University of Chicago study by Professor Kwang-Sun Lee, “Infant mortality rates in the nineteenth century were in the range of 130 to 230 for every 1,000 births. The main causes were diarrhea, respiratory illness, and infectious diseases such as scarlet fever, measles, whooping cough, smallpox, diphtheria, and croup.” For the mid-nineteenth-century mother, parturition in any situation co
uld be dangerous; on the wagon trail it was especially hazardous.

  17 For years LDS scholars have noted Ann Eliza’s obvious bias and political agenda in The 19th Wife. Yet for this paper, whenever I could check her version of events against another source I found general agreement. To my surprise, I have come to the opinion that Ann Eliza’s memoir, at least in the depiction of her mother’s life and her family’s years in Nauvoo and journey to Zion, is for the most part factually reliable, although her emphasis on certain matters, while skipping over others, can at times leave the reader with a distorted impression of early Church history. Whether or not the entire memoir is factually correct, especially the passages concerning her relationship with Brigham Young, will be part of my future research.

  18 I would like to thank the Department, especially Professor Sprague, for the generous work-study grant supporting my upcoming internship at the Ann Eliza Young House, which I’m really excited about.

  VIII

  WIFE #19:

  THE GUN ON THE SCREEN

  I WAS LIKE WOW

  “Johnny, wake up.”

  “What the—?”

  “I need you to get up.”

  “Where are we?”

  We were in Mr. Heber’s parking lot. The bank sign across the street said it was eight in the morning and already ninety degrees. The kid sat up, his face creased from the futon. “You got anything for breakfast?”

  I threw him a packet of powdered doughnuts and he ate them silently, cautiously, while I listened to the morning news. Ten minutes later Maureen arrived in a yellow Honda with a family of stuffed penguins in the back window. She sat for a minute, flicking a plastic comb through her hair. I got out of the van and knocked on her window.

  “Jordan,” she gasped. “Shoot, you scared me.”

  “Sorry, but I just realized you never gave me a copy of the police report.”

  “All right, just give me a second to land.” Something caught her attention over my shoulder. “Who’s that?”

  Johnny and Elektra were coming straight for me, each panting like, well, like a dog. “This is Johnny. I’m looking after him for a friend.” I sent Johnny and Elektra back to the van, but they didn’t want to go. I had to give them each a little shove.

  “Dick,” he said.

  Inside the office it was dark and warm. Maureen went around turning on the lights and the a/c and her computer while talking about how busy Mr. Heber was lately. Finally she went to the wall of file cabinets and started riffling through the S drawer. “Here it is, let me make a copy. But first I want you to be honest—what’s the story with Johnny?”

  “He doesn’t have a place to go right now.”

  “If he’s a runaway, you should call the police.”

  “He’s not a runaway.”

  “I see,” she sighed. “Another lost boy. It just breaks my heart. Did you try Jim Hooke? He runs a shelter. The man’s a saint. Let me give you his number.” She pecked at her keyboard and brought up the guy’s deets.

  Maureen put the police report in a file folder for me. “It’s pretty basic,” she said, “but here you are.”

  It described the murder scene pretty much the same as the Register did. Whoever filled it out had been meticulous, measuring the distance between the door and the chair, the height of the blood splatters on the wall, that sort of thing. There was a diagram of a human body, which the investigator had marked where the bullet entered my dad, and a second diagram of the backside, showing the exit wound. At the bottom of the last page, the investigator signed his name: Hiram Alton. Queenie’s husband. Well, there you go.

  More interesting were two little questions next to his signature: Were photographs taken? A little yes box was checked. Is the investigation complete? No.

  “Maureen? Do you have the photographs?”

  “What photographs?” I showed her the report. “Let me check the file.” But there weren’t any photos in the file.

  “Would you ask Mr. Heber?”

  “Ask me what?” Mr. Heber stood in the front door, his wraparound sunglasses making it impossible to tell if he was pissed or what. “Maureen, what’s going on?”

  “Jordan wanted the police report.”

  “I see.” He moved in the direction of his office, then turned around. “What did you want to ask me about?”

  “The pictures. The report says they took pictures.”

  “I realize that. I made a request, but they haven’t turned up yet.”

  “When will they be here?”

  “Should be soon. We’ll call you when they arrive. Maureen has your cell?” He might as well have been wearing a sign that said I don’t have time for this.

  “Before I go, I need to tell you something.” I blurted out the whole business about Sister Kimberly and 5, about one of them lying about where 5 was the night my dad was killed.

  Mr. Heber removed his sunglasses. He said, “Hmm.” Just hmm. Nothing more.

  “Isn’t that fishy?”

  “Yes, I’ll agree those stories don’t add up.”

  “What do you think it means?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” I’m not sure why I thought he would be able to take this info, drop it into some sort of thinking machine, and come up with the answer that would pop my mom free from jail, but I guess deep down that’s what I expected.

  “Unfortunately, there could be a hundred reasons why one of them or both are lying. But before you go any further, let me give you three bits of advice. One: most people lie. Two: the reason they lie usually has nothing to do with your case. And three: unless you’re careful, their more or less innocent lies can really throw you off.”

  The thing about Heber was I never could quite tell what he wanted—my mom out of jail or me out of his office. “Come on,” I said. “Not everyone goes around lying.”

  “No, not everyone, but you’d be amazed how many liars are always buzzing around a crime.”

  Maureen shrugged. “I’m afraid he’s right.”

  About fifteen miles outside St. George, Johnny finished eating everything in the van. He wiped his sugary fingers on his thighs, burped, then thought to say, “Where we going?”

  “Mesadale Police Department. I want to try to get those pictures myself.”

  “Are you out of your fucking mind?”

  “Calm down.”

  “They’ll kill me.”

  “They won’t kill you.”

  “Dude, I know that place a whole lot better than you. Everyone’s like freaking out.” He punched the dash. “Stop this van!”

  “Johnny, relax. When we get there, you can help me.”

  “If you don’t stop right now, I’m going to jump out.”

  “Johnny, I know what I’m doing.”

  “So do I.” He pulled his bag into his lap, opened the door, said, “You’re so full of shit,” and leaped out. It happened so quickly, I drove another fifty yards before I could stop. In my rearview Johnny rolled down the embankment with his bag tight to his chest. When he came to a stop he stood and slapped the sand out of his hair. Tough little kid. Stupid too. I backed up along the road until I was next to him.

  “Get in.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “I’ll make sure nothing happens to you.”

  “You know what they said when they kicked me out? They said if I ever came back, my mom would end up dead. So fuck you for taking me back there, and fuck your fucking van, and fuck your mom, I don’t give a shit about her.”

  He started walking in the direction of St. George, hugging his little bag, but there was no way he could walk back to town. I backed up some more until I was next to him again, but he kept walking and I kept driving in reverse. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Come on, get in.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “Fine. What do you want to do?”

  “None of your fucking business.”

  “Look, all right, don’t come. But let me take you back
to St. George. I’ll drop you wherever you want.”

  He kept walking but eventually said, “I’m not talking to you.”

  “Johnny, you’re acting like a baby.”

  “What do you expect?” He wiped his nose with his shoulder. “I thought you were cool.” We went backward like that another twenty yards.

  “Hey, Maureen told me about this place, maybe we should go there.”

  He stopped. “What place?”

  “Some guy named Jim Hooke. He has this house.”

  Johnny started walking again, and I threw the van into reverse.

  “You know him?”

  “You getting ready to dump me too?”

  “No, not at all.” Heber was right: people lie all the time. “Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll drop you at the movies and go to Mesadale myself. When I get back I’ll pick you up.”

  He stopped. “Only if you promise to come back.”

  “I promise.”

  “I promise.”

  He pondered the promise, turning it over like a bit of treasure found in the sand. “Deal. But I’m going to need some cash for candy.” I told him no problem. “And popcorn.”

  “I’ll give you five bucks.” I stopped the van and Johnny climbed in. Elektra welcomed him back with a lick. “Put your seat belt on.”

  “Whatever.”

  We didn’t say anything for ten miles. As we approached St. George, my cell picked up reception again. There was a message. “Yeah, hi, Jordan, it’s me, Maureen. Guess what. Those pictures came right after you left. You can pick them up anytime.”