What’s the reason Emma denied polygamy just before her death? Was Emma Smith bound to secrecy? Was it a trauma response? Cheryl Bruno answers that in our next conversation…
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Introduction to Book Editing
GT 00:44 Welcome to Gospel Tangents. I‘m excited to have a very busy author back on the show. For those of you who didn’t see the previous segment, could you reintroduce yourself?
Cheryl 00:56 I’m Cheryl Bruno, and I’m editor of this new book, Secret Covenants.
GT 01:01 She’s been a very busy author, as you know, if you watched the last segment. We just watched her co-author with John Dinger. Cheryl’s written, well edited. Can you talk a little bit about the editing process? What is involved when you bring together all these different authors, because there’s like 12 or so we talked about that before, but tell us about that.
Cheryl 01:27 Okay, so as I’ve said before, Gary Bergera, over at Signature Books, when he was still there, before he retired, asked me to put together a book made of essays about polygamy. I think the original conception was that I would bring together essays that had already been written and then just put them into a book. But I thought that I would like to have new insights on early Mormon polygamy, because it’s been so long since we had Brian Hales book come out, or Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness. It has been many years since that came out, and so I thought we could come up with some new insights. I asked a group of authors to get together and write me a chapter for this book. I chose many authors that were well known for writing about polygamy. Then I have a few new ones that this is their first publication, and it makes for a very great book.
GT 02:24 It’s a great book too.
Cheryl 02:27 The editing process is very intense. When I first was asking these authors to write for me, first I had to have a conception of what the book would be, so that they just didn’t go off in all directions. Because I wanted it to be a cohesive book, so I had to be able to pitch what it was going to look like to these authors, so that they could fit their ideas into this cohesive whole. Then they sent me their first drafts. In many cases, because I gave them a idea of how long I wanted it to be, and I had 10 authors, and I didn’t want to go over like 200 pages, but it actually did go quite over 200 pages; 400 pages, twice as long. But some of the authors were very enthusiastic and gave me 80 pages. So, I had to cut quite a bit. You know how sad it is for an author, for their editor, to just cut their baby in half.
GT 03:31 So you make them do it. Don’t you?
Cheryl 03:33 Yes, but I would give them information on what I felt wasn’t needed. In many cases, I did just line through [text] because it’s hard sometimes for an author to see when they’ve spent so much time on their book what [to cut.] They think everything is important. So sometimes you have to give them a little bit of help on that.
GT 03:55 Okay.
Cheryl 03:56 We went back and forth, cutting a lot of them. Then when we thought we had it cut, they wanted to add more. They found something else. So, that was a really interesting process that we went through. I had to wrestle some. Some of the article or chapters had a tone that I didn’t want to have in the book, because I wanted to strike a very scholarly tone. I did not want to be anti-Mormon in any way, and yet…
GT 04:27 Or apologetic, either. Right?
Cheryl 04:28 Or apologetic, either. That’s right. So, there’s a certain tone I wanted to strike. I had to argue a little bit with some of the authors about fixing their tone. It was quite a long process. I found that there weren’t a lot of women that I could ask to give me a chapter on polygamy. Polygamy needs women’s voices to discuss it in a balanced way. We have many, many women who do activism around polygamy, but we don’t have that many women who, at the time, this was couple years ago, when I was first putting this together, were doing scholarly work on polygamy. So that was disappointing to me to try to find women’s voices. I feel like I still have a dearth of women’s voices in this book. Although in the past two years now, there have been women that have stepped forth in writing scholarly treatments of polygamy. So, I think that that’s becoming better.
GT 05:32 Cool.
Cheryl 05:33 So, it was a difficult process. Oh! Then once we have done Don Bradley and Chris Smith both wrote articles for [the book.]
GT 05:42 Really good ones,
Cheryl 05:43 Right. They’re great articles. But then, as they were doing these articles, they came up with a completely different insight that warranted another chapter. So, they both got together and came together to put another chapter in,
GT 05:57 Which is really good.
Cheryl 05:58 Yeah, it’s a great chapter. It did end up a lot longer than I thought it would be. It’s very dense, but I think it’s great book.
GT 06:09 Very readable, I would say.
Cheryl 06:11 Thank you.
GT 06:12 One of the nice things about it, this is more of an anthology. So, you don’t need to read it cover to cover. You can just pick a chapter and read it. And so that’s what I’ve done. I’ve been all over the place. Of course, I read your chapter. I didn’t read John’s because I didn’t get enough notice that he was coming. But Mark Tensmeyer, Clair Barrus, Mary Ann Clements, Don Bradley’s chapter on Fanny Alger. Do you say Al-jerr Al-gurr?
Cheryl 06:42 Well, now the thing is to say All-gurr, because the family now says All-gurr, or the family that is descended from Fanny. That group in Utah calls it All-gurr, but David Goulding has done some research, and he says that Al-jerr was the way that they pronounced it back then. So really, you can say either one and be pretty Correct.
GT 07:10 Okay. That’s good to know. I like Al-jerr better.
Cheryl 07:11 Okay, you’re good.
GT 07:15 But yeah, so it’s great. You don’t have to read it cover to cover. You can pick and choose, and it’s really fun. I’ve been reading Chris Smith and Don Bradley’s chapter. I’m about halfway through, and it’s just mind blowing.
Cheryl 07:31 It is mind blowing, and that’s why this word “new insights” is really important, because some of these, and especially the Bradley and Smith article is very new insights that have never been brought forth before. You think that everything that has to be said and polygamy has already been said, but this is very new. I guarantee you have never heard it before,
GT 07:55 Yeah, for sure, for sure, it’s great.
Did Emma Agree to Partridge Sisters Polygamy?
GT 07:58 Well, let’s dive into your chapter you talk about Emma Smith’s denials. There’s also the Partridge sisters, which supposedly Emma participated in that sealing. It’s funny because I read your chapter first, but then I read Don and Chris’s chapter, and I was like, Oh, that has huge implications for your story as well.
Cheryl 08:28 Another thing, let me go back for just a minute. Another thing I had to do in order to make the book cohesive is people had different ideas on how certain things happened historically. I wanted to get them all together and try to figure out a way we were going to say it, where we weren’t all contradicting each other. That was another [issue.] We did quite a bit of work on that so that and we still have differences, but we wanted to make it so it wasn’t like you read the book and you were just very confused what happened.
GT 08:59 I think that’s great. But from my point of view, I love it when people disagree. I want to get all the different perspectives. Disagreement is fine with me.
Cheryl 09:13 Well, I mean, there will be different perspectives, but I just don’t want total disagreement especially on things that we can that maybe are facts that we can look at and come to a consensus.
GT 09:25 In reading Chris and Don’s chapter, it gave me some other questions that I want to ask you. So especially since I read after I read your chapter, I was like, Oh, well, that’s an interesting insight. I think one of the big insights specifically, there’s the story about Emma agreeing to allow Joseph Smith to be married to the Partridge sisters. Is it Elizabeth & Eliza? It’s something like that.
Cheryl 9:59 Emily & Eliza Partridge.
GT 10:00 Ok. The traditional story of Emily & Eliza Partridge is that Emma agreed that Joseph could be sealed to the sisters, and that she participated in the sealing. Then when she saw Joseph intimate with one of the sisters. I don’t know which one. She became upset and threw a fit, threw them out of the house and renounced all polygamy; anything that she had agreed to. Where is that story wrong?
Cheryl 10:41 The first thing; the story comes from Emily Partridge’s later reminiscences that they married to Joseph Smith. They were brought into polygamy first. Both of the girls married Joseph Smith, and then after that, Joseph was able to convince Emma for a short period of time to agree to marry some wives. The wives that she chose were Emily and Eliza. But they did not want to tell her that they were already married to Joseph Smith. And so, they had a repeat ceremony where, where apparently Emma gave them to Joseph.
GT 11:25 And put their her hand on there, or something.
Cheryl 11:27 One of the accounts says she put her hand in his and so gave her away. In doing a little bit of further research, we have affidavits in Utah from both Emily and Eliza. They give dates of the marriage, and they give the officiator of the marriage, who was James Adams, who was participating in the marriage that Emma participated in. When we look at it, this is the work that Johnny did. He looked at the dates that James Adams was in town, because he was from out of town, Springfield, I believe, and then he came into Nauvoo. We have the dates that he was in Nauvoo. We have the dates that Emma was in and out of Nauvoo, that Joseph was in and out of Nauvoo. And we have a certain time period when this could have happened, that all three were together, and it doesn’t quite work with the affidavits. And so, Johnny was saying, Well, did this even happen? Did a marriage even happen where Emma agreed.
GT 12:35 Was part of the ceremony.
Cheryl 12:35 Right. So that’s what I investigated in this chapter.
GT 19:43 Was Emma part of the ceremony?
Cheryl 12:44 I believe there is good reason to think that she was not a part of this.
GT 12:48 Oh wow. That’s quite a wrinkle.
Cheryl 12:50 Yeah.
GT 12:51 Why do you believe that?
Cheryl 12:53 Let’s go back. In our previous conversation, 2e talked a little bit about Andy Ehat’s thesis. He says in his thesis that he obviously believed that Emma was part of the second ceremony, or, I don’t know, second and third, where Emily and Eliza. It’s very confusing. But Andy Ehat says that Emma had to, in order to receive her higher ordinances, as part of the Quorum of the Anointed, she had to accept polygamy. And so, this was the time when she accepted polygamy. She let Joseph marry Emily and Eliza. Then a short time after, she reneged on her promise and kicked them out of the house. After that was a polygamy advocate or foe, I guess
GT 13:43 One question I had was, these marriages to the Partridge sisters, did that occur before or after D&C 132? That was in July of 1843 I believe.
Cheryl 13:57 Right. So Emily and Eliza were married to Joseph Smith the first time, before that revelation. And then after, Emma became aware of polygamy, and after 132 was when she agreed to the marriage and participated in it.
GT 14:14 It was both before and after. That’s interesting. All right. But you don’t think she participated in the second ceremony. So there were two ceremonies?
Cheryl 14:30 The evidence is very late and a little bit convoluted. I’m not even sure that there were any ceremonies at all.
GT 14:44 Oh!
Cheryl 14:45 That’s why I feel like some of the polygamy skeptics have a leg to stand on with some of these marriages of Joseph Smith. Because we’re not really sure about ceremonies and what the dates were, and since it’s so late. I mean, Emily and Eliza were very firm in remembering that they had married Joseph Smith.
GT 15:08 Okay, and so there had to be at least one ceremony, then. Right?
Cheryl 15:11 Well, I believe there was at least one ceremony. I believe there was something. Their story seems very—they’re very sure that that Emma participated in some kind of something, acquiescing to their union with Joseph Smith. Now, whether it was a knowledge Emma had that they were actually going to be wives in very deed, or whether it was going to be some kind of dynastic sealing, we’re not really sure what Emma’s understanding was. So perhaps Emma could have had an understanding that these were just sealings and wouldn’t necessarily be a consummated marriage. And so then, when she saw Joseph Smith in bed with somebody, that’s when she lost it and threw everybody out.
GT 16:01 Well, it brings up a question. I haven’t had an opportunity to talk to Don and Chris yet, but they brought up such a—what’s the word? [It was] just an interesting perspective on the whole Fanny Alger story. And so, I want to bring this up because I think it’s related here. For those of you who haven’t read the chapter, it’s amazing. I’ve only read half of it. The thesis of their chapter is that it seems that both Joseph and Oliver were sealed in the form of an adoptive sealing. Oliver adopted a girl that was, I think just 10. I believe her name was Fuller,
Cheryl 16:48 Adeline Fuller.
GT 16:49 Okay. Then Joseph may have been sealed to Fanny Alger, as at least in Oliver’s understanding, an adoptive-type sealing. Because Oliver apparently treated this sealing with [Adeline] Fuller as a child. She was just 10, I believe. Whereas Joseph it became a little bit more romantic, it appears. And so, then that’s why Oliver accused Joseph of the dirty, nasty, filthy scrape or affair. And so, I wonder, and I really want to talk to Don and Chris about this, because it’s an amazing chapter, but I do wonder. It seems like it would have been easier, at least with Oliver and I would assume with Emma and other people, to say, hey. I want to be sealed to the [Partridge sisters.] Because they were still pretty young, the Partridge sisters. I don’t know if you remember how old they were.
Cheryl 17:51 Yeah, like 19-20.
GT 17:52 Okay, so older. I mean marriageable age, I guess. But it would have been easier to say, “Emma, I’m just being sealed adoptively.” It’s not a marriage thing. It would have been easier to get Emma to consent to something like that.
Cheryl 18:09 Yes, but I mean, we just don’t have any evidence that she agreed to an adoptive sealing.
GT 18:16 At all.
Cheryl 18:17 But, I mean, we have more evidence in the Fanny Alger case. They will, they will talk about that. But with the Partridge sisters, it may have been that it was presented as a marriage, but maybe for eternity, as Brian would call it, something that wasn’t going to be consummated on the earth, but still kind of a marriage alliance.
GT 16:42 Okay, so if it’s a marriage that’s not consummated, I can see Emma reluctantly agreeing to something like that. And then when I mean, who knows what happened between Joseph and one of the sisters? But if it was affectionate at all I can easily see Emma becoming very upset about that. But it might have been an easier sell, if I can use that term, to sell Emma on this adoptive sealing idea, than a sexual sealing for sure. Okay. So you think there was probably only one ceremony. And so how do we get this two ceremonies story?
Cheryl 19:29 I’m not sure on the ceremonies. That’s the thing is that there was actually later in Utah that was a big thing is they wanted to show that ceremonies happened around these things. And so they wanted to distinguish it from John C Bennett’s spiritual wifery, where he just would have liaisons with these women. And so now they’re going to in Brighamite polygamy. It definitely had to be along with a marriage sealing. And so, I’m not quite sure that all of the women who married Joseph in Nauvoo had a sealing ceremony, as we picture it now in our church.
GT 20:12 Okay. Because I think if I remember right, you’d probably know this better than me. It seems like both Todd Compton and Brian Hales were trying to find evidence that a ceremony occurred. But you’re saying some of these, especially early sealings may not have had a ceremony.
Cheryl 20:30 Yeah. I mean, I really haven’t done a lot of research on that particular thing. I’m just starting with Emily and Eliza, and it seems that there are very many problems around how these sealings took place, whether there were two [ceremonies,] what exactly the story was. Because I feel that Emily and Eliza were telling the truth as what they recalled. Joseph Smith somehow bringing them into a marriage. Maybe Emma [was] not aware. Then later [Emma was] aware. The documentation is very sparse, and so it’s difficult to know exactly what was going on. But what I’m trying to do here is just call the attention of people to the fact that we do have a discrepancy. We have a date given where it couldn’t have happened because James Adams was isn’t in town. Todd Compton has tried to propose other dates. I think Don Bradley also has tried to propose other dates for this when it could have happened. Johnny Stevenson was pushing back against this, saying, No, this date couldn’t have happened. No, this date couldn’t have happened. And so, when did the sealing happen, if there was such a sealing? There was only a short window of time when it could have happened, because then James Adams died.
GT 21:55 Okay. Whatever happened, it had to happen before he died.
Cheryl 21:59 Right.
GT 22:02 So what’s your best reconstruction of the events that happened then?
Cheryl 22:07 I actually don’t do a reconstruction. I’m saying this is fishy. This is fishy. This is fishy.
Why Emma Denied Polygamy
Cheryl 22:17 So, what I’m trying to reconstruct is possibilities for why Emma then continued to deny polygamy all the rest of her life. That’s really what my chapter is about. Because we’ve wondered. If we believe that Emma was aware of Joseph Smith’s polygamy, which I think she was aware of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Then why did she, after he died, continue to deny, continue to deny. I use Emily and Eliza’s cases as just a glimpse into perhaps some reasons why she would have denied that Joseph practiced polygamy.
GT 22:56 Okay.
Cheryl 22:57 So one reason could have been that the sealing ceremony was supposed to be secret, very secret. And so, everyone in Nauvoo kept that secret until they went out to Utah, and then there was a difference. They were now going to be public with it, and so they were able to talk about it. But Emma wasn’t part of the saints that went out to Utah, so maybe she was still keeping the secret, as she has had covenanted to do. Right? She promised that she would never tell, and then she never did.
GT 23:30 Okay.
Cheryl 23:30 So that could be a reason. A second reason could be later in Utah, some of the people who were explaining what they were doing in Nauvoo said, “Well, we were giving carefully worded denials. We denied that it was happening, but the wording was such that we could say, oh, we never practiced spiritual wifery, but we did practice celestial plural marriage. So they were careful with their wording, so that they could deny it but still maintain plausible deniability. So perhaps this is what Emma’s doing. When you look at her testimonies, and we don’t really have them in her own words, per se. We just have what other people are reporting she said to them. So we can’t really see..
GT 24:25 Including Joseph Smith III, her son.
Cheryl 24:27 Right. I mean, I think we can pretty much see what she was saying, but maybe he didn’t preserve the wording exactly right. It seems pretty much like she was denying it.
GT 24:36 Okay.
Cheryl 24:37 It doesn’t seem like she’s trying to slip out of it.
GT 24:41 We talked to John Dinger in the case of Joseph Smith’s denials, that these were legal denials, not necessarily religious
Cheryl 24:51 right.
GT 24:52 Could Emma be doing the same thing?
Cheryl 24:54 Yes. She could be doing the same thing. So, but it’s hard to tell, because, like I said, we don’t have her own wording, her own handwriting. Yeah, so, it’s hard to really tell. But I don’t think—that’s one of the scenarios that I don’t really believe has much plausibility.
GT 25:17 You don’t like she was doing legal denials.
Cheryl 25:19 I think that perhaps she was keeping a secret. Then III reason is that she may have, well, there’s several. But she may have just erased it from her memory because she just didn’t want to think about it. It was very traumatic for her. This was a trauma response to a very horrible thing that happened to her. Perhaps she put it out of her mind, and then later, when people asked her, she was just like, Oh no. That never happened. That can happen.
GT 25:50 Well, especially with Lewis Bidamon, her second husband, who then cheated on her.
Cheryl 25:55 Right. That must have been horribly traumatic. We know this happens. We’ve seen this in modern days, where people have traumatic things happen to them and then they need hypnosis to call it back to them. I mean, there are many cases where the hypnosis has been called into question, but we do know that there are cases when you just blank something out. And I, in fact, have one of these cases in my own life where I was a teenager when an occurrence happened that the rest of my family remembers very clearly. I was present and happened over and over, but I have erased it from my memory, and I completely do not remember it ever happening. It’s very strange that I can’t call that up out of my memory. So, I know it happens.
GT 26:43 Oh, wow, yeah, that’s interesting.
Cheryl 26:45 So that could be a possibility. And then the last possibility is that she said at one time, she was referring to some documents. She was saying that, if I never saw it, I don’t have anything to say about it. So a possibility, if indeed, she was not a part of Eliza and Emily’s marriages, and she never saw with her own eyes Joseph Smith marrying these other women, she may have felt like she could deny it and say, Well, I never personally saw it, so it just didn’t happen.
GT 27:23 That would refer to the first secret ceremony. Is that what you’re referring to?
Cheryl 27:28 No, the second one. If there was not a second ceremony where she actually participated, then she might never have seen. She might have heard rumors, but she never saw Joseph, actually, with these other women.
GT 27:43 So, you’re saying that she could have agreed to the sealing and but not participated?
Cheryl 27:49 No. She never agreed to anything, and she never saw anything, which is a possibility that I that I mentioned in here in my chapter. If she never agreed to anything, she never saw anything, then she could say, “Well, I don’t think he did it.” I think she knew he did it, but she could say, “I wasn’t part of it.”
GT 28:09 Would some people call that lying, where she had good evidence that he was participating, but she just refused to acknowledge it? {Cheryl nods.} Okay,
Cheryl 28:21 But really, we don’t know. And so we have to look at these possibilities. We have to look at the evidence that we have, and make suppositions. And so, I think that that is why the polygamy skeptics are important to listen to. Because Joseph Smith had many marriages, and they can take some of them and show that perhaps we don’t have as much evidence as we think we do. Right?
GT 28:50 Okay.
Cheryl 28:51 So, for example, the Lawrence sisters, who were also in the Joseph Smith home at the same time as the Partridge Sisters; we don’t have good evidence for them either. One of them actually denied that she ever what was had a relationship with Joseph Smith. So, let’s balance the evidence. Let’s see what we have. Let’s look at it again. If we want to maintain our narrative that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, we have to actually engage with this evidence again, with our new insights that we have, and try to figure it out. Is it as strong as we thought it was?
GT 29:34 Okay.
Cheryl 29:35 If it’s not, then we got to look at it again.
GT 29:36 Okay.
Emma’s Other Denials
GT 29:40 So let’s see. I’m trying to decide. Do we want to go with the Lawrence sisters? Is that the next denial, or are there other denials that we’d like to talk about with Emma?
Cheryl 29:50 I mean, Emma never directly talked about the Lawrence sisters. But let’s talk about some of her denials. I think some of her denials had to do with her sons, because she always told her sons that she never practiced polygamy. And so then they went out to Utah, after they had associated with the Reorganized Church. They went out to Utah to be missionaries for the Reorganized Church, and they preached that Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy. So, in the 1860s Joseph F Smith and Joseph Smith, III, who were cousins, had this series of letters that went back and forth. Joseph Smith, III defended his mother, saying she wasn’t a liar. And Joseph F Smith saying, Oh, everybody knows that.
GT 37:29 Joseph F was Hyrum’s son.
Cheryl 37:33 Right. So then in Utah Territory, in 1866 they went to a California Joseph Smith, III and his brother Alexander, went to a mission in California. On their way over there, they stopped in Utah, and they did the same thing where they tried to preach to these people and Joseph F. Smith was trying to introduce them to or gather together some of the women that he knew were plural wives of Joseph Smith, and get affidavits from them to testify that they had practiced polygamy because they didn’t want Joseph Smith, III to think that. There wasn’t a lot of evidence at that point. So a lot of the evidence that we have comes after Joseph F Smith wanted to gather together these affidavits and testimonies from the women who had participated in it.
GT 31:45 Okay, so that was the reason. Okay, that’s interesting.
Cheryl 31:49 Then, in the 1870s David Smith went over. He was a very fragile one of the sons of Joseph Smith, who was pretty fragile.
GT 31:57 Emma was pregnant with David, when Joseph died
Cheryl 32:00 Right. That’s who that was. He went out to Utah, and they say that there’s some reason to think that he was very disturbed by evidence that he encountered when he went out to Utah, that his father had participated in polygamy. It was one of many reasons why he later entered an institution. He was institutionalized for mental issues. But I want to read this too, because this is, this is where we get that idea from, a note in David’s file at the Northern Illinois Hospital and Asylum for the Insane. “He, David, with his brother, had been joined together in preaching and teaching against the plurality of wives, and had argued against same in 1873. It was proved to him that his father did believe in The doctrine and met several of his wives. Also saw many men who used to be with his father who told him the same. This was a disappointment to him, and he disliked to take sides against his brother,” who was Joseph Smith III, “or going with him. David regarded that his mother deceived him in relation to the matter. The conclusion was “The result was the impairment of his mind.” So, the people at the asylum felt that his brain issues had to do with him finding out that his father was a polygamist.
GT 33:32 I mean, that would be hard to accept, especially when you told your whole life it didn’t happen. Yeah. Okay, that was in the 1870s you said?
Cheryl 33:42 Right.
GT 33:43 I’m trying to remember when Emma died.
Cheryl 33:48 1879. She gets her last testimony.
GT 33:50 Okay.
Cheryl 33:51 And Joseph Smith…
GT 33:52 This is the most well-known denial.
Cheryl 33:55 Joseph Smith, III. Missionaries from Utah would come to Nauvoo and talk with Emma, and so several of them wrote down. Always their question was “Did Smith practice polygamy?” It seemed that every time someone asked her, that she denied it. But then, and right before she died, her son, Joseph Smith, III, came to her, and he has notes of an interview that he had with her. This is when he grilled her on the subjectShe very clearly said that Joseph never practiced it.
GT 34:31 Okay.
Cheryl 34:32 So he published it then after her death, because she died very soon after this interview, and then it was published.
GT 34:39 In the Saints Herald, I believe, and that was in 1879.
Cheryl 34:44 One of the questions he asked was, “What about the revelation on polygamy? Did Joseph Smith have anything like it? What of spiritual wifery?” So he’s trying to drill down there. Right.
GT 34:54 I usually say spiritual wife-ery. Is there a reason why you say whiff-ery?
Cheryl 34:58 That’s just how I’ve always said.
GT 35:01 Okay, so, because I noticed John Dinger said that too, and I was like, Oh, I always thought it was spiritual wife-ery.
Cheryl 35:09 Okay, well, I guess you could pronounce it either way. She replied. In his notes, he says she replied, there was no revelation on either polygamy or spiritual wives. So see, there’s not a lot of wiggle room there. 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. So, isn’t that interesting? It seems to me, like Joseph is a bit more evasive than Emma was. Emma’s saying no. But then she when she quotes what, what her husband said to her, that seems like a little bit of an evasive answer.
GT 36:01 I wonder, could she be referring to celestial plural marriage instead of those other terms like polygamy and spiritual wifery?
Cheryl 36:10 Yeah.
GT 36:12 I mean, that would be a carefully worded denial.
Cheryl 36:15 That would that would be a carefully worded denial. Yes.
GT 36:18 Okay, because they didn’t ask about celestial plural marriage.
Cheryl 36:21 True, true.
Strongest Case for Emma’s Denials
Cheryl 36:23 So, hmm. You gave, was it four possibilities that Emma might have, or reasons why she might have been denying this? Do you have a sense that one’s case is stronger than the other?
Cheryl 36391 I feel that I don’t like the carefully worded denials one as much as the others. I mean, I don’t have really any evidence that would point to one over the other. So that’s why. I mean, some people can look at this chapter and say, you’re really being wishy-washy. But I feel like as historians, sometimes we have to do that. We have to say when we have evidence of something and when we really don’t. This is something that is a conundrum. Because I really do believe that she was aware. There is evidence that she was aware of the rumors and of Joseph. But we just don’t have evidence of why she would deny it.
GT 37:22 Yeah, because she was the first president of the Relief Society. She turned that organization into an anti-polygamy group.
Cheryl 37:33 Yes, it seems like Joseph Smith was making it a polygamy positive place to be.
GT 37:44 Her counselors were polygamous.
Cheryl 37:45 Yeah, she would not have it.
GT 37:37 They were working against each other, which I can see why. It’s interesting, because we don’t want to call Emma lying about these denials, but there’s not evidence that, for example, she participated in the Partridge sealings. So where do we stand on this is? It’s just vague, and we can’t come up with any answers?
Cheryl 38:18 I’m always uncomfortable when people are saying, “Oh, he lied about this.” Or she lied about that, because I don’t know that I’ve always in my life been truthful. But I’ve tried to be. I wouldn’t say that I’m a liar, but sometimes there are reasons that you might want to present something as a little bit different. Does that make sense? Then somebody could come back and say, “You are a liar”, and technically they’d be right. But there are reasons why, like John Dinger pointed out, that there are legal reasons why Joseph Smith might not have wanted to make it public that he was practicing. And so there may have been reasons that Emma had that make perfect sense. Especially the one where, if she blocked it out of her mind, I wouldn’t necessarily, then say that she was lying about it. Or if you promise to keep something secret you don’t [tell.]
GT 39:20 You’re supposed to keep it secret. That’s very interesting.
Cheryl 39:27 I think there’s ways that you can behave with integrity and still technically be lying about something. People are going to blast me for that. But there it is.
{End of Part 2}
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