Road to Helen Mar Kimball
Michelle Stone was supposed to be writing about Sarah Ann Whitney when she stumbled onto the patriarchal blessing of Helen Mar Kimball. Every time she sat down to work on Sarah Ann, she says, she felt something like a stupor of thought, and she took it as a sign to stop. So she went back to Sarah Ann’s blessing, written on unusual pink-bordered paper.
The only other known document on that kind of paper is a poem Helen wrote to her mother, and that trail led Michelle to Helen’s own patriarchal blessing, dated May 28, 1843. That’s the month usually given for Helen’s marriage to Joseph Smith, yet Michelle says the blessing makes it “abundantly clear” that Helen was not married and had no plans to be. The blessing is in William Clayton’s handwriting and recorded in his journal, and Michelle calls it the earliest document we have for Helen. She wondered why it hadn’t been used, noting that Brian Hales’s collection of the sources leaves it out.
Road to School
Getting to that paper took a long road. Michelle had a full presidential scholarship at BYU and left in her final year to have her first baby, who is now 28. After some very hard years, and after taking her 132 Problems channel down, she felt she was supposed to go back to school. BYU’s options for returning students didn’t work out, so her husband suggested Utah Valley University. She called on the last day to enroll and was told there were no advising appointments for two weeks. Then, while she was still on the phone, someone canceled a 2:00 appointment.
She met with an advisor, enrolled, and started class the next day. UVU accepted her credits (except religion), she needed only 30 to graduate, and she spent a full senior year in history. She graduated with a 4.0, summa cum laude, and between a scholarship and a grant she paid no tuition. Her advice to returning students: “Go to UVU, not BYU.”
Why Pick Polygamy?
Going back was terrifying and thrilling. Academic writing took some adjustment after podcasting, where she liked to build to a big reveal. But compared with the endless laundry, dishes and cooking of a big family, school felt like Christmas. Michelle is candid that as an overwhelmed young mom she used to pray for a housekeeper and think, “This is why we need polygamy.” Now she sees it differently: another wife brings more needs and more children, and “another woman does not need to be my servant.” Picture a 20-year-old moving into a 30-year-old woman’s home to care for her seven children, she says. “That’s horrible and unfair, right? And that’s what polygamy is.”
Her senior thesis, a historiography of how Helen’s story has been told, ran more than twice the 35 pages required and won the Lucille T. Stoddard Senior Thesis Award. It was later published in the Journal of Mormon Polygamy as “Constructing Helen: Absences, Ambiguities, & Adjustments.” To critics who dismissed it as just an undergraduate award, Michelle points to the Phi Alpha Theta regional conference at Weber State, where she presented a different paper and UVU won both the undergraduate and the overall best paper awards.
In Part 4, coming Tuesday, Michelle explains what a historiography is, answers people who say she has an agenda, and I break some news about where she’s starting her PhD. Members can get the whole interview right now at patreon.com/gospeltangents. Listen to the full conversation wherever you get your podcasts.
Don’t miss our other conversations with Michelle: https://gospeltangents.com/people/michelle-stone/
Copyright © 2026
Gospel Tangents
All Rights Reserved
Chapters
0:00 Going Back to School
1:16 Why She Took Her Channel Down
4:12 Trying BYU Again
6:13 “Why Don’t You Call UVU?”
10:08 “Why Can’t I Have a Housekeeper?”
11:40 4.0, Summa Cum Laude & a Full Scholarship
13:50 Lucille T. Stoddard Award
15:31 UVU at Phi Alpha Theta
18:33 “Constructing Helen”
19:58 Sarah Ann Whitney’s Pink-Bordered Blessing
20:19 Helen’s May 1843 Patriarchal Blessing
21:19 Can You Trust William Clayton?
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 23:35 — 32.6MB) | Embed
Subscribe: Email | | More
