A comprehensive timeline of secret plural marriages, public denials, rejected proposals, surviving correspondence, and the deception of Emma Smith
"Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing
but inwardly are ravenous wolves." — Matthew 7:15
This timeline presents a chronological record of Joseph Smith's plural marriages, rejected proposals, public denials of polygamy, surviving correspondence, and his wife Emma's discoveries and reactions. Every entry is drawn from primary source documentation: LDS Church-published records (Joseph Smith Papers, History of the Church), court depositions (Temple Lot Case), personal journals (William Clayton), contemporary newspapers, and peer-reviewed scholarship — Todd Compton (In Sacred Loneliness), Brian Hales (Joseph Smith's Polygamy), Richard Bushman (Rough Stone Rolling), and Fawn Brodie (No Man Knows My History).
The pattern that emerges is one of sustained, calculated deception: while privately contracting at least 30–40 plural marriages, Joseph Smith simultaneously and repeatedly denied the practice to his own followers, to the public, and to his own wife. This is not the portrait of a man gradually introducing a difficult doctrine — it is the portrait of duplicity — the very opposite of what Catholics understand as the transparency, humility, and truthfulness required of authentic prophetic witness (cf. Deuteronomy 18:20–22; Matthew 7:15–20).
Joseph Smith marries Emma Hale in South Bainbridge, New York. She is his only legal wife and will remain so until his death. All subsequent "marriages" were religious ceremonies with no civil standing, kept secret from both Emma and the public.
The Book of Mormon contains an unambiguous condemnation of polygamy: "David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord… there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife." D&C 132 will later directly contradict this passage.
Smith dictates a revelation: "Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh." This will directly contradict D&C 132 twelve years later.
Associates later state Smith received an early revelation on plural marriage during his Bible translation work around 1831. No contemporaneous written record exists. The claim is reconstructed entirely from later reminiscences, after polygamy was already being practiced.
Smith's first plural relationship. Fanny is a teenage household servant in the Smith home in Kirtland, Ohio. Oliver Cowdery (Smith's scribe and co-founder) called it a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair."
William McLellin reported a conversation with Emma in 1847 (accepted by LDS and non-LDS historians): "One night she missed Joseph and Fanny Alger. She went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!!!" Fanny was expelled from the household.
The 1835 Doctrine & Covenants includes: "Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband." This statement remained until 1876, when it was quietly removed and replaced with Section 132.
Cowdery, who had called the Alger relationship a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair," is excommunicated. Among the charges: accusing Smith of adultery. The man who bore witness to Smith's misconduct is removed.
An early recorded denial: Joseph states he does not have "more wives than one? No, not at the same time."
First documented Nauvoo plural marriage. Sealed by Joseph B. Noble, who later testified under oath. Emma was not informed.
Zina and Henry Bailey Jacobs were a young couple deeply in love. She was seven months pregnant with Henry's child when sealed to Smith. Smith had first proposed in 1840 — Zina refused. After she married Henry, Smith came back, claiming an angel with a drawn sword compelled him. Zina testified: "I made a greater sacrifice than to give my life for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman."
Zina's older sister, also legally married to another man (Norman Buell). Smith married both sisters — both while married to other men.
While Marinda's husband, Apostle Orson Hyde, is away on a mission to Palestine (since April 1841), Smith receives a revelation directing her to "hearken to the counsel of my servant Joseph in all things." Marinda would subsequently become one of Smith's polyandrous wives — sealed to him while her husband served the mission Smith himself had assigned.
English convert Martha Brotherton, in Nauvoo only three weeks, was lured by Heber C. Kimball to a locked upstairs room at Smith's Red Brick Store. Brigham Young proposed she become his plural wife, telling her Smith had a revelation authorizing it. Smith personally entered the room to endorse the proposal, reportedly offering himself as an alternative. Martha refused and fled. She told her parents, and the family left Nauvoo. She later published a sworn affidavit (July 13, 1842). In response, Young and Kimball swore counter-affidavits calling her account "a base falsehood" — Smith orchestrated their distribution. In a final irony, Brigham Young had Martha sealed to himself by proxy after her death in 1870.
Agnes Coolbrith (33) — widow of Smith's own brother Don Carlos. Sylvia Sessions Lyon (23) — already married to Windsor Lyon; she later told her daughter Josephina on her deathbed that Josephina was Smith's biological daughter (DNA testing has not confirmed this). Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner (23) — already married to Adam Lightner; testified Smith told her an angel with a drawn sword threatened him; first approached by Smith when she was 12. Patty Bartlett Sessions (47) — already married to David Sessions; served as go-between recruiting younger women.
Hyrum Smith references the Martha Brotherton rumors — a "sister shut in a room for several days." Joseph follows: "there is no person that is acquainted with our principles would believe such lies, except Sharp the editor of the 'Warsaw Signal.'"
Already married to Apostle Orson Hyde, still abroad on the Palestine mission Smith had assigned him. Smith married Hyde's wife while Hyde served Smith's own church overseas.
Smith proposed marriage to Nancy, daughter of his First Counselor Sidney Rigdon, after arranging a private meeting through Marinda Hyde. According to Nancy's brother John W. Rigdon (1905 affidavit): Smith "made the proposal of marriage to my sister" and Nancy "flatly refused." Bennett's more detailed account (corroborated in outline) states Smith took Nancy into a private room, locked the door, told her he had "long loved her" and God approved. Nancy "repulsed him and was about to raise the neighbors" until he unlocked the door. Smith later claimed he had been "testing her virtue."
After Nancy's rejection, Smith dictated a letter (through Willard Richards) delivered to Nancy. It famously argues:
"That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another. God said, 'Thou shalt not kill;' at another time He said 'Thou shalt utterly destroy.'"
This letter — written to pressure a 19-year-old into accepting a secret polygamous proposal — has been quoted approvingly in LDS General Conference for over 150 years without disclosing its original context. The Joseph Smith Papers preserves a manuscript copy designated "Joseph's Letter to Nancy Rigdon." Smith publicly denied authorship.
Sarah M. Cleveland (50) was Emma's counselor in the Relief Society. Eliza R. Snow (38), the prominent poetess, served as secretary of the Relief Society — the organization Emma had formed to combat rumors of polygamy. Both women — Emma's closest Relief Society associates — were now secretly married to Emma's husband behind her back. Both would sign the October 1842 denial.
Martha publishes her sworn account. Published in the St. Louis American Bulletin (July 16), the Sangamo Journal (July 22), the Warsaw Signal (July 23), and the New York Herald (July 25, 27). Smith orchestrates a campaign of counter-affidavits. Brigham Young swears under oath her account is "a base falsehood" — two months after he had secretly married his own first plural wife. Heber C. Kimball likewise swears it false.
Daughter of Bishop Newel K. Whitney. Her father officiated the ceremony. A specific revelation gave Whitney the exact words for the sealing. The Whitneys later arranged a sham civil marriage to Joseph C. Kingsbury to disguise Sarah Ann's relationship with Smith.
While hiding from Missouri lawmen, Smith writes to Bishop Whitney, his wife, and Sarah Ann — one of the few surviving letters directly tying Smith to a plural wife, in his own handwriting:
"My feelings are so strong for you since what has pased lately between us… the only thing to be careful of; is to find out when Emma comes then you cannot be safe, but when she is not here, there is the most perfect safty… burn this letter as soon as you read it; keep all locked up in your breasts."
Two days prior, he had written Emma a love letter closing: "Yours in haste, your affectionate husband until death, through all eternity; for evermore."
The Times and Seasons publishes a statement signed by 18 women (including Emma Smith as RS President): "We do hereby certify and declare that we know of no other rule or system of marriage than the one published from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants." Among the signers: Eliza R. Snow (secretly married to Smith since June), Sarah M. Cleveland (also secretly married to Smith), and Newel K. Whitney, who had officiated his own daughter's sealing to Smith in July. This is perhaps the single most damning document of deliberate collective deception.
Emma discovers the relationship between Joseph and Eliza R. Snow, living in the Smith household. Evidence supports a physical confrontation occurred. According to one account, Emma threw Eliza down the stairs. Whether Eliza was pregnant and miscarried is debated. Eliza moved out.
The Partridge sisters, orphans living in the Smith household, were each sealed to Smith without the other's knowledge and without Emma's knowledge. Emily later testified under oath: "Joseph had tried to make these things known to me several months before — I think in the spring or summer of '42, but I had shut him up so quick that he said no more." Emily confirmed under oath in the Temple Lot Case that she "slept with him in the same bed."
"We are charged with advocating a plurality of wives, and common property. Now this is as false as the many other ridiculous charges which are brought against us. No sect have a greater reverence for the laws of matrimony… and we do what others do not, practice what we preach."
Lucy Walker (age 17) was an orphan in the Smith household. Smith told her: "I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter. If you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you." She accepted. Smith married Lucy on May 1, 1843, while Emma was away in St. Louis. Lucy later said: "Emma Smith was not present and she did not consent to the marriage; she did not know anything about it at all."
After months of persuasion, Emma briefly accepts plural marriage on condition she choose the women. She selects the Partridge and Lawrence sisters. On May 11, Emily and Eliza Partridge are re-sealed to Smith in Emma's presence — they had already been secretly married in March. Emily recalled: "Emma seemed to feel well until the ceremony was over, when almost before she could draw a second breath, she turned, and was more bitter in her feelings than ever before."
Orphaned teenagers whose estate Smith managed as their court-appointed legal guardian. He married his own wards. Smith was later charged (though not convicted) with mismanaging their inheritance.
Smith approached Apostle Heber C. Kimball and asked for Heber's wife, Vilate — a woman Heber loved deeply. Heber was devastated. He agonized for three days, during which he reportedly "touched neither food nor water for three days and three nights." Finally, Heber and Vilate together went to Joseph and consented to surrender Vilate to him. At that point, Smith told them it had been only a test — an "Abrahamic test" of their faithfulness and obedience, like God testing Abraham with Isaac.
But the test had a price. Smith then told Heber what he actually wanted: their 14-year-old daughter, Helen. Heber, having just proven his willingness to give up his own wife, was now in no position to refuse his daughter. Smith promised Helen the marriage would ensure "your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father's household." Helen, believing she was securing her family's salvation, consented. She later wrote that she had understood it as a purely ceremonial "eternity only" sealing — but discovered afterward that it carried present-life consequences. She was barred from attending a dance with friends her own age, and wrote bitterly: "I felt as a bird in a cage… I could not enjoy the pleasure of youth. In the month of June I learned the real intent."
Helen was 14 years old — the youngest documented wife. Her father, who had been emotionally broken by the "test," was left to deliver his own daughter into the arrangement. The entire episode reveals a pattern of calculated psychological manipulation: create an impossible demand, relent to produce relief and gratitude, then extract the actual concession while the subject is too emotionally spent to resist.
Emma discovers the Partridge sisters were already married to Joseph before she "chose" them. She demands they be expelled. Emily recalled: "She turned against us after that… Emma knew that we were married to him, but she never allowed us to live with him." William Clayton records Emma threatening to take plural husbands herself.
Smith marries at least seven more women in rapid succession. Ages range from 16 to 58.
At Hyrum's urging, Smith dictates the revelation on celestial marriage (now D&C 132). The revelation includes a direct threat to Emma: "I command mine handmaid, Emma Smith, to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord" (D&C 132:54). It requires wives to be virgins (v. 61) and Emma's consent (v. 61) — conditions Smith had already violated dozens of times. It claims David "sinned not" in having many wives (v. 38–39), contradicting Jacob 2:24.
Hyrum reads the revelation to Emma. She rejects it. Clayton recorded she was "very bitter and full of resentment and anger." She reportedly destroys the handwritten copy (Clayton had made a backup). She expels the Partridge sisters, threatens divorce, and may have demanded to be sealed to William Law.
From Smith's handwritten journal: "Gave inst[r]uction to try those who were preaching teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. On this Law. Joseph forbids it. And the practice ther[e]of — No man shall have but one wife." When the Manuscript History was later compiled, a crucial qualifier was inserted: "unless the Lord directs otherwise."
Smith proposed to Jane Law, wife of his First Counselor William Law. Jane later recalled Smith "asked her to give him half her love; she was at liberty to keep the other half for her husband." She refused. William Law demanded Joseph publicly confess and denounce polygamy as "from Hell." Joseph refused. Law was removed from the First Presidency (Jan 8, 1844) and excommunicated (April 18). The Laws purchased a printing press.
Published in the Times and Seasons: "An Elder… by the name of Hiram Brown, has been preaching Polygamy, and other false and corrupt doctrines." Brown was excommunicated for publicly preaching what Smith was secretly practicing. Hyrum Smith himself had 3–4 plural wives at this time.
"Some of your elders say, that a man having a certain priesthood, may have as many wives as he pleases, and that doctrine is taught here: I say unto you that that man teaches false doctrine, for there is no such doctrine taught here; neither is there any such thing practiced here." Hyrum Smith himself was practicing polygamy at this time.
Preaching from the stand in Nauvoo: "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers." Delivered weeks before his death. He had at least 30 wives.
William and Wilson Law, former close associates, publish the first (and only) edition of the Nauvoo Expositor. The paper exposes Smith's practice of plural marriage with affidavits and firsthand testimony. The publishers — many of them former insiders — had intimate knowledge of what they were reporting. William Law's condition for reconciliation had been that Smith "acknowledge publicly that he had taught and practised the doctrine of plurality of wives… and that he should own the whole system (revelation and all) to be from Hell." Smith refused.
At the Nauvoo City Council, Hyrum states the plural marriage revelation "was in answer to a question concerning things which transpired in former days, and had no reference to the present time." This was false — D&C 132 explicitly commands Joseph Smith by name and threatens Emma specifically.
The City Council unanimously declares the Expositor a "public nuisance." Mayor Smith orders the marshal, assisted by ~200 men from the Nauvoo Legion, to destroy the press. They burn every copy, scatter the type, wreck the press, and gut the building. William Law recalled: "The Smiths thought they had killed it; whereas, by destroying the press, they gave it a new lease of life and extra power to overthrow them."
Joseph and Hyrum Smith are killed by a mob at Carthage Jail. The destruction of the Expositor was the proximate cause of Joseph's arrest. The concealed practice of plural marriage — and the desperate efforts to suppress its exposure — was the single most important factor in the chain of events leading to his death. He died without ever publicly acknowledging his polygamy.
Eight years after Smith's death and safely settled in Utah Territory, Orson Pratt publicly announces plural marriage and reads D&C 132 for the first time to a general audience. Pratt had temporarily left the Church in 1842 because his wife claimed Smith had proposed to her. The denials of the Nauvoo period were now rendered undeniably false by the Church's own leaders.
In a famous interview with her son Joseph Smith III shortly before her death, Emma denied to the end: "He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have." While Emma's denial is understandable as the grief and dignity of a woman profoundly betrayed, it cannot be sustained against the overwhelming documentary evidence — much of it from LDS sources themselves.
The documented record presents an unmistakable pattern: Joseph Smith contracted at least 30–40 secret plural marriages — including polyandrous unions with women already married to faithful followers — while simultaneously and repeatedly denying the practice to his own congregation, to the public, and frequently to his own wife. He orchestrated affidavits from his own secret plural wives denying the very marriages they had entered. He excommunicated members for publicly teaching what he privately practiced. He destroyed a printing press to suppress the truth.
From a Catholic theological perspective, this pattern is disqualifying. The Catholic understanding of prophetic authority, rooted in Scripture and Tradition, requires that a true prophet bear witness to truth, not systematically deny it (cf. John 8:32, 44; Matthew 5:37). The Catechism teaches that "lying is the most direct offense against the truth" (CCC 2483) and that "by its very nature, lying is to be condemned" (CCC 2485). A man who lies repeatedly and systematically about a practice he claims is commanded by God does not meet any recognizable standard of prophetic integrity — biblical, patristic, or philosophical.
The Catholic Church has always taught that prophets and saints, while imperfect, must demonstrate fundamental truthfulness and integrity in their public witness. The sustained campaign of deception documented above is not the portrait of a flawed-but-genuine prophet. It is the portrait of a man who, by his own fruits, fails the test Christ himself established: "By their fruits ye shall know them" (Matthew 7:20).
The Joseph Smith Papers Project (LDS Church-published primary documents) · JSP: Letter to Nancy Rigdon, ca. Mid-April 1842 · JSP: Letter to Whitneys, August 18, 1842 · JSP: Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132] · JosephSmithsPolygamy.org (Brian Hales) · A Careful Examination: Polygamy Denials · Mormon Polygamy Documents: 23 Polygamy Denials · IRR: Joseph Smith Statements Denying Polygamy · IRR: Chart of Joseph Smith's Plural Wives · Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Signature Books, 1997) · Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith's Polygamy, 3 vols. (Greg Kofford Books, 2013) · Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (Knopf, 2005) · Fawn M. Brodie, No Man Knows My History, 2nd ed. (Knopf, 1971) · Linda King Newell & Valeen Tippetts Avery, Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith (Univ. of Illinois Press, 1994) · George D. Smith, Nauvoo Polygamy (Signature Books, 2008) · John C. Bennett, History of the Saints (1842) · William Clayton, An Intimate Chronicle, ed. George D. Smith (Signature Books, 1995) · Martha H. Brotherton, Affidavit, July 13, 1842 · John W. Rigdon, Affidavit, July 28, 1905 · History of the Church, 7 vols. · Temple Lot Case depositions (1892–1894) · Book of Mormon, Jacob 2:24–30 · Doctrine and Covenants Sections 49, 101 (1835 ed.), 132