Introduction and Guest Background

Part 1 of 3 · Ep. 12

John Dehlin [00:00:11] Hello and welcome to the Mormon Stories podcast. This is John Dehlin. Very excited to have you with us today. We have taken a bit of a vacation from the podcast. We apologize for that. But we're very excited to bring you a new episode today. Today we are fortunate to have with us Todd Compton. Todd Compton is a well known author. He is a PhD in classics from UCLA, but he's probably most widely known in the Mormon study circles for having authored a book on polygamy called In Sacred Loneliness. And he also edited the journals of Helen Marr Whitney that was published through the Utah State University Press. And he's of course published in both Sunstone and Dialogue Journals. But we're very excited to have Todd with us today. Todd, thanks for coming on.

Todd Compton [00:01:04] Yeah, thanks for having me.

John Dehlin [00:01:06] Today's going to be a little bit interesting. I was fortunate enough to catch your interview on Times and Seasons yesterday. Very interesting read. So kudos to you and for Times and Seasons for putting that together. Was that your first sort of participation in the bloggernacle or have you done other interviews?

Todd Compton [00:01:28] I haven't done other interviews. I've done little responses to things every now and then, but I haven't done much with the Blogger Knuckle.

John Dehlin [00:01:40] Well, let me offer you an official welcome to the Blogger Knuckle then.

Todd Compton [00:01:47] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:01:48] It's an interesting place. Anyway, today's going to be a little bit different from the article published in Times and Seasons or the interview, because I'm thinking about titling this polygamy 101. What I'd love to do is just basically in whatever time we're able to pull together, cover the basics on polygamy. Not in a scandalous way, not in a way to dig up dirt, but just for someone who wants to know what, what are the basic facts? You know, what are they? But before we do that, Todd, what I'd love to do is just learn a little bit about you, if you don't mind. Tell us just if you don't mind really briefly, sort of what your background is in Mormonism, Mormon studies. What piqued your interest in Mormon studies and what led you to want to write a book on this important topic?

Todd Compton [00:02:43] I'm from Utah and was raised in the Church, so I've always kind of had an interest in Mormon history. When I went to byu, I was very interested in Hugh Nibley and kind of was a follower of Hugh Nibley for quite a while and got interested in the ancient world. So I went to UCLA and got a PhD in classics, which is Greek And Latin. And then after I graduated, I had a hard time finding a job. And by kind of an odd sequence of events, I got kind of a fellowship to study the journals of Eliza R. Snow at the Huntington Library.

John Dehlin [00:03:35] Where's that?

Todd Compton [00:03:36] Pasadena, California. And they have the original journals of Helen Marr Whitney. I mean, Eliza R. Snow. And so as I was studying those journals, trying to understand them, she referred to a lot of women. And I was trying to understand who. Just simply who these women were. And so I realized she was a wife of Brigham Young. So I needed a good list of Brigham Young's wives and needed a good list of Heber J. Not Heber C. Kimball's wives, because the young wives and the Heber C. Kimball wives were really, really close. And I realized I needed a good list of Joseph Smith's wives.

John Dehlin [00:04:28] Around what year was this that you were reading?

Todd Compton [00:04:31] Oh, this might have been, what, 92, 93, something like that? 94.

John Dehlin [00:04:37] And just out of curiosity, how did Eliza R. Snow's papers get donated to the Huntington Library?

Todd Compton [00:04:48] It's just one of those things. They've always had an interest in Mormon. In Mormon documents. And Juanita Brooks actually brought a lot of documents down there to them, and so I think they were sold to the library.

John Dehlin [00:05:10] Is that affiliated with UCLA, then?

Todd Compton [00:05:13] No, no, not connected in any way.

John Dehlin [00:05:15] Interesting.

Todd Compton [00:05:18] So I don't believe it was one of the descendants of Lorenzo Snow, I think. Who? I don't think he donated them. I think he sold them. So that's how they ended up there.

John Dehlin [00:05:31] Oh, and so this was in 92. So it was pre Internet, pre Google, so to speak.

Todd Compton [00:05:36] Something like that? Kind of. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:05:37] Okay. Okay.

Todd Compton [00:05:38] Around then 93, something like that, we might have had Internet, but it was pretty primitive.

John Dehlin [00:05:44] Right? Okay. So you started compiling these lists.

Todd Compton [00:05:49] So I found out that there really wasn't a good list of Joseph Smith's wives. And the closest thing we had was the appendix of no Man Knows My History by Fawn Brody. And I really thought she didn't do a good job of compiling, you know, that list she has. And so.

John Dehlin [00:06:12] So up until this point, all those years of Sunstone and Dialogue Publishing, there hadn't been any significant articles in those journals or others that listed the wives or attempted to.

Todd Compton [00:06:26] No, not really. It's kind of interesting, huh? Danielle Bachman, who's a person who was in this church educational system, he had done a really good. Master's thesis on Joseph Smith's polygamy, but that was never published, and it wasn't widely distributed.

Todd Compton [00:06:56] And actually, in that he really didn't come up with a list himself. George Smith eventually published an article on Nauvoo polygamy, and there was kind of a list there of Joseph Smith's wives, but he didn't have a biography of these wise of Joseph Smith.

Todd Compton [00:07:19] So I found out to make a list, you kind of had to. So anyway, I'm jumping ahead here, but I decided, since no one had created a list, it would be a good contribution to Mormon studies to create a really reliable list of Joseph Smith's wives. And to do that, I found out that I really had to study the evidence to find out which really were Joseph Smith's wives, because some of Fawn Brody's entries were based on really shaky bad evidence.

Todd Compton [00:07:54] And also I found out that some of these women were pretty obscure. So you had to make sure you were identifying the right person. So you had to, you know, do like, all the standard things. You had to have the birth date, death date, date of marriages. And to do that, you had to start writing little biographies. So that's how I started. I just wanted a good, reliable list of Joseph Smith's plural wives. And to do that, I had to write little biographies. And then the little biographies, I got interested in their lives. And so the little biographies became bigger biographies. That's how the book was written.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Now, were you one of those members of the church that sort of was taught from early years that Joseph had many wives, or did you stumble upon that later?

Todd Compton [00:08:43] You know, I don't remember. When I found out about it, I was always kind of interested in Mormon history. So I probably found out about it fairly early. But it was never something I was. Polygamy was, you know, it was just something that was interesting. But I never went out of my way to find out about it.

Todd Compton [00:09:03] I think I had read Religion and Sexuality by Lawrence Foster, which is a really fine book that deals with Mormon polygamy. It compares Mormon polygamy to two other kind of utopian groups in early America. You know, I'd read it, and it was interesting, but it wasn't a main focus for me. And I began writing this book purely. I began doing the research for my book purely to understand the journals of Elizar Snow better, because she would refer to someone as Sister, you know, Sister Kimball, and I would want to know who the heck that might be. Or she would refer to someone by a first name or call someone, you know, Louisa. And I'd want to find out who that Loisa was.

John Dehlin [00:09:50] Sure. Okay.

Todd Compton [00:09:53] Well, then, of course, then, you know, I started Reading the diaries and, you know, autobiographies of these women, and they really had wonderful, wonderfully interesting, dramatic lives. So I ended up writing these fuller biographies and trying to capture some of the drama and interest in their lives.

John Dehlin [00:10:17] Very good. Well, then let's. Then, now that we understand sort of how you got to the point of authoring the book, let's go ahead and jump into the content. And then after we've sort of discussed the content, then we'll jump back to reactions about the book and what the experience was like writing the book and maybe ask you some questions about how things are today. How does that sound?

Todd Compton [00:10:41] Sure.

Biblical and Early Mormon Origins of Polygamy

John Dehlin [00:10:42] So let's just do a really quick beginning. Tell us really briefly what the biblical origins of polygamy are. From the Old Testament standpoint,

Todd Compton [00:10:57] Polygamy is kind of a important Semitic marriage custom. And so it's practiced today in many parts of Africa, in the Near East, Arabic. It's part of Islamic culture. I believe a lot of Native Americans had polygamous wives. I don't know if they still do, but they did when.

Todd Compton [00:11:32] Whites came and started living among them. So it's one of the standard marriage customs in the Old Testament. So you have people like Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, I believe, were all polygamists. And then you have, of course, kings like King David and King Solomon were polygamous also.

Todd Compton [00:11:57] And I believe in the days of Jesus that polygamy wasn't widely practiced. But there was, you know, some Jews practiced it. You know, it was just a lot rarer in those days. And of course, at some point, I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point, I believe Judaism stopped practicing it altogether.

Todd Compton [00:12:22] However, as I mentioned, in Islamic nations, it is still practiced. I believe they limit it to four wives, though, which is an interesting practical limitation.

John Dehlin [00:12:33] Right. Number four. So what are the first, you know, you hear about things going on in Kirtland? You know, what are the first inklings or documents that you've come across that indicate that there was at least some thinking or some revelation or whatever it was. What were the seeds for polygamy within Mormonism? Where did it begin?

Todd Compton [00:13:04] Well, the very first thing I believe is the scripture in the Book of Mormon. And, gosh, I don't have it right off the top of my tongue here, but basically, where is it? Is that in Jacob, where it says he denounces polygamy among the Nephites, but he says polygamy is a bad thing unless I command?

John Dehlin [00:13:34] Right.

Todd Compton [00:13:35] Okay. And so depending on how you view the Book of Mormon, you can either View it as an inspired thing like most Mormons do, or you can, as non Mormons, view it differently. Know, Joseph Smith, even if he had just received it as a revelation, you know, that might have been the first thing that impressed him, is that God could command and give polygamy and order polygamy. So I think that's the very first reference to it.

John Dehlin [00:14:08] So to establish a timeline, then around 1829 to 1830, you know, in the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith is introduced to the concept of polygamy and as you say, the notion that it can be allowed if the Lord sanctions it. Right, okay.

Todd Compton [00:14:29] And there was another situation where some of the brethren went to the kind of a Lamanite mission. And there was some talk, I think, from Joseph Smith about possibly marrying women and Lamanite women. And some of the brethren said, how can we do that? We're already married. And Joseph Smith said, you can do it like Abraham did or Isaac or Jacob, by marrying plural wives. So that possibly happened around something like 1831, 1832. We don't have contemporary evidence for that, but someone reported it later in Utah. However, I believe my dating for the first plural marriage was 1833. I believe Joseph Smith married Fanny Alger. And so I believe it was as early as that. So that's the Kirtland period.

John Dehlin [00:15:30] So some of the reading that I've done, you know, a faithful Mormon would immediately say, well, Joseph's not going to begin marrying unless he's specifically been commanded to do so. And so the question immediately springs up, when did the commandment first come? Certainly it was before his marriage to Fanny.

Todd Compton [00:15:53] Right? Yeah. If you have, you know, if you look at it from that point of view, if you think Joseph Smith would never marry unless he was commanded, then obviously you would think that God commanded him before 1833.

Todd Compton [00:16:13] So obviously, if you're a non Mormon, you would tend to think that he came up with it on his own somehow. And I tend to have the idea of revelation as not just God pouring information into your head, more that you yourself are put forth effort to think about things and have spiritual interest in things, and you're influenced by things like reading the Scriptures.

Todd Compton [00:16:50] And so all of this might have been part of Joseph Smith's background. We know he read the Old Testament very, very carefully and was very caught up by it. He was very caught up by the example of Abraham, who was a polygamist. So depending on if you're a Mormon or a non Mormon, you kind of think that in addition to all that study and pondering. He had inspiration and revelation.

John Dehlin [00:17:19] So I was up on BYU's they have a FAC up on BYU website where it actually states there's good evidence that the revelation was received in 1831. Do you have any idea what they might be referring to when they make that claim?

Todd Compton [00:17:36] There's some later statements by people like Orson Pratt and. Orson Pratt and Hyrum Smith. Not Hyrum Smith, Joseph F. Smith. There's some statements that Joseph Smith received the revelation that early, but they're saying this, you know, like in 1850, 1860.

Todd Compton [00:18:02] And so it would be nice if we had a more contemporary piece of evidence for when precisely he received it. But according to those, you know, later statements, he did receive it that early. And by the way, the evidence for him marrying Fanny Alger in 1833 is an autobiography by Mosiah Hancock that again, he wrote later in Utah. However, he was a.

Todd Compton [00:18:32] Mosiah Hancock was a full cousin of Fanny Alger, and his father, Levi Hancock, performed a marriage according to. To Messiah. So I personally accept Messiah Hancock's autobiography as reliable. But, you know, this is an issue that historians have to deal with everywhere. It's dealing with laid evidence and evidence that's contemporary and. And you really like to get evidence as early as possible, but sometimes you have late evidence. That's good.

John Dehlin [00:19:17] Right. Okay. So there's some evidence that in 1831 there may have been a revelation based on some subsequent men. There's some decent evidence that there was a first polygamous marriage that happened around 18. You said 1833.

Todd Compton [00:19:36] 1833.

John Dehlin [00:19:37] 1833. I think others have dated up to 1834. 1835. Is that right?

Todd Compton [00:19:43] Pardon?

John Dehlin [00:19:44] Others have dated it potentially 1834. 1835.

Todd Compton [00:19:49] That's true, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:50] Okay. And did. Did Fanny actually live in. Live. Live with Joseph and Emma or what? Do you know anything about that situation?

Todd Compton [00:19:59] Yeah, she actually actually lived in the home kind of as a maid for a while.

John Dehlin [00:20:03] This is in Kirtland.

Todd Compton [00:20:05] In Kirtland, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:20:06] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:20:07] And it was a very common thing to have, you know, helping, you know, helping maids and helping almost kind of like nannies sometimes and men, you know, servants around the house. It was very common for young women to live in households. And so, yeah, she lived there for a while. We have kind of a story that, Again, this is a late story, but by someone who was there in Kirtland that Emma Smith discovered that there was a connection between Fannie and Joseph Smith and that she required Fanny to leave the house.

John Dehlin [00:20:59] Do you have a sense for what year that was approximately.

Todd Compton [00:21:04] Then we're talking about. And again, you know, we're talking about 1836, something like that. 1835. 1836.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] And do you think. Do you think Emma was the first person to find out outside of Joseph and Fanny?

Todd Compton [00:21:23] Well, I don't know. Well, no. Levi Hancock performed the marriage.

John Dehlin [00:21:26] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:21:27] So there was a small group that did know that Joseph Smith was involved in plural marriage.

John Dehlin [00:21:35] Do you know who it was?

Todd Compton [00:21:36] A very small group.

John Dehlin [00:21:36] Who else might have been in that group? Like Hire? Was Hiram in on it at that time? Do we know?

Todd Compton [00:21:46] Hard to say.

John Dehlin [00:21:47] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:21:48] It's really hard to say.

John Dehlin [00:21:49] So it's just really sketchy.

Todd Compton [00:21:51] Benjamin Johnson, who. Two of his sisters later married Joseph Smith, and he was in a lot of this early church history, and he wrote a memoir. He actually wrote a letter to Secretary of the First Presidency, and he talked about how he had learned in Kirtland that Fanny was married to Joseph Smith. So it began to be known at that time.

John Dehlin [00:22:21] Now, something just popped in my head in 1835. I believe there's a section of the Doctrine and Covenants that actually alludes to claims that had been made that the Mormons in Kirtland were practicing polygamy. And it seems to sort of be a denial. And it basically seems to state very specifically that polygamy is not part of the church.

Todd Compton [00:22:50] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:53] So how would a believing Mormon find a way to reconcile the fact that a revelation was likely received beforehand? At least one marriage was performed, yet the Doctrine and Covenants seemed to indicate that it was against church rules based on its scripture.

Todd Compton [00:23:13] Well, it's a very interesting aspect of the history of Mormon polygamy that sometimes it was practiced when it was not legal. And I believe in Kirtland and in Missouri and in Nauvoo, I believe that there were state laws that made it illegal. And so. And then later in after the manifesto, some people practiced it, and once again, it was illegal. Actually, it was illegal through. Before 1890. Before.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] The manifesto actually don't mean illegal. I mean against church law.

Todd Compton [00:23:54] But I'm explaining. Okay. So using that as a basis for this explanation here. Okay, okay. And because it was illegal, often the church, you know, kind of like they had a public. A public defense of a public. How shall I say this? Public.

Todd Compton [00:24:19] They made public statements about polygamy, and then there was a kind of a private practice to polygamy, and they were not exactly the same. And I believed that the Mormons felt that because God had required them to practice polygamy, you Know, it was like they were forced to have a public, you know, a public denial of polygamy. And so throughout the history of polygamy, you have this. You have this opposition between, you know, public denial and private practice. You know, though, you know, in the 18, you know, starting in 1852, you have a period in history where there was, you know, polygamy was quite open, but especially in the beginnings and then the end of polygamy, you have these kind of like these contradictory messages going on, which is very fascinating and very interesting for historians to try to piece together. Okay, what piece of this puzzle is the public denial and what piece is the private practice?

John Dehlin [00:25:26] Right. I just found the actual reference. It's in DC section 101, verse 4. Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, which we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman but one husband.

Todd Compton [00:25:49] Right. And that was in the Doctrine and Covenants all throughout the Utah period when, you know, we were practicing polygamy openly. And in 1852, we publicly announced that we were practicing polygamy. And I believe that we kept that in the Doctrine Covenants until. When was it the 1880s or something like that? And then we replaced it with DNC132 because we needed to show that polygamy was a religious practice, a religious belief.

John Dehlin [00:26:25] So it made it that far.

Todd Compton [00:26:26] Legal purposes. Pardon?

John Dehlin [00:26:28] So it made it that far in our.

Todd Compton [00:26:30] Yeah, that we call it the article on marriage that was in the DNC until, you know, all through the Utah period.

John Dehlin [00:26:41] Interesting. I didn't realize it survived that long.

Todd Compton [00:26:44] Yeah. And then they replaced it with DNC132, which is just the opposite, including a lot of stuff about plural wise.

John Dehlin [00:26:55] Interesting. Okay, so how did Oliver Cowdery. Do we know anything about how Oliver Cowdery found out and how important was this issue in what resulted in his excommunication? Because one thing that frustrates me a tiny bit, when I listen to church history, we often tend to demonize and kind of discredit those who ended up being disaffiliated or disaffected in some way, often assuming it was over petty or unreasonable, faithless sort of reasons. So to what extent. When did Oliver Cowdery find out. How important was that of a factor in his excommunication? In 1838,

Joseph Smith's Earliest Plural Relationships

Todd Compton [00:27:46] That was an important factor. And we don't know exactly when he found out about it, but he did find out about it. And it was part of the reasons he had a psychological separation from Joseph Smith. And he wrote a letter, and this is one of the earliest contemporary documentary evidences of polygamy in which he wrote a letter and accused Joseph Smith of having a relationship with Fanny Alger. And he described it as a. He described it as an affair. He didn't see it as a marriage.

John Dehlin [00:28:31] He called it a dirty, nasty affair. Is that right?

Todd Compton [00:28:34] Yeah, I don't have the language right in front of me, but yeah, he was very angry at Joseph Smith. And so obviously that wouldn't endear him to Joseph Smith. And that was one of the charges against him when he was excommunicated, that he had falsely accused Joseph Smith of adultery. And so Oliver Cowdery may have come to realize there was a relationship between Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger. And perhaps Joseph Smith hadn't fully explained to him the doctrine of push. So he interpreted it as an affair. But this is an important pattern and it kind of repeated in Nauvoo, and that is people coming to find out about polygamy. And some of them fully accepted it and said, I'll fully accept it, but others could not accept it and left the church. Some very prominent church leaders.

John Dehlin [00:29:39] So a couple.

Todd Compton [00:29:40] Oliver Cowdery was, you know, obviously very, very important early figure in early Mormonism. I think he was, wasn't he a co president of the church or something like that? Or assistant president, I believe.

John Dehlin [00:29:50] I've read that. Yeah.

Todd Compton [00:29:52] Yeah,

John Dehlin [00:29:54] so. So a couple things that characterize early polygamy were one, a public denial of it through the church scriptures, and secondly, a very, very selective communication of the practice by Joseph to those close to him, including not communicating it to some of the people who are most close to him. You'd think who. You'd think he'd be most likely to communicate it to. Is that right?

Todd Compton [00:30:24] That's true. That's very true.

John Dehlin [00:30:26] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:30:27] Sometimes. See in. We're getting ahead to Nauvoo a little bit now. But he hadn't told people about polygamy who were some of the highest leaders in the church. But he had selected some loyal friends and got them to help him practice polygamy. Just like Levi Hancock knew all about polygamy and apparently Oliver Cowdery didn't. So kind of ironic, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:30:56] So Fanny Augur moved out what year?

Todd Compton [00:30:58] Approximately around. This was around 1835.

John Dehlin [00:31:02] And did she ever return to affiliation with Joseph after that, or was that the end of their relationship? In this life, at least that was

Todd Compton [00:31:11] the end of their relationship. In this life. She and her family were traveling to Missouri and they went through Indiana. And she stayed in Indiana and married someone in Indiana there named Custer. She had a family, a large family in Indiana, and did not affiliate with the church after that. Of course, there wasn't a big church presence in Indiana. I imagine she continued writing to her brothers who came to Utah. So there were a lot of elders in Utah. I imagine she continued to communicate with them, but she kind of dropped out of church records at that point.

John Dehlin [00:32:01] And there was some interview with her later in her life where she acknowledged. You said it was in a letter. Where she acknowledged having married Joseph from her point of view.

Todd Compton [00:32:10] No, no. I'm just saying she. There was probably family contact with her.

John Dehlin [00:32:16] Oh, so she never admitted. She never. She never actually in. In a document acknowledges this marriage?

Todd Compton [00:32:23] Nope. We don't have anything she ever wrote. We don't have any letter, at least that I know of.

John Dehlin [00:32:30] Interesting.

Todd Compton [00:32:31] We don't have any letters or diaries or autobiographies, anything like that. We have some things written by people who were close to her, who knew her.

John Dehlin [00:32:44] Okay, so when did the next. When did polygamy re. Emerge again? After the Algar Fair,

Todd Compton [00:32:57] Joseph Smith married a really interesting woman named Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris Smith, and she was the widow of the Masonic Mason Morgan, William Morgan, who was quite a famous figure in early America. But we don't have a date for her marriage, but we know she was one of the earliest wives of Joseph Smith, and we know that Joseph and Emma Smith stayed with her and her husband in Missouri. So I have a theory that possibly she married Joseph Smith in Missouri, but I don't have any really solid date. So the next one where we have a solid date is Liza Beaman. And that date is. Let me find it here. I'm leafing through my book. What was it? 1841. I'll just go to the chart I have here. Yeah. April 5th, 1841.

Evidence for Joseph Smith's Plural Wives

John Dehlin [00:34:11] Okay, so there may have been a polygamous marriage in Far West.

Todd Compton [00:34:16] Yeah, but we really don't know. That's my guess.

John Dehlin [00:34:20] How meaningful is it that up on familysearch.org it lists Lucinda Pendleton with the marriage date of 1838 in a place that says Far West Missouri. Is that. You know, I was talking to a family member about this issue, and I said, oh, well, all these marriages are listed on familysearch.org and their response was, well, so what? That just means some member of the church just submitted it, and it may be true and it may be not. And I said, well, if I were to submit that I was married to Joseph smith back in 1840, would it also make it through? You know, to what extent? Do we have any idea that maybe the church has approved these marriages by having them show up on familysearch.org, you think, on the list for Joseph, maybe they would scrub it. Do we have any idea whether this represents confirmation from the church that these things happened?

Todd Compton [00:35:14] Well, unfortunately, familysearch.org, it's a wonderful tool, but it isn't. It isn't reliable for detail, and so we really can't use it as an authority. It does show that the church kind of agrees that there were quite a few plural wives of Joseph Smith, but for specific plural wives, we really can't take it as an authority. The best thing to do, obviously, is get my book and see what evidence I have for each of the plural wives, because I really thoroughly go through the evidence for each plural Y. But one thing that happened in the 18. What was it, 60s, 70s, or 80s, is there was a big controversy between the Mormon Church and the RLDS Church, which is now the community of Christ Church. And the RLDS Church was sending missionaries to Utah and saying Joseph Smith Jr. Never was a polygamist. And so. Joseph F. Smith. Joseph. Yeah, Joseph F. Smith went around.

John Dehlin [00:36:26] Son of Hyrum.

Todd Compton [00:36:28] Son of Hyrum. He went around and he got a lot of affidavits from, you know, Joseph Smith's plural wives. And so a lot of our evidence for just Joseph Smith, plural wives come from these affidavits. Later in the 1890s, one of the assistant historians of the church, named Jensen, Andrew Jensen, he published a list of Joseph Smith's wives, which I believe has 29 wives on it. And so that's a good conservative source from a real conservative church member. And he went around and he talked to many of the wives of Joseph Smith who were still alive. And he talked to William Clayton, who performed some of the marriages in Nauru. And so those two sources, the affidavits and the Andrew Jensen list of those are two places you can start if you're a conservative Mormon.

John Dehlin [00:37:35] Was this because Joseph F. Smith was feeling like the church's credibility was being threatened by the Reorganized Church?

Todd Compton [00:37:42] Yeah, It was a big controversy, and there were a lot of people in the Midwest who were part of the RLDS Church, and. And obviously Mormons didn't want them to. You know, obviously Mormons want people to be in the Mormon Church, and so, you know, to support the Mormon cause. You know, and to keep people from joining the RLDS church, because people were joining the RLDS Church, you know, because of this reason.

Todd Compton [00:38:21] He went around and he collected affidavits, you know, and the women in these affidavits, they gave the exact date when they married Joseph Smith and so on. Of course, some of the women had died or weren't living in Utah, so we don't have affidavits from them. But, you know, there's also evidence.

Todd Compton [00:38:37] It's good evidence from people who were plural wives. And they said, oh, yes, and we knew this woman, and she was also a plural wife. That's good, solid evidence also. Okay, so how many women actually left autobiographies and talked about how they married Joseph Smith?

John Dehlin [00:38:54] Do we have any journals that were written at the time the marriages were performed that actually give the evidence that's more contemporary with the actual event itself that you're aware of?

Todd Compton [00:39:09] It's interesting. We have a few early diaries by people like Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs Young and Eliza R. Snow and Patty Bartlett Sessions, and they were quite reticent in their journals and did not talk about polygamy. However, when they wrote autobiographies, often, then they were more forthcoming about polygamy, and then they told the stories. So, for example, in the Elizar Snow case, you go to the date when she was married to Joseph Smith, and she just says, this was a marvelous day. And she doesn't say specifically why it was marvelous. So you'd never know just reading the journal. But when you read her autobiography, you piece it together with that, and she gives the date in the autobiography, and then you read the two together, and they make sense.

John Dehlin [00:40:07] Okay, So

Todd Compton [00:40:11] I hope you're getting the sense this is all like a big puzzle.

John Dehlin [00:40:15] Yes.

Todd Compton [00:40:16] Yeah, getting, you know, and you're getting good pieces of evidence, and you're just putting them together, and. And then everything makes more sense the more you put them together.

John Dehlin [00:40:25] Right. So take us through early Nauvoo as it starts accelerating. Do you have any idea what led to the. The acceleration? Why this spike in 1842? Let's say maybe it's 1841, but it seems like in 1842, this just exploded. Do you have any idea what history led to that explosion of acceleration?

Todd Compton [00:40:51] Well, as I mentioned before, Joseph Smith, I believe, from very early, had been reading in the Testament and had been very profoundly impressed by the examples of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, especially Abraham. And so he came to believe, depending on how you look at Joseph Smith, whether you're a Mormon or a non Mormon, he came to believe that he should probably practice polygamy.

Todd Compton [00:41:28] So he started in Kirtland, I believe. But he went through a period of great turmoil, and he dealt with a lot of legal problems in Kirtland and a lot of legal and even. Problems of war in Missouri, where he had, you know, he was really. The Mormons were really at war with the non Mormons.

Todd Compton [00:42:01] And so finally, when he got to Nauvoo, that was like, the first period where I think the Mormons felt like they could take a breath and really start to live their religion the way they wanted to, where they kind of had the legal freedom to do it. And Joseph Smith had his special charter for Nauvoo, and they were able to build up a big community there.

Todd Compton [00:42:28] And so I think for a long time, they weren't harassed by non Mormons the way they were in Missouri. And so I think Joseph Smith felt kind of comfortable that he could do it. He had a community around him, and he felt like it was the time to start doing it. So Beginning in that April 5, 1841, date, he began marrying plural wives.

John Dehlin [00:42:58] So there's this story of an angel drawing a sword and threatening him with his life if he didn't start practicing it. Does that come into play here at all?

Todd Compton [00:43:10] That's. Again, that's one of these stories from late evidence, and you come across it in a number of writers, so I suspect that it was, you know, that, you know, it might have its source. Joseph Smith might have been the one who told that story. And so, Yeah, that in. In the early, early Nauvoo, I would date that story.

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Okay, okay.

Todd Compton [00:43:43] So again, that's late evidence. A lot of this is laid evidence.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] Okay, so. So regardless, it starts picking up. Now, tell us a little bit about the nature of. Do we know anything about how he would approach it? Who. Who was in on it? And a little bit about. Once the marriage was performed, what was the marriage like? Or was it a marriage in name only or in spirit only? What can you tell us about these marriages?

How Joseph Smith Approached and Married Plural Wives

Todd Compton [00:44:16] Often he would approach the father or an older brother of. Of these women before he talked to the women. Sometimes he approached the women first, and often he would frame it in terms of, like, a religious imperative. Instead of having a big romantic courtship, it was more like, this is a religious thing. I've been commanded to do it, and I've had an impression that you're to be my wife.

Todd Compton [00:44:58] And sometimes the women did not accept at first and came to have a Spiritual sense that Joseph Smith was right and polygamy was right and so they should marry him. Other women totally rejected it and never accepted his proposals.

Todd Compton [00:45:19] And as I say, sometimes he worked through the father or the older brother. And so the father or the older brother didn't want to be involved at first. And eventually they came to accept it. And. So that's how he approached these women. And each woman had a different story, you know, and so that's an overview. It's very interesting when you get into the individual stories.

John Dehlin [00:45:51] This just reminds me of one thing you mentioned. The older brother, the father. There's a story early on, I believe it's in Ohio, where some ruffians came into Joseph's house and tried to take him outside and tried to shove poison down his throat, blah, blah, blah. I've heard people allege that that was actually tied to. To a sibling or a father of a girl that was supposedly propositioned by Joseph or whatever. You know what I'm talking about?

Todd Compton [00:46:20] Yeah. That woman was Marinda Johnson, who later married the apostle Orson Hyde and then later and also married Joseph Smith. And there's one accusation in, you know, that again, is fairly late, that it was involved with Joseph Smith getting involved with her when she was at that time, she was just a teenager, young teenager. But I believe that evidence is really not good. So I believe they were mad at Joseph Smith for other reasons. And so I personally think that, you know, that accusation is totally wrong based on really bad evidence.

John Dehlin [00:47:08] Okay. I do see on familysearch.org that Mirinda Nancy Johnson was married in proxy to Joseph in Salt Lake City. But I don't know if that means anything.

Todd Compton [00:47:21] Right. I mean. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:47:23] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:47:24] Family. Family search is very.

John Dehlin [00:47:26] Yeah.

Todd Compton [00:47:26] In details. Very unreliable. Okay, so she married Joseph Smith in Nauvoo and later was divorced from Orson Hyde. This is one of these polyandrous marriages. But later divorced Orson Hyde and I believe was married. Married by proxy to Joseph Smith also. But she had married him in Nauvoo first.

John Dehlin [00:47:50] Okay. So it was clear that Joseph felt like it was important to respect the father or the older sibling to work through them.

Todd Compton [00:48:00] In other cases, he approached the woman directly.

John Dehlin [00:48:04] Okay, and do we know? You know, I remember the first thing even close to hinting at this, that I remember is a story of how Joseph had a close brother who he worked with, one of the more prominent leaders in the church at that time, where he basically said, I'd like to have your wife and take her as my own. And so it was more of a test of faith. So this brother would go and get his wife and in tears, present his wife before Joseph and say, okay, Joseph, I love you and I trust you. So if this is what you want, here's my wife. And then Joseph would break down himself and say, this was just a test for you. And now I seal you to your wife for time and all eternity. You know, that's the first even hint of this idea that I ever heard.

Todd Compton [00:48:54] Yeah, that's the Heber C. Kimball story. So you can read that in the biography of Heber C. Kimball by Orson F. Whitney, who was the son of Helen Marr Kimball Smith Whitney, who was a plural wife of Joseph Smith and also the daughter of Heber C. Kimball. So that story is there in Ocean F. Whitney's book. So. So I think it's reliable.

John Dehlin [00:49:20] But in that case, he didn't take the wife. Right. He married it to the woman.

Todd Compton [00:49:25] In other cases, he did take the wife. He did marry women who were married to. Already married to other men.

John Dehlin [00:49:34] So you bring it up. Let's just talk about that. This is what other people refer to as polyandry. Tell us, did the husband know? A lot of people come to him as a huge shock that Joseph married women who were at the time married to men who were living, some of them actually faithful in the church. So tell us about that.

Polyandry and Wives Already Married to Other Men

Todd Compton [00:49:58] It's one of the really interesting problematic areas of early Mormon polygamy and we would like more data about it. What we would really like is a good autobiography by Joseph Smith. And we don't have that.

John Dehlin [00:50:15] Right, Right.

Todd Compton [00:50:18] However, some of the women, especially one woman, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, she left an autobiography and told about how Joseph Smith approached her and she was married to another man. She was married to a non Mormon named Adam Lightner. And she said that Joseph Smith approached her and said that he had been connected with her in the pre existence and that, you know, and for that reason that they kind of were a matched couple and they should be married in this life and so for eternity.

John Dehlin [00:50:58] For eternity. Right. You said married in this life, but it's for eternity.

Todd Compton [00:51:03] Right. Well, all of, all of these marriages were for eternity. They were also for. For life, you know, for time and eternity.

John Dehlin [00:51:13] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:51:13] These polygamous marriages that Joseph Smith had, they were for time and eternity.

John Dehlin [00:51:17] Right.

Todd Compton [00:51:19] And so she, she was one of these women. She, she took a while before she could, you know, accept it. But then she did marry Joseph Smith. But in all these marriages, or Joseph Smith married women who were married to other men, the women continued living with the other men, who I call the first husband, which is very interesting, they didn't leave the first husband and then, you know, be wives of Joseph Smith openly. They stayed living with their previous husbands and continued having children by them.

John Dehlin [00:51:57] And did the husbands ever know?

Todd Compton [00:52:00] Here's one case where we would like to know more, because none of these first husbands left autobiography, to the best of my knowledge. And we have a family tradition. In the case of Zina Hennington, who was one of these, she was married to a Mormon named Henry Jacobs, faithful Mormon, when she married Joseph Smith.

Todd Compton [00:52:26] And according to family traditions, Henry Jacobs knew about it and said, the thinking of God and the prophets is higher than my thinking. I will allow this. And that's just a family tradition. And these family traditions are. They're late, you know, but sometimes they're true. So perhaps he knew, and obviously it must have been a very, very difficult test.

Todd Compton [00:53:02] His wife Zina had two kids, and I believe they were both the children of Henry Jacobs. However, it's very interesting, she later married Brigham Young at the same time that Brigham Young was still married to Zina. And Henry Jacobs stood as a witness in the Nauvoo Temple. And Zina was pregnant with their second son. And then Henry and Jacob started going across Iowa. So very complicated stories here, but I believe some of the men knew. I believe in other cases that the first husbands did not know. And I suspect when there was a non Mormon who was the first husband, that the non Mormons, you know, the first husbands were not told, as in the case of Adam Lightner, in the case of Mirinda Johnson.

Todd Compton [00:54:07] Orson Hyde was on his mission to Israel when she married Joseph Smith. And we have that date for her marriage to Joseph Smith in Joseph Smith's journal. So that's very good evidence in Joseph Smith's own journal. So we don't know if Orson Hyde knew about it because he was just so far away.

John Dehlin [00:54:29] He was gone. So. So how many polyandrous marriages were you able to find or confirm in your studies?

Todd Compton [00:54:40] Let's see, I have this quantified someplace right here.

John Dehlin [00:54:48] I'll just stall for you. I've read. Okay, yeah, I've read anywhere between 8 and something like 7 and 10. You know, other women that he married were married to other men at the time.

Todd Compton [00:55:01] Yeah. Of the first 12 marriages, nine were Polyandrus. Okay, the first 12. And then of all the later ones, what was it? It was something like 18 or 19. I don't have it right in front of me. Okay, so there's a substantial number.

John Dehlin [00:55:19] So you go. You go up. Close to 20 polyandrous marriages. Yeah, I've never heard it that high.

Todd Compton [00:55:27] Yeah. Of the. Well, this might be worth doing. We'll go through here. The first 12, nine were polyandrous, and then we have 1 2. Just two more, I guess.

John Dehlin [00:55:51] Okay, so your count's at about 11 right now so far.

Todd Compton [00:55:55] Yeah, I think it's more than that for some reason. Let's make sure we get this right here. Okay, so the first 12, I'll read them off. Let's see, we have Lucinda Pendleton, Zina, 2 Percentia, 3, Sylvia Sessions, 4. Mary Elizabeth, 5, Patty Bartlett, 6. Miranda Johnson, 7. Elizabeth Davis, 8. Sarah Cleveland, 9. Okay. Ruth Sayre, 10, Elvira Annie Holmes, 11. Okay, so, yeah, okay, nine of the first 12, and then 11 of the 33.

John Dehlin [00:56:41] 11 total. Okay, so that also tells us you've been able to document about 33 total polygamous marriages for Joseph.

Todd Compton [00:56:50] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:56:52] So what?

Todd Compton [00:56:53] But it's interesting, isn't it? You know, like, the last 22 were he married single women, you know, Whereas the first 12, they were mostly these polyandrous marriages.

John Dehlin [00:57:08] So. Yeah. Another thing that you hear often maybe is a misconception. We'll get to this later. Is that a lot of the women taken on were older women who were left without husbands on the frontier. And so it was more of an act of charity and of support than it was anything else. What can you. You know, I've also heard allegations that there are very young girls or young women involved. What can you tell us about the ages of some of the single younger women?

Todd Compton [00:57:43] Well, both of those things are true, and only. They're only untrue. If you say. That's the whole story. Like, if you say they were all these younger women, you know, that would be untrue. If you say they're all these, you know, older women that, you know, people were marrying just to give them support, that would be untrue also. So you have both things going on. You have, you know, Mormons marrying younger women and having big families. And one of the, you know, one of the reasons for polygamy was this idea of having big families, having lots of kids.

Todd Compton [00:58:20] Okay. But you also had situations where you had a single woman in the ward and a bishop would marry her, you know, so he could give her support. And sometimes you had situations where you had a woman and two church and, well, you had what you call dynastic alliances. In other words, two church leaders wanted to kind of, kind of cement their friendship, and so one would marry the daughter of another church leader. So that's another motivation. The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

The Nature and Emotional Reality of These Marriages

Part 2 of 3 · Ep. 13

John Dehlin [00:00:11] All right, Todd. Well, let's. Let's explore a little bit about the nature of these marriages. What can you tell us about. Was there a relationship? Was there a romantic relationship? Was there a friendship? Were there visits? You know, what do we know, if anything, about the nature of these? Or were they just purely spiritual or on paper with no meaning? What can you tell us about the nature of these marriages?

Todd Compton [00:00:41] Well, I have a term for Utah polygamous marriages, and I call it practical polygamy. And polygamy was lived in the open and Mormon. After 1852, Mormons were open about polygamy. So, anyway, you have this later polygamy that I call practical polygamy. And then in Nauvoo, you have what I call. I don't know what you would call it. Secret polygamy, I guess.

Todd Compton [00:01:10] And because it was secret, it could not be lived in a practical way. So, in other words, Joseph Smith could, you know, could not openly visit his wives as wives. Okay, so he did visit them, but he did it secretly.

Todd Compton [00:01:29] The wives were not publicly announced in Nauvoo, but again, just as in Kirtland, there were. There was a small group of people who knew about Joseph Smith's polygamy and had been introduced to it. And so there was kind of like this circle within.

Todd Compton [00:01:47] Within the Nauvoo. The culture at Nauvoo, the community at Nauvoo that did know about the polygamy, but it couldn't be practiced polygamy publicly later because of the. Because of the controversy with the RLDS Church. The rlds. Some RLDS people said that Joseph Smith never.

Todd Compton [00:02:17] That these never were actual marriages because Joseph Smith didn't consummate them. There was no sexuality. And so some of these women explicitly said that there were sexual relations. So at least according to what the women said, there were sexual relations with these marriages.

Todd Compton [00:02:39] One woman left an affidavit that her child, who was raised with a different name, was actually the child of Joseph Smith. However, it was secret in Nauvoo, and it's interesting, it was often quite secret still into Utah. And because of this controversy with the RLDS Church, it became documented more than would have been documented.

Todd Compton [00:03:09] So that's the best I can tell you about that. There's a lot of things we would like to know more about polygamy, but because of what these women said in autobiographies and in affidavits, you know, we kind of know the framework. We know that Joseph Smith visited them, you know, and according to the women there were sexual relations. And that's, you know, that fits in with later polygamy also. Later polygamy. One of the reasons for polygamy was to have lots of children. You know, it's a standard Mormon thing. So I think that was part of, you know, Nauvoo polygamy also.

John Dehlin [00:03:44] And were you able to find any credible evidence of actual offspring?

Todd Compton [00:03:52] This one affidavit by Josephine Fisher, I think is good evidence. I accept it, where she says that her mother on her deathbed told her that she was actually the child of Joseph Smith, even though she had been raised as Josephine Lyon. So I find that very good evidence. Mary Elizabeth Rawlins Lightner said she knew of two or three people who were raised who were Joseph Smith's children, but they were raised under other names. Unfortunately, she didn't give us names, but she's a credible witness. She was a wife of Joseph Smith. And so, you know, the secrecy of Nauvoo polygamy kind of continued on into Utah. So we don't know everything, but we do know somewhat about his marriages.

John Dehlin [00:04:47] Do we know who else was allowed to practice during this Nauvoo time?

Todd Compton [00:04:58] Yeah. And again, I recommend an article by George Smith. They appeared in Dialogue, and since then, an article by Gary Bergera has appeared, and they both look at polygamy in Nauvoo, including Joseph Smith, but including other people also. And there was a. There was a group. There was a group of people who were part of this polygamy inner group, and they started to marry and have children in Nauvoo. William Clayton is one example. Brigham Young, Heber C. Kimball, some people who are less well known. Joseph Bates Noble, who's one of my relatives and was the one who performed the first marriage of Joseph Smith and eliza beaman on April 5, 1841. So polygamy began to be practiced not just by Joseph Smith, but by other people also in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:06:04] It seems like some of the most prominent people who you'd think would know, didn't know. Is that true as well? Well, in the Nauvoo period, yeah.

Todd Compton [00:06:18] And also in the Kirtland period. And Joseph was very selective in who he shared polygamy with. And I think he must have sensed that some people would not accept it, and so he did not share it with them. And other people, he must have might have sensed that they would accept it.

John Dehlin [00:06:38] Who are the notables that you can think of in Nauvoo who were out of the polygamy loop, at least for A significant amount of time.

Todd Compton [00:06:45] Rigdon is one really notable person.

John Dehlin [00:06:48] Right.

Todd Compton [00:06:49] Who was the. What was he? First counselor? Yeah. In the first presidency. And Joseph Smith proposed to his daughter, without Rigdon's knowledge, Nancy, his daughter rejected Joseph Smith. And so that really caused a split between Sidney Rigdon and Joseph Smith. Just almost like quite a bit like earlier, Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery had had a split. So here's one example. The apostles tended to accept Joseph Smith's polygamy, you know, led by Brigham Young and he, Bruce Kimball. But the High Council in Nauvoo, which was very important, a lot more important than in modern Mormonism, people in the High Council were split, and the local stake presidency, again, was very important. They were like general authorities, and they were split. And so it was a major cause of. Of conflict in Nauvoo.

John Dehlin [00:08:07] Sure. Now, just briefly, you know, one of the most important, significant characters in the Nauvoo period is also one of the least well known, and that's John C. Bennett. What can you tell us about his involvement in this? And, you know, whether it had anything to do with his disaffection or disaffiliation and whether. Whether there's any credible documentation that counters what the claims were, which was that he was doing lots of adulterous things without approval.

Todd Compton [00:08:45] You know, In my book, I focused on certain elements, and I did not even focus on Joseph Smith. I only focused on Joseph Smith when he was part of the story of these women I was writing about. And as a result of this, I have not researched John C. Bennett. I know the basic stories. There's actually a biography of him. And he came into Nauvoo, and almost immediately, he became a very close confidant of Joseph Smith. And I believe he became an assistant president.

John Dehlin [00:09:37] Yes.

Todd Compton [00:09:38] And was very influential on Joseph Smith and helped get the Nauvoo charter. But then evidently, he. He had a wife that he hadn't told anyone about, and he started having affairs with women. And so he eventually was kicked out of the church. And so that's in a nutshell. I mean, it's more complex than that. And evidently, he was telling people that he had been authorized by Joseph Smith to have these relationships with women. And evidently, Joseph Smith denied that. And so there was a. That was a real problematic time because then John C. Bennett wrote an expose of Mormonism and polygamy. And evidently, Joseph Smith stopped having marriages for a while after Bennett split from the church.

John Dehlin [00:10:45] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:10:47] That's the best I can tell you off the top of my head.

John Dehlin [00:10:49] No, sure.

Todd Compton [00:10:49] He really isn't part of my book.

John Dehlin [00:10:51] Not that. That's fine. I was just wanting to throw that in and see what you could confirm or not confirm about that.

Todd Compton [00:10:59] By the way, at some point, ask me a question about what? What are some of the other good books on polygamy? Okay, I'll do that.

John Dehlin [00:11:09] I'll do that. So the title of your book, in Sacred Loneliness clearly refers to how the women are feeling about this whole deal. Do you have thoughts or things to share about how the Nauvoo women were feeling about it, or is that mostly about sort of the Utah women in the Utah polygamy?

Todd Compton [00:11:33] And again, this allows me to say that I looked at each of these women and I took them from birth through their Mormon experience, early Mormon experience in Kirtland and Nauvoo. But then I kept going with them back into Utah after Joseph Smith's death. And there are other marriages they had. A lot of them married Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, and I went with him to their deaths. So, in other words, I have full biographies of each of these women, which are just wonderful stories. They had wonderfully interesting lives.

Todd Compton [00:12:16] They were married to Joseph Smith for only a small part of their life. A lot of them were married in 1842, and so they were only married to them for like a year and a half. And after that, they had long, momentous lives in Mormonism.

Todd Compton [00:12:38] Your question is, did they have these feelings of loneliness in Utah, only in Utah, or did they have them in Nauvoo also? I believe it was more when they were living in practical polygamy. However, I think some of the same patterns might have been there in early polygamy. Just because what would it be like to be married to a man who had 32 other wives?

Todd Compton [00:13:09] I think that you would have been really limited in the time you could spend with him because it was secret polygamy. You would even be more limited. So I think it must have been very difficult for some of those women.

John Dehlin [00:13:28] Sure.

Todd Compton [00:13:29] In Nauvoo.

The End of Joseph Smith's Polygamy in Nauvoo

John Dehlin [00:13:32] So let's talk briefly about sort of how this Joseph Smith Nauvoo polygamy story ends, at least for Joseph. I remember reading, I believe it was in Brody's book, the allegation that, well, William Law was second counselor in the First Presidency and that while William wasn't around, or maybe William came back from a meeting or something he was at and found Joseph with his wife, and that later his wife told William that Joseph had propositioned her or something like that. And I've Also heard allegations that Joseph liked to send people on missions to foreign countries so that then he could propose to their wives polygamously as well. But talk, if you briefly can, about that notion that that might even be fathomable. But then how this led to an unraveling for Joseph and how fundamental polygamy happened to be in his martyrdom.

Todd Compton [00:14:42] Yeah, in the case of William Law, he's one of these. Another example of one of these high church leaders who split with Joseph Smith at least partially because of polygamy. And there is evidence that his wife accused Joseph Smith of proposing to her and she turned him down. And obviously this would, for the husband, this would cause a real rupture in friendship. And so he left the church and he helped publish the Nauvoo Expositor, which dealt partially, at least, with Joseph Smith's polygamy. And Joseph Smith caused the novel Expositor to be destroyed.

Todd Compton [00:15:38] And because of this, this is what caused the non Mormons to request that he stand trial. Because he helped cause the destruction of the Nautilus Expositor and because he was taken captive to stand trial, then he was killed by the mob.

Todd Compton [00:15:58] So the polygamy was involved there. Polygamy, the proposition to William Law's wife, if you believe William Law's wife. So you can look at that evidence and see if you believe it's true.

John Dehlin [00:16:19] But the denials that started very early on in 1835, the public denials of polygamy continued through the end of Joseph's life. Is that correct?

Todd Compton [00:16:30] Yeah, that's right. He publicly. One public speech, he said, people accuse me of having, you know, eight wives. Look here, I can only see one. So that's true. It was that same principle.

John Dehlin [00:16:50] I just have to ask, you know, I could see him, I could see Joseph building some really close friendships where he could get a sense that someone would be open or not to their daughter or their wife or whatever. But how could you explain him with like Sidney Rigdon or William Law taking it that far? I mean, it doesn't seem like it's explainable in really simple terms why he would take those risks, that other than that, he truly believed that this is what God wanted him to do. How else could you explain the risks that he was taking with so many men that might be inclined to not take those propositions very favorably?

Todd Compton [00:17:46] And as we said, he married 11 women who were married to other men. And obviously that could be a very dangerous thing and it could cause your closest friends to become enemies, obviously. So as you say, it's very Dangerous.

Todd Compton [00:18:07] If you're a Mormon. If you're a, you know, and there's different kinds of Mormons. If you're, let's say, a conservative Mormon, you know, I guess you would have to say that you believe that Joseph Smith did everything, you know, under the guidance and maybe orders of God. And you have the story of the angel with the sword.

Todd Compton [00:18:34] If you were, you know, a non Mormon, you know, you'd have to say you'd think he was very reckless. I think very reckless. And almost. Well, reckless would be a good term. Looking at it from the viewpoint of a conservative Mormon and from the viewpoint of a non Mormon, you see, it's very different points of view.

Todd Compton [00:19:02] And I think another way that I've heard some Mormons, you know, who you might call a little more liberal, express it is they, Some of them have. I've heard people, you know, talk about how they try to come to understand it by saying they believe Joseph Smith was given the revelation on polygamy, but then he may possibly made mistakes in how he, how he practiced polygamy.

Todd Compton [00:19:33] And if you think about it, polygamy, you know, has a long, long history in the Semitic culture, but it had been gone from Western culture for a long time. And so it was all brand new. Learning how to practice it in a practical way, it would be kind of.

Todd Compton [00:20:02] You would just be exploring it from the bottom up. And for that reason, I think often it was very, very difficult for the women and the men.

John Dehlin [00:20:18] Yeah. So an observer has a range of things they can interpret. It can be that Joseph was doing exactly what God told him every step of the way, that he was feeling out the situation, trying to figure out the right way to implement it to. He sort of was out of control or completely reckless and, you know, irresponsible with what he was doing. There's just a big range.

Todd Compton [00:20:43] Well, that's how I'm sure some knowledge. Mormons.

John Dehlin [00:20:46] Right. Okay. So, so it's, but it's safe to say that, that the polygamy thing was a, was a very significant factor in his martyrdom. And in Hiram's martyrdom, it was, it was a factor. And Hiram was, Was Hiram polygamous as well?

Todd Compton [00:21:04] He was a polygamist.

John Dehlin [00:21:05] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:21:05] He, he, he was one of these who, who at first, you know, kind of rejected polygamy, but eventually he accepted it.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] Okay. And so the martyrdom happens. The Nauvoo expositor comes, you know, had come out, the jig is up, the word's out, the persecution hits hard. Fast forward a couple years later, and Brigham Young ends up winning the succession battle versus Signe Rigdon and takes the Mormons to Salt Lake City. What can you tell us about, you know, the flourishing of polygamy under Brigham Young?

Todd Compton [00:21:51] Well, it's. They were living it openly. It was very much practiced among the leaders. The common man didn't practice it so much, but it was viewed as kind of a religious duty. So sometimes when a man was given an office, like he was made a stake president and he was a monogamist, his leaders said, well, now it's your duty. You know, you've got to set an example of, you know, being a polygamist. And also, they preached that you needed to practice polygamy to enter the highest, highest part of heaven. And so if you were ambitious, if you religiously, you know, felt that you wanted to get to the highest levels of heaven, you would want to be a polygamist.

John Dehlin [00:22:44] Just to read a quote I have from the Journal of Discourses, Brigham Young saying, the only men who become gods, even the sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son, but they cannot reign as kings in glory because they had blessing offered unto them and they refused to accept them. Thought I'd throw that in.

Todd Compton [00:23:14] Yeah, you get a lot of quotes like that.

John Dehlin [00:23:16] So it was not only. It went from being something that Joseph felt he had to practice to something that. That the most righteous men in the church with the most status had little option but to practice if they wanted to live in God's presence forever and attain the highest state of exaltation.

Todd Compton [00:23:38] Yeah. And according to William Clayton, at least Joseph Smith taught that you needed to practice polygamy to enter the highest part of heaven.

John Dehlin [00:23:48] So it becomes a core, fundamental part of our gospel, so to speak, became

Todd Compton [00:23:53] a very important part of the Mormon religion.

John Dehlin [00:23:59] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:24:01] You know, at the same time, you have all of these practical issues, and you have all of, you know, every polygamous family was different, and every polygamous husband was. Was different. And there were lots of different motivations for marrying women. And we talked a little about some of them earlier on. Sometimes you have these dynastic alliances, and sometimes you have a bishop wanting to offer protection to a single woman in his ward.

Todd Compton [00:24:36] And sometimes you have strong attraction between a man and a woman. It might be spiritual attraction. Okay. But it was. That's the closest to romantic, you know, And I think there was an element of romantic attraction sometimes in these polygamous marriages.

Todd Compton [00:24:54] So you have a lot of different motivations for entering polygamy, you know, but I think central is that religious reason. And you have. Every family is different. And so sometimes some families, some men were more successful at it than others.

Todd Compton [00:25:13] And so you have some families where it seems like it was quite dysfunctional, and other families where they did the best they could to make it work and were pretty good at it.

John Dehlin [00:25:28] So tell us about. Paint for us the picture of a polygamy success story where it was functional and where it seemed to be healthy and even a positive thing. And then in contrast that with sort of when polygamy went wrong, what that family looked like and how that manifested itself.

Todd Compton [00:25:51] Okay, well, for a positive example, I like to give the example of Dudley Levitt. And you can read a biography of Dudley Levitt by Juanita Brooks called On the Ragged Edge. And she presents a quite positive view of polygamy in that book. And it talks about how important his children were and how he treated his wives well and how he was a good man, hard worker. So I think that's one book that kind of gives you a fairly positive view of polygamy. One example of Pilgami, where it shows the problems with it is it's from my book you could read then. And you don't need to read my book. You can go to the diaries of Emily Partridge, who had married Joseph Smith in Nauvoo. Actually, she's an example of where she felt that loneliness in Nauvoo, but later she felt it with Brigham Young also. And Brigham Young married 56 wives.

John Dehlin [00:27:11] I heard this bizarre quote from Brigham Young the other day. I don't know if it's true, but it basically said, you'll find few men in the world who enjoy less the company of women than I. Is that. Have you heard that quote before?

Todd Compton [00:27:26] I might have. I don't. I don't remember.

John Dehlin [00:27:28] Okay, so that's not something that sticks out.

Todd Compton [00:27:29] I don't remember specifically.

John Dehlin [00:27:31] Okay. Anyway, so she was one of the 50 plus wives of Brigham Young.

Todd Compton [00:27:35] Yeah. And so obviously, you know, when. Just think about it practically, if you have that many wives, how much attention can you give to any one wife? In addition, he had favorite wives, which is one of the patterns you see in polygamy in Utah.

Todd Compton [00:27:54] And again, when you think of that, well, that's very good for the favorite wife. But what about these women who aren't the favorite wife? You know, they have even less time with their husband. And then you think of Brigham Young as a very busy Church leader also.

Todd Compton [00:28:10] And so Emily Partridge really had a hard time with Brigham Young. And her diaries kind of present a very distant relationship she had with him. And it just caused her great anguish that she felt like he wasn't close to her or to her children. And she had a hard time even getting what she felt was basic financial support from him. So. So that's an example of the loneliness women can have.

John Dehlin [00:28:42] Well, let me shoot you some rapid fire questions dealing with sort of the typical stereotypical conceptions that people have about polygamy. Tell us, you know, what percentage, at its peak, what percentage of Mormon men have you found were engaged in polygamy?

Todd Compton [00:29:03] Well, this is one of the interesting questions about polygamy. And it all depends on how you, you know, how you set up what's

John Dehlin [00:29:11] a Mormon, what's an active Mormon.

Todd Compton [00:29:13] Right. Or if you say families, what percentage of families?

John Dehlin [00:29:16] Oh, right.

Todd Compton [00:29:17] You know, but I think what people would agree now would be something like 20 to 30% of Mormons were polygamous.

John Dehlin [00:29:25] So much more than the. Much more than the 5%.

Todd Compton [00:29:28] Yeah, you get these figures, like only 1%, you know, were polygamists. And that's just flat wrong. Yeah, that's one of the myths about polygamy. That's flat wrong. It was more like 20 to 30%

John Dehlin [00:29:40] of the men and of the men,

Todd Compton [00:29:42] you know, and that differs from town to town. It differed, you know, you know, some decades there were more polygamous marriages than other decades. But, you know, 20 to 30%, that's what scholars have agreed is about something like that. Kathleen Danes has written a book called More Wives Than One. She's a BYU professor, specializes in family history, and I think that's a figure that she has something like that in her book.

John Dehlin [00:30:15] Okay. There's another common notion that the first wife and maybe subsequent wives had the right of refusal, that a husband had to get permission from at least the first wife, if not subsequent ones, before he could take on another one.

Todd Compton [00:30:32] Okay. Now, in theory that that is true. In theory, they kind of had this idea that the husband should check with the first wife and the first wife and that he shouldn't go ahead unless the first wife agree. In practice, it really didn't work out that way because if the first wife didn't want him to take another plural wife, incredible. A lot of religious pressure was put on her. So in many cases, the first wife was opposed to it, but just went along with it anyway. And in a number of cases, the husband didn't check with the first wife. So that was kind of an ideal, but often it was not followed.

John Dehlin [00:31:15] Right. And what would you say the average number of plural wives that the average polygamist would have or can even say?

Scope and Demographics of Latter-day Saint Polygamy

Todd Compton [00:31:29] Well, remember that the more elite you are, the more likely you are to be a polygamist, and the more wives you were like, okay, so you have Brigham young with, like, 50, 56 wives. Okay. However, so the great majority of Mormon men who are polygamists were less elite than, obviously, Brigham Young or the apostles. So it's more common for a husband to have two or three or four wives. However, the more elite you were, generally, the more wives you had.

John Dehlin [00:32:03] And in Utah, polygamy, you. You were responsible for financially supporting your spouse? All your spouses?

Todd Compton [00:32:11] Oh, yeah. I mean, this was standard idea of any responsible husband should. Yeah, should support his. His wives and families.

John Dehlin [00:32:23] Did the church ever provide. Did the church ever provide support? You know, stake president or whatever? Would he get extra help to. To help? You know, it's like, okay, I'm a stake president. You want me to practice polygamy, Give me a little help here so that I can afford it. Do you know if there was ever any financial remuneration for.

Todd Compton [00:32:44] I'm not sure how much formal support there was for polygamists, but I think that often they called men to positions when they were successful, already successful. And so the idea was that they would be able to provide for their wives. And they continued often to be businessmen after they had been called as church leaders. And so that would, you know, it helped to be a, you know, church leader, to be a successful businessman, obviously, in Utah, however, sometimes it was very difficult for men to provide for their wives, and wives sometimes felt that they were not provided for adequately. And there's some examples of that in my book. Eliza Partridge, who's the sister of Emily Partridge, an example of that. She was married to Amisa Lyman. So that's an example again, from my book. The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

Pressure to End Polygamy and the Manifesto

Part 3 of 3 · Ep. 14

Todd Compton [00:00:12] So

John Dehlin [00:00:15] did you ever come across instances where a man was. Was pretty successful at keeping his wives

John Dehlin [00:00:22] happy and fulfilled and, you know, in all ways that it was just. That it was just a great experience for everyone involved?

John Dehlin [00:00:28] I know you talked a little bit

John Dehlin [00:00:29] about that earlier, but

Todd Compton [00:00:34] the Dudley Levitt is the positive example I like to use. Another one that's interesting is John Taylor, who was the apostle who eventually had post manifesto wives and eventually was excommunicated. His son, Sam Taylor wrote a biography of him, and it's actually almost more a biography of Sam Taylor's mother, who was the wife of John Taylor. But it's fascinating because he really admired his father. He really loved his father.

Todd Compton [00:01:13] And the book isn't an attack on polygamy, but it shows the. The problems with it, you know, at the same time that it shows how John Taylor loved each one of his wives and loved all his children. And that's one of the really striking things that you get from that book is how despite his fascinating, you know, flamboyant lifestyle, how much he loved his kids and how his kids reacted to that. That's another example. I guess you could call it positive, even though there were financial problems in that story. Also, you could say, if you're a Mormon, in defense of some of these men, often they stopped being able to provide because Mormonism, because polygamy became illegal in the 1870s, they 80s, 1890s, which made it more difficult for Mormon men to provide for their families.

John Dehlin [00:02:24] Right. So let's talk about that for a second. Let's fast forward to,

John Dehlin [00:02:32] you know, whenever the heat started being applied by the federal government, polygamists started being, you know, incarcerated, persecuted. The church tries to defend itself, I guess, in some way. But, you know, all these activities ultimately led to the 1890 manifesto.

Todd Compton [00:02:54] Correct.

John Dehlin [00:02:54] What can you tell us about the

John Dehlin [00:02:58] dynamics that that led to that monumentous change? I imagine it wasn't an easy decision for Wilford Woodruff. I imagine that Brigham Young was faced with considering that. That option. And John Taylor, of course, obviously didn't choose to. To rescind polygamy either. What can you tell us, just at a high level, about, you know, the brethren starting to entertain the possibility of polygamy needing to. To start being phased out?

Todd Compton [00:03:32] Yeah, well, in 1882, Congress passed the Edmonds Act. And in 1887, Congress packed the Edmonds Tucker Bill. And these bills were bills that had peace. You know, they were. They made it very, very difficult for Mormons to continue practicing cleaning. And with the Edmunds Tucker Bill, the church would have had just simply had to give up all its property to the federal government, including the temples. So, you know, there was enormous pressure on the church and they had hoped to get statehood because then they could, you know, create their own marriage loss, which would allow polygamy. But, you know, the United States government would not allow them statehood.

John Dehlin [00:04:34] You know, this makes me want to

John Dehlin [00:04:36] ask you a quick question. If you, if, you know, whenever slavery is talked about in the United States, there's always this notion of. Well, for some it was clearly about human rights and about racism and bigotry and treating people fairly. But there was also this notion of economics, north versus south and competition and

John Dehlin [00:05:00] all sorts of less than altruistic motives

John Dehlin [00:05:04] that some attribute towards other causes in the Civil War. And specifically that motivated the abolitionists to do what they did. I'm curious, you know, other than offending the traditional Christian puritanical sensitivities of the average American, do you have a sense for what other dynamics, if there were any, that made this even be on the radar and be significant enough to where two major pieces of legislation would be passed?

Todd Compton [00:05:42] Well, it's interesting. It's kind of parallel to slavery. And the first Republican party platform criticized what they called the twin relics of barbarism, slavery and polygamy. And that was back in 1854. Abraham Lincoln signed an anti polygamy bill way back in 1862.

John Dehlin [00:06:09] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:06:10] During the Civil War.

Todd Compton [00:06:12] Yeah, Merrill Anti bigamy Act. And that was kind of. The Mormons just ignored it and the federal government didn't try to enforce it. So it was only the Edmonds act and the Edmunds Tucker Bill. They really had teeth. They made it so Mormons couldn't vote, Mormons couldn't hold office.

Todd Compton [00:06:35] Many of them were sent to jail, as you mentioned. Then they were going to take away all the church's property. So. And there was a crusade. There was a real crusade, an anti polygamy crusade in America and in the East.

Todd Compton [00:06:58] So it's really an interesting culture clash at that point. So anyway, you have the manifesto in 1890, and Mormons still viewed polygamy as so important that many of them continued practicing it, but they just had to practice it in secret.

Todd Compton [00:07:22] And as you mentioned, and as I mentioned, there was a doctrine that to get the highest degree of salvation, of exaltation, you had to be a polygamist. And so many church leaders, many church members, still wanted to get that highest level of salvation.

Todd Compton [00:07:43] And there were some other motivations too. There were some situations where a man was married to a woman, and she didn't have any kids, and he wanted kids, and so he wanted plural wives so he could have kids. Sometimes you had situations like that, post manifesto marriages, but you had quite a number of post manifesto polygamous marriages. And they were.

Todd Compton [00:08:10] A number of the general authorities were involved with these marriages. And so you had the colonies in Mexico, and the first presidency would send people down to the colonies with kind of a recommend written in code that they be allowed to be married polygamously.

John Dehlin [00:08:30] So the sense is just to make

John Dehlin [00:08:32] sure our listeners are in sync. Is it sort of the sense that Wilford Woodruff did make the first manifesto in 1890, even though it was in scripture, basically saying, you know, we now come out against polygamy and we don't want to do it anymore. But that. That was done with the full knowledge that they would continue practicing it. They would just try and keep it really secret.

Todd Compton [00:09:01] I believe there were some general authorities who kind of had that idea. Yeah. It was just so important to Mormons. It was so difficult to give it up that they felt like they could not give it up.

John Dehlin [00:09:15] Is there any way to know how complicit Wilford Woodruff was?

Todd Compton [00:09:21] He was. He was involved in. In sending people down to Mexico to have plural marriages.

John Dehlin [00:09:29] Was there a feeling that that. Was there a feeling that that was legal because it was outside of the United States then.

John Dehlin [00:09:34] So.

John Dehlin [00:09:35] So basically they're saying, we'll abide by the laws of the United States, but what we do in other countries is our business. Is that kind of what you're saying?

Todd Compton [00:09:42] Yeah. There was some of that feeling, though, when people began to realize that they were having marriages outside the country. Then they kind of. They tried to get them to say, no, we don't have marriages outside of the country. And so. But they continued to have marriages both in Canada. Plural marriages, both in Canada. And in a lot of them, quite a few of them in Mexico.

John Dehlin [00:10:09] What about in the United States?

Todd Compton [00:10:11] Some in the United States also. Okay, so it's almost some on ships. Ships, you know, the ships that were not on in any country at all.

John Dehlin [00:10:22] So maritime polygamous marriages.

Todd Compton [00:10:25] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:10:26] So it's almost like a return to the Joseph Smith Nauvoo Kirtland style polygamy where it goes underground again.

Todd Compton [00:10:34] It was. It was secret polygamy again.

John Dehlin [00:10:37] Okay. So it's. Let's not stop practicing it, but let's just do it more tactfully and subtly.

Todd Compton [00:10:43] Right. And I didn't write about this at all in my book, but I recommend to people a really fine book by Carmen Hardy called Solemn Covenant, the Mormon Polygamous Passage. And he writes about this period and what a difficult period it was for Mormons, this transition from polygamy to monogamy.

Todd Compton [00:11:08] And, you know, it's a myth to say all of a sudden we were, you know, fully polygamous, you know, before 1890. And then, you know, after the manifesto, we were fully monogamous. It just didn't happen that way. There was a transition period, you know, and if you think about it, that would make sense, but it was secret polygamy. And once again, you have these, you know, you have the public professions and then you have the private practice. And they were.

Todd Compton [00:11:35] They were at odds with each other. And the Mormons who did it this way felt that they were doing the right thing, but they had to pay a price in credibility. You can't keep these things secret, even though you try to. So it became well known that there was this post manifesto polygamy going on.

Todd Compton [00:11:58] And it came out, especially in the Reed Smoot hearings, when Reed Smoot was elected senator and went east and. And the Senate refused to seat him until their hearings about whether Mormons really had given up polygamy. And these hearings were very dramatic and very embarrassing to the Mormons that there was all this documentation for this post manifesto polygamy. And so Joseph F. Smith, who was the prophet at that time, he came out with what we called his second manifesto in 1904.

Todd Compton [00:12:38] And these smoot herrings, you can. There's a wonderful book about that by a woman named Kathleen Flake. And so to read about that in detail. Get the book by Kathleen Flake.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:12:52] But it's totally fascinating period in Mormon history.

John Dehlin [00:12:58] So the impetus to the second manifesto was a desire to get Reed Smoot nominated to the or accepted and seated in the usa.

Todd Compton [00:13:08] Yeah, it was part of that whole time in history, that zeitgeist. Another aspect was the excommunication of John Taylor, who I mentioned earlier, was that

John Dehlin [00:13:24] the son of the prophet. Was that the son of the prophet John Taylor?

Todd Compton [00:13:27] Yeah, the son of the prophet. He was an apostle and Matthias Cowley was another apostle. And they were very prominent in these post manifesto marriages. And so they were. They were released from the quorum of the 12 as a result of these Smoot hearings. And later they were. One was excommunicated, the other was disfellowshipped. But other authorities had taken plural wise. Other general authorities had taken plural wise.

John Dehlin [00:13:54] BH Roberts did. I saw.

Todd Compton [00:13:57] Yeah. And the son of Wilford Woodruff is one example. But they weren't as well known as John Taylor in Matthias County.

John Dehlin [00:14:05] So a bit of a potential fall guy sort of thing happening with these two then.

Todd Compton [00:14:09] Yeah. Some people look at them as scapegoats. Scapegoats and heroic. Because they accepted this. Role that they had to pay play.

John Dehlin [00:14:23] Right.

Todd Compton [00:14:24] Of the church. And again, I recommend that wonderful biography by Sam Taylor. What is it called? Family Kingdom. Tells about his father's experience and his mother's experience.

John Dehlin [00:14:38] Right.

John Dehlin [00:14:40] So.

John Dehlin [00:14:41] So we can say that that marriage is officially ceased for sure, by 1904. 1905 and. Oh, go ahead.

Todd Compton [00:14:51] Mostly. Mostly.

John Dehlin [00:14:53] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:14:53] Some people think that even after that. There were a few afterwards, but they're not as well documented. So after 1904 it was mostly done in. In the Mormon church. There were other groups break off groups that practiced polygamy, obviously.

Fundamentalist Splinter Groups After the Manifesto

John Dehlin [00:15:14] Okay, well, this is fascinating. I appreciate everything you've shared with us so far. We've now arrived at the point where polygamous marriages have pretty much ceased. Is it safe to say that those who had already entered in were sort of grandfathered and allowed to continue? Or did the end of polygamy eventually mean that the families had to be dispersed and women and children orphaned?

Todd Compton [00:15:45] You have both of those things happening. Sometimes people were kind of grandfathered in and other times people actually gave up their lives. So it was a very, very difficult, painful time.

John Dehlin [00:15:59] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:01] And from there I guess we can fast forward unless there's anything notable we can fast forward to today. There were some split offs and groups that still exist that are break offs from the church who wanted to continue. And those are known as the fundamentalists. Right. Is there anything else that someone learning this at a basic level should know about polygamy between 1905 and let's say today?

Todd Compton [00:16:36] I don't know, you could talk a little bit about what you know. Fundamentalism in Mormon terms means polygamous groups. And so you had groups kind of. There's a big group in one of the suburbs of Salt Lake City. There's another group in southern Utah on the Arizona border called Colorado City, and they still practice it and they trace their authority back to John Taylor. And so they think of all the church leaders after John Taylor as kind of traitors to polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:17:16] Which suburb of Salt Lake City are you comfortable saying?

Todd Compton [00:17:19] Pardon?

John Dehlin [00:17:20] Which suburb in Salt Lake City?

Todd Compton [00:17:24] I didn't say and I don't know.

John Dehlin [00:17:25] Oh, okay.

John Dehlin [00:17:26] Oh, so it's not publicly known.

Todd Compton [00:17:30] Probably people know, but I don't.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:17:33] I haven't studied modern polygamy okay. So I just felt that people should have a basic idea that it is still going on, but they're break offs. Break offs who, you know, kind of developed after this post manifesto period.

John Dehlin [00:17:54] And then maybe the last thing I'll say before I move back to talking

John Dehlin [00:17:59] to you a little bit about your experience writing the book and any future work you're doing. You know, many of us who are

John Dehlin [00:18:07] listening are aware that when Gordon B.

John Dehlin [00:18:09] Hinckley was interviewed by Larry King, and Larry King asked, you know, President Hinckley, what about polygamy? President Hinckley's answer was that it's not doctrinal. Were you aware of that? And did you have any thoughts or comments around.

John Dehlin [00:18:26] Around that, you know, that statement?

Todd Compton [00:18:30] I think I have. I did hear about that. I don't have it in front of me to see exactly what he said. I know quite early that James Talmage, he made a statement to the effect that polygamy was not a central doctrine of the church. It was kind of an incidental doctrine.

Todd Compton [00:18:54] So you have these statements by people in our century that are kind of. They kind of contradict the statements, you know, that say that polygamy was necessary for the highest salvation. And, you know, it's one sign of how our church has changed from a polygamist church to a generally monogamous church.

Todd Compton [00:19:17] What I find interesting is, however, sometimes people kind of have this idea that polygamy will still be in the celestial kingdom. And even though they're just the most monogamous church you could find, sometimes in their faith, they kind of have this idea that in the next life there will be polygamy. And so that's kind of our heritage from polygamy at this point.

John Dehlin [00:19:48] And it's also fair to say that polygamous marriages still are being enacted. It's just that there's polygamists in the hereafter. So, for example, my mother is married

John Dehlin [00:20:01] to a man who's sealed to his former wife who's passed away.

Todd Compton [00:20:05] Right? Yeah, you have some of that going on.

Publishing the Book and Its Personal Impact

John Dehlin [00:20:10] So tell us, you know, what was it like to publish this book? And what was the reaction, you know, in your family, the extent to which you're comfortable sharing with your family, with your ward, with your stake, and even broader.

Todd Compton [00:20:30] My family was very good about it, and my parents are pretty conservative. And. And so they. They've been supportive of me. So as far as my words, I've had people, those who know about it, you know, they've been friendly. A lot of them don't know about It, I don't, you know, I don't bring it up unless it happens to come up. If it comes up, I'm happy to talk about it. I was in the Santa Monica stake at the time and stake presidency had wanted me to visit with them and they kind of expressed not so positive feelings about, about the book. But

John Dehlin [00:21:34] did you get a sense that they had actually. Did you get a sense that they had actually read it?

Todd Compton [00:21:39] I think there was one of them who was a member of the church educational system who might have read it. I know he had a copy.

John Dehlin [00:21:48] Right.

Todd Compton [00:21:49] And so I'm in a different state now, and I don't think anyone in my stake has mentioned it to me. You know, there's a couple of my friends know about it, but I'm not sure if my bishop knows about it.

John Dehlin [00:22:05] You've been able to hold callings and stuff then?

Todd Compton [00:22:08] Pardon?

John Dehlin [00:22:09] You've been able to hold callings and normal.

Todd Compton [00:22:13] Yeah, I've held callings. Yeah, I have a calling now. I'm not like what you would call, you know, like stake president type or anything like that. Just a standard, you know, someone who tries to go to church every week.

John Dehlin [00:22:30] Right.

Todd Compton [00:22:32] I'm not, I wouldn't call me super active, but I enjoy going to church.

John Dehlin [00:22:40] So are you comfortable talking about what impact this study had on your testimony? Whether it deepened it weakened, it was indifferent to it?

Todd Compton [00:22:59] I would say that it's possibly changed the quality of my faith. I'd say it's made my faith more complex, if you want to talk about it that way. I wouldn't say it in terms of strengthening or weakening, but more in terms of making my faith more complex.

Todd Compton [00:23:29] I talk about absolutist faith and non absolutist faith. Absolutist faith means everything has to be absolute. Like a church leader is absolutely perfect and someone who fights against them is absolutely evil. As I've come to develop my faith, I don't see things in that way.

Todd Compton [00:23:59] I see church history and church leaders as more complex than that. And I think that more complex faith, I think it, it's a deepening in my view. But it's very difficult for people who do have this absolutist faith to look at the stuff I've dealt with. And I accept it with my non absolutist faith.

Todd Compton [00:24:27] And I accept that complexity. And they don't have the background, You know, they don't have this point of view of non absolutist faith to deal with these issues. So it's very difficult for them. But I Think the important thing is what I'm reporting is not, I haven't made any of it up. I'm just reporting what's in the historical record.

Todd Compton [00:24:59] And I really do believe that anything that's true, you can include it in your faith. So you don't need to be afraid of anything in church history if you have faith that's authentic. And I think you do need to develop that more complex faith, that non absolutist faith. So that's how I deal with it, at least. Everyone has to work through these issues themselves, but that's how I work with it.

John Dehlin [00:25:37] And one last, just to follow up on those comments, I could hear some of my listeners thinking, after learning all this stuff in depth and breaking this ground, I'm sure there are all sorts of things that maybe were shocking to you or really revealing. May I ask, you know, what's kept

John Dehlin [00:25:57] this from just making you drop it

John Dehlin [00:25:59] all and say, this is one huge

John Dehlin [00:26:01] fraud, this is bad and I'm out of here.

John Dehlin [00:26:05] You know, is there anything you want to share? Because, you know, part of the purpose

John Dehlin [00:26:08] of this podcast is to say that,

John Dehlin [00:26:12] you know, leaving the church isn't the only option, that you can know the stuff and still stick around, and lots of people do. So is there anything you can or feel comfortable sharing to explain why this hasn't led to just a massive defection for you?

Todd Compton [00:26:35] Again, let me emphasize, different people react to it in different ways. I can just talk about myself. I remember I heard a great talk by a guy named Stan Kimball and he talked about how he said, when you, when you're beginning, you know, when you're starting faith, like when you're a kid, you have what I guess he would call oversimplified faith. What he called it was pre primary pablum, right? And that's not my phrase. That's his phrase.

John Dehlin [00:27:12] Yes.

Todd Compton [00:27:13] But then he said you go through a period, you know, if you're, if you study church history and you actually study the real church history, you know, like the real documents, he said in there, it's very difficult, you know, like there's a lot of conflicts with what you've accepted in the PPP period. Pre primary, baby, there are a lot of conflicts, he said, and then different people go different ways. You know, like some people become atheists, he says some people retreat back into the pre primary Pablo period. It's like they don't want to deal with the real history, the real issues and the real documents, he said.

Todd Compton [00:27:57] But other people can go on and develop a faith that accommodates the real history and the real history that you find in the documents. And he says, the way he expressed it, he said that later faith that you have, it shares a lot with that previous faith you had, the early faith you had, but it includes all of the real problems.

Todd Compton [00:28:35] And he said, and I kind of look at it that way, but I'm not minimizing in any way how difficult the conflicts are and how difficult the problems are. An example he used was the prophets in the Old Testament. He said, you go back to those prophets and you find out how extremely human they are. You look at Jonah and how he didn't want the people he was sent to to repent, that, you know, he was just very human, you know, and they had lots of. You look at the prophets in Genesis, sometimes they're deceptive.

Todd Compton [00:29:20] Lots of very, very human people. And yet there's this inspiration of God working through them at times. At times they're rebelling against it, and at times it's there. And so I kind of look at it that way, but I'm not minimizing at all how difficult it is, for sure.

John Dehlin [00:29:45] Sure.

Todd Compton [00:29:46] But I think that it's important that we really do come to terms with these problems because they're there. You know, it's like Joseph Smith is a major figure. You know, there's this kind of. This idea that we should keep his polygamy, kind of like as a taboo subject and never talk about it. And that's just silly. He's a major figure in American history.

Todd Compton [00:30:10] Someone's plural, you know, someone's wives, someone's family life. It's part of their. It's part of their history, it's part of their life. You have to deal with it. You know, it's much better to find out what the real story is and try to work through it than it is to just act like this is a taboo subject that no one should deal with.

Todd Compton [00:30:35] So that's how I deal with it. That's how I look at it. Everyone looks at it differently. By the way, one of the books I recommend is Rough Spirit Stone Rolling by Richard Bushman.

John Dehlin [00:30:47] Yes.

Todd Compton [00:30:48] And he deals with the. Joseph Smith's polygamy. Quite frankly, he doesn't. You know, it isn't as extensive as in my book. My book's 800 pages, but he deals with it quite frankly and is interesting how he looks at it. I recommend that for if there happen to be conservative Mormons out there who want to see how a really fine scholar who's a good member of the church looks at it.

Recommended Reading on Mormon Polygamy

John Dehlin [00:31:16] At the beginning of the podcast, you asked me to make sure and ask you what other books you recommend. You've mentioned several along the way, but are there any others you wanted to.

Todd Compton [00:31:24] Oh yeah, let me just mention a few. I mentioned Dane's more wives than one. She's a BYU professor and that one has been widely acclaimed. Lawrence Foster wrote a book called Religion and Sexuality, which is a fine book, and he compares Mormon polygamy to the Shakers in the Oneida community. That's one of the earliest books on polygamy and it's still one of the best. Richard Van Wagner wrote a fine book called Mormon Polygamy that's a history, just basically a history of polygamy and it goes through the whole story. Okay. Solemn Covenant by Carmen Hardy deals with post manifesto polygamy and that's one of the great books in Mormon history. Really? He's just such a fine scholar and it's such a fascinating story.

John Dehlin [00:32:20] What's the name of that again?

Todd Compton [00:32:21] I really recommend that. Mormon Enigma is a really interesting look at Joseph Smith's polygamy from the viewpoint of Emma Smith. It was very difficult for Emma Smith. So that's another standard look at polygamy. So if you read all those books, you're pretty well up on polygamy.

John Dehlin [00:32:46] And might I add for one last time, in Sacred Loneliness by Todd Compton. Published by who?

Todd Compton [00:32:53] Signature Books.

John Dehlin [00:32:54] Signature Books.

John Dehlin [00:32:55] So what's next for Todd Compton?

Todd Compton [00:32:59] Oh, I'm just having a book coming out that's from my classics background and it's called, let's see, it's got a really weird title. Victim of the Poet, Escape Goat Warrior and Hero in Greco Roman and Indo European Myth and History. It's being published by center for Hellenic studies in Washington D.C. which is connected with Harvard University Press.

John Dehlin [00:33:26] Excellent.

Todd Compton [00:33:27] So that's kind of a nibbly, kind of a Nibley esque book. So that's totally different than In Sacred Loneliness, but I'll be interested to see what Mormon's reaction is to that book also.

John Dehlin [00:33:42] And any other Mormon studies titles in the. In the Pot Stewing.

Todd Compton [00:33:49] Any other titles in what in Mormon studies? Oh, well, a lot of great books. You know, like Leonard Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom is basic.

John Dehlin [00:34:02] Oh, no, no, no, I'm sorry.

Todd Compton [00:34:03] Massacre.

John Dehlin [00:34:04] I'm sorry, I meant in from you.

John Dehlin [00:34:07] So any other Mormon studies titles?

Todd Compton [00:34:10] I'm doing a biography of Jacob Hammond. So that's a real.

John Dehlin [00:34:21] And he was. He was a major figure in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Is that right?

Todd Compton [00:34:26] No, he. He was actually in Salt Lake City marrying a plural wife during the Mountain Meadows massacre.

John Dehlin [00:34:31] Okay.

Todd Compton [00:34:32] He was lucky. He missed it.

John Dehlin [00:34:34] Okay. Okay.

Todd Compton [00:34:36] He's just a fascinating figure in Southern Utah history, Native American history. So I wanted a real change of pace.

John Dehlin [00:34:46] Yeah,

Todd Compton [00:34:48] he is one

John Dehlin [00:34:52] very good. Well, I just want to thank you so much for taking well over two hours to be on this podcast. I think that hopefully many people who aren't so inclined to reading, or at least to deep reading about Mormon studies will be able to get a good overview of. Of this very important issue to Mormonism. I just can't thank you enough for being willing to take the time to do this interview.

Todd Compton [00:35:19] Welcome. The history of polygamy sure is. It's incredibly fascinating.

John Dehlin [00:35:24] Well, I'm sold, and I hope. I'm sure our listeners are as well. So, Todd Compton, thanks again for coming on this podcast.

Todd Compton [00:35:32] Okay, you're. You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:35:34] And I'd just like to thank all of you for listening and tuning in. We hope you've enjoyed what you've listened to today. If you have any feedback, please send it to us@mormonstoriesmail.com we're very grateful for your listenership, and we hope to talk to you again soon. Thanks a lot and take care.

Todd Compton [00:35:59] The depth of your dreams, the height of your wishes.

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