Joseph smith biography wives submit

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Texts Video icon An illustration of two cells of a film strip. Video Audio icon An illustration of an audio speaker. Meanwhile, Smith's family faced financial hardship, due in part to the death of his oldest brother Alvin. When he proposed marriage, her father, Isaac Hale, objected; he believed Smith had no means to support his daughter.

Later that year, when Smith promised to abandon treasure seeking, his father-in-law offered to let the couple live on his property in Harmony and help Smith get started in business. Smith made his last visit to the hill shortly after midnight on September 22, , taking Emma with him. He also said the plates were a religious record of Middle-Eastern indigenous Americans and were engraved in an unknown language, called reformed Egyptian.

Although Smith had abandoned treasure hunting, former associates believed he had double crossed them and had taken the golden plates for himself, property they believed should be jointly shared. In October , Smith and Emma permanently moved to Harmony, aided by a relatively prosperous neighbor, Martin Harris , [ 43 ] who began serving as Smith's scribe in April Harris persuaded Smith to let him take pages of manuscript to Palmyra to show a few family members, including his wife.

Smith said that Moroni returned the plates to him in September , [ 50 ] and he then dictated some of the book to his wife Emma. The completed work, titled the Book of Mormon , was published in Palmyra by printer Egbert Bratt Grandin [ 56 ] and was first advertised for sale on March 26, Before Smith could confirm the newly baptized, he was arrested and charged with being a "disorderly person".

Smith later claimed that, probably around this time, Peter , James , and John had appeared to him and had ordained him and Cowdery to a higher priesthood. Smith's authority was undermined when Cowdery, Hiram Page , and other church members also claimed to receive revelations. On their way to Missouri , Cowdery's party passed through northeastern Ohio , where Sidney Rigdon and over a hundred followers of his variety of Campbellite Restorationism converted to the Church of Christ, swelling the ranks of the new organization dramatically.

When Smith moved to Kirtland in January , he encountered a religious culture that included enthusiastic demonstrations of spiritual gifts , including fits and trances, rolling on the ground, and speaking in tongues. Smith brought the Kirtland congregation under his authority and tamed ecstatic outbursts. Converts poured into Kirtland. By the summer of , there were fifteen hundred to two thousand Latter Day Saints in the vicinity, [ 72 ] many expecting Smith to lead them shortly to the Millennial kingdom.

They found Jackson County, Missouri. After Smith visited in July , he pronounced the frontier hamlet of Independence the "center place" of Zion. For most of the s, the church was effectively based in Ohio. The mob beat Smith and Rigdon unconscious, tarred and feathered them, and left them for dead. In Jackson County, existing Missouri residents resented the Latter Day Saint newcomers for both political and religious reasons.

Smith advised his followers to bear the violence patiently until after they had been attacked multiple times, after which they could fight back. After petitions to Missouri governor Daniel Dunklin for aid were unsuccessful, [ 83 ] Smith organized and led a small paramilitary expedition, called Zion's Camp , to aid the Latter Day Saints in Missouri.

The men of the expedition were disorganized, suffered from a cholera outbreak and were severely outnumbered. By the end of June, Smith deescalated the confrontation, sought peace with Jackson County's residents, and disbanded Zion's Camp. After the Camp returned to Ohio, Smith drew heavily from its participants to establish various governing bodies in the church.

In March , at the temple's dedication, many who received the endowment reported seeing visions of angels and engaged in prophesying and speaking in tongues. In January , Smith and other churchleaders created a joint stock company , called the Kirtland Safety Society , to act as a quasi-bank; the company issued banknotes partly capitalized by real estate.

Smith encouraged his followers to buy the notes, in which he invested heavily himself. The bank failed within a month. Smith was held responsible for the failure, and there were widespread defections from the church, including many of Smith's closest advisers. The failure of the bank was one part of a series of internal disputes led to the demise of the Kirtland community.

Political and religious differences between old Missourians and newly arriving Latter Day Saint settlers provoked tensions between the two groups, much as they had in Jackson County. By this time, Smith's experiences with mob violence led him to believe that his faith's survival required greater militancy against anti-Mormons. Non-Mormon vigilantes raided and burned Mormon farms, while Danites and other Mormons pillaged non-Mormon towns.

Governor Lilburn Boggs then ordered that the Mormons be "exterminated or driven from the state". The following day, the Mormons surrendered to 2, state troops and agreed to forfeit their property and leave the state. Smith bore his imprisonment stoically. Understanding that he was effectively on trial before his own people, many of whom considered him a fallen prophet, he wrote a personal defense and an apology for the activities of his followers.

Many American newspapers criticized Missouri for the Haun's Mill massacre and the state's expulsion of the Mormons. Smith also attracted a few wealthy and influential converts, including John C. Bennett , the Illinois quartermaster general. Though Latter Day Saint authorities controlled Nauvoo's civil government, the city guaranteed religious freedom for its residents.

Smith and Bennett became its commanders, and were styled Lieutenant General and Major General respectively. As such, they controlled by far the largest body of armed men in Illinois. The early Nauvoo years were a period of doctrinal innovation. Smith introduced baptism for the dead in , and in construction began on the Nauvoo Temple as a place for recovering lost ancient knowledge.

For women, Smith introduced the Relief Society , a service club and sorority within which Smith predicted women would receive "the keys of the kingdom". It was around this time that Smith began secretly marrying additional wives, a practice called plural marriage. In retaliation, Bennett left Nauvoo and began publishing sensational accusations against Smith and his followers.

By mid, popular opinion in Illinois had turned against the Mormons. After an unknown assailant shot and wounded Missouri governor Lilburn Boggs in May , anti-Mormons circulated rumors that Smith's bodyguard, Porter Rockwell , was the gunman. Certain he would be killed if he ever returned to Missouri, Smith went into hiding twice during the next five months, until the U.

Attorney for Illinois argued that his extradition would be unconstitutional. Two law officers arrested Smith but were intercepted by a party of Mormons before they could reach Missouri. Smith was then released on a writ of habeas corpus from the Nauvoo municipal court. In December , Smith petitioned Congress to make Nauvoo an independent territory with the right to call out federal troops in its defense.

After receiving noncommittal or negative responses, he announced his own independent candidacy for president of the United States , suspended regular proselytizing, and sent out the Quorum of the Twelve and hundreds of other political missionaries. By early , a rift developed between Smith and a half dozen of his closest associates. On June 7, the dissidents published the first and only issue of the Nauvoo Expositor , calling for reform within the church but also appealing politically to non-Mormons.

Smith had recently given his King Follett discourse , in which he said that God was once a man, and that men and women could become gods. Fearing the Expositor would provoke a new round of violence against the Mormons, the Nauvoo City Council declared the newspaper a public nuisance, and Smith ordered the Nauvoo Legion to assist the police force in destroying its printing press.

Destruction of the newspaper provoked a strident call to arms from Thomas C. Sharp , editor of the Warsaw Signal and longtime critic of Smith. On June 27, , an armed mob with blackened faces stormed Carthage Jail , where Joseph and Hyrum were being detained. Hyrum, who was trying to secure the door, was killed instantly with a shot to the face.

Smith fired three shots from a pepper-box pistol that his friend, Cyrus H. Wheelock , had lent him, wounding three men, [ ] before he sprang for the window. He was shot multiple times before falling out of the window, crying, "Oh Lord my God! Following Smith's death, non-Mormon newspapers were nearly unanimous in portraying Smith as a religious fanatic.

After a public funeral and viewing of the deceased brothers, Smith's widow—who feared hostile non-Mormons might try to desecrate the bodies—had their remains buried at night in a secret location, with substitute coffins filled with sandbags interred in the publicly attested grave. Smith Smith's grandson searched for, located, and disinterred the Smith brothers' remains in and reinterred them, along with Smith's wife, in Nauvoo at the Smith Family Cemetery.

Modern biographers and scholars—Mormon and non-Mormon alike—agree that Smith was one of the most influential, charismatic, and innovative figures in American religious history. Smith's death resulted in a succession crisis within the Latter Day Saint movement. Nominal membership in Young's denomination, which became the LDS Church, surpassed 17 million in Strang , who had based his claim on a letter of appointment ostensibly written by Smith but which some scholars believe was forged.

The first of Smith's wives, Emma Hale, gave birth to nine children during their marriage, five of whom died before the age of two. However, in cases where DNA testing of potential Smith descendants from plural wives has been possible, results have been negative. He also disliked her open opposition to plural marriage. Young excluded Emma from ecclesiastical meetings and from social gatherings.

Emma maintained her belief that Smith had been a prophet, and she never repudiated her belief in the authenticity of the Book of Mormon. By some accounts, Smith had been teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as , and there is evidence that he may have been a polygamist by In April , Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman, [ ] and during the next two-and-a-half years he secretly married or was sealed to about thirty or forty additional women.

According to Bushman, the "signal feature" of Smith's life was "his sense of being guided by revelation". Instead of presenting his ideas with logical arguments, Smith dictated authoritative scripture-like "revelations" and let people decide whether to believe, [ ] doing so with what Peter Coviello calls "beguiling offhandedness".

The Book of Mormon has been called the longest and most complex of Smith's revelations. Christian themes permeate the work. Some scholars have considered the Book of Mormon a response to pressing cultural and environmental issues in Smith's day. Remini calls the Book of Mormon "a typically American story" that "radiates the revivalist passion of the Second Great Awakening".

Bushman writes that "the Book of Mormon is not a conventional American book" and that its structure better resembles the Bible. Smith never fully described how he produced the Book of Mormon, saying only that he translated by the power of God and implying that he had read its words. For at least some of the earliest dictation, Smith's compatriots said he used the "Urim and Thummim", a pair of seer stones he said were buried with the plates.

In June , Smith dictated a revelation in which Moses narrates a vision in which he sees "worlds without number" and speaks with God about the purpose of creation and the relation of humankind to deity. In the course of producing the Book of Mormon, Smith declared that the Bible was missing "the most plain and precious parts of the gospel". In , Smith encouraged some Latter Day Saints in Kirtland to purchase rolls of ancient Egyptian papyri from a traveling exhibitor.

He said they contained the writings of the ancient patriarchs Abraham and Joseph. Over the next several years, Smith dictated to scribes what he reported was a revelatory translation of one of these rolls, which was published in as the Book of Abraham. Egyptologists have subsequently determined them to be part of the Egyptian Book of Breathing with no connection to Abraham.

In his revisions of the Bible, and production of the Book of Abraham he taught that Black people were cursed by God with the curses placed on Cain and Ham , and linked the two curses by positioning Ham's Canaanite posterity as matrilinear descendants of Cain. According to Pratt, Smith dictated his revelations, which were recorded by a scribe without revisions or corrections.

Smith's revelations often came in response to specific questions. He described the revelatory process as having "pure Intelligence" flowing into him. Smith, however, never viewed the wording to be infallible. The revelations were not God's words verbatim, but "couched in language suitable to Joseph's time". Smith gave varying types of revelations.

Some were temporal, while others were spiritual or doctrinal. Some were received for a specific individual, while others were directed at the whole church. An revelation called "The Law" contained directions for missionary work, rules for organizing society in Zion, a reiteration of the Ten Commandments , an injunction to "administer to the poor and needy" and an outline for the law of consecration.

In , at a time of temperance agitation, Smith delivered a revelation called the " Word of Wisdom ", which counseled a diet of wholesome herbs, fruits, grains and a sparing use of meat. It also recommended that Latter Day Saints avoid "strong" alcoholic drinks, tobacco, and "hot drinks" later interpreted to mean tea and coffee. Before , most of Smith's revelations concerned establishing the church, gathering followers, and building the city of Zion.

Later revelations dealt primarily with the priesthood, endowment, and exaltation. Smith taught that all existence was material , including a world of "spirit matter" so fine that it was invisible to all but the purest mortal eyes. Like matter, Smith saw "intelligence" as co-eternal with God, and he taught that human spirits had been drawn from a pre-existent pool of eternal intelligences.

Therefore, the work and glory of God was to create worlds across the cosmos where inferior intelligences could be embodied. Smith taught that God was an advanced and glorified man, [ ] embodied within time and space. Humans are, therefore, not so much God's creations as they are God's "kin".

Joseph smith biography wives submit

Through the gradual acquisition of knowledge, according to Smith, those who received exaltation could eventually become like God. In Smith's view, the opportunity to achieve godhood also called exaltation extended to all humanity. Those who died with no opportunity to accept saving ordinances could achieve exaltation by accepting them in the afterlife through proxy ordinances performed on their behalf.

Apart from those who committed the eternal sin , Smith taught that even the wicked and disbelieving would achieve a degree of glory in the afterlife. Smith's teachings were rooted in dispensational restorationism. For instance, in the early s, Smith temporarily instituted a form of religious communism , called the United Order , that required Latter Day Saints to give all their property to the church, to be divided among the faithful.

By the mids, Smith began teaching a hierarchy of three priesthoods—the Melchizedek , the Aaronic , and the Patriarchal. Smith taught that the High Priesthood's endowment of heavenly power included the sealing powers of Elijah, allowing High Priests to perform ceremonies with effects that continued after death. During the early s, Smith unfolded a theology of family relations, called the "New and Everlasting Covenant", that superseded all earthly bonds.

Plural marriage, or polygamy, was Smith's "most famous innovation", according to historian Matthew Bowman. Contents move to sidebar hide. It included 27 women besides Emma Smith. However, historians disagree as to the number and identity of the plural wives Smith had. Various scholars and historians, including Fawn M. Brodie , George D.

Smith , [ 7 ] and Todd Compton , have attempted to identify the women who married Smith. As Compton has stated, for many of these marriages, "absolutely nothing is known of [the] marriage after the ceremony. Quinn gave this sealing a window of year between and Brian C. Hales notes the following weaknesses in the evidence: Andrew Jenson's notes for Lucinda say "better leave her out perhaps"; the timeline for Sarah Pratt's statement would put the start of the relationship in which is before Joseph and Lucinda even met.

Hales writes "If a plural marriage occurred, I think it would have been in Nauvoo. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife, in It was in the early part of Feb, that he was compelled to reveal it to me personally". Brigham Young sealed me to him, for time and all eternity -- Feb. He asked me if I believed him to be a Prophet of God.

He fully Explained to me the principle of plural or celestial marriage Why Should I be chosen from among thy daughters, Father I am only a child in years and experience. After Joseph Smith's death, I was visited by some of his most intimate friends who knew of his request and explained to me this religion, counseling me to accept his wishes, for he now was gone and could do no more for himself.

While still kneeling at the altar, my hand clasped in his and ready to become his third plural wife, Heber C. Kimball tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Cordelia, are you going to deprive the Prophet of his desire that you be his wife? One time when Cordelia told this story to her granddaughter, Mary Verona Cox, she said, "Verona, in eternity I want the man that was the father of my children and was a good husband and father.

I lived with him and loved him. Research by Ugo A. Perego , a geneticist and member of the LDS Church, has shown that a number of children of Smith's alleged polygamous relationships were not his genetic offspring. The following table lists some of the children born to Smith's alleged polygamous wives as well as those ruled out by genetic testing : [ 76 ] [ 77 ] [ 78 ].

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. List of wives of Joseph Smith. See also: Origin of Latter Day Saint polygamy. List of wives [ edit ]. Allegations of children born to polygamous wives [ edit ]. See also [ edit ].

References [ edit ]. Citations [ edit ]. Brigham Henry , History of the Church , vol. Historical Record 6 [May ]: — The Mormon Hierarchy; Origins of Power. Retrieved 8 January She then told me that I was the daughter of the Prophet Joseph Smith. Retrieved 12 June Was Joseph Smith the biological father of Josephine Lyon? The genetic evidence.

Smith Jr. It is said that she was the first woman given in plural marriage "by and with the consent of both parents". The Historical Record, Volumes Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith. University of Illinois Press. ISBN