User:InProgress/Website reviews/Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

Website review: Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

My greatest hope in this regard is that the LDS Church will not defend Joseph Smith’s involvement in polygamy as appropriate.
—The anonymous author of Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith (http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/Who.htm)

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Overview

FAIR's evaluation of the web site Remembering the Wives of Joseph Smith

• The owner of the site claims to be an active Latter-day Saint. He remains anonymous on the web site.
• The author's stated hope is that the Church will "not defend Joseph Smith's involvement with polygamy."
• The site uses a FAIR article to make the Church appear as if they are hiding plural marriage.

Summary

Loaded and prejudicial language

• "In the relative stability of Nauvoo, Joseph would try to establish polygamy, a practice he had flirted with in Kirtland and Missouri."

Biographies

Emma Hale

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Fanny Alger

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Lucinda Morgan Harris

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Louisa Beaman

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Zina Huntington Jacobs

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary
-	The website states that Henry Jacobs "seemed to struggle" with Zina marrying Brigham Young, and notes that Henry wrote the following in a letter to her: “...the same affection is there...But I feel alone...I do not Blame Eny person...may the Lord our Father bless Brother Brigham...all is right according to the Law of the Celestial Kingdom of our God Joseph.”	Source text with extracted text highlighted: "I feel alone & no one to speak to or call my own I feel like a lamb without a mother I do not blame eny person or persons no may the Lord our father Bless Brother Brigham and all pertains unto him forever tell him for me I have feelings against him nor never had, all is right according to the Law of the Celestial Kingdom of our God Joseph Zina be comforted be of good cheer and the God of our fathers bless you I know your mind has been troubled about many things but fear not all things will work together for good for them that Love God therefore the subject to council as you hav commenced and you will be saved…" Letter from Henry B. Jacobs, no date, part of the Zina Card Brown Family Collection (1806-1972), LDS Church Archives, MS 4780, box 2, folder 1.

Presendia Huntington Buell

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary
The website claims that in return for giving his sister to Joseph in marriage, that Joseph offered Dimick Huntington "any reward he wanted."
Presendia continued to live with her "first husband Norman" for approximately two years after she married Heber C. Kimball.
The site states that Presendia "married Joseph Smith on December 11, 1841," and shortly afterward notes that when Presendia left to cross the plains in 1846 that she "took her six year old son, Oliver, with her, leaving behind her 16 year old son George and husband, Norman."		Note that Presendia took with her a son that may have been conceived during the time that she was married to Joseph Smith. This appears to be an allusion to the claim that Oliver Buell (originally made by Fawn Brodie in No Man Knows My History), that Oliver was actually Joseph's son. This claim has been proven false through DNA research. "Only 9 of the 23 genetic markers match when comparing the inferred Oliver Buell haplotype to that of Joseph Smith. Such a low degree of correlation between the two haplotypes provides strong evidence that they belong to two unrelated paternal lineages, thus excluding with high likelihood Joseph Smith Jr. as the biological father of Oliver N. Buell. Further weight is given to this observation by the close match of the inferred haplotype of Owen F. Buell to the independent Buell record in the SMGF data base, which genetic relationship dates back prior to Joseph Smith's era. Additionally, the two genetic profiles were run through a haplogroup predictor algorithm that assigned the Smith haplotypes to a cluster known as R1b and the cluster for the Buell's haplotypes to I1b2a, two deeply divergent clades that separated anciently, thus providing further evidence that the Oliver Buell and Joseph Smith lineages are not closely related" [1] See: Joseph Smith and polygamy—Children of polygamous marriages—Buell

Agnes Coolbrith

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Sylvia Sessions Lyon

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Mary Rollins Lightner

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Patty Bartlett Sessions

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Marinda Johnson Hyde

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Elizabeth Davis Durfee

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Sarah Kingsley Cleveland

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Delcena Johnson

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Eliza R. Snow

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Sarah Ann Whitney

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Martha McBride Knight

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Ruth Vose Sayers

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Flora Ann Woodworth

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Emily Dow Partridge

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Eliza Maria Partridge

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Almera Johnson

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Lucy Walker

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Sarah Lawrence

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Maria Lawrence

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Helen Mar Kimball

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Hanna Ells

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Elvira Cowles Holmes

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Rhoda Richards

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Desdemona Fullmer

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Olive Frost

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Melissa Lott

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Nancy Winchester

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Fanny Young

-	Claim	Sources used	FAIR Commentary

Notes

1. [note] Ugo A. Perego, Jayne E. Ekins, and Scott R. Woodward, "Resolving the Paternities of Oliver N. Buell and Mosiah L. Hancock through DNA," JJHWA, 133.

Further reading

• Church Response to Jon Krakauer's Under the Banner of Heaven, Newsroom, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. (27 June 2003). See section "Plural Marriage."