Fanny Alger was Joseph Smith's first plural wife

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Fanny Alger was Joseph Smith's first plural wife

Summary: With a lone exception, there is no account after Joseph’s death of Emma admitting Joseph’s plural marriages in any source. The reported exception is recorded in a newspaper article and two letters written by excommunicated Latter-day Saint apostle William E. McLellin. The former apostle claimed to have visited Emma in 1847 and to have discussed Joseph’s relationship with Fanny Alger. McLellin also reported a tale he had heard about Joseph and Fanny Alger in which they were allegedly observed by Emma together in the barn.

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• Question: What do we know about Joseph Smith's first plural wife Fanny Alger?
• Question: Did Joseph Smith marry Fanny Alger as his first plural wife in 1833?
• Question: How could Joseph and Fanny have been married in 1831 if the sealing power had not yet been restored?
• Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that Joseph Smith had an affair with Fanny Alger?
• Question: Did Emma Smith discover her husband Joseph with Fanny Alger in a barn?
• Question: Did Fanny Alger have a child by Joseph Smith?

Question: What do we know about Joseph Smith's first plural wife Fanny Alger?

Jump to details:

• Question: What do we know about Joseph Smith's first plural wife Fanny Alger?
• There are no first-hand accounts of the relationship between Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger

Question: Did Joseph Smith marry Fanny Alger as his first plural wife in 1833?

Jump to details:

• Question: Did Joseph Smith marry Fanny Alger as his first plural wife in 1833?
• Joseph Smith met Fanny Alger in 1833 when she was a house-assistant to Emma
• Joseph said that the "ancient order of plural marriage" was to again be practiced at the time that Fanny was living with his family
• Joseph asked the brother-in-law of Fanny's father to make the request of Fanny's father, after which a marriage ceremony was performed

Question: How could Joseph and Fanny have been married in 1831 if the sealing power had not yet been restored?

Jump to details:

• Question: How could Joseph and Fanny have been married in 1831 if the sealing power had not yet been restored?
• There is historical evidence that Joseph Smith knew as early as 1831 that plural marriage would be restored
• Joseph and Fanny's marriage was a plural marriage, not an eternal marriage

Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?

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• Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?
• Oliver Cowdery perceived the relationship between Joseph and Fanny as a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair"
• Even hostile accounts of the relationship between Joseph and Fanny report a marriage or sealing

Question: Did Emma Smith discover her husband Joseph with Fanny Alger in a barn?

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• Question: Did Emma Smith discover her husband Joseph with Fanny Alger in a barn?
• William McLellin claimed to have heard a story that Fanny and Joseph were in the barn and Emma had observed them
• Ann Eliza Webb, who was born 11 years after Joseph's marriage to Fanny, claimed that Emma threw Fanny out of the house

Question: Did Fanny Alger have a child by Joseph Smith?

Jump to details:

• Question: Did Fanny Alger have a child by Joseph Smith?
• A suggestion that Fanny was pregnant by Joseph surfaced in an 1886 anti-Mormon book with a claim that Emma "drove" Fanny out of the house
• Fawn Brodie claimed that Fanny's son Orrison was the son of Joseph Smith, but this was disproven by DNA research

Notes