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

{{FairMormon}}
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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"===

Some of Joseph's associates, most notably Oliver Cowdery, perceived Joseph's association with Fanny as an affair rather than a plural marriage. Oliver, in a letter to his brother Warren, asserted that "in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself."<ref>Richard Bushman, ''Rough Stone Rolling'', 323–25, 347–49.</ref>

Gary J. Bergera, an advocate of the "affair" theory, wrote:

<blockquote>
I do not believe that Fanny Alger, whom [Todd] Compton counts as Smith’s first plural wife, satisfies the criteria to be considered a “wife.” Briefly, the sources for such a “marriage” are all retrospective and presented from a point of view favoring plural marriage, rather than, say, an extramarital liaison…Smith’s doctrine of eternal marriage was not formulated until after 1839–40. <ref>{{Dialogue1|author=Gary James Bergera|article=Identifying the Earliest Mormon Polygamists, 1841–44|vol=38|num=3|date=Fall 2005|start=30n75}}</ref> 
</blockquote>

There are several problems with this analysis.  While it is true that sources on Fanny are all retrospective, the same is true of many early plural marriages.  Fanny's marriage has more evidence than some.  Bergera says that all the sources about Fanny's marriage come "from a point of view favoring plural marriage," but this claim is clearly false.

===Even hostile accounts of the relationship between Joseph and Fanny report a marriage or sealing===

For example, Fanny's marriage was mentioned by Ann Eliza Webb Young, a later wife of Brigham Young's who divorced him, published an anti-Mormon book, and spent much of her time giving anti-Mormon, anti-polygamy lectures.  Fanny stayed with Ann Eliza's family after leaving Joseph and Emma's house, and both Ann Eliza and her father Chauncey Webb <ref>Wilhelm Wyl, [Wilhelm Ritter von Wymetal], ''Mormon Portraits Volume First: Joseph Smith the Prophet, His Family and Friends'' (Salt Lake City, Utah: Tribune Printing and Publishing Company, 1886), 57; Ann Eliza Young, ''Wife No. 19, or the Story of a Life in Bondage, Being a Complete Exposé of Mormonism, and Revealing the Sorrows, Sacrifices and Sufferings of Women in Polygamy'' (Hartford, Conn.: Custin, Gilman & Company, 1876), 66–67; discussed in Danel W. Bachman, "A Study of the Mormon Practice of Polygamy before the Death of Joseph Smith" (Purdue University, 1975), 140 and Compton, ''In Sacred Loneliness'', 34–35.</ref>  refer to Joseph's relationship to Fanny as a "sealing." <ref>Ann Eliza would have observed none of the Fanny marriage at first hand, since she was not born until 1840.  The Webbs’ accounts are perhaps best seen as two versions of the same perspective.</ref>   Eliza also noted that the Alger family "considered it the highest honor to have their daughter adopted into the prophet's family, and her mother has always claimed that she [Fanny] was sealed to Joseph at that time." <ref>Young, ''Wife No. 19'', 66–67; discussed by Bachman, "Mormon Practice of Polygamy", 83n102; see also Ann Eliza Webb Young to Mary Bond, 24 April 1876 and 4 May 1876, Myron H. Bond collection, P21, f11, RLDS Archives cited by Compton, In Sacred Loneliness, 34 and commentary in Todd Compton, "A Trajectory of Plurality: An Overview of Joseph Smith's Thirty-Three Plural Wives," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 29/2 (Summer 1996): 30.</ref>   This would be a strange attitude to take if their relationship was a mere affair.  And, the hostile Webbs had no reason to invent a "sealing" idea if they could have made Fanny into a mere case of adultery.
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{{endnotes sources}}
[[Category:Letter to a CES Director]]
[[Category:Mormonism Unmasked]]
[[Category:No Man Knows My History]]
[[Category:One Nation Under Gods]]
[[Category:The Changing World of Mormonism]]
[[Category:Wikipedia]]

[[es:Pregunta: ¿Algunos de los socios de Joseph Smith creer que José Smith tuvo un romance con Fanny Alger?]]
[[pt:Pergunta: É verdade que alguns dos associados a Joseph Smith acreditava que ele havia tido um caso com Fanny Alger?]]