26 March 1830
Book of Mormon published, condemning plural wives with an exception
Jacob 2 declares that no man among the Nephites shall have more than one wife and no concubines, then adds that if God will raise up seed unto himself, he will command his people. The passage is the church's founding scriptural position on the question. Both defenders and critics later read the exception clause as the hinge.
Disputed Whether the exception clause was written as a loophole or read as one only in hindsight.
17 July 1831
A revelation near the Missouri line on marrying Lamaniteshinge
W. W. Phelps, writing to Brigham Young thirty years later in 1861, reported that on this date Joseph Smith dictated a revelation before seven elders west of Jackson County, including the words that in time ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome and just. Phelps added that about three years afterward he asked how married men could do this, and Joseph answered, in the same manner that Abraham took Hagar and Keturah. The apostate Ezra Booth, writing in the Ohio Star on 8 December 1831, independently reported a revelation about a matrimonial alliance with the natives.
Why this is a hingeIt is the earliest claimed origin point for plural marriage, and the church's own essay ties part of D&C 132 to 1831.
Disputed No 1831 manuscript survives. FAIR notes the sole text is Phelps's 1861 recollection; the Tanners argue Booth's 1831 letter corroborates it.
17 August 1835
The Article on Marriage declares one man, one wifehinge
The 1835 Doctrine and Covenants published as section 101 a statement, probably drafted by Oliver Cowdery, reading: Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again. It remained in every edition of the Doctrine and Covenants until 1876, when it was replaced by section 132.
Why this is a hingeFor forty-one years the church's own canon contained an explicit denial of the practice its leaders were living.
Disputed FAIR argues the statement was true of the general membership, who were not being taught the practice; critics call it a canonised falsehood.
c. 1835–1836
Fanny Alger and the Kirtland householdhinge
Fanny Alger, a household helper in the Smith home, was joined to Joseph Smith in what Utah-era Latter-day Saints called his first plural marriage. Emma Smith discovered the relationship and expelled her; Fanny stayed briefly with Chauncey Webb's family, left Kirtland with her family in September 1836, and married Solomon Custer, a non-Mormon her own age, in Indiana on 16 November 1836. She never spoke publicly about Joseph Smith.
Why this is a hingeEverything about the practice's origin, its authorisation and its moral character turns on whether this was a marriage or an affair.
Disputed Compton, Hales and the Gospel Topics essay call it a plural marriage; Lawrence Foster, Vogel and Brodie hold that contemporaries did not regard it as one. There are no first-hand accounts from Joseph, Fanny or Emma.
21 January 1838
Oliver Cowdery calls it a dirty, nasty, filthy affair
Writing from Far West to his brother Warren, Cowdery said that 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. Three months later, on 12 April 1838, Cowdery was excommunicated on charges that included seeking to destroy the character of Pres. Joseph Smith Jr by falsly insinuating that he was guilty of adultery.
Disputed Hales's site transcribes the key word as scrape with affair overwritten, and the closing clause as never deviated from the truth on the matter.
5 April 1841
Louisa Beaman sealed to Joseph Smith at Nauvoohinge
In the evening, in a grove near the Mississippi, Joseph Bates Noble sealed his wife's sister Louisa Beaman to Joseph Smith, with Joseph dictating the words for Noble to repeat. Louisa, then twenty-six, was reportedly dressed in a man's coat and hat. Noble swore an affidavit to the ceremony on 26 June 1869 and repeated the testimony at the 1892 Temple Lot hearings, where he said of the wedding night, I know it, for I saw him in bed with her.
Why this is a hingeThis is the first Nauvoo plural marriage that can be fixed by a sworn statement, and the practice runs continuously from here.
Disputed Gary Bergera has argued from an 1866 Wilford Woodruff memorandum for 1840 rather than 1841; Hales rejects the redating.
27 October 1841
Zina Huntington Jacobs, married and pregnant, is sealed to Joseph Smithhinge
Zina Diantha Huntington had married Henry Bailey Jacobs on 7 March 1841 in a ceremony performed by John C. Bennett, and was carrying Jacobs's child. Her brother Dimick B. Huntington sealed her to Joseph Smith, with Fanny Maria Huntington as witness, according to Zina's own 1869 affidavit. She continued to live with Jacobs, and after Joseph's death was sealed to Joseph for eternity with Brigham Young standing as proxy and married to Young for time. Six weeks later, on 11 December 1841, the same brother sealed Zina's sister Presendia Huntington Buell to Joseph; Presendia had been Norman Buell's wife since 1827 and continued to live with him until 1846.
Why this is a hingeIt opens the sequence of sealings to women with living husbands, the single most contested feature of the whole practice.
Disputed Whether the sealing was eternity-only or conjugal. Hales and FAIR argue eternity-only; Van Wagoner and Compton treat the category as unsettled. DNA testing in 2005 confirmed Jacobs as the father of Zina's son Zebulon.
January or February 1842
Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner sealed while married to Adam Lightner
Mary Elizabeth Rollins, married to the non-Mormon Adam Lightner and pregnant, was sealed to Joseph Smith by Brigham Young in a room over the red brick store. She said Joseph told her he had been commanded to take her as early as 1834, when she was a thousand miles away, and that an angel came to him three times, the last with a drawn sword. She lived with Adam Lightner until his death and bore him eight children.
Disputed She described the sealing as for time and eternity in one account and, when asked directly in 1905, said she was sealed to Joseph for eternity after Adam refused to join the church.
8 February 1842 (or 1843)
Sylvia Sessions Lyon sealed while married to Windsor Lyon
Two nearly identical unsigned affidavits in the Joseph F. Smith collection give the sealing date as 8 February 1842 and 8 February 1843. Sylvia's husband Windsor Lyon, a Nauvoo merchant, was excommunicated in November 1842 for suing the stake president over a loan, and remained on friendly terms with Joseph Smith.
Disputed Hales notes both affidavits and argues for a connubial separation from Lyon before the sealing; George D. Smith cites only the 1842 document.
9 March 1842
Patty Bartlett Sessions sealed by Willard Richards
The Nauvoo midwife Patty Bartlett Sessions, then forty-seven and married to David Sessions, was sealed to Joseph Smith in Newel K. Whitney's chamber. Her own journal entry of June 1860 records: I was sealed to Joseph Smith by Willard Richards Mar 9, 1842, in Newel K. Whitney's chamber, Nauvoo, for time and all eternity. Her daughter Sylvia, herself sealed to Joseph, was present as a witness.
Disputed Critics cite the phrase for time and all eternity as a polyandrous wife's own refutation of the eternity-only argument; FAIR notes Patty does not say what her husband knew.
17 March 1842
The Female Relief Society of Nauvoo is organised
Joseph Smith organised the Relief Society with eighteen women, Emma Smith as president and Elizabeth Ann Whitney, Sarah M. Cleveland and Eliza R. Snow as her counselors and secretary. Membership reached over a thousand by September. Within months every member of that presidency except Elizabeth Ann Whitney had been or would be sealed to Joseph Smith, and Whitney's seventeen-year-old daughter was.
Disputed Whether Emma used the society to hunt out plural marriage or to reform morals generally. Brodie argues the former; Newell and Avery are more cautious.
April 1842
Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde sealed while Orson Hyde is in Jerusalem
Marinda Johnson, married to the apostle Orson Hyde since 1834, was sealed to Joseph Smith while her husband was on his mission to Palestine. Orson returned to Nauvoo in December 1842 and Marinda resumed living with him; they divorced in 1870. A second sealing date of May 1843 appears on an affidavit she personally signed.
Disputed Whether Hyde was sent away so the sealing could occur. Interpreter argues the year-long gap after his departure undercuts the claim.
April 1842
Nancy Rigdon refuses, and the Happiness Letter is written
According to Bennett's account, Joseph Smith took Sidney Rigdon's unmarried daughter Nancy into a room, locked the door, and told her he had had an affection for her for several years and wished that she should be his. She refused. A letter followed containing the lines, That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be, and often is, right under another, and, Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is. Bennett printed the letter in the Sangamo Journal on 19 August 1842; church leaders answered with an affidavit from Stephen Markham impugning Nancy Rigdon's character, Nauvoo citizens published counter-affidavits calling Markham a liar, and on 3 September The Wasp carried a notice, said to be authorised by Joseph Smith, effectively withdrawing it.
Disputed Authorship. The Joseph Smith Papers place the letter in an appendix rather than as a featured document because Joseph Smith's authorship is uncertain; Sidney Rigdon noted the letter was not in Joseph's hand but never denied its authenticity.
17–19 May 1842
John C. Bennett falls
Bennett resigned as mayor of Nauvoo amid allegations of illicit intercourse with women and signed an affidavit stating that he never knew Joseph Smith to teach that illicit intercourse with females was justifiable. He was excommunicated and by summer was publishing letters in the Springfield Sangamo Journal naming women he said Joseph had approached, using the term spiritual wifery.
Disputed How much of Bennett's account is reliable. He got Louisa Beaman's name and her officiator right, which JMH contributors treat as evidence he had real access; FAIR treats his framing as slander.
29 June 1842
Eliza R. Snow sealed to Joseph Smith
Brigham Young sealed Eliza R. Snow, the thirty-eight-year-old Relief Society secretary, to Joseph Smith at the home of Sarah Cleveland, another of his wives, who stood as witness. Snow's journal entry for the day reads only: This is a day of much interest to my feelings. Sarah Cleveland had been sealed to Joseph the same day.
27 July 1842
A revelation supplies the words for Sarah Ann Whitney's sealing
Joseph Smith dictated a revelation instructing Bishop Newel K. Whitney in the exact language to use in sealing his seventeen-year-old daughter Sarah Ann to Joseph. The ceremony bound the pair to be each other's companion so long as you both shall live, preserving yourselves for each other and from all others, and also throughout eternity, reserving only those rights which have been given to my servant Joseph by revelation and commandment and by legal authority in times past.
1 October 1842
Times and Seasons prints a public denial signed by the Relief Society presidency
The paper reprinted the 1835 Article on Marriage and stated that it was the only rule of marriage practised in the church, in order to show that Dr. J. C. Bennett's secret wife system is a matter of his own manufacture. Attached certificates were signed by Emma Smith as president, Elizabeth Ann Whitney and Sarah M. Cleveland as counselors, and Eliza R. Snow as secretary. Cleveland and Snow had both been sealed to Joseph three months earlier, and Whitney's daughter two months earlier.
Disputed The Gospel Topics essay describes these as carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about celestial plural marriage; LDS Discussions calls them lies by verbal technicality.
4 and 8 March 1843
Emily and Eliza Partridge sealed without Emma's knowledge
Heber C. Kimball sealed nineteen-year-old Emily Dow Partridge to Joseph Smith on 4 March, and her sister Eliza a few days later. Both were orphaned daughters of the late Bishop Edward Partridge and were living in the Smith household. Emily recorded that neither sister knew of the other's marriage at the time, everything was so secret.
1 May 1843
Lucy Walker, seventeen, sealed to Joseph Smith
William Clayton officiated while Emma was in St. Louis buying store goods. Walker later recounted that Joseph had told her, I have been commanded of God to take another wife, and you are the woman, and gave her until the next day to decide, adding that if she rejected the message the gate will be closed forever against you. She sought and said she received a revelation of her own.
Disputed Whether this constitutes coercion. LDS Discussions and MormonThink read the deadline and the threat as coercive; FAIR calls it the only case of a deadline and says it arose from her long hesitation.
11 May 1843
The Partridge sisters are sealed a second time, in Emma's presence
Emma agreed to two additional wives on condition that she choose them, and chose Emily and Eliza Partridge, not knowing they were already sealed to her husband. Emily wrote that to save family trouble Brother Joseph thought it best to have another ceremony performed, and that from that very hour, however, Emma was our bitter enemy. Emma afterwards also gave Joseph the Lawrence sisters, Maria and Sarah, orphaned Canadian wards for whom Joseph had been appointed legal guardian.
Disputed Emily gave the date as 11 May and elsewhere 23 May; under cross-examination in 1892 she conceded she might have erred on the date but not on the facts.
May 1843
Helen Mar Kimball, aged fourteen, sealed to Joseph Smith
Heber C. Kimball proposed the match to Joseph and then to his daughter, who was two or three months short of her fifteenth birthday. Helen later wrote that her father taught me the principle of Celestial marriage and having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he offered me to him, and that her mother grieved to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path. Helen continued to live in her parents' home.
Disputed Whether the marriage was conjugal. Helen described it as for eternity alone; Compton wrote in 2022 that though there is no solid evidence either way, he does not believe it was consummated; D. Michael Quinn argued that it was.
28 May 1843
Joseph and Emma Smith sealed for time and eternity
Days after Emma took part in four of her husband's plural sealings, the Smiths were sealed to each other in a meeting of the Quorum of the Anointed, the third such sealing performed in the church. James and Harriet Adams were sealed in the same meeting. Emma and Harriet were the first women to witness the quorum's activities; Emma received her endowment on or just before 28 September.
12 July 1843
The revelation on plural marriage is written downhinge
Hyrum Smith urged Joseph to dictate the revelation so he could read it to Emma and persuade her. William Clayton wrote ten pages as Joseph dictated. The text promises exaltation to those sealed by proper authority, states that if any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, he cannot commit adultery, and ends by commanding, Let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, with the warning that if she abide not this commandment she shall be destroyed. Hyrum read it to Emma, who rejected it.
Why this is a hingeIt is the only written revelation on the subject, the text later canonised, and the document whose exposure eleven months later destroyed Nauvoo.
Disputed The Joseph Smith Papers introduction notes that by summer 1843 Joseph had entered into about twenty-five confidential sealings, so the revelation followed the practice rather than preceding it.
August 1843
A copy of the revelation is burned
Bishop Newel K. Whitney had a copy made by Joseph C. Kingsbury before the original was destroyed. William Clayton reported that Joseph said Emma had so teased, and urgently entreated him for the privilege of destroying it that he consented to pacify her. William McLellin, who spoke with Emma in 1847, wrote that Joseph himself pulled open the fire with his fingers and burned it after she refused to touch it. Emma denied burning it in an 1856 interview.
Disputed Whether Emma or Joseph burned it, and whether Emma was denying the act or denying that what she burned was an authentic revelation.
9 March 1844
The Voice of Innocence read to the Relief Society
Emma Smith opened the Relief Society's first meeting of 1844 by reading a proclamation condemning the Seducer of female chastity, the Slanderer of Female Character, and calling on the whole virtuous female population of the city to shut such people out of their houses and society. The women voted unanimously to uphold the President in putting down iniquity. Relief Society meetings then lapsed.
18–21 April 1844
William and Jane Law excommunicated; a rival church organised
A council of thirty-two leaders excommunicated William and Jane Law and Robert Foster for unchristian conduct without summoning them. Three days later William Law held a public meeting denouncing Joseph as a fallen prophet and organised the True Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Law said he would reconcile only if Joseph would acknowledge publicly that he had taught and practised the doctrine of plurality of wives and own the whole system to be from Hell.
26 May 1844
Joseph Smith denies polygamy in public
Days after a Hancock County grand jury indicted him for adultery and fornication on the Laws' complaint concerning Maria Lawrence, Joseph Smith addressed the Saints in Nauvoo: What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers. He had by then been sealed to roughly thirty women.
Disputed FAIR argues the speech answered specific charges of adultery brought by named accusers rather than making a blanket denial of plural marriage; critics read it as a flat lie.
7 June 1844
The Nauvoo Expositor prints the secrethinge
The single issue of the dissenters' paper carried affidavits from Austin Cowles, William Law and Jane Law describing the plural-marriage revelation, including the provision granting a man the privilege of marrying ten virgins. It also charged Joseph with attempting to unite church and state and called him a demon in human shape. Three days later the city council, with Joseph presiding as mayor, declared the press a public nuisance and ordered it destroyed; it was smashed and the papers burned the same evening.
Why this is a hingeSuppressing the exposure led directly to Joseph's arrest, the mob at Carthage and his death twenty days later.
Disputed Whether the destruction was legal. Dallin H. Oaks's 1965 Utah Law Review article is the standard defence of its partial legality; the abatement without notice to the owners is what produced the riot charge.
27 June 1844
Joseph and Hyrum Smith killed at Carthage
Held in the Carthage jail on charges of riot and treason arising from the Expositor's destruction and the mustering of the Nauvoo Legion, both men were shot by a mob that broke into their cell. Plural marriage was not made public by the church for another eight years, when Orson Pratt announced it in Salt Lake City in August 1852.
January 1846
Proxy sealings in the Nauvoo temple
As the Saints prepared to leave Illinois, about thirty women were sealed to the dead Joseph Smith for eternity in the newly finished temple, and to living men, chiefly Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball, for time. Most had been sealed to Joseph during his life; Brodie inferred that the remainder had been too. The register of these ordinances is the closest thing to an official contemporary list.
Disputed Whether a January 1846 proxy sealing implies a marriage during Joseph's lifetime. Bushman notes eight additional women in this category and treats the inference as uncertain.
1 October 1879
The Last Testimony of Sister Emma
Shortly before her death, Emma Smith was interviewed by her son Joseph Smith III, then president of the RLDS church. Asked whether her husband had other wives, she answered: He had no other wife but me; nor did he to my knowledge ever have. Asked about a revelation on polygamy or spiritual wifery, she said there was none. The interview became the RLDS church's evidentiary foundation, and prompted Joseph F. Smith's collection of affidavits in Utah.
Disputed Lawrence Foster argues the questions were framed with ambiguities allowing deniability, since they used Bennett's terms rather than the church's own; Newell and Avery describe Emma as caught between loyalty to truth and to her sons.
22 October 2014
The Church publishes Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo
The Gospel Topics essay acknowledged in the church's own voice that Joseph Smith practised plural marriage, that the youngest wife was Helen Mar Kimball, sealed several months before her 15th birthday, that some sealings were to women already married to other men, and that leaders had issued carefully worded denials. Saints, volume 1, followed in 2018 with a narrative treatment.
Disputed MormonThink and LDS Discussions argue the essay's phrasing minimises ages and consent; FAIR responds that nothing in it was new to historians.
