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Marriage in Utah

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The most singular, the most powerful of these three groups of secular notes, even when we study them from a political point of view only, is that which defines the conditions of family life, particularly in what it has to say of marriage. Marriage lies in the root of society, and the method of dealing with it marks the spirit of every religious system.

Now the new American church puts marriage into the very front of man's duties on earth. Neither man nor woman, says Young, can work out the will of God alone; that to say all human beings have a function to discharge on earth, the function of providing tabernacles of the flesh for immortal spirits now waiting to be born, which cannot be discharged except through that union of the sexes implied in marriage. To evade that function is according to Young, to evade the most sacred of man's obligations. It is to commit sin. An unwedded man is, in Mormon belief, an imperfect creature; like a bird without wings, a body without soul. Nature is dual; to complete his organization a man must marry a wife. Young says that Love is the yeanling for a higher state of existence, and the passions, properly understood, are the feeders of spiritual life. Looking to this dogma of the duty of wedlock solely as a source of political power, we should have to allow it very great weight. What waste it saves! In many religious bodies marriage is simply tolerated as the lesser form of two dark evils. Those Essences from whom we derive so much allowed it only to the weak, and on account of weakness they thought it better for a good man to refrain from marriage, and in the higher grades of their society the relation of wife and husband was unknown.

Many orders among the Hindus practice celibacy.
The Greeks had their vestal virgins;
The Egyptians their anchorites;
The Syrians their ascetics.

In the Pagan Olympus abstinence was a virtue, praised, if not practiced, by the gods. Hestia and Artemis were honored above all the denizens of heaven, because they rose beyond the reach of love; may, the idea of marriage, being a kind of corruption, had so sunk into the Pagan mind as to crop out everywhere in the common speech. To be unloved was to be unspotted; to be single was to be pure. In all Pagan poetry the title of virgin is held to be higher than that of mother; nobler than that of wife.

Among Christian communities marriage is a theme of endless disputation; one church calling it a sacrament, another calling it a contract; all churches considering it optional, few regarding it as meritorious, many denouncing it as a compromise with the devil. The Greek Church encourages celibacy in a class; the Latin prohibits marriage to its priests. The Gothic church may be said to stand neutral, but no church in the world has ever yet come to insist on the duty of marriage as necessary to the living of a true Christian life.

On the contrary, every religious body which has dealt with the topic at all, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Latin, Abyssinian, declares by facts, no less than by words, that any union of the sexes in the bands of wedlock is hostile to the highest conception of Christian life. Hence the monastic houses; hence the celibacy of priests; institutions which infect the mind of society, arresting the growth of many household virtues, poisoning some of the sources of domestic life. A wifeless priest is a standing protest, against wedded love; for if it be true that the human affections are n snare, leading men away from God, it is surely a good man's duty to crush them out. A snare is a snare; a sin is a sin, to be avoided equally by the layman and the priest.

Young has turned the face of his church another way. With him marriage is a duty and a privilege and the elders being considered examples to the people in all good works, are enjoined to marry. A priest and elder must be a husband; even among the humbler flock, it is held to be a disgrace, the sign of an unregenerated heart, for a young man to be found leading a single life.

Hut the saints have pushed the doctrine a step further; for instead of denying to their popes and priests the consolation of women's love, they encourage them to indulge in a plurality of wives, and among their higher clergy, the prophet, the apostles, and the bishops, their indulgence is next to universal. Not to be a pluralist is not to be a good Mormon. My friend, Captain Hooper, though he is known to be rich, zealous, insinuating, and an admirable representative of Utah in Congress, has never been able to rise high in the church, on account of his repugnance to taking another wife. "We look on Hooper," the Apostle Taylor said to me yesterday at dinner, "as only half a Mormon," at which every one laughed in a sly, peculiar way. When the merriment, in which the young ladies joined, had died down, I said to Hooper, "Here's a great chance for you next season; pick out six of the prettiest girls in Salt Lake City, marry them in a batch; carry them to Washington, and open your season in December with a ball." "Well," said Hooper, "I think that would take for a time, but then I am growing to be an old fellow."

Young, who is fond of Hooper, proud of his talents, and conscious of his services, is said to be urging him strongly to marry one more wife at least, so as to cast his lot finally, whether for good or evil, with the polygamous church. If Hooper yields, it will be from a sentiment of duty and fidelity toward his chief.

Every priest of the higher grades in Salt Lake Valley has a plural household; the number of his mates varying with the wealth and character of the elder. No apostle has less than three wives.

Of the marriages of Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and Daniel Wells, the three members of what is here called the First Presidency, no accounts are kept in the public office. It is the fashion of every pious old lady in this community, who may have lost her husband by death, to implore the bishop of her ward to take measures for getting her sealed to one of these three presidents. Young is, of course, the favorite of such widows; and it is said that he never makes a journey from the Beehive without being called upon to indulge one of these poor creatures in her wish. Hence, a great many women hold the nominal rank of his wife whom he has scarcely ever seen, and with whom he has never hail the relations of a husband, as we in Europe should understand the term. The actual wives of Brigham Young, the women who live in his houses—in the Beehive, in the Lion House, in the White Cottage—who are the mothers of his children, are twelve, or about twelve in number. The queen of all is the first wife, Mary Ann Angell, an aged lady, whose five children—three sons, two daughters—are now grown up. She lives in the White Cottage, the first house ever built in Salt Lake Valley.

Joseph and Brigham, her eldest sons, chiefs of their race, are already renowned in missionary labor. Sister Alice, her eldest daughter, is my friend, on the stage. The most famous, perhaps, of these ladies is Eliza Snow, the poetess, a lady universally respected for her fine character, universally applauded for her fine talents; about fifty years old with silver hair, dark eyes, and noble aspect, simple in attire, calm, lady-like, rather cold. Eliza is the exact reverse to any imaginary lights of the harem. I am led to believe that she is not a wife to Young in the sense of our canon; she is always called Miss Eliza; in fact, the Mormon rite of sealing a woman to a man implies other relations than our Gentile rite of marriage; and it is only by a wide perversion of terms that the female saints who may be scaled to a man are called his wives. Sister Eliza lives in the Lion House, in a pretty room on the second floor, overlooking the Oquiosh Mountains, the valley, the river Jordan, and the Salt Lake; a poet's prospect, in which form and color, sky and land and water, melt and fuse into glory without end. Young's less distinguished partners are: Sister Lucy, by whom he has eight children; sister Clara, by whom he has three children; sister Zina, poetess and teacher, (formerly the wife of Dr. Jacobs,) by whom he has three children; sister Amelia, an old servant of Joseph, by whom he has four children; sister Eliza. (2,) an English girl, (the only English woman in the prophet's house,) by whom he is said to have four or five children; sister Margaret, by whom he has three or four children; sister Emetine, often called the favorite, by whom he has eight children. Young himself tells me that he never has had and never will have a favorite in his house, since desires and preferences of the flesh have no part in the family arrangements of the saints.

The apostles have fewer blessings than the presidents, but twelve are all pluralist. The following figures are supplied to me by George A. Smith, cousin of the prophet Joseph, and historian of the church:

Orson Hyde, first apostle, has four wives.
Orson Pratt, second apostle, has four wives.
John Taylor, third apostle, has seven wives.
Wilford Woodruff, fourth apostle, has three wives.
George A. Smith, fifth apostle, has five wives.
Amasa Lyman, sixth apostle, has five wives.
Ezra Benson, seventh apostle, has four wives.
Charles Rich, eighth apostle, has seven wives.
Lorenzo Snow, ninth apostle, has four wives.
Erastus Snow, tenth apostle, has three wives.
Franklin Richards, eleventh apostle, has four wives.
George Q. Cannon, twelfth apostle, has three wives.

With the exception of John Taylor, the apostles are considered poor men; and in Salt Lake it is held dishonest for a man to take a new wife unless he can maintain his family in comfort as regards lodging, food, and clothes. Some of the rich merchants are encouraged by Young to add wife on wife. A bold and pushing elder said to me last night, in answer to some banter: "I shall certainly marry again soon. The fact is I mean to rise in this church, and you have seen enough to know that no man has a chance in our society unless he has a big household. To have any weight here you must be known as the husband of three women."

[Source: Digest of Election Cases; By United States Congress; Publ. 1870; Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]

©2012 Genealogy Trails

Marriage in Utah
.
The most singular, the most powerful of these three groups of secular notes, even when we study them from a political point of view only, is that which defines the conditions of family life, particularly in what it has to say of marriage. Marriage lies in the root of society, and the method of dealing with it marks the spirit of every religious system. Now the new American church puts marriage into the very front of man's duties on earth. Neither man nor woman, says Young, can work out the will of God alone; that to say all human beings have a function to discharge on earth, the function of providing tabernacles of the flesh for immortal spirits now waiting to be born, which cannot be discharged except through that union of the sexes implied in marriage. To evade that function is according to Young, to evade the most sacred of man's obligations. It is to commit sin. An unwedded man is, in Mormon belief, an imperfect creature; like a bird without wings, a body without soul. Nature is dual; to complete his organization a man must marry a wife. Young says that Love is the yeanling for a higher state of existence, and the passions, properly understood, are the feeders of spiritual life. Looking to this dogma of the duty of wedlock solely as a source of political power, we should have to allow it very great weight. What waste it saves! In many religious bodies marriage is simply tolerated as the lesser form of two dark evils. Those Essences from whom we derive so much allowed it only to the weak, and on account of weakness they thought it better for a good man to refrain from marriage, and in the higher grades of their society the relation of wife and husband was unknown. Many orders among the Hindus practice celibacy. The Greeks had their vestal virgins; The Egyptians their anchorites; The Syrians their ascetics. In the Pagan Olympus abstinence was a virtue, praised, if not practiced, by the gods. Hestia and Artemis were honored above all the denizens of heaven, because they rose beyond the reach of love; may, the idea of marriage, being a kind of corruption, had so sunk into the Pagan mind as to crop out everywhere in the common speech. To be unloved was to be unspotted; to be single was to be pure. In all Pagan poetry the title of virgin is held to be higher than that of mother; nobler than that of wife. Among Christian communities marriage is a theme of endless disputation; one church calling it a sacrament, another calling it a contract; all churches considering it optional, few regarding it as meritorious, many denouncing it as a compromise with the devil. The Greek Church encourages celibacy in a class; the Latin prohibits marriage to its priests. The Gothic church may be said to stand neutral, but no church in the world has ever yet come to insist on the duty of marriage as necessary to the living of a true Christian life. On the contrary, every religious body which has dealt with the topic at all, Greek, Armenian, Coptic, Latin, Abyssinian, declares by facts, no less than by words, that any union of the sexes in the bands of wedlock is hostile to the highest conception of Christian life. Hence the monastic houses; hence the celibacy of priests; institutions which infect the mind of society, arresting the growth of many household virtues, poisoning some of the sources of domestic life. A wifeless priest is a standing protest, against wedded love; for if it be true that the human affections are n snare, leading men away from God, it is surely a good man's duty to crush them out. A snare is a snare; a sin is a sin, to be avoided equally by the layman and the priest. Young has turned the face of his church another way. With him marriage is a duty and a privilege and the elders being considered examples to the people in all good works, are enjoined to marry. A priest and elder must be a husband; even among the humbler flock, it is held to be a disgrace, the sign of an unregenerated heart, for a young man to be found leading a single life. Hut the saints have pushed the doctrine a step further; for instead of denying to their popes and priests the consolation of women's love, they encourage them to indulge in a plurality of wives, and among their higher clergy, the prophet, the apostles, and the bishops, their indulgence is next to universal. Not to be a pluralist is not to be a good Mormon. My friend, Captain Hooper, though he is known to be rich, zealous, insinuating, and an admirable representative of Utah in Congress, has never been able to rise high in the church, on account of his repugnance to taking another wife. "We look on Hooper," the Apostle Taylor said to me yesterday at dinner, "as only half a Mormon," at which every one laughed in a sly, peculiar way. When the merriment, in which the young ladies joined, had died down, I said to Hooper, "Here's a great chance for you next season; pick out six of the prettiest girls in Salt Lake City, marry them in a batch; carry them to Washington, and open your season in December with a ball." "Well," said Hooper, "I think that would take for a time, but then I am growing to be an old fellow." Young, who is fond of Hooper, proud of his talents, and conscious of his services, is said to be urging him strongly to marry one more wife at least, so as to cast his lot finally, whether for good or evil, with the polygamous church. If Hooper yields, it will be from a sentiment of duty and fidelity toward his chief. Every priest of the higher grades in Salt Lake Valley has a plural household; the number of his mates varying with the wealth and character of the elder. No apostle has less than three wives. Of the marriages of Brigham Young, Heber Kimball, and Daniel Wells, the three members of what is here called the First Presidency, no accounts are kept in the public office. It is the fashion of every pious old lady in this community, who may have lost her husband by death, to implore the bishop of her ward to take measures for getting her sealed to one of these three presidents. Young is, of course, the favorite of such widows; and it is said that he never makes a journey from the Beehive without being called upon to indulge one of these poor creatures in her wish. Hence, a great many women hold the nominal rank of his wife whom he has scarcely ever seen, and with whom he has never hail the relations of a husband, as we in Europe should understand the term. The actual wives of Brigham Young, the women who live in his houses—in the Beehive, in the Lion House, in the White Cottage—who are the mothers of his children, are twelve, or about twelve in number. The queen of all is the first wife, Mary Ann Angell, an aged lady, whose five children—three sons, two daughters—are now grown up. She lives in the White Cottage, the first house ever built in Salt Lake Valley. Joseph and Brigham, her eldest sons, chiefs of their race, are already renowned in missionary labor. Sister Alice, her eldest daughter, is my friend, on the stage. The most famous, perhaps, of these ladies is Eliza Snow, the poetess, a lady universally respected for her fine character, universally applauded for her fine talents; about fifty years old with silver hair, dark eyes, and noble aspect, simple in attire, calm, lady-like, rather cold. Eliza is the exact reverse to any imaginary lights of the harem. I am led to believe that she is not a wife to Young in the sense of our canon; she is always called Miss Eliza; in fact, the Mormon rite of sealing a woman to a man implies other relations than our Gentile rite of marriage; and it is only by a wide perversion of terms that the female saints who may be scaled to a man are called his wives. Sister Eliza lives in the Lion House, in a pretty room on the second floor, overlooking the Oquiosh Mountains, the valley, the river Jordan, and the Salt Lake; a poet's prospect, in which form and color, sky and land and water, melt and fuse into glory without end. Young's less distinguished partners are: Sister Lucy, by whom he has eight children; sister Clara, by whom he has three children; sister Zina, poetess and teacher, (formerly the wife of Dr. Jacobs,) by whom he has three children; sister Amelia, an old servant of Joseph, by whom he has four children; sister Eliza. (2,) an English girl, (the only English woman in the prophet's house,) by whom he is said to have four or five children; sister Margaret, by whom he has three or four children; sister Emetine, often called the favorite, by whom he has eight children. Young himself tells me that he never has had and never will have a favorite in his house, since desires and preferences of the flesh have no part in the family arrangements of the saints. The apostles have fewer blessings than the presidents, but twelve are all pluralist. The following figures are supplied to me by George A. Smith, cousin of the prophet Joseph, and historian of the church: Orson Hyde, first apostle, has four wives. Orson Pratt, second apostle, has four wives. John Taylor, third apostle, has seven wives. Wilford Woodruff, fourth apostle, has three wives. George A. Smith, fifth apostle, has five wives. Amasa Lyman, sixth apostle, has five wives. Ezra Benson, seventh apostle, has four wives. Charles Rich, eighth apostle, has seven wives. Lorenzo Snow, ninth apostle, has four wives. Erastus Snow, tenth apostle, has three wives. Franklin Richards, eleventh apostle, has four wives. George Q. Cannon, twelfth apostle, has three wives. With the exception of John Taylor, the apostles are considered poor men; and in Salt Lake it is held dishonest for a man to take a new wife unless he can maintain his family in comfort as regards lodging, food, and clothes. Some of the rich merchants are encouraged by Young to add wife on wife. A bold and pushing elder said to me last night, in answer to some banter: "I shall certainly marry again soon. The fact is I mean to rise in this church, and you have seen enough to know that no man has a chance in our society unless he has a big household. To have any weight here you must be known as the husband of three women." [Source: Digest of Election Cases; By United States Congress; Publ. 1870; Transcribed and submitted by Andrea Stawski Pack.]



©2012 Genealogy Trails