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Video transcript:
I recently found this post on Reddit claiming that early Latter-day Saint missionary work in Scandinavia was really just a thinly-veiled sex-trafficking operation bent on funneling young women into the Utah plural marriage machine. Here’s the deal: One of my biggest pet peeves is when critics take a subject that is really worth talking about, like polygamy, and then dilute it by piling on other clearly sensationalized claims like this one. So in this video, I want to dive in and learn what I can about this claim, but then I want to cut through the sensational and explore some more practical questions. How many women in Utah actually practiced polygamy? What did a polygamous proposal look like? And if things went south, what did divorce look like?
First things first: Were missionaries trafficking young Scandinavian girls? Well, the first red flag is that there is no source attached to this meme, and the Reddit user is clearly hostile to the Church. Nonetheless, if missionaries were targeting and trafficking Scandinavian women to Utah, I figured it should be reflected in Scandinavian immigration statistics from the 1800s, if I could find that information somewhere. The hunt was on, and it actually wasn’t long before I struck gold. I learned that out of over 10,000 Scandinavian converts who emigrated between 1853 and 1882, 74% did so in family groups. About 15% were marriageable women, and 12% were marriageable men. Many of these eligible individuals naturally ended up marrying each other.
“All prevalent notions to the contrary, these [Scandinavian] converts by and large embraced Mormonism in families. Lurid stories of abduction to supply women for Utah’s supposed harems had their germ in occasional runaways and desertions, but the statistics and the accounts of the converts themselves provide a convincing, not to say startling, corrective of folklore.”
This Reddit post is really just a modernized version of the sensationalized 1800s anti-Mormon political cartoons that we all know and love.
But let’s put the sensational aside and talk about reality for a bit. In reality, how many women actually even practiced polygamy in Utah? Well, ChatGPT gave me a quote from this book that supposedly answered that question, but I trust ChatGPT about as far as I can throw it, so I went to the library, found the book, came home, and lo and behold, ChatGPT had indeed lied to my face. It turns out that this data is not particularly easy to find either. My search continued until I found this article, which tried to take a demographic snapshot of polygamy in 3 different wards in Salt Lake City at its absolute height in 1860. Researchers found that 44% of women were married polygamously, 36% monogamously, and 20% were unmarried. So while polygamy was certainly accepted and popular, even at its height, there were still plenty of men and women who chose monogamy. As a side note, in their study, polygamy was actually the least common in the ward composed of 95% immigrants.
But if a man wanted to take on another wife, what did that process actually look like in Utah? I’ll admit, in the past I’ve imagined plural marriage as if it were sort of a free-for-all — with men looking to almost collect women like Pokémon. But the reality was different. My search for answers took me from the internet to this book, which led me to a stash of old books in my kids’ closet, where I found this book, which I inherited from my grandpa probably 15 years ago and have finally had the opportunity to use!
Apostle Orson Pratt taught in 1853, “…before any man takes the least step towards getting another wife, it is his duty to consult the feelings of the wife which he already has, and obtain her consent…”
Now, while this was the expectation and the standard, it didn’t always pan out this way. And if the wife didn’t have a good reason to tell her husband no, then he could still move forward with the plural marriage. Of course, that probably wouldn’t be the best foundation for a happy home. And we’ll circle back around to this when we talk about divorce.
But this was only the first step. Plural marriage, like a monogamous sealing in the temple today, was considered a priesthood ordinance. Pratt noted that “No man in Utah, who already has a wife … has any right to make any propositions of marriage to [another] lady, until he has consulted the President over the whole church….” If Brigham Young said no, that was the end of it. And he did sometimes say no.
Peter Shirts is one rather brutal example of that. Peter liked to live in the more remote regions of southern Utah and wasn’t much of a people person. In response to his petition to take on another wife, Brigham Young responded,
“Dear Brother: – [until you are] willing to live where a family can be safe and have a reasonable opportunity for social enjoyment and improvement, I am of the opinion that it will be altogether best for you to continue to lead the life of a hermit, for I know of no woman worth a groat [like goat] who would be willing to agree with your wild unsocial ways for any length of time. Your Brother in the Gospel, Brigham Young.”
Of course, Brigham Young wasn’t familiar with everyone in Utah, so many men would have their bishop or stake president send in a letter of recommendation. If the president approved of the union, the man would then need to get the permission of the prospective fiancée’s parents. Pratt wrote that “if their consent cannot be obtained, this also ends the matter.” If they said yes, then the man could finally approach the woman. If she said no, that was also the end of it. If she said yes, then they could go ahead and plan the marriage ceremony.
Regarding courtship of plural wives, Brittany Nash wrote that “Many women who became plural wives experienced little to no courtship, which appealed to Victorian sensitivities about the appropriate behavior of married men.” Mary Farrell remembered that “Married men didn’t do any courting of their plural wives. Why, we would have thought it dishonorable for a mature married man to go sparking around like a young man. They just came and asked us, and if we wanted them, we agreed.” Of course, experiences varied, but researcher Kathryn Daynes acknowledged that “Most stories confirm this kind of restraint when courting plural wives.”
Now, for most of my life, I’ve thought that polygamy was not inherently fair to women, and that monogamy was inherently fair to women. But the reality is that in the 19th century, to a degree, both polygamy and monogamy were unfair to women, though perhaps in different ways. In marriage and in society at large, women were considered subordinate to men.
Getting divorced in the United States was relatively difficult – especially if initiated by a woman. But in polygamous Utah, the opposite was true. Getting an ecclesiastical divorce was relatively easy, especially if initiated by a woman. In my research, I happened upon an office journal entry that sheds some light on what Brigham Young thought about divorce: He “liked a woman to live with her husband as long as she could bear with him, and if her life became too burdensome, then leave and get a divorce….” In one 1861 speech, he went so far as to say that “When a woman becomes alienated in her feelings & affections from her husband, it is then his duty to give her a Bill and set her free….”
George Q. Cannon wrote in 1879 that “The liberty upon this point [of divorce] rests with the woman, and as regards a Separation, if her position should become irksome, or distasteful to her, even, and she should desire a Separation, not only is the man bound to respect [it]… but he is bound also to give her and her offspring a proportionate share of his whole property.”
Divorce was still generally discouraged, and unhappy marriages certainly still existed—but in 1870, Utah likely had the highest divorce rate in the country. Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff, and Joseph F. Smith all had wives who divorced them.
Polygamy in Utah wasn’t butterflies and rainbows. It was understandably heart-wrenching for a lot of people, and mistakes were certainly made. But as researcher Richard Van Wagoner pointed out, “Contrary to popular nineteenth-century notions about polygamy, the Mormon harem, dominated by lascivious males with hyperactive libidos, did not exist. The image of unlimited lust was largely the creation of Gentile travelers to Salt Lake City, more interested in titillating audiences back home than in accurately portraying plural marriage.” And unfortunately, that same representation of polygamy is perpetuated to this day.
Speaking of important topics being diluted with sensationalism, have you ever heard the claim that Brigham Young would lace sacks of flour with broken glass, which he then gave to Native Americans? That’s what we investigate in this episode. Go check it out. Have a great day.
Reading list:
- “Let’s Talk About Polygamy,” by Brittany Chapman Nash
- “More Wives Than One,” by Kathryn M. Daynes
- “Mormon Polygamy,” by Richard S. Van Wagoner
- “Mapping Mormonism,” ed. Brandon S. Plewe (BYU Press). See chapter 2, pp. 122-125.
- “Homeward to Zion: The Mormon Migration from Scandinavia,” by William Mulder: https://tinyurl.com/4ayer83b
- “Demographic Limits of Nineteenth-Century Mormon Plygyny,” by Davis Bitton and Val Lambson (BYU Studies): https://tinyurl.com/2s7dfcnc
- “That Time Brigham Young Said ‘No!’ to Polygamy,” by Ardis E. Parshall, 01 Sep 2016: https://tinyurl.com/bdrk3vyk
- “How Common was the Principle? Women as Plural Wives in 1860,” by Maria Cornwall, Camela Courtright, & Laga Van Beek (Dialogue Journal): https://tinyurl.com/2uj3k65m