By Erin
“We meet today with joy to act
A proxy for thy dead,
And give thee scores of wives who’ll be
Like Crowns upon Thy Head”
-Mrs A Randall, written for Wilford Woodruff on his 70th birthday
Let me tell you a story.
A story about powerful men and invisible women.
A story about women viewed as prizes, as objects, rather than as people.
A story about a man who liked to give himself dead wives for his birthday.
267 of them.
But first let me tell you a bit of my story. A story about Zera Pulsipher, my ancestor, and the man who baptized Wilford Woodruff.
My family loves to talk about him and about how pleased we are that someone in our family baptized the man who would one day become a prophet. We take pride in him and his accomplishments.
A few months ago while I was preparing a talk on family history for my daughter to give in Primary, I discovered that Zera Pulsipher, at the age of 68, had polygamously married a 14 year old girl named Martha Hughes. Martha had her first baby a year later. She would have five children with him in total.
First, I felt sick. Then I thought, who was this poor girl? How did she feel about being given to and impregnated by a man old enough to be her grandfather? Did she think she was doing God’s will? Did she feel betrayed by her parents? Was there a boy she loved and had hoped to marry instead? Did anyone even ask her what she wanted? How many nights did she cry herself to sleep?
What was her story?
I had never heard once about Pulsipher’s four wives. I didn’t even know he was a polygamist. These real women who lived and breathed and wept and bled are peripheral to their husband. Invisible.
I know his story. (Or I thought I did.) Why don’t I know hers?
These thoughts on the inequality and tragedy of polygamy were on my mind when I learned that Wilford Woodruff had sealed dead women to himself on his birthday.
So let me tell you that story about Wilford Woodruff.
To celebrate his birthday, on multiple occasions (his 70th, 71st, 72nd, and 74th) Wilford Woodruff invited dozens of women and girls to the temple to do proxy work for previously deceased women and girls he then sealed to himself as wives.
Woodruff recorded in his journal in 1877 that he had received revelation from God that the temple work should be done “for and behalf of the wives who are dead and have been sealed to my servant Wilford, or those who are to be sealed to him, and this shall be acceptable unto me saith the Lord, and the dead of my servant shall be redeemed in the spirit world and be prepared to meet my servant at the time of his Coming.”
After their time in the temple, Wilford was surprised with a “present of a birth day Bridal cake three stories high.”
When I first learned this, I was shocked. And revolted. And so confused. But there it was, written in his own hand in his journals.
I thought, who were these women? Why have I never heard of them? Why have they been erased?
How could this have been from God? Why did this man feel like he had the power to seal more than two hundred strangers to himself in order to magnify his glory at the expense of their consent?
If it was solely about redeeming the dead, why didn’t they seal dozens of dead men as well? Why not seal the single dead men and women together, if love or even knowledge of each other in this life is irrelevant?
Who are these poor women? What are their stories?
So I started digging. I poured through the Family Search records and Woodruff’s journals.
And I found them.
So now I can tell you the story of Mary Jane Belden.
Mary Jane was born in Potsdam, New York in 1833. When she was 21 years old she married a man called Uri William Hart. The next summer she gave birth to a baby girl, whom they also named Mary.
Tragically, Mary Jane and her baby both passed away within two months.
Twenty years later, Mary Jane was one of 154 deceased women and girls who received their endowment by proxy on Wilford Woodruff’s 70th birthday in order to be sealed to him as polygamous wives.
During her life Mary Jane was not a member of the church, nor was her husband, who was still living at the time Mary Jane was sealed to Woodruff as an eternal wife. She was baptized by proxy ten years after her sealing.
Mary Jane, Uri, and baby Mary were finally sealed together as a family in 1960.
I could also tell you the story of Percy Hart, one of the many women who received her proxy endowment on his 70th birthday, who had been dead for twelve years before Woodruff was even born.
Or the story of Lydia Hart, who passed away when she was six years old. She doesn’t have her baptism, confirmation, initiatory, or endowment work done, since those are unnecessary for people who die before the age of accountability. But she is eternally sealed as a wife to Wilford Woodruff.
Or the story of Sarah Woodruff Hart, who passed away several months before her 15th birthday, who was one of the 154.
Or the stories of Mabel Hart, Emeline Hart (age 9), Martha Sophia Hart, Pamela Baggs, Delia Selden Hart (married mother of two), Emily Hart (age 15), and Mary Conover, who were among the many people posthumously sealed to Woodruff on his 72nd birthday.
The following excerpt is from Wilford Woodruff’s journal entry dated March 1, 1879:
“And I had sealed to me at the altar 74 single women who were dead. which makes 267 in all of the dead single women who have been sealed to me in the Endowment House in Salt Lake City and in the St George Temple. I was also sealed today for 65 Couple of dead friends of the Hart family. Making 139 sealings and 7 adoptions.”
Women with husbands and families of their own, women dead before Woodruff took his first breath, teenagers, and children were all sealed as wives to a man they hadn’t even met. Women who should be able to write their own stories.
So let me tell you another story.
The story is about a woman, or a girl. She is like you, or she is not. She is funny, or maybe intellectual. She may be kind. She may be cruel. She has a terrible singing voice. She sings like an angel.
She is a human being with hopes, and dreams, and potential, with a love worth giving and a life of her own.
She is supposed to be equal to a man.
She is a man’s 203rd wife.
Let’s tell her story.
Erin has three girls at home, a husband at her side, and a nerdy heart at all times.
Sources:
Woodruff’s journal entry recording the revelation:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=eb07ddd8-d258-43b3-82fd-1b0bc186b269&crate=0&index=233&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Woodruff’s journal entry for his 70th birthday:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=eb07ddd8-d258-43b3-82fd-1b0bc186b269&crate=0&index=235&utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Mrs A Randall’s poem:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=eb07ddd8-d258-43b3-82fd-1b0bc186b269&crate=0&index=237
Woodruff’s journal entry for his 71st birthday:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=eb07ddd8-d258-43b3-82fd-1b0bc186b269&crate=0&index=307&fbclid=IwAR338kGWF3lD79H_FGuNDEyZIKqx7lyXXpQ4vSzDrc18GFWAWlkLcX1DTTg
Woodruff’s journal entry for his 72nd birthday:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=eb07ddd8-d258-43b3-82fd-1b0bc186b269&crate=0&index=388&fbclid=IwAR3A3Q-qwieiWyIt79qPUgtmXJqYaHYb03zlxvZSNotXdUIcmjo5HAb6ulY
Woodruff’s journal entry for his 74th birthday:
https://catalog.churchofjesuschrist.org/assets?id=d7ad4442-4fad-4648-887d-0a697e06e55c&crate=0&index=99&fbclid=IwAR08XjpgnzDGrK3JFO4GE-6knBk9PAaS6hU-NWYzjeiEyU-iaruVaWmdqlo
Woodruff’s Family Search page:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/details/KWNT-8NB?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf
Mary Jane’s Family Search page:
https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/family/LZ4G-9WM
34 Responses
This is a really impactful piece, thanks for putting it together and sharing with us. And thanks for the sources so we can retrace your footsteps.
Polygamy. Ugh. It’s the herpes of Mormonism – the gift that never stops giving.
Thank you thank you. Women’s stories need to be heard, no matter how heartbreaking they may be. I was taught to revere this man, Wilford Woodruff, and others like him. Some would still choose to do so, but no matter your opinions, lets be honest about what he really did. And lets listen to the women’s stories and not erase them in the telling of a pretty story about a ‘prophet’
You capture the feeling and implications of polygamy so well; they really deserve a response from our church leaders. (Psst! And by “response” I mean a real apology, none of this “we don’t know why the Lord commanded this practice” business.)
I have a 16-year-old daughter who felt shattered when her 16-year-old bf kissed another teen girl- tell me again how women can or should bury their feelings, thoughts, hopes, dreams to be an accessory to a man for eternity. I cannot fathom her being wed to a 50/60 y/o man, let alone having 5 babies with him. WHAT ABOUT THE WOMEN?
I read my ancestor’s stories, one teen married a man 40 years older than her who already had a wife and 8 kids; she was only 17. She did this happily because she believed this was REQUIRED of her for exaltation, that the Lord wanted this of her. And later on he’d go on to marry another woman 55 years younger than him as well.
Spiritual manipulation flooded free will right out of their soul; their will was folded carefully away and prophets proclaimed polygamy a success because many women obeyed perfectly with a glorious afterlife promise dangling before them, like a diamond pendant just out of reach.
My friend from high school’s great-great-great grandmother was named Delight Stocking and was promised as a future bride to Wilford Woodruff when she was 8 or 9 in Nauvoo (and then married him as a plural wife when she was 18 and he was 50). I have thought about that relationship many times over the years since I heard her story.
Delight spent her teenage years knowing that her first sexual experience was going to be with that old man up on the stand at conference, and he looked out at this CHILD, knowing he would be the man to take her virginity someday. She didn’t get to date, have boyfriends, flirt, or dream of her wedding day with the boy of her dreams. She just knew that at 18, that 50 year old guy on the stand would be her husband.
Now I remember being at BYU when my 19 year old neighbor married a 29 year old guy, and we all thought it was a little weird because he was SO OLD. And they’d dated so briefly, and it felt like she just wanted to get married and he was taking advantage of her youth and lack of experience in the dating world. They were so unequally yoked.
I can’t fathom the dynamics of being a teenager marrying a 50 year old prophet. He’d be experienced sexually and in life in general, and she’d be a baby. She’d have spent her life being told what a spiritual giant and leader he was. There’d be zero chance for even the semblance of an equal relationship.
It just sounds too much like rape. 🙁
That’s so incredibly fundamentalist. We don’t think of our polygamous history the same way that we think of more current fundamentalist sects. And we should. I have great grandmothers who seem to have been peaceful in polygamy, and we should very much be asking why that is. I have one great grandmother who clearly WASN’T content in polygamy (or perhaps marriage at all) being divorced twice, widowed twice. We should ask what she knew that others didn’t.
Wow. Thanks for writing this.
Thanks for this post. This is shocking and disturbing. As you rightly pointed out, if this was just about sealing people and giving them blessings, why not seal random single men and women together and then seal them as children to some general authority?
It’s even creepier that the sealings were performed on his birthdays. This clearly demonstrates how polygamy was about male kingdom building and about the status of male leaders in the eternities. And I suppose they could justify it all by saying they were giving these poor women celestial glory. Who wouldn’t want to be married to a future God?
I feel so sad for these women. There is a reason we don’t seal people today who were never married while alive. The excuse in the polygamy gospel topic essays wears thin about how Joseph was commanded and other leaders were commanded, but that God didn’t always show them how to implement the commandment. Well we have proof right here that supposedly it was God’s will that President Woodruff have a vast celestial harem of women who never knew him.
31 For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.
32 And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.
33 For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms like, unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.
God forbade polygamy to peoples in the New World because of the suffering of His daughters. Then He changes His mind in the 1800s, and now Old Testament whoredoms are acceptable again, including the suffering of His daughters? I don’t think so.
Amen and amen.
Yes. You can’t claim plausible deniability when it comes to working out polygamy when you have what is supposedly word-for-word revelation from God telling you exactly what to do.
Amen!!!
Thank you for writing about what you found regarding Wilford Woodruff. This makes a mockery of the sealing covenant. I’m happy I have a testimony of Jesus Christ, for which I am grateful. I agree an apology is owed, but as President Oaks said, “the Church does not apologize”. Quite something to say about an organization run by imperfect human beings.
So seal them all to Jesus, but of course it isn’t at all about Jesus. This might ruffle some feathers, but temple dealings are only “valid”, in the minds of living Mormons, so it’s all for not anyway. Left with only the feelings of injustice and outrage that any man would have such audacity. The real disgrace here is the polygamy to the living women who were just numbers. I like what Violadiva said in her comment…”the herpes of Mormonism”, so true!
Hi Amy…how much more accurate can one be…”it isn’t at all about Jesus”…The Second Anointing tells it all …having one’s calling and election made sure. Those poor women conned by Joseph Smith, and Paul of Tarsus, the Herodian, to create an impression of great sexual prowess using deceased “bodies”. We can be eternally grateful to God that we live in such an era in which we able to do our own research and have access to the internet and the amazing research e.g. Robert Eiseman: “James, the Brother of Jesus”. Yet today we have the wives of the so-called Prophets (i.e. the CEOs) of Mormon Inc.,who follow their “men” as sychophants …what is their excuse? The Money? The Power?
JS had NOTHING to do with polygamy! Leave him out of it!..
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/manual/gospel-topics-essays/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disagrees with your statement.
It is truly sickening what men can get away with when they convince their community that God approves of it.
[…] https://www.the-exponent.com/mary-jane-wilford-woodruff-and-the-267-dead-wives/ […]
Thank you so much Erin for your information. Just recently I have been on a deep dive into polygamy. I have been a member my whole life and can’t believe how complacent I have been until now in accepting this abhorrent practice as something called of God in early church history. For whatever reason—why it took this long, I don’t know —but upon reading the words of Jacob in my scripture study I was struck by the evil of polygamy. He refers to polygamy as a “grosser crime” as he calls out the Nephites who are committing the whoredoms of David and Solomon. “Behold David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.” ( Jacob 2:24) “…For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none.” ( 2:27) Jacob goes on in to tell the Nephites that “ Lamanites whom ye hate are more righteous than you because they have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord to which was given unto our father —that they should save it were one wife” And not only that, but because of the Lamanites obeying this commandment, “Behold the Lord God will not destroy them but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people. “Behold, their husbands love their wives and their wives love their husbands.” ( Jacob 3:5-7)
The disturbing polygamy practiced by our early church prophets did not come from God. It’s heart breaking to think of the abuse of so many women who followed in faith. And unconscionable to think of a “Prophet” preying on a teenager. I am humbled by my own journey…it took me so long to see the truth. We are conditioned to be extremely loyal to the church and connect to Christ only through that church. The church becomes an end in itself. I seek to have a direct relationship with my Savior. The church is making progress …so I will choose to see the good. But I will also choose to think critically for myself and never again check my brain by accepting cognitive dissonance to follow authority . Church leadership errored egregiously too with Blacks and the Priesthood. There has never been an apology for both these egregious sins—polygamy and racism.
Patriarchy still needs to be rooted out ..I live in the the Bay Area where we had the recent announcement from our pulpit that women should not be in the stand. This was the week that the Middle East broke out in a horrific war….yet this was the important message that we needed to hear as members of Christ’s church? I think not ….I believe Christ would have asked us to pray for peace and be mindful of our brothers and sisters in both Gaza and Israel.
Much gratitude to Erin and all who have posted. I am in agreement with all that has been stated. …except the post that claims JS was not a polygamist …oh how I wish that was true!