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Utah satirist Al Church, among other suggestions on how to survive as a gentile in Utah, offered this tip: “Ask guides at the Beehive House how many wives Brigham Young had. (Of my last four tours, the answer has averaged 21.)” (1981, 17). 

The volunteer guides at the Beehive House have no corner on the confusion market. Ann Eliza Webb, a disgruntled wife suing Brigham Young for divorce and hefty alimony, defrayed her expenses by writing a mildly scandalous pot boiler called Wife Number Nineteen (1876) in which she claimed (incorrectly) to be the last and (also incorrectly) the nineteenth. She was actually number fifty-two. Stanley Hirshson’s major biography of Brigham Young, The Lion of the Lord, gives the number of wives as seventy (1969, 184—223). The research that produced this number is unfortunately no more accurate than that in the rest of the book. In 1940, the Young family produced a widely used pamphlet, “Brigham Young’s Wives, Children and Grandchildren” (Sanborn 1940) that gives the number as twenty-seven, a number popularized by Irving Wallace in his The Twenty-seventh Wife (1961), a fictionalized biography of Ann Eliza Webb Young. Leonard J. Arrington’s award-winning biography, Brigham Young: American Moses (1985, 420-21), divides the wives into three groups: (1) the sixteen wives who had children by Brigham Young, (2) nine others whom “Brigham Young held out to be wives” but who had no children by him, and (3) “some thirty women” who were sealed to him for eternity only, but whom he does not name. 

This paper has three purposes: to identify the number of wives, to suggest some reasons for the ambiguities of the term wife, and to document the wives Brigham Young married over the course of his life. (See Table 1 at the end of this paper.) 

The first purpose is the easiest: fifty-five women were sealed to Brigham Young. Then why has it taken 109 years after Brigham’s death and a great deal of scholarly research to derive a clear number? One reason is Brigham Young’s own reluctance. His Victorian sensibilities apparently made it hard for him to talk about so sexual a subject, and his Yankee independence bristled at the invasion of his privacy. He himself, on one of the few public occasions when he discussed the topic, reported in 1870 that he had sixteen wives (JD 13:173). But usually he tried to avoid the question. He gave instructions to the Historian’s Office that “he did not wish but little history of his family given” (Historian’s Office Journal, 31 Jan. 1857). 

On another occasion, he complained mildly: “Ladies who come into my office very frequently say, ‘I wonder if it would hurt his feelings if I were to ask him how many wives he has?’ .. . I would as lief they should ask me that question as any other; but I would rather see them anxious to learn about the Gospel” (JD 14:162). 

A second reason for the confusion is the remarkable number of variations in the types of ecclesiastically recognized liaisons that occurred. Brigham Young’s fifty-five sealings—meaning a ceremony performed by priesthood authority that linked a man and a woman—could be of two types. The most common—and the only one currently practiced—is a ceremony that seals a man and woman for time (mortal life) and for eternity. A second form could seal a woman to one man for time and another for eternity. Such ceremonies usually occurred when a widow was sealed to her dead husband for eternity and to a living husband for time in the same ceremony. It was understood that any children by the second husband would be considered the progeny of the first husband. In the early days of the Church, these relationships were commonly called proxy marriages. 

However, the two forms of sealing did not exhaust the possible relationships. In both forms of sealing, the husband and wife could either establish a conjugal relationship or the ceremony could remain unconsummated. In Brigham Young’s case, a significant number of sealings may have been non-conjugal, since the only incontrovertible proof of cohabitation after this lapse of years is either personal documentation (none exists) or the birth of a child, and Brigham Young fathered children by only sixteen of his wives. This does not necessarily mean that he did not have conjugal relationships with some of the other thirty-nine wives, but the topic of where he spent his nights was apparently not a matter of household discussion. His daughter, Susa Young Gates, in her recollections observes, “[Even] if I would, I could tell nothing of my father’s marital relations, for they were regarded in the family as most sacred. And no one ever knew aught about these matters which should be preserved in the holiest silence of the human heart” (n.d., 74). 

Corroborative evidence of nonconjugal status is that Brigham Young, in an 1859 interview with Horace Greely, stated: “I have some aged women sealed to me upon the principle of sealing which I no more think of making a wife of than I would my Grand Mother” (Greeley 1859). Twelve of the thirty-nine were over forty-five when they married him, and six were more than ten years older than Brigham. 

A third complication was whether a sealed wife became part of Brigham Young’s households. I have considered that women members of Brigham Young’s households, if they resided with other wives, received financial support from Brigham Young and/or were publicly recognized as a wife. Twenty three of his wives, by my count, belonged to his households. (Of course, a woman sealed to Brigham Young and living in his household would not necessarily be a conjugal wife.) 

One might well ask why a woman would seek or accept sealing to a man under some of the more unconventional circumstances I have explained. Much of the motive lies in an understanding of the doctrines of plural marriage, a theological discussion which has been amplified elsewhere. Latter-day Saints introduced to the doctrine of plural marriage in Nauvoo understood that it was part of the promised “restoration of all things” that included a reestablishment of the family structure of such ancient prophets as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; that it was the “higher law” of the afterlife which they were being called by God and his prophet to live in this life; and that it was an ordinance necessary to salvation. Not only would it determine relationships with beloved kinfolk in the next life, but, Latter-day Saints believed a priesthood sealing between worthy partners was also essential for both men and women before they could be saved. In an 1845 sermon, Brigham Young alluded to this doctrine in those terms when he assured his listeners that “no woman can be perfect without a man to lead her . . . and I say to every man upon the face of the earth: if he wishes to be saved he cannot be saved without a woman by his side.” He identified this doctrine as “Joseph Smith’s spiritual wife system” (“Speech,” 1845). 

In addition to these persuasive doctrines, the economic realities of the American frontier made it virtually obligatory for a woman to be married; and the cultural norms of the society also reinforced the view that the institution of marriage inevitably accompanied adulthood. 

Brigham Young was a married man when he encountered Mormonism, and he would, as it turned out, have two wives before he ever had a plural one. He married his first wife, Miriam Works, on 8 October 1824 when he was twenty-three years old and she was eighteen. They had two daughters, then joined the Church in April 1832. A few months later Miriam died of consumption at the age of twenty-seven. In Kirtland, Brigham met Mary Ann Angel. They were married on 10 February 1834, four months before her

thirty-first birthday. She mothered Brigham’s young daughters and, over the next seven years, gave birth to six additional children, including a set of twins. Brigham Young learned about plural marriage in Nauvoo from Joseph Smith, and there is no reason to question his own report that he reacted negatively. Greeley asked him, “Is the system of your Church [plurality of wives] acceptable to the majority of its women?” and Brigham Young answered, “They could not be more averse to it than I was when it was first revealed to us as the Divine will. I think they generally accept it, as I do, as the will of God” (Greeley 1859). He made similar statements on other occasions.

Wives Sealed to Brigham Young during Joseph Smith’s Lifetime: June 1842–May 1844

Between the time that Brigham Young first learned of the doctrine of plural marriage and the time Joseph Smith died—just under two years—he was sealed to four women. All four women came West, lived as part of his house hold, outlived him, and shared in his estate. Three of them bore him children. 

Brigham Young chose twenty-year-old Lucy Ann Decker Seeley for his first plural wife, and they were married by Joseph Smith on 17 June 1842. She was the daughter of Isaac Decker, a long-time friend of Brigham Young and his father John Young. She and her two children had been abandoned in Nauvoo by her husband, William Seeley, who according to family tradition, was a drunkard and abusive (Gates n.d., 4). In many ways, this marriage to Lucy Ann was typical. A significant number of women sealed to Brigham Young were from families with whom he had long-standing friendships; many were either widows or divorcees with children. 

His second plural wife was forty-one-year-old Augusta Adams Cobb, who had left her husband and five of her children in Boston when she came to Nauvoo with two children, one of whom died on the way (Cable 1965; Cobb 

1886). The same day, Brigham also married Harriet Elizabeth Cook, a nineteen-year-old convert to the Church with no relatives in Nauvoo. The fourth wife was sixteen-year-old Clarissa Caroline Decker, Lucy’s sister. They were married 8 May 1844, one month before Joseph Smith’s death. 

All four of these women swore that they were married to Brigham Young on these dates in affidavits signed in 1869 and 1870 (Smith 1:48, 50; 2:12, 16). Lucy’s marriage date and sealing are also recorded in the Nauvoo Temple records, which document confirmed sealings for the other three in the temple in January 1846. 

Before the Nauvoo Temple’s Completion: September 1844–May 1845

After Joseph Smith’s death but before the temple in Nauvoo was completed, Brigham Young was sealed to fifteen women in secret ceremonies. Brigham Young recorded them in code in his diary as “M E” (marriage for eternity) or “M T” (marriage for time) capitalized and underlined at the top of the diary pages when his marriages were performed. For example, on 10 September 1844 he wrote, “This day I visited Br. Isac Chace. Br. H.C. Kimball was with me. Br & Sister Chase with their daughter Claricy was at home. We had a good visit . . . .” “M. E.” is written on that page. Since Heber C. Kimball was often a witness to those marriages it is instructive to compare his diary entry for the same day. For example, he confirms Brigham Young’s marriage to Clarissa Chase on September 10: “went to . . . Br. Cheaces. They ware sealled all wright.” 

Brigham Young’s diary records his marriages to all fifteen wives married during this period but Emily Dow Partridge and Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner. Emily’s family has dated her marriage in September 1844 (Gates and Sanborn 1920, 127). Her son Edward Partridge Young was born the next year. Brigham Young’s diary does not continue into May 1845, but Heber C. Kimball’s diary records “Seald B to Lite” meaning to Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner on 22 May 1845. Mary Elizabeth affirms in her autobiography: “I was also sealled to B. Young as proxy for Joseph” (Lightner, n.d., 25). 

Of the fifteen women, four—Emily Dow Partridge, Louisa Beaman, Eliza R. Snow, and Olive Gray Frost—were sealed to Joseph Smith for eternity with Brigham Young standing as proxy for the murdered prophet. A fifth, Margaret Pierce Whitesides, a young widow, was sealed to her first husband for eternity and to Brigham Young for life. Like Margaret, six others had been married before. The previous marital status of Clarissa Blake, five years older than Brigham, is unknown. So is her death date. Three of these fifteen (Elizabeth Fairchild, Diana Chase, and Mary Ann Clark) divorced him in the next few years. Three died before they reached Utah. Olive Gray Frost died in October 1844 before the temple was completed. Her sealing is the only one from this period not confirmed after the temple was open. Five of this group bore Brigham children and seven lived in his household in Utah. Thus, at one point in this period, the forty-three-year-old Brigham had twenty wives ranging in age from seventeen to forty-eight and had eight children—two by Miriam Works, six by Mary Ann Angel (daughter Mary Ann had died in 1843), and a four-month-old son by Lucy Ann Decker. 

Nauvoo Temple Marriages: January—February 1846

When the temple was completed, the Saints rushed to perform sealings and endowments before leaving for the West. Often Church leaders would spend several consecutive days in the temple. Brigham Young wrote in his diary on 

12 January 1846, “I gave myself up entirely to the work of the Lord in the temple almost night & day. I have spent [sic] not taking more than 4 hours upon an average out of 24 to sleep & but seldom ever allowing myself the the [sic] time & opportunity of going home once in a week . . . .” 

In the five-week period between 7 January and 6 February 1846, Brigham Young was married to nineteen women, and his sealings to all of his living wives were reconfirmed. Fourteen of his nineteen new wives had been married before and seven were significantly older, including Phebe Morton Angel, the mother of Mary Ann Angel (then fifty-nine), and Abigail Marks Works (then sixty-nine), the mother of his first wife, Miriam Works. 

Of this group, only two, Margaret Alley and Zina Huntington, bore him children. Six of these women were sealed to dead husbands for eternity (three to Joseph Smith) with Brigham Young standing proxy. Eight of these women predeceased him, three received divorces, and the remaining three may have either died before reaching Utah or stayed in the East. 

On the Plains: February 1847–April 1848

Between Brigham Young’s departure from Nauvoo and his permanent arrival in the Salt Lake Valley, he was sealed to four women. The first, Jane Terry Young, was a widow with two young children, who requested on her deathbed that she be sealed to Brigham Young. (Her dead husband, George W. Young, was no relation to Brigham Young.) Four days after the sealing, she died (Heward 1956, 73). This particular marriage was the shortest of Brigham Young’s marriages. (The longest was his union with Mary Ann Angel. They had been married forty-three years when he died in 1877.) 

Sixteen-year-old Lucy Bigelow and her nineteen-year-old sister Mary Jane were sealed to him in Winter Quarters on 20 March 1847, just before he left on his first expedition to Utah. According to Lucy’s daughter, Susa Young Gates, these sealings were secret even though there were almost no non Mormons in the area (n.d., 74). Brigham Young took his wife Clara Decker to Utah, left her in Salt Lake City, returned to Iowa in the fall of 1847, and, while there, was sealed to Sarah Malin. Both Sarah and Mary Jane later left him, Mary Jane marrying twice more. Lucy, however, lived in his Utah house hold and bore him three children. 

Sealings in Utah: October 1852–December 1872

On 29 August 1852, Orson Pratt expounded the principle of plural marriage in a general conference session, ending the period of secrecy. At that point, Brigham Young was fifty-one years old. Of his forty-two plural wives, seven had died and six had received divorces. The history of four is unknown. Thirty-one children had been born; three more were conceived that year. 

A few days later, Brigham Young married Eliza Burgess. She was twenty five years old and her father had been a Church leader in England. Brigham would marry ten more women before his death in 1877. Eight had been married before, and several brought young children into the family. Five were older women who seem to have been nonconjugal wives. None of the eleven were sealed for eternity to former husbands. Three of the eleven bore him one child each, and two received divorces. 

By his death on 23 August 1877, Brigham Young had married fifty-five wives. Nineteen had predeceased him, ten had received divorces, four are unaccounted for, and twenty-three survived him. Seventeen wives received a share of his estate while the remaining six apparently had nonconjugal roles. 

Sixteen women gave birth to Brigham Young’s fifty-seven children; Emme line Free had ten; six wives had only one child. The oldest child, Elizabeth Young Ellsworth, was fifty-two at Brigham’s death and the youngest, Fannie Young Clayton, was seven. Eleven of the sixteen women survived him. None of the women who bore him children cancelled their sealings or remarried. 

Divorces

Rather than being the political and domestic despot whose image appeared in the Eastern press, Brigham Young apparently maintained a remarkably open attitude toward divorce. Although the circumstances of all of his divorces are not known, what documentation exists seems to indicate amicable partings. In many cases, these women remarried and remained in Utah, taking an active part in the Church for the rest of their lives, This fact tends to dispel the myth of the horrified woman, enslaved against her will, disgusted equally with Brig ham Young, the Church, and plural marriage. 

The first documented divorce was from Mary Woodward on 13 December 1846, his wife of less than a year. In a brief but warm letter that day, he wrote: “In answer to your letter of yesterday, the 12 inst; I will say, you may consider yourself discharged from me and my counsel” and added that he would be glad to help her if she and her children were ever hungry (Brigham Young papers). 

Divorce records are sketchy for the emigration period, but two women who had been sealed to him in the Nauvoo Temple left him then to marry other men. Diana Chase married William Montgomery Shaw on 1 January 1849 and raised a large family in the Ogden, Utah, area. The widowed Mary Elza Nelson Greene, who had been sealed to her first husband for eternity and to Brigham Young for this life, was sealed to Bruce Israel Philips on 17 September 1850 by Parley P. Pratt in Salt Lake City. 

On 18 June 1851 Mary Ann Clark Powers wrote from Kanesville, Iowa: “I wish you to release me from all engagements with you for time and eternity. . . .” (Brigham Young papers). This request was granted. 

After the Church began recording divorces in 1851, Mary Ann Turley and Mary Jane Bigelow obtained divorces in 1851, Eliza Babcock in 1853, and Elizabeth Fairchild in 1855 (Divorce Certificates, Brigham Young papers). They were under twenty when they married Brigham Young and had never become part of his household. They all remarried; and Mary Jane, Eliza, and Elizabeth remained in Utah. 

Almost twenty years later in 1873, Ann Eliza Webb applied for a civil divorce. The case came to trial in 1875, and the court ordered Brigham to pay $500 per month allowance and $3,000 court costs. When he refused, he was fined $25 and sentenced to a day in prison for contempt of court (Arrington 1985, 373). There is no record of application for a Church divorce, but she was excommunicated 10 October 1874 and devoted much of the rest of her life to publishing her somewhat sensational memoirs and giving anti Mormon lectures. 

Twenty-one of Brigham Young’s fifty-five wives had never been married, six were separated or divorced from their husbands, sixteen were widows, and six had living husbands from whom divorces had apparently not been obtained. Marital information is unavailable for six. 

From a twentieth-century perspective, the polyandrous marriages seem most problematic. Three of these women (Mary Ann Clark Powers, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, and Hannah Tapfield King) were married to non Mormons, which meant, according to the theological understanding of the times, that their salvation could not be assured. Mary Ann Clark Powers, married to Brigham Young 15 January 1845, later said she had not “bin a wife to” Powers after the sealing and expressed relief when Powers went to California. She received a divorce from Brigham Young in 1851 (Powers to Young, 18 June 1851, Brigham Young papers).

Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner (n.d.), was an early and fervent member in Kirtland and Missouri. She and her husband, Adam Lightner, gathered with the Saints at Nauvoo and eventually Utah. Joseph Smith prophesied (correctly) that Adam would never join the Church and explained to Mary Elizabeth that she needed to be sealed to a worthy priesthood holder for eternity. She was sealed to Joseph before his death and the sealing was confirmed in the Nauvoo Temple, Brigham Young acting as proxy. In the same ceremony, she was sealed to Brigham Young for life, but her relationship to Adam Lightner seems to have remained unchanged. They had ten children and both died in Minersville, Utah, many years later. She was never known as a wife of Brigham Young. 

Hannah Tapfield King joined the Church in England, came to Utah with her non-Mormon husband, became known as a poet and writer, and was sealed to Brigham Young for eternity in 1872 when she was sixty-five. This sealing did not affect her relationship with her husband, and she never became part of the Brigham Young household (King, c 1864-72). 

The remaining three women, however, had living husbands who were Mormons, and it is not clear why they chose not to be sealed to those husbands. Zina Diantha Huntington Jacobs had been sealed to Joseph Smith before his death. When that sealing was confirmed in the Nauvoo Temple, Brigham Young acted as proxy. It seems to have been the invariable custom that when a woman was sealed to one man for eternity, she was sealed to his proxy for time. Her husband, Henry Jacobs, was present during the ceremony and apparently agreed to the sealings (Nauvoo Temple Records, 2 Feb. 1846). Zina and her two sons by Henry became part of Brigham Young’s family; she later bore Brigham a daughter. Henry remarried and died years later in Salt Lake City, still a member of the Church. 

Mary Ellen Woodward applied to the Nauvoo High Council in about 1844 for a divorce from James B. Woodward, her Mormon husband, on grounds of physical cruelty to her and their three children. After she was sealed to Brigham Young, James persuaded her to come back to him; and by her request, Brigham Young granted a divorce. However, her letter to Brigham Young on 25 February 1847 asks, “If I do all I can and after this he treats me bad, will you let me leave him and live with my children?” 

The third woman, Lydia Farnsworth Mayhew, had nine children by her Mormon husband, Elijah Mayhew (Family group sheet, Genealogical Society). At sixty-two, she was sealed to Brigham Young for eternity on 8 May 1870. This sealing did not change her relationship with Elijah, and they lived together until he died in 1896. 

It is clear from this analysis of Brigham Young’s sealings that marriage was a more fluid relationship in nineteenth-century Mormonism than in the twentieth century. It served multiple functions—theological, economic, and social. The pragmatic flexibility Brigham Young brought to these sealings, while the source of considerable confusion, also provides a measure of the significance of the marital relationship as an ordering device in nineteenth century Utah society.

[Editor’s Note: For Table 1: Wives of Brigham Young, see PDF below, pp. 65–69]