This is a throwback episode with Brian Hales from 2017. Brian is the author of Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, Volumes 1-3, and it’s just in time for the Journal of Mormon Polygamy Conference this weekend at the University of Utah. Check out our conversation….

https://youtu.be/WVs0ypGKq5o

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Canadian Polygamy – Should it be Legal?

The Interview

GT:  Well I’d like to welcome everybody out here to Gospel Tangents Podcast.  I’m really excited to talk to Dr. Brian Hales.  He’s the expert on polygamy, or one of the experts I guess. I’m grateful to have you here and thank you for letting me take some of your time today.

Brian:  Rick it’s really a privilege for me to be here.

GT:  Well thanks.  One of the things I’d like to do is to introduce you to my audience a little bit.  Typically I try to talk to a lot of historians who are doctors but you are the first physician, although I have talked to a physician’s assistant as well.  Could you tell us a little bit about your background, even in medicine?  I think you’re a Utah man.  Is that right?

Brian:  I am actually.  I went to Utah State, grew up in Logan and got a medical degree from University of Utah, so I have a little bit of the Ute blood in me as well.

GT:  Aggie and Utah, ok.

Brian:  Aggies primarily.  Then I had a member of my family who was involved with Mormon fundamentalism and that kind of steered me over into thinking about polygamy.  This is back in 1989 so it’s been quite some time ago.  At that point I was in a residency for anesthesia and I do tell people that my books are part of my full anesthesia services.  You’ve probably heard me say that joke, but I got interested then in Mormon fundamentalism and published a book, co-authored a book in 1991 dealing with that topic but then later a couple of other books.

People were asking me about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, and I didn’t have answers and really I would argue none of the books did.  Todd Compton’s book has some things that were very helpful but he had written biographies and it wasn’t focused specifically on Joseph, so there was still a lot of room for research and to also try to figure out some of the historical aspects that really were just big question marks I think in a lot of people’s minds.

So in 2006-2007 I hired Don Bradley who is a dear friend but also a remarkable researcher and he went out and did a lot of research for me, gathered documents, and I told him to get everything:  anti-Mormon or supportive, whatever he could find.  We wanted to get every known document, and it was interesting because after we had been going about six months, it became obvious that if we kept going, eventually we would be able to put either a transcript or at least a reference to every known document on polygamy within the volumes that we were putting together.  So we got kind of excited about that but that was mostly Don Bradley’s work.  But his help, I put together three volumes (vol 1, vol 2, vol 3) on polygamy.  There’s been a few new things come out.  This was in 2013 that they were published, but not a lot has come out but a few very important things that we can talk about.

GT:  Yeah we’ll definitely want to talk about that.  Well great!  I’m glad you talked about how you got interested in fundamentalist Mormonism, I guess.  There are different branches.  Could you just kind of briefly give a sketch of the main ones? I guess we’ve got the FLDS, AUB.  Are there any others?  Could you give a background on Mormon fundamentalism?

Brian:  Well do you mind if I just talk about what’s going on in Canada right now?

GT:  Sure, that would be great.

Brian:  I just got back last week, it was a week ago today from Cranbrook, [British Columbia,] Canada.  That is where they are holding a trial right now for two leading polygamists:  Winston Blackmore and James Oler.  The Canadian government has kind of a different system than we have here in the United States in that they have a law against polygamy.  It’s been on the books since 1899 or before.  They haven’t prosecuted anybody in the last 100 plus years, but what they are able to do in Canada that we don’t do in the U.S. is they can petition their Supreme Court to rule on the constitutionality of a particular law.  In 2012 they did this to the state, well it would be the province, British Columbia did a provincial court saying, is this polygamy law constitutional?  They ruled that it was.

They are now prosecuting the two leading polygamists because there’s a group of hundreds, not thousands, but hundreds located about an hour, hour and a half away from Cranbrook where the court’s being held.  So the prosecution, the attorneys called me up and said, would you come up and be an expert?  They said, we don’t want you to testify for or against, and I told them that isn’t what I’m interested in doing.  They wanted somebody to give an accurate history which is something that I had studied.

I can even give you a copy of a chart that I’ve updated and you can put it the show notes or however you do online if people are interested.  It’s available at https://mormonfundamentalism.com, but they asked me to come up and start with Joseph Smith and go right through on authority to the 1890 and 1904 manifestos, the period between that and the fundamentalist groups coming together at the end of the 1920s, and then the branches and the breakoffs and I put together a nice little chart that talks about the different groups and of course the fundamentalists up there.  The polygamists up there are, or were aligned with the FLDS, but in 2002 Winston Blackmore was excommunicated by Warren Jeffs over kind of an interesting situation where Warren, representing his father Rulon who had had strokes and was not necessarily communicating that much but Warren gave the word that Winston was supposed to actually take the life of a woman who had been involved with what he felt was a transgression within their religious beliefs and Winston refused to do it so he was excommunicated.  This was before Warren had actually taken over.

James Oler is the other leader and when Winston was excommunicated as the bishop up there then James Oler took over.  [It was] kind of a sad tale.  My heart actually goes out to both of these guys.  I don’t agree with their polygamy but the sad thing is that James Oler helped with that 2012 case where they brought up the constitutionality of the anti-polygamy law, and James Oler was just a friend of the court, or gave an opinion on that, and then it came out against the polygamists and Warren was unhappy with that and sent him out to repent from afar which takes away his wives and everything.  He seems like a really nice guy.  I only chatted with him, exchanged very few words but he seemed like a very humble man and again I want it known that I am not up there to testify against the polygamists.  There’s been some people saying that. It isn’t true.  I was totally neutral on that.

Rick I don’t know if you want to know this but personally I don’t think that we should allow polygamy either in Canada or the United States, but my reason might be a little surprising to you, because in a country or government that allows same-sex marriage, and again I’m not speaking for or against that, but if we allow same-sex marriage and we allow polygamy, you could have networks of people, hundreds of people all married to each other in a variety of ways.

If the government privileged marriage, in other words if a married man and a married woman, whatever kind of marriage it is, if they have a privilege a single person doesn’t have, then everybody’s going to want to be married in some way.  I think it would force the government to basically get out of the marrying business and leave it as a social construct or a religious agreement.  But in doing that it would also take away any privilege for marriage which I think could harm the family.  So that’s my reasoning for saying I don’t think we should have legal polygamy.  I think a society can absorb polygamy on a small scale. It obviously can’t be practiced widely because of the differences in people, male and female, the gendered differences of being born, but I don’t think a society can absorb both of the expansions or marriage at the same time.  I mean you can do same-sex marriage, or you can do polygamy.  I don’t think it’s good for the family to do both.

 

Does D&C 132 Conflict with JST Genesis?

The Interview

GT:  In your book, you’ve got a three volume set I guess I should say, and one of the other things I wanted to talk about was, I had an interview with Dr. Mark Staker. I don’t know if you were able to watch those interviews?  (video here)

Brian:  Just a part of it.

GT:  Ok, in one of those interviews with Dr. Mark Staker, he really surprised me when he said that he thought that Black Pete, who was the first black Mormon in the church, baptized just six months after [the church was organized], may have introduced polygamy to Kirtland, which kind of blew my mind. I’d never heard that before, and I wanted—you know you’re kind of an expert on Kirtland era polygamy and that as well.  I wanted to get your opinion on that point.

Brian:  You know Mark, who is a remarkable scholar and you don’t dismiss anything that someone who’s done his level of research comes up with, you don’t dismiss it just out of hand.  You want to entertain it and see how it fits with the other building blocks, but Mark and I have actually exchanged emails and had conversations and we actually have some disagreements on a number of points.

I am aware of this from your podcast, and I think that Joseph Smith didn’t need Black Pete to introduce him to polygamy, the idea.  We see this all the time with say the Book of Mormon.  Critics will say Joseph got this idea of Noah in Mosiah. Noah is actually this person in Joseph’s life and they’ll try to draw these parallels and things.  It’s interesting talk but I don’t think it’s all that necessary.  Joseph knew the Old Testament, he knew Abraham had more than one wife and Jacob, so why would we need to think that it was Black Pete that was introducing this in a very real way, especially when Joseph wasn’t supportive of so much that was going on when he first arrived down there, and the types of spiritual experiences that they were expressing in their church meetings and things like that.  So I’m a little dubious on that, but I just applaud Mark.  I say go forward and let us know.

The timeline lines up pretty well with Joseph having been translating the Old Testament, particularly the discussion about the patriarchs who were polygamists in 1831 when we also having them talking about marrying Lamanites if we believe W. W. Phelps [account of] revelation that he recounted decades later, so I think that the chronology of him bringing up the question as he’s translating fits the evidence a little bit better, but with Mark Staker, he may have other evidence I haven’t seen.  We’ll just have to wait for it.

GT:  Yeah, well Mark did admit that it was more of a circumstantial case, so not strong evidence, but he said Black Pete was seen as an Indian which he was black, but whatever.  He said early in the Mormon Church they said, well you’re black.  You must know what Indians are all about so that was kind of how it started and Indians are polygynous and he thought maybe that might have been something, so anyway, interesting thought I had never heard before.

Let’s go back to that timeline because Black Pete, the record only shows him from about 1830-1831 which is the time period if you read section 132 in the Doctrine and Covenants it says that portions of the revelation may have been received as early as then.  Mark said well it could have been Black Pete that maybe tried to influence polygamy among the Kirtland saints, and that may have been why Joseph turned to the Bible and looked at polygamy and Abraham as you mentioned.  So my question is, well there’s a few questions.

One of the interesting things, and I’m just going to reveal my opinion.  Polygamy is one of the most difficult topics for me to wrestle with theologically.  As we look at, let’s talk about Doctrine and Covenants 132.  It says in there that God gave Abraham the wives.  It seems to me if Joseph Smith is translating the Book of Genesis, or retranslating it, and he made some changes in the Book of Genesis, if you read that story in Genesis, it seems pretty clear that it wasn’t God, it was Sarah that said, Abraham, why don’t you take Hagar? {Brian nods}.  It seems to me if Joseph Smith is translating that, wouldn’t there have been a revelation there or a Joseph Smith Translation?  He leaves that story basically unchanged.  Do you have any comments on that?

Brian:  There’s at least a couple of ways that could be interpreted at least in my view.  There are people who say Joseph knew all of section 132 in 1831.  I’m not one who believes that at all.

I believe that he may have learned in 1831 that plural marriage was a correct principle, and that’s kind of the language some of the brethren used.  He learned it was a correct principle.  In other words Abraham wasn’t sinning or transgressing by practicing polygamy.  The Bible does not teach anything about whether polygamy is good or bad.  All we know is that Abraham practiced it and Abraham was a friend of God.  We can get that from scriptures, so Joseph may have just gone with his question about is this a valid practice?  What was the second question?

GT:  Joseph Smith Translation leaves that biblical story unchanged…

Brian:  Right.

GT:  ..but in D&C 132 it says God gave the wives.

Brian:  The other thing is that in the Bible there’s nobody commanded to practice polygamy ever, but we have in section 132 that Abraham was commanded by God to marry Hagar.  So I don’t think Joseph knew any of this in 1831.  If we follow Joseph’s teachings even on something like eternal marriage, we find a hint of it in 1835 but still there’s nothing there, and I’m not sure, and I think Mark would disagree with me on this, Mark Staker, but I don’t think Joseph was fully apprised of the authority and what it could do that he received in the temple on April 3, 1836 from Elijah, Moses, and Elias.  I honestly am not sure that he understood that authority until maybe some years later, but that’s speculation on my part.  We certainly don’t have him teaching anything about plural marriage or eternal marriage until we get into Nauvoo in late 1840, early 1841.  Did I cover that?

GT:  Well so I guess my question is as far as 132 and Genesis, does it seem to you that there’s a difference among those two scriptures as far as whether God commanded Hagar to be a plural wife or whether Sarah was totally responsible?

Brian:  And because Genesis, even the Joseph Smith Translation states that…

GT interrupts:  Yeah it leaves that story unchanged.

Brian:  …Sarah was the driver and not God through Abraham.

GT agrees:  Uh huh.

Brian:  I believe all of these principles came to Joseph line upon line, precept upon precept.  Some of the exciting things that are happening down at BYU, Tom Wayment and others are looking at the Joseph Smith Translation very carefully and discovering that it really shouldn’t be thought of as actual scripture in and of itself, that it was a chance for Joseph to expand upon the text to make the Bible text correspond with the theology that he was receiving through revelation, or through communications that he portrayed to be from God.  So for me to see the JST Genesis and that it doesn’t necessarily say what comes in 1843 doesn’t surprise me because of the line upon line, precept upon precept process.

GT:  Ok.

Polygamy Rumors – Declaration on Marriage

The Interview

GT:  Clair Barrus gave a presentation at a Mormon history conference in which he said that there was no documentation of any polygamy revelations prior to, I wish I remembered this exactly, but I believe 1838.  There’s no documentation of that until about 1838 and that’s when you get the first points of documentation.  In talking with Dr. Staker, one of the things he mentioned was, I believe it was 1835, you have the Declaration on Marriage which was originally a section in the Book of Commandments, but then it was later taken out and replaced with section 132.  Could you talk about some of those polygamy rumors?

I know in your book you said there was nothing in the news[papers] about them.  In 1835, Dr. Staker makes the case, well why would they talk about polygamy if polygamy wasn’t a problem?  There must have been something going on in Kirtland in the early, at least 1830s.

Brian:  The first accusation against the Latter-day Saints, they weren’t called that then, against the Mormons, the Mormonites, that they had embraced some alternate form of marriage, came in 1831.  It was in conjunction with the Law of Consecration and it was basically not only do they share everything, they share wives.  That was the accusation that came up.

Of course it’s easily refuted.  There’s nothing to support that it was even thought of or discussed.  So when people say they were talking about polygamy in Kirtland, I would really like to see the data on that, that this was really a response to polygamy because my research shows that there was, with respect to Joseph and Fanny Alger, discussion of adultery and that was the claim that everybody was worried about.  I don’t find anybody discussing polygamy during that period.

If we read the section 101, which is “On Marriage” it was entitled, it talks about polygamy but it talks about fornication and adultery, and so to say that this is reacting to polygamy rumors, it could be true but there is no evidence for that, and so I argue that this is really just a blanket statement that’s covering the comments made about this idea of Law of Consecration of sharing wives, as well as any other accusations and Oliver Cowdery wrote a very nice declaration.  He said we haven’t got anywhere near enough time to respond to all of the accusations that are being made against us, so I don’t think that’s a real strong argument, that the article because it mentions a man having one wife, and technically the language, if you look at it closely does not prevent polygamy.  We can talk about that if you want.  This is not my observation, this is an observation from the RLDS Church writer, as well as President Joseph F. Smith, that the language does not actually prevent polygamy.  It’s a little ambiguous when it comes to that.

GT:  Actually go ahead.  I was just reading that just yesterday, but go ahead and finish that point.

Brian:  Ok, what it says is that a man should have but one—a woman should have but one husband, and a man….

GT interrupts:  A man one wife.

Brian:  …One wife.  {Brian looks for a book}  The language doesn’t say should be only one wife or at least one wife.  I could pull up the exact…

GT interrupts:  Yeah go ahead and grab it.

{break}

Brian:  Ok what I have now is the 1835 Doctrine & Covenants and what it says here, it says

“The 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.”

What has been pointed out is that it doesn’t say that a man should have only one wife.  It doesn’t say that a man should have at least one wife, and so the accusation has been made by critics and even by a church president that this was intentional language allowing for polygamy to be practiced in the future.

Now the irony of that is this was printed twice in Nauvoo as evidence that the church was not practicing polygamy.  So despite this loophole, potential loophole, do I think that Joseph put that in intentionally?  I have no idea.  It wouldn’t surprise me if he did, to be honest with you.  He had a long view things and he would have known, he may have known again that at least it was a correct principle from 1831, so whether it was carefully crafted, or just a coincidence.  If you want to disagree, and that goes for anyone listening, that’s fine, because we’ll never resolve this.

GT:  Well one other point I want to talk about, Dr. Staker mentioned, and I believe Dr. Richard Bennett mentioned as well some people believe that that section was not authored by Joseph Smith but was authored by Oliver Cowdery.  What’s your opinion on that?

Brian:  You know in my volume one, I go into this in some detail, and what we find is yes Joseph was gone, and yes they were quick to get this passed.  In fact they called for this conference on Sunday to be done on Monday and there were almost no leaders there.  The Quorum of the Twelve there were almost no one present, the High Council really weren’t represented.  The theory is that they were trying to get it pushed through before Joseph got back because Oliver had these reasons and stuff.

I don’t think so and I’m grateful for Michael Marquardt for helping me.  We sat one afternoon down in his basement and we went through all the documents, and what we find is at that at point in time they needed to go forward with printing the Doctrine & Covenants.  They had published we think most of the book up to section 101, which is the Article on Marriage and that they’re having piles of all these papers around the printing office. So we think, or at least I think and I think Michael agrees that the driver at that point was really that they just wanted to get official approval so that they could finish publishing the Doctrine & Covenants and so I don’t think that they were trying to do something backhanded with Joseph.

When Joseph came back there’s no evidence that he really disapproved of what had happened.  In fact he quotes or refers to the Article on Marriage two or three times later when he is performing marriages.  He said this declares our church’s belief which they had to have in writing in order for the elders of the church to be authorized by the state to perform state recognized marriages, so there were a number of things.

The other evidence that I found is that if you go back and look at the index of the 1835 Doctrine & Covenants which was written weeks before Joseph had left Kirtland, you find that section 101 is referenced in this index, so the index was written before and Joseph even quotes from the index, but the index didn’t have page numbers.  So I think that information tells me that yes they were planning to include it.  Joseph was planning to include it and it was just a matter of getting the printing done so they’d have a page number to put in there.  But people can try this out themselves.  Just get an 1835 copy of the Doctrine and Covenants and look at it.  We know it was published earlier because of the timeline of some of the things that were quoted from it.

I don’t ascribe to–it’s actually I think Richard Van Wagoner’s book, Mormon Polygamy that first introduced this theory. Todd Compton reiterated the possibility. He didn’t jump totally on board, but I really think that it’s a…

GT interrupts:  So whether Oliver may have authored it or not, it didn’t seem like it bothered Joseph at all and he was fine with it.  Is that safe to say?

Brian:  I believe so.  I’d have to refresh my memory, but what we do know is he could have had it rescinded but he also quoted it as authoritative and Michael Marquardt pointed this out to me I think he’s even published that somewhere that Joseph did consider it after the fact to be the official declaration of the church at that time.

GT:  Ok.

 

 

1^st Plural Wife Fanny Alger: Time or Eternity Polygamy?

The Interview

GT:  Alright, well let’s move on to his first polygamist wife.  Now you said Fanny Al-gurr.  I’ve heard lots of people say Fanny Al-jerr.  Is there a correct way to say that?

Brian:  A family member said it was All-gurr.

GT:  All-gurr.

Brian:  And I never know how it’s going to come out of my mouth.  I mean just because they said it All-gurr now doesn’t mean they said it All-gurr back then.  It’s spelled so it could be pronounced in any number of ways and I try to remember to say All-gurr but who knows how they said it?

GT:  Alright.  Well why don’t you kind of give us a brief overview for those of us people who may not be familiar with the story of Fanny.  How did she know Joseph and how did they get acquainted and that sort of thing?

Brian:  You’ve already talked to Mark Staker and he’s the one I’m dependent upon to try to identify when Fanny actually arrived in Kirtland, because some people want to pair Joseph and Fanny as early as 1831 and all.  Mark told me that he thinks it couldn’t have been any, that Fanny did not joined the Smith family as a domestic in their household until at the earliest late 1833 and probably it was 1834.

We have one witness, one testimonial, only one so do with it as you please that remembers Joseph saying the angel came in July of 1834, Mary Elizabeth Rollins years later, many years later remembering this, but for me I believe Joseph would not have entered into plural marriage prior to that time, so I place the Fanny Alger-Joseph Smith union, and I believe it was a plural marriage for a couple of reasons like I’ll explain in 1835, probably late 1835, maybe early 1836.  I don’t think they would have been able to keep it secret from Emma for very long.  To me it’s implausible that they could have been married and actually having relations which may have occurred.  There’s some evidence supporting that.  We just don’t know, but they couldn’t have done this for very long without Emma figuring it out.  She’s a smart lady.

I put the marriage late 1835, early 1836 discovered a few weeks or months later, but that timeline is completely controversial. People are willing to pick dates earlier, weeks/months earlier than that timeline but I don’t think that it actually would have been much earlier than that.

GT:  Ok, so then what brought the relationship to light?

Brian:  Well I meant to say there’s a couple reasons I think it was a marriage rather than just an adulterous relationship.  We have one account, a single attestation again from a rather dubious source, Mosiah Hancock added a description on the end of his father’s autobiography where he describes how Levi Hancock was approached by Joseph and Joseph said “Levi, I want to marry Fanny so can you be an intermediary in this?”

This was a pattern that was repeated in Nauvoo, not always but it happened.  Levi approached Fanny.  Fanny said yes, so Levi performed the marriage.  It wouldn’t have been a sealing, it wouldn’t have been an eternal marriage, but the authority that was used by Joseph to marry people for the church but just for time in Kirtland, that authority certainly could have been used here, and that’s my theory.  Again these are unanswerable questions and critics are quick to rush in with other alternative interpretations.  It’s just insoluble.

GT:  So let me make sure I understand that.  So the marriage seems to have occurred before the vision in 1836 of Elias, Elijah, and the third person.

Brian:  Moses.

GT:  Moses.

Brian:  Yeah.

GT:  So you’re telling me that the marriage to Fanny was probably performed for time only?

Brian:  There are some who believe it was after April 3^rd.

GT:  That the marriage occurred after the vision.

Brian:  Yeah.  You actually can plug that in.  It’s plausible.  Don Bradley’s done some really good research and he dates the discovery to I think it’s June, May-June of 1836, so if the marriage occurred in say late April, May-June and lasted just a few months before Emma found out, which is entirely plausible, I don’t know that I embrace that, but Don at least we know when it broke up.  We can date that pretty well, then it could have been a sealing.  The authority could have been sealing authority that Joseph would have given to Levi.

An alternate interpretation, and this is a question that comes up a lot Rick, it’s a good question.  If it wasn’t a sealing, then what authority was used?  The state wasn’t going to allow Joseph to marry a second wife, so the only authority that it could have been would be priesthood authority and Joseph was already using that authority to marry people just for time there in Kirtland.  So one interpretation is Joseph gave that authority to Levi and this would have been strictly a priesthood marriage that Joseph would have argued God recognized and so if he recognized it and Fanny and her family apparently recognized it as did others who were involved, but not Oliver [Cowdery] and not Emma.

But the other reason that I think this was an actual marriage and ceremony was performed was that Eliza Snow moved in in early 1836 to live with the Smiths and teach their children.  In 1887, he was an independent historian, Andrew Jensen showed up at Eliza’s door and said I’m trying to make a list of all of the wives of Joseph Smith.  He had been down to see Melissa Lott and Melissa Lot had given him thirteen names that he’d written down on this piece of paper and at some point instead of him writing down what Eliza was saying, he turned the paper over to her and gave her the pencil, and she wrote an additional thirteen names, and among those names were Fanny Alger.

So my theory is that if this had been an adulterous relationship, and he also wrote a paper on Fanny where he quotes Eliza as saying she was well-acquainted with Fanny, and that Fanny was the one that Emma made such a fuss about, so Eliza was there and I think Eliza would have known the details of what was going on.  She considered Fanny a wife and so these two bits of evidence to me I think are convincing for me that this was in fact a marriage, probably not a sealing, and again I place it to late ’35, early ’36 but there’s really no way to date it.

GT:  Yeah that’s interesting.  I’m going to reference Dr. Staker again, one more time.  One of the things Dr. Staker said which was surprising to me and I wanted to get your opinion on was he said that he thought that when Peter, James, and John came in 1829 or 1830, and restored the Melchizedek Priesthood to Joseph and Oliver, that they gave the sealing power to Joseph then.  If you read the book of Matthew [16:18-19] it says basically Upon Peter—I’m not quoting it right but he gave the sealing power to Peter.  Upon this rock I build my church and whatever you seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven.

So I guess there’s a case that could be made when Joseph received the Melchizedek Priesthood from Peter, James, and John, do you think that sealing power might have come as early as 1830, or was it really 1836 with Elias, Elijah, and Moses?

Brian:  You know it’s a super question because Brigham Young later said that if you have the apostleship, you have all the authority, and the senior apostle of course holds the keys to exercising all of the authority, but every apostle has all the authority.  There’s no other authority that could be granted except that given to an apostle, and we’re told that Peter, James, and John ordained them as apostles with the same calling that Paul had received, and Paul was an apostle.  So that’s another supportive argument for this.

But there seems to be in the economy of heaven and authority, a need for certain keys to be restored to unlock certain authority, and you could theorize that they had the authority but they didn’t have the keys.  Now it gets really messy really quick and I don’t know of anybody who’s really tried to sort through all of this in a way that we could consider it an orthodox teaching.

GT:  That’s actually what Mark said.  He had the authority, he didn’t have the keys until 1836.

Brian:  Oh, well it that’s what Mark said that’s a really good thing then.  I’m feeling really good because Mark’s looked into this a lot more than I have.

GT:  Ok, very interesting.

Fanny Alger Part 2: Plural Marriage or Adultery?

The Interview

GT:  Alright, let’s go on.  Somehow this relationship was discovered.  You alluded to Emma wasn’t very pleased with it and neither was Oliver Cowdery.  Can you talk about their reactions and how they discovered it?

Brian:  Yes.  {reaching for book}  In an appendix here in my volume two, and I’m not trying to plug my books.  They’re out in paperback now.

GT:  You can plug away.

Brian:  Can I plug?

GT:  I’m perfectly fine with that.  They’re great books.

Brian:  I’ll just hold this up to the camera.  I think I have actually posted this appendix on https://MormonPolygamyDocuments.org.  If you go there, I think I actually have put this up there.  The point is there’s only 19 accounts that we have that talk about Fanny.  They contradict each other.  They come from good sources and dubious sources.  If somebody wants to figure out what they want to believe about Fanny, just get that appendix, read the 19 accounts and form your own opinion.  There are actually a few others that have important things, but those are the primary accounts that people need to know.

What we understand is that more or less, the people that Joseph Smith told about Fanny Alger as a plural wife, they didn’t believe him.  But most of the people that learned it from Fanny did believe which is interesting.  Fanny’s family believed.  The family that Fanny went to live with was Chauncey Webb and Eliza Jane Webb, they believed that this was an actual marriage, but Joseph is caught with Fanny and they’re in a haymow, they’re in a barn, and we were out there in Kirtland with the John Whitmer Historical Association meeting this last September, and I asked Mark, ‘where is the barn?’  He had no idea.  It’s long since been destroyed.

They were discovered by Emma “in the act.”  We could assume that was something sexual.  Some people want to say it was in the act of getting married by Levi, the ceremony.  It’s a bit of a stretch.  Maybe he was in the act of something affectionate.  Virtually anything affectionate would have been over the line in Emma’s eyes understandably.  She caught them, and she’s not accepting Joseph’s explanation at all.

‘This is a plural marriage.  God authorized it.’

‘Yeah right.  She’s pretty and this isn’t working for me.’

Joseph, according to one of the accounts gets Oliver and says in the middle of the night.  ‘Oliver, come help me with this.’  Oliver hears the story and sides with Emma and thinks Joseph is having an adulterous affair.  That was his opinion, probably right up until his death, that Joseph was not authorized to marry her.  It wasn’t a marriage.  He made hints to members of the high council that Joseph had been guilty of adultery.  He did not accept any story of a marriage ceremony as being valid, and neither did Emma.

Years later in 1847, William McLellin had an interview with Emma, and Emma didn’t want to talk about polygamy but she did say look.  If you tell me things you heard, I’ll tell you whether they’re true or false, and in that conversation she said Joseph was both an adulterer and a polygamist.  We don’t know what she meant by that.  My theory is that she never did accept Fanny as a true plural marriage.  She thought it was adultery.  Joseph had to seek repentance and all that.  In my mind, that’s the dichotomy.  She accepted Nauvoo polygamy but never accepted Kirtland polygamy.

GT:  So going back to that other point that I just made.  I didn’t realize that Oliver sided with Emma.  That’s kind of interesting.  Oliver’s opinion, would that argue against the 1830 sealing power restoration and more towards an 1836, or do you think that has any impact on that at all?

Brian:  Do you know, I do personally believe even though Oliver was there receiving this authority from Elijah, Moses, and Elias, I really am not convinced that they knew what this authority was all about.  Of course there was a rift right after that.  The blowup came in, according to Don [Bradley], it was just weeks later.  From that point forward, there’s a rift between Joseph and Oliver.  If Joseph was receiving additional understanding about the authority, Oliver would not have been privy to any of that.  So the only knowledge Oliver had of those ordinations was what they had before that point and whatever was given in that vision, which apparently wasn’t much, or if it was, it wasn’t written down.  So again, I can see Oliver receiving authority he doesn’t understand and then there’s a rift and he never does gain any understanding.  Joseph in fact receives additional revelation during the next four or five years that helped him understand it.

GT:  Well that revelation in 1836 wasn’t written down for 40 years, so it definitely took a while.

Brian:  Well they did have it in third person written down.

GT:  Oh, they did?

Brian:  Yeah they do.  People, the critics of the church don’t attack the timeline associated with the April 3, 1836 revelation.  It was recorded.  That is lost.  It was turned into third person for the history just within days by I think Warren Parrish.  That account we do have.  In fact it was published in the Ensign by Elder Marlin K. Jensen, when he was there, so you can see it there.  It’s in third person, and that was changed.

GT:  Ok, so it wasn’t canonized for 40 years but it was written down right away.

Brian:  Right.

GT:  Ok, Great.  So what happened to Fanny?  Do you know when it was discovered and what happened to Fanny after?

Brian:  It’s an interesting story and I’m not that expert on it, but Don has them being discovered, I think it’s June of 1836, and Emma throws her out of the house, understandably.  She goes to live with Chauncey Webb for a matter of weeks or maybe months until her family who lived in the northern part of the state are able to come down and pick her up.  And they, by September, they’re on their way out.

Then there’s this funny story, and I think it’s from Mosiah Hancock where Fanny was being held captive in the Kirtland Temple.  Joseph sent Levi to free her out of the Kirtland Temple.  He backs his wagon up to the temple and she jumps from the window.  If you look at the heights involved, it just doesn’t work.  Mosiah Hancock is not that reliable.  He’s got some really weird stories.  There’s the story of there being a big to-do about it and they leave in September.

They go to Missouri as their destination but they stop in Indiana.  There Fanny marries a guy named Solomon Custer. Don theorizes that Fanny is pregnant, and that’s why she jumps into this marriage so quickly.  I’m not sure I believe that to be so, but we can understand why she would, having been broken up with Joseph—Joseph could grant a priesthood divorce as easily as he could allow for the priesthood marriage.  Some people say she couldn’t have been married to Joseph because she got remarried so quickly.  I don’t know that I buy that.  I think when they left Joseph could have said goodbye and that would have been the end of the relationship.

Her marrying this Solomon Custer who was apparently a really good guy, not very religious, and they settled there in Indiana where she lived out the rest of her life.  She joined the Universalist Church, had I think eight children and died a member of Universalist Church.  We have some interesting stories.  There’s one story that after Joseph was killed, he had told Brigham, ‘I want you to marry all of my plural wives to make sure that they are taken care of.’  There is one rumor, and I don’t know what to think of it that says Brigham actually went up and told Fanny that he would marry her, even though she was already married, just to fulfill the letter of this law that Joseph allegedly told the Twelve.

But the story doesn’t say that Fanny was offended and threw him out of the house, but has her just responding that ‘I want to be the wife of one husband,’ and sent Brigham on his way.  I don’t know if that’s true.  We have a little more reliable story from Benjamin Johnson who said that Fanny’s brother had approached her and asked her about her relationship with Joseph Smith, in the marriage.  Her response was simply, ‘that’s all my own affair,’ and didn’t say anything elaborate on it.

Her family, Fanny’s family went to Nauvoo.  The Webbs with whom she lived went to Nauvoo.  They followed the church west.  Whatever actually happened between Joseph and Fanny did not bother their faith of these people who knew the details, same with Eliza Snow.

GT:  Was it true that her parents came all the way to Utah?

Brian:  Her brother did and I don’t know if they died or all, but they didn’t leave the church. It’s interesting that John Alger in 1891, this is right after the 1890 Manifesto, he left the church over the Manifesto.  He had a polygamist wife and he could not accept that.  So again some irony.

GT:  Fanny’s brother was a polygamist?

Brian:  Uh huh, and he left the church over the Manifesto of 1890.

GT:  Wow I did not know that.  That’s interesting.

Brian:  Yeah.  I don’t know how you want to read that, comparing it to 1835.

GT:  That is very interesting.

What are the Theological Justifications for Polygamy?

The Interview

GT:  Ok, so let’s leave Fanny alone for a while.  There was a big break in polygamist marriages.  How long was that break, and who was the next wife?

Brian:  Do you know there is some evidence for Joseph marrying plural wives between 1836 and 1841.  I think it’s dubious, but Fawn Brodie in her book No Man Knows My History has several names there, but the evidence isn’t totally clear that it didn’t happen.

I don’t believe it happened because in order for it to happen I think Joseph had to build up a little of the theology of sealing, so there just was no real timeline for this to happen.  I mean Fawn Brodie’s version is just full of problems.  It’s bad scholarship, her timeline and she’s interpreting things wrong.  But there’s at least one quote saying that one of Joseph’s wives was married, I think it was Lucinda Pendleton, I could be wrong, but was married before they got to Nauvoo.  Again, no evidence to support that but one late recollection from somebody who wasn’t even a member of the church at the time.  For the most part, my interpretation is that there was no one.  He was not involved with anyone in a plural marriage between 1836 and 1841.

GT:  It would make sense he would take a break with Emma’s reaction.

Brian chuckles:  Well that was just what I was going to say.  I mean Joseph probably got an ultimatum from Emma.  If you ever do this again, we’re done, or something because Emma was a strong personality.  If she didn’t accept this came from God, despite the revelations, despite the Book of Mormon, you can certainly understand why Joseph would have been reticent to jump back in.  There’s multiple accounts of him not wanting to do it.  The critics ignore them as prevarications, but I think that he really didn’t want to do it because he knew what Emma was going to say when she found out.  Eventually she would.

We fast forward to 1840s, late 1840s and we find several people remembering.  We’re dealing with very late accounts at this point.  There’s been an article by Gary Bergera talking about how the marriages were actually in 1840.  I think his reasoning is problematic and I’ve responded to that.  I think we’re very solidly in 1841.  On April 5^th, Joseph was sealed this time by Joseph B. Noble to his sister-in-law, and that was Louisa Beamon.

I will add that Don Bradley is doing some research now and he is actually pushing that marriage to April of ’42.  If you look at the chronology, it fits a lot better in April of ’42 than 1841 because what we find is, except for Louisa, Joseph is marrying Zina Huntington and Prescinda Huntington and four or five women who all have legal husbands.  Now we’re getting into this polyandry question and my theory is that Joseph was just being sealed for eternity to these women, in the hopes that the angel who came a second time sometime prior to that—we don’t have a date for the second visit of the angel commanding polygamy, but I theorize that he came and said “Do this.”  So Joseph was just doing these eternity only, non-sexual marriages because he was hoping to please the angel and also not offend Emma, who wouldn’t have had to worry too much about them because there was no sexuality involved.  The evidence is not absolutely conclusive, but I think there is a lot of reasons to believe that this is actually happening.

GT:  So I’m glad you went there, because I wanted to talk about polyandry.  I know that Dr. Lawrence Foster said that we shouldn’t use that term.  We should use a “proxy husband” which would make sense if there were no sexual relations.  It does make you wonder why are they doing these in the first place?  Why would an angel command you to marry somebody, and not have sexual relations because it does in D&C 132, it does say that one of the purposes is to raise up seed.  So if you’re not having sexual relations, why would an angel command such a thing?

Brian:  It’s a good question.  Sometimes the critics will say, “that’s the only reason” is to multiply and replenish.  It’s verse 63, but actually section 132 gives four reasons for plural marriage, and that’s one of them.  But I think there’s another one that’s much more important.  Let me talk about the other two before we get to the most important one.  It’s a part of the restoration of all things, and I’m blocking on the third one.

The fourth one, the one that is the most important is that, and it takes a little bit of history, but Joseph asks God about polygamy in verse one.  Then we find polygamy isn’t mentioned until verse 32, 34.  But what we find is the answer to the question about polygamy is that God is talking about eternal marriage.  Verse seven talks about one man who has the keys.  Verses eight through eighteen gives us three examples about what happens to associations or marriages that are not sealed by the authority of that one man.  There’s three examples there. When does God give us examples?  He’s trying to teach a principle here.

Even in verse eighteen he’s telling us if a man and a woman are married for time and all eternity, but if that marriage is not through the one man that holds the keys, it’s not valid neither in force when they are out of the world.  The Lord is putting three exclamation points behind verse seven that says there’s one man on earth at a time that has this authority.  Then in verses 19-20 it tells us of a monogamous couple who live worthily and are sealed by this authority, then they are exalted.  They become gods.  Their marriage continues after death.  But it’s talking just about a monogamous marriage through all of this, but in verses 16-17 it tells us that if a person dies, and they are not sealed by this authority, then they remain singly and separately, without exaltation in their saved condition to all eternity, telling us that every person will need to be sealed into eternal marriage.  So plural marriage could ostensibly allow every worthy person, assuming there are more worthy women than men, and I’ve heard that that’s a problem for some people, but go into any Christian congregation, or Mormon congregation and just look at the genders.  There’s always more women than men.  Always.

This is a principle that reaches beyond death.  It’s far more important in my mind than multiply and replenish the earth.  I was just going to look up the third reason here {looking in a book}.

[Break]

GT:  Tell us about the four reasons in the Doctrine & Covenants for polygamy.

Brian:  Just to reiterate, the easiest one is part of the restitution of all things, and if somebody asks you, “Why did Joseph do it?”  The easy answer is, he was a prophet-restorer, and the old prophets did it, and he restored it.  That’s not entirely nuanced, and some would say it’s even correct.  I think it is generally.

The second one is it was a trial.  This is the one I couldn’t remember.  It presented a special trial.  The Lord does do that.  It gives different people at different times different kinds of trials.

A third one was to—it was the one I had talked a great deal about.  It allowed all men and women to enter into a marriage, even if this is a plural wife, and then the [fourth] one is the one we started with, multiply and replenish the earth.

Can I just add here Rick?  There’s been a book written lately that assumes that eternal polygamy is a bad thing.  Of course on earth, polygamy is not fair.  It’s unequal.  You could say it’s sexist if you want, on earth.  But I don’t think that we know anything about eternal marriage, and we certainly don’t know anything about eternal plural marriage.  So to assume that that’s a bad thing, that it victimizes women, and to assume that women should fear that is to fear unknown things.

God has promised us everlasting joy, a fullness of joy.  His plan is a plan of happiness.  I understand why even my own daughter is worried about this eternal polygamy idea.  She’s told her husband, “You’re going to die before me because I’m not going to die before you and have you remarry so I’m a polygamist in heaven.”  She’s told him that.  I get that.

But at the same time, God has told us.  This is not speculation.  It’s a fullness of joy.  It’s eternal happiness.  It’s exaltation for those who attain it.  I think we just have to take faith in these things that are promises, and try not to fear the unknown.  It may still be hard, and it is additional faith.  I understand that, but I believe that whatever it is, and I have no desire to be a polygamist here or there. But I do believe that a woman is not going to feel victimized in eternity if she obtains exaltation.  I think we just have to hold onto that faith, that that is true and then trust God.  I don’t agree with this idea that we know what eternal polygamy is and that we know that it is bad and that we should fear it here today.

Mormon Polyandry:  More than One Husband

Introduction

When we talk about Mormon polygamy, we usually mean polygyny—the idea of a man has more than one wife.  The opposite of that is polyandry, where a woman can have more than 1 husband.  Did you know that Joseph Smith was sealed to women who were already legally married to other men?  We’re going to talk about one specific case in detail where Dr. Brian Hales believed that Joseph and Sylvia Session Lyon were parents of one of the offspring of Joseph Smith.  He did a DNA test to find out if Joseph was the father of Josephine Lyon or if Windsor Lyon was the father.  It’s a pretty interesting story.  I hope you’ll check it out.

The Interview

GT:  Alright, let’s jump back. As we started this we started talking about Polyandry or proxy husbands.  I know recently, I believe it was last year at Mormon History Association, you had said that you thought Joseph had sexual relations with Sylvia Sessions Lyon, if I remember the name right.  DNA tests came back and that wasn’t true.  What are your opinions specifically on that marriage now as far as, were there sexual relations there, or not?

Brian:  Do you know the evidence I will say is ambiguous.  But for years, if you read my three volumes, I theorized that the marriage between Joseph Smith and Sylvia Sessions Lyon did include sexual relations in that plural marriage, and I had some theories as how that might have unfolded.  When the DNA evidence came back—and part of the theory was that Joseph was the father of Josephine [daughter of Sylvia Sessions Lyon.]  That’s an important point.  But when the DNA evidence came back that Windsor Lyon was the father, it required me to re-write things.  I’ll be honest with you.  It wasn’t what I expected, but it was what I had hoped.

It’s a lot easier to understand Joseph Smith’s plural marrying, particularly these sealings to already married women, it’s a lot easier to understand them if he is not the father of Josephine.  I argue that the evidence is ambiguous and that the facet if Joseph had actually practiced polyandry, he would have been so contrary to the Bible, there’s really only one direct message.  Paul mentions it once, and he condemns it as adultery.  It’s in Romans.

So the Bible condemns it, but it’s also in frontier America, if a man is sexually involved with your wife, you can kill that man and the law’s not going to go after you most of the time.  We’ve got examples of that, clear up to…

GT:  It happened with Parley P. Pratt [who was killed by a woman’s husband.]

Brian:  Exactly, Parley P. Pratt and others, where the law was just looking the other way.  It was almost expected that either the husband, or if she wasn’t married, a brother or father, but some other male relative would exact corporal punishment or capital punishment on the individual who committed this.  So Joseph, if he had actually been involved with these men, he would have had to been 100% secret, worrying about his life if it was discovered, or have 100% complicity with the husband, which is not recorded in any case.  Plus it would have been beyond novel. It would have been very controversial.

So I’m saying the little bit of ambiguous evidence that the critics have accumulated to say Joseph practiced it, and it is ambiguous.  There’s no unambiguous evidence saying that a woman ever believed she had two husbands in Nauvoo.  We’re not looking for a woman to say, “yeah I had sex with him and I had sex with him.”  That’s not going to be found, but a woman, her family, a letter, or some other communication saying that a woman actually had two husbands or defending that idea, none of that is available.  I’m arguing that if it were an actual teaching, it would have been defended and it would have been highly criticized by those who would have found it so repulsive they would have left the church or the critics would have picked up on it.  We don’t have anything.

So I’m arguing that ambiguous evidence on something that would have been explosive is not enough for me to say Joseph practiced sexual polyandry, and that’s a term that I’ve used a lot in the past, but just a woman having more than one husband.

GT:  So let’s talk a little bit about that timeline with Sylvia Sessions Lyon.  As I recall she married Windsor Lyon.  They were married for a time.  I believe Windsor got excommunicated or something {Brian nods.}  So it was in this period where he was excommunicated that Joseph supposedly was sealed to Sylvia.

Brian:  Right.

GT:  Then perhaps they had sexual relations.  I think you’re telling me that’s ambiguous.  Is that what you’re saying?

Brian:  Right.

GT:  Ok so then, well the question is was Josephine conceived while Joseph and Sylvia were married?  That would therefore prove that he had sexual relations with her.  It sounds like evidence says that no, it was with Windsor.  So the conception must have happened after—well I’m a little confused on the timeline.  Supposedly she got back together with Windsor so I believe, and please correct me if I’m wrong, I believe you said these were serial marriages, not polyandrous marriages in that she had two husbands.  You’re saying that she was married to Windsor, she was essentially religiously divorced, maybe not legally divorced, then she got back together with Windsor.  Is that correct?

Brian:  That’s what I have written in my books, and what I’ve had to re-write.

GT:  Oh, ok.

Brian:  I don’t believe that.

GT:  You don’t believe that anymore.

Brian:  No I don’t, but if somebody is interested, if you go on Youtube, before I gave my MHA presentation—what the MHA presentation does, it gives four interpretations of the new DNA evidence.  One of them is polyandry, that’s one of the four, and a second one was that there was no marriage at all, that they had no sealing or anything.  Then I go through two others, I’d have to go back and look, but all of the possibilities I talk about, and the evidences supporting them.  The one I came down against in that presentation, and before I gave it, I actually recorded it as a video, it’s a 20 minute video.  [See this video:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ceJMnXNxU ]

GT:  I do remember watching it but it’s been a while.

Brian:  Yeah.  All the evidence, everything is there.  It’s still valid today.  There’s been nothing really new, though Don Bradley has been out doing more research and he hasn’t found anything super helpful except that we do know that Josephine lived close, and there’s a family tradition that says that her step-sister also lived close and she said she was present at the same time that Josephine was when Sylvia said that they are daughters of Joseph.  The question is, are they daughters physically or are they daughters spiritually?

I had thought physically for Josephine but the argument is that they were both there, so it had to be spiritually.  That may be a little confusing so I’ll just lead you to refer people to that video and maybe they can hear all about it but the family tradition has been reinforced by some other things that Don Bradley has found out about their situations.

Family traditions are notorious for being false.  Again, even though they’ve believed it for years doesn’t mean that it’s true, it just supports that interpretation which is that this was nothing more than a sealing.  The language is that Sylvia was sealed to Joseph when Windsor was out of the church.  Now if this were a polyandrous marriage, whether Windsor was out of the church or not would be unimportant.  Who cares?  Because if it’s a polyandrous marriage, she’s still having relations with him and then they get married and it would have no meaning.

But if Windsor is excommunicated, and it’s in November 23^rd, I think of 1842, then Sylvia can’t be sealed to Windsor.  So that would make perfect sense for her to seek out Joseph to be sealed to him just for the next life [in] an eternity only sealing.  Right now Laura [Brian’s wife] and I have gone through the evidence on these eleven polyandrous marriages.  We think all of them were just for the next life.

Why the women chose Joseph over their legal husbands, sometimes these men were active Latter-day Saints, we don’t know.  It seems odd.  But it’s not as odd as them practicing actual sexual polyandry without anybody ever talking about it or finding that to be controversial.

GT:  Ok, so your opinion is of all the eleven polyandrous marriages, where a woman could have two husbands essentially, none of them involved sexual relations.

Brian:  Correct.

GT:  That’s your opinion.  Ok.  So let’s talk a little bit about…

Brian:  Rick, let me interrupt though.  If people go to my books, they’re going to be confused because I used the word eleven.  The twelfth polyandrous marriage on the chart is Sarah Ann Whitney to Joseph C. Kingsbury, which was a front marriage.  Everybody involved with that realized that she was sealed to Joseph but apparently there was some legal issues going on, so Joseph asked Kingsbury to have a legal marriage but not consummate the marriage.  Everybody agrees that was the relationship.  That’s number twelve.

Number thirteen is Lucinda Pendleton who we just know nothing about, and the fourteenth one is to Mary Herron who we have one attestation that connects her to Joseph sexually but we don’t know any of the details.  If somebody goes to my chart, there’s actually fourteen women on that but eleven of them we believe were eternity-only, two are undocumented so just take your guess, and then we have this pretend marriage with Sarah Ann, so fourteen in total.

GT:  Oh, ok.  Great.  Well let’s talk about, I believe it was Orson Hyde or Orson Pratt, I always get those two mixed up.  One of them Joseph sent on a mission and then supposedly married his wife while he was on a mission.  Can you talk about that story?

Brian:  It’s a great story.  In 1842 John C. Bennett wrote a book called History of the Saints.  If we wanted to take a minute, I just bought an original copy of it.  I have it upstairs for thousands of dollars.

GT:  Oh my goodness!

Brian:  It’s got writing from 1842 in it.  It’s pretty exciting to me.  In that book he says Joseph would send men on missions and marry their wives.  Well of the fourteen women, we know that eleven of them, their husbands were not on missions.  Two of the men, we don’t have a date for the marriage so we can’t say.  The only one of them that we know was on a mission was Orson Hyde.  Orson Hyde went to Palestine with the Twelve [Apostles.]  We all know the story.  Over a year later we have a sealing date between him and Orson Hyde’s wife Marinda.

GT:  Between Joseph and Marinda.

Brian nods:  The problem is we have two sealing dates for Joseph and Marinda.  The other date is from an affidavit Marinda signed that is well after Orson Hyde returning from Palestine.  Even the one that appears to be a case where Joseph might have sent him on a mission, then he waits a year—it doesn’t make sense.  A year later we have Joseph being sealed to Marinda, but again we have a second date.  The second date is a signed affidavit which we probably would consider to be more reliable than something that was just scrawled on a page in Joseph’s journal, not in his handwriting but in I think Thomas Bullock’s [handwriting.]  Again that story is false, yet it’s a sound bite.  It’s all over the internet.  We’ve got to kill it.  It’s wrong.  It’s false.  Joseph did not send men on missions and so he could marry their wives according to any reliable documentation.

GT:  Hmmm.  I’ve always heard that was reliable so that’s interesting.

So he had fourteen potentially polyandrous marriages, he had the one with Fanny, what about the other, how many are there?

Brian:  By my cou