The nothingness of my mother’s mothers’ consent

I’m not entirely sure how I came to be toggling between FamilySearch and a WordDoc, searching for, finding and typing women’s names into a list. But here I am. These are the generations of my mother’s mothers who were in polygamist marriages. Polygamy has always been a “deep-breath-eyeroll-shake-head-stomach-ache” part of my Mormon cultural heritage. I’ve been plenty disturbed by the concept, the context, the controversy of did Joseph or didn’t he?, and the hushed tones of it all.  I guess I’ve just been curiouser and curiouser about the specific polygamist fruits hanging on my family tree. I’ve never looked, so I’ve never seen, and now it seems I cannot look away.  I click the down arrow on each of my mother’s mothers to see the “other wives” of the men to which they were married.
My empathy is pricked by the intimacy of reading and spelling their names, their full names, their maiden names.  After ninety minutes of clicking and toggling and checking and rechecking, I think I’m finished. Initially, I planned to go through my father’s mothers too, but this is starting to feel overwhelming.  So, I decide at this point, I’ll just tally the numbers for my mother’s side alone. As I count all the women for each man, “4 for Chester,.. 7 for Christian…” and push the corresponding number on the calculator, I feel the watery heat of tears pooling in my eyes.

            “…equals… 56”.  9 men.   56 women.

            Typically, when discussing my Mormon heritage, I’ve described my family lines through a grandfather frame; so-and-so man had this-and-that number of wives, I come through wife number “__”.  But today, 56 women are staring up at me from the calculator and I know it’s time to change the framing of my family tree.  Nine of my mother’s mothers, from four different generations, shared their husbands and their lives with 47 other women.

            I can’t know how each of the women in my family felt about their situation, but these statements from Joseph F. Smith, president of the Mormon Church during the Reed Smoot Hearings in 1907 rend me with sorrow.

JFSmith: The condition is that if she does not consent the Lord will destroy her, but I do not know how he will do it.
Question:  Is it not true that if she refuses her consent, her husband is exempt from the law which requires her consent?
JFSmith: Yes; he is exempt from the law which requires her consent. She is commanded to consent, but if she does not, then he is exempt from the requirement.
Question: Then he is at liberty to proceed without her consent, under the law. In other words, her consent amounts to nothing?
JFSmith: It amounts to nothing but her consent. (Proceedings 1907, HC 1:201, D&C 132).

  Reading Joseph F. Smith describe the meaning of the meaninglessness behind meaningless consent offered to women in exchange for their participation in polygamous marriages, I recognize a faint echo of what I’ve experienced in Mormonism.  A choice between anything and eternal damnation is not true choice. It is certainly not the same as the agency I was given by God.  It is the exercise of control by men who claim authority over me. Joseph F Smith was right, my consent amounts to nothing meaningful. There is no growth, no sense of self, no filling the measure of one’s creation without true choice. 

  The Mormon theology I was taught puts the ultimate value on one’s agency, explaining that the Atonement of Christ protects that gift.  To be an agent unto one’s self is to order, create and guide the experiences of one’s life. God used creative power to build worlds of dizzying complexity, the variety of which we have yet to comprehend. This is how I am created in God’s image; I also have the divine power of creative agency.  This is the gift of the Creators to their Children, to choose the meaning of their existence. 

  My mother’s father’s grandfather’s grandmother, Sarah Marinda Bates, first wife of LDS Apostle Orson Pratt, shared the only meaningful identity available to her in 19th century Mormonism with 9 other women.  In 1844, Sarah exchanged her consent for her husband to be sealed to Charlotte Bishop in the Nauvoo Temple, so she could have her own sealing to Orson. By 1875, Sarah had courageously made it known that her faith in the Mormon religion all but disappeared over 30 miserable years of living inside polygamy.  When an Elder of the church characterized her as a “regular Satan”, she responded to him, “there are only two classes of Mormon women; devils and fools.”  At the bottom of the religious hierarchy, Sarah’s only choice was to rebel or comply.  Under threat, her agency ceased to exist. This is not Christianity, this is coercion, manipulation, even fear mongering.  After decades of sacrificing her agency on the altar of polygamy, she’d had enough and rebelled, and she received the promised condemnation from the church she once loved.  A church she had loved so deeply, she was willing to raise and bear children in poverty while her husband served missions for years amounting to decades. A church she had loved so deeply, she moved from Ohio to Missouri to Nauvoo and to the Salt Lake valley. A church she had loved so deeply, she set aside her God-given sense of self-worth to agree to a “new and everlasting covenant” she was told would bring her family everlasting prosperity and joy.

I’ve lived every day of my 50 years sunk deep and safe and sheltered in a 20th century, enigmatic version of orthodox Mormonism.  I’m just getting used to seeing “all that is, and all that ever was” without the prescription lens of patriarchy.  I’ve wasted too many years trusting, “it was a different time” and “society had different needs” as valid apologies for polygamy. Accepting the historical privilege and responsibility that comes from living in this era, this decade, this 21st century, I can finally see what some women could not, and others still will not.  I can see the injustice, the oppression, the man taking from the woman what only her Creator could give – her divine agency. 

These are the names of my mother’s mothers and the women with whom they shared their husbands, their identity, their shame, their prosperity, and their poverty.

Mary Angelina Packer
Agnes Melissa Loveland
Sarah Maria Dickson
Pamela Elizabeth Barlow
Angelina Avilda Champlin    
Sarah Ewell
Maria Laverna Champlin
Martha Jane Packer                 
Christiana Petrina Sundby
Helena Marie Lindquist
Mary Flint
Ann Mariah Brown
Margaretta Unwin Clark
Emma Summers
Henrietta Caroline Williams
Ann Clark
Cordelia Calista Morley
Emeline Sally Whiting
Jemima Losee
Lydia Margaret Losee
Mary Ann Darrow
Emma Sophia Pedersen
Lucy Gunn
Lenora Abigail Snow
Hannah Blakesley Finch
Hannah Knight Libby
Eleanor Mills
Harriet Lucinda Cox
Betsy Bradford
Hanna Sibley
Ann Dayer
Sarah Scott
Hannah Sibley
Woman of Unknown Name
Janette Scott Ure
MaryAnn Ferguson Price
Janet Scott
Agnes Davis
Elizabeth Jones
Sarah Marinda Bates
Charlotte Bishop
Adelia Ann Bishop
Mary Ann Merrill
Sarah Louisa Chandler
Marian Ross
Sarah Louisa Lewis
Juliaette Ann Phelps
Margaret Graham
Eliza Crooks
Ane Marie Christensdatter
Christine Maria Hedvig Bruun
Ane Marie Alesdatter
Anne Marie Iversdatter
Mariane Lovise Loutrup
Ane Kirstine Mylendorf
Maria Kerstine Bruun