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Polygamy and the Martha Brotherton affair

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Polygamy and the Martha Brotherton affair My major shelf breaker was the Martha Brotherton affair. Even though I had read Donna Hill’s book ‘Joseph Smith, the first Mormon’ about 20 years ago and had been shocked to the core when I read about the Fanny Alger affair, I had been able to put this on a shelf and accept that the Church which Joseph established was good and true. Several years ago I listed to Lindsay Hanson Park’s great podcast ‘A year of Polygamy’, one of the episodes mentioned very briefly Brigham Young’s proposal to Martha Brotherton, the historian who Lindsay was interviewing didn’t know much about Martha’s background and assumed that she was a poor British convert. Through my past membership in the Church I have become an enthusiastic and competent genealogist and Martha Brotherton’s story wet my appetite as I am also from the British Isles. What I discovered was quite fascinating and was also the final crack in my proverbial shelf. EARLY LIFE AND CONVERSION Mart
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The sad affair of William Hill and his wife Keziah Downes

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Whilst searching for newspaper articles about Martha Brotherton I came across the following article from an Isle of Man newspaper dated May 2 1874. LDS missionaries had decided to revamp the missionary efforts in the Isle of Man (an Island located off the North West coast of England )and had hired a hall to present their message. At the end of their presentation an elderly man came forward to share his warning about the Mormons, he then read a statement from a Mr. William Hill, formerly a respectable shopkeeper in Manchester, whom the old man had known, and who had, in his hearing repeated the statement. The first half of this statement I will discuss in my next blog as it contains several other cans of worms in which to go into and in this particular Blog I want to concentrate on William Hill’s own personal and harrowing experiences. The following is a quotation from William Hill’s statement as recorded in the above mentioned Newspaper - “Hill, in relating his own personal exp
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Eternal Polygamy

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When the subject of polygamy ever came up in church in the lessons or discussions, it was always quickly asserted that we don’t practice that anymore, that it was something in the church’s past because there were more faithful women than men, and that you will be excommunicated if you practiced it now. I always found it a difficult subject and wished that it hadn’t ever been practiced, though in the back of my thoughts I knew that the church taught that polygamy would be practiced in the eternities, and sometimes jokes would be made about someone being a second wife in heaven. The present president of the church and his councillor are both married to their second wives as their first wives passed away, but what about a woman whose first husband passes away, if she remarries she can’t have both husbands in the eternities. When I was about 20, living in England, I had a conversation with a sister of our ward in the ladies toilets. This sister had two young children but her husband was le
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The first cracks in my Mormon shelf

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The first heavy item on my shelf was polygamy and I am sure that I will have to cover this topic in several articles. Growing up in the church you always vaguely knew about Brigham Young and his multitude of wives and I can remember my Mum saying that she didn’t really like Brigham Young, but you never heard about Joseph Smith and his polygamous affairs. I remember my Father in law asking me years ago if I knew that Joseph Smith had practised polygamy, Pa always had a problem with this subject and had even written several letters to the First Presidency about it. What he couldn’t understand were the contradictions about Joseph Smith’s wives, in some books he read about him having had more than 26 wives and in other sources he read quotes from Joseph Smith flat out denying that he had more than one wife. As an answer to his questions he received a copy of the list of women who testified in the Temple Lot case swearing that they were married to Joseph Smith, but this didn’t answer his re
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