Joseph Smith’s Polygamy Volume 1a: History by Hales Brian C

Author:Hales, Brian C. [Hales, Brian C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Greg Kofford Books
Published: 2013-02-18T05:00:00+00:00

A Reaction to Members’ Personal Misconduct?

Besides general accusations against the Church, during the 1830s, several individual members were guilty of immoral practices that may have been labeled as “polygamy.” Neither their nonmember neighbors nor their Church leaders shrugged off such activities. In 1892, Church member John Taylor (not the apostle) remembered that in Independence in 1832:

I went about visiting and teaching the people, and visiting all the houses I saw. I went to a man by the name of Claudious Hendricks, and there was a woman living in his house, and I felt as though there was something wrong about it, although I had no evidence,—that is no proof. . . . There was a man,—this woman’s husband was an elder and he was sent here on a mission, and she stayed there at Hendricks’ place, and he went and got her with a child, the same as old David and Uriah’s wife,—He got her with child while her husband was gone. [A]nd he was brought up and cut off from the Church for it.60

On February 3, 1834, Joseph Wood was excommunicated reportedly for either fornication or some form of polygamy.61 Oliver Cowdery wrote to a Brother Fosdick regarding this case of Church discipline:

We were very sorry to learn that Bro. J. Wood had gone so far astray and offered such violence to the pure principles of the Gospel of Christ. But, alas! Such is the depravity of man when lost to a sense of the fear of God and of the ties which bind every virtuous man to the interest and happiness of his fellow man. Every principle incubated among you which is contrary to virtue, to industry, to wisdom, to good order, to propriety, and in fine, to the pure principles of godliness as contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, the Book of Mormon and the revelations and commandments of Jesus Christ, which have been given to his church in these last days, is entirely foreign from the feelings of our breasts, and is that upon which we look down with feelings of the utmost disapprobation; and as conscientious men who expect to render an impartial account, before the searcher of hearts, of all our transactions here, we cannot look upon any principle contrary to the above with any degree of allowance.

After some investigation of the case of Bro Wood, in council, it was decided that he should be cut off from the Church. Accordingly the Council lifted their hands against him and he was excluded from the church on this 3rd day of Feb. 1834 for indulging an idle, partial, overbearing and lustful spirit and not magnifying his holy calling whereunto he had been ordained. These things were plainly manifest to the satisfaction of all the council, and the spirit constrained us to separate him from the church.62

Benjamin F. Johnson reported a third case: “There was [in 1835] Some trouble with Jarid Carter. and through Bro Sherman, I learned that ‘As he had built himself a new house, he now wanted another wife’ which Joseph would not permit.

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