Book "The Polygamous Wives Writing Club" by Paula Harline

-It was interesting to note that BY voiced possibly stopping polygamous marriages as it seemed to be getting out of control. I didn’t think it was for quite a bit longer before any thoughts like that were surfacing at the top leadership.

– It became trendy for some women to marry “not so great of men” so that they would be fairly sure that they wouldn’t be asked to be in a polygamous relationship in the future.

– I know Utah and the west were hard places to live, but I was struck at just how much many (most?) of these women lived in poverty. It is heartbreaking to hear some of the details.

– It was interesting that the women often decided to try and not even feel for their husbands but instead live for their children’s success.

Don’t want to make you go back an rehash, but just curious what BY’s thinking was, what he was responding to.

I was really struck by Brian Hales’ comment somewhere that he doesn’t read many journals because they’re too sad. I have to admit that I haven’t done so, either, because I imagine they would make me terribly angry.

Thanks for the review. I’ll be interested to hear what you think about the early parts of Year of Polygamy.

Here is what Harline said about BY

But during the 1860’s and 1870’s, some of his wives and their children moved out of the Beehive and Lion Houses. His first wife and other wives with large families, and some with small families, preferred moving to their own homes. Young’s daughter Susa later wrote that her father regretted the way he set up his family and allowed his wives to leave if they wanted “to correct what he esteemed to be a mistake of his early judgement,” Although he didn’t doubt that polygamy was a commandment of God, he learned that it could create “considerable disharmony and financial strain,” and, in his case, was “only a mixed success.”

Outside of his family life, Young conducted Church business and received letters that disturbed him. He tried to encourage his people, but he became somewhat disillusioned with polygamy as early as 1858 when too many marriages that Church leaders had encouraged during the mid-1850s Mormon Reformation ended in divorce. At a December 1858 private meeting, he said that he “did not feel disposed to do any sealings [for plural marriages]’ after receiving a large number of requests for plural divorces.” suggesting that he “at least considered the possibility of suspending the practice for a period of time.” During the Mormon Reformation, Young wrote, “President James Snow of Provo cautioning him that he should discourage such aggressive promotion of plural marriage, ” presumably because zeal for the practice had hardly left a woman or a girl over age sixteen unmarried.