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I have been reading “Wife No. 19” going in knowing that Ann Eliza Webb Young was a niece of my 3rd great grandfather. I didn’t know that she told a story of my ggg grandfather’s struggles in taking his first plural wife. Ann Eliza says he was sealed to his first wife (my ggg grandmother) and another young lady in the Nauvoo Temple, but then Mrs Webb was ultimately successful in getting the 2nd wife to leave her home. This young woman was Jane Mathers, who married Levi Savage in Jan 1848. They had a son in Jan 1851 but then Jane died that same December. In the film “17 Miracles” it shows Levi with a young son, and now I realize if this account is correct that son was actually sealed to Jane Mathers and my gggGF at the time because their sealing had not been canceled.
It seems I learn something new about a family member with almost every book I read.
That’s so cool. It seems many people had a hard time with living the law. It certainly wasn’t like “more wives…woohooo”
No. They women certainly were not thrilled, and any man that may have thought “hey this won’t be too bad” was not anticipating how it felt to the women — or how their difficulties would also make his life hell. Ann Eliza does get some details wrong in the book, she obviously tells some stories that were hearsay because there is no way she could have observed them herself. Some exaggeration is to be expected but I believe the heartbreak that she stresses over and over was real. She seems sincere to me and I found they way she describes the ultimate cause of some Reformation murders agrees with the conclusion of Walker, Turley, & Leonard’s Mountain Meadows book: that BY’s rhetoric contributed to the ability of members to commit a heinous crime.
One of the more interesting revelations of the book comes when she describes going through the endowment house. She lists the people who played the main characters: Elohim – Brigham Young
Jehovah – Heber C. Kimball
Jesus – Daniel H. Wells
Michael – W.C. Staines
Satan – W.W. Phelps
Peter – Orson Pratt
James – John Taylor
John – Erastus Snow
etc.
I had heard something about Adam-God that placed Elohim as a sort of grandfather to Adam, so this list really hit me as intriguing. What a cast that is as we look back from today!
History is really fascinating, if we let it be. That would be an endowment session I’d like to see!!
Could you imagine going to a session in Manti or wherever they still do live sessions and Thomas Monson was Adam and Uchtdorf was Satan? That would be amazing. And it looks like a daughter of BY married another relative of mine. I haven’t looked it up to confirm the connection but her husbands name is very similar to a great grandfather of mine so I assume a relation. Orson, What do you think about all that? Is it weird to have relatives in polygamist relationships with BY?
I think it’s cool that I have so many connections. I don’t think in any way who they were dictates who I am, but it is where I come from and it is interesting to me. Two sisters of another great, great grandfather were plural wives of Joseph Smith. If you know of the LeBaron fundamentalists of Mexico in the 70’s they are distant cousins. I think most family trees have a few “crazy” branches but I enjoy finding new things about family connections while reading history. It works well for me because I know of at least 3 grand… parents in Kirtland, and in Nauvoo those same 3 were joined by a few more. One set was Richard Bushman’s great-great grandparents, another was Jonathan Browning, the owner of a gun/blacksmith shop in Nauvoo and the father of John Moses Browning the well known gun maker. A couple more were less known and more recent immigrants at the time but sometimes – as in this connection to BY’s daughter – I hear of something that ties them in.
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