175 years ago today - Apr 11, 1838

[Joseph Smith Diary] Charge[s] prefer[r]ed against O[liver] Cowdery before the High Council in Far West, M[iss]o[uri] by Elder Seymour Brounson ... For seeking to destroy the Character of Pres[ident] Joseph Smith, Jr., by fals[e]ly insinuating that he was guilty of Adultery &c. ...

[Source: Faulring, Scott (ed.), An American Prophet's Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith: Joseph Smith Diary, 1838, http://amzn.to/jsdiaries]

7 comments:

  1. Faulring, pp.172-173.

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  2. This very credible charge of adultery against Joseph Smith would have been with Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris which "event" also occurred sometime in 1838.

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  3. I think it may in reference to Fanny Algers.

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  4. You are right, Clair! I stand corrected!

    JSP J1:251-253 in note 92 makes reference to Joseph Smith's previous "affair" (c.1833) with Fanny Alger, and not his next one with Lucinda Harris.

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  5. And I guess I should point out that while there is not a record of Joseph Smith marrying Fanny Algers, it is possible that he did. Cowdery, apparently felt otherwise.

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  6. All the evidence points to these two events as being "adulterous affairs" and not "marriages."

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith's_wives

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  7. The Wikipedia article you cite regarding Fanny Algers provides some evidence for a marriage. Nothing is conclusive in either of these cases IMO.

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    According to George D. Smith, Alger's marriage to Smith was attested to by several people, including Emma Smith, Warren Parish, Oliver Cowdery, and Heber C. Kimball.[18] Compton cites Mosiah Hancock's handwritten report of his father Levi's account of the marriage ceremony of Smith and Alger, and records his father's account of negotiations between Levi and Smith in procuring their respective wives. Compton also notes that nineteenth-century Mormons in Utah, including Benjamin Johnson, Heber C. Kimball and Andrew Jenson, and former Mormons Chauncey Webb and Ann Eliza Webb Young, regarded the Smith-Alger relationship as a marriage.[19] Historian Lawrence Foster asserts a claim that later Mormons may have falsely assumed there was a marriage where there was only a sexual relationship: he views the marriage of Alger to Joseph Smith as "debatable supposition" rather than "established fact".

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