Wife Number Nineteen

Wife Number Nineteen

Can you imagine what it would be like to be someone’s nineteenth wife?

CHAUNCEY WEBB and his parents were among Joseph Smith’s earliest converts. They first heard Smith in upstate New York in 1833 shortly after he had produced the Book of Mormon and presented himself as a new messiah who would restore true religion to the world. They followed Smith to Kirtland, Ohio, where Chauncey met and married Eliza Churchill, a Mormon girl of seventeen.

The Webbs next followed Smith to Nauvoo, Illinois, where they lived next door to Brigham Young and his family. In the summer of 1844 Joseph Smith was lynched by an anti-Mormon mob while in jail. Following his death, Brigham Young became leader of the movement. It was during their time in Nauvoo that Chauncey and Eliza’s daughter, Ann-Eliza, was born on September 13, 1844, and Chauncey added a second wife.

Two years later the Mormons, having worn out their welcome in Illinois, started west and in 1848 reached Salt Lake City. There at the age of eight Ann-Eliza was baptized as a bishop carried her to a pond and threw her into the water. Four years later her father began receiving proposals from church dignitaries for her hand in marriage.

When Ann-Eliza turned seventeen, Brigham Young began to notice her. More and more she was aware of his staring at her, but that didn’t stop her from falling in love with an Englishman named James Dee. When Ann-Eliza was eighteen, they were married. But all was not well, and within a month Ann-Eliza realized that the marriage had been a great mistake. Two years and two children later they were divorced.

Some time later at a Sunday service Ann-Eliza realized that Brigham Young was looking at her almost sensuously while he was preaching. After the service he walked her home and asked her parents for permission to marry her.

Ann-Eliza was shocked at the thought of marrying someone older than her father, yet she felt duty bound to yield to his wishes. On April 7, 1869, Ann-Eliza became the nineteenth wife of the head of the Mormon Church. He was sixty-eight; she, twenty-four. Young kept the wedding a secret, fearing the jealousy of his favorite wife.

After the wedding, Young returned Ann-Eliza to her parents for a while and then put her in a run-down little house of her own. She, like all but the favorite wife, lived poorly, receiving a monthly allowance of five pounds of sugar, some candles, a bar of soap, and a box of matches. She also received bread from a Mormon bakery and a supply of pork.

After a year of marriage, Young decided that Ann-Eliza should live at “The Farm,” which supplied his families with food. After three and a half years on the farm, Young moved her to Salt Lake City.

There Ann-Eliza met the pastor of the Methodist church. She began to spend time with him and his wife, and for the first time in her life she had the opportunity to observe a monogamous family. She found herself drawn to the world they represented. Ann-Eliza soon decided that her only hope of happiness was to leave Mormonism and divorce Brigham Young. She went to court and was granted a divorce in 1874 amidst much publicity and had to sneak out of Salt Lake City at night, fearing for her life.

Once out of Utah she began lecturing against polygamy. A few weeks after her escape, Ann-Eliza was invited to the Methodist Female College of Delaware, Ohio. There the president carefully explained the gospel to her. It was like a new dawn breaking. Ann-Eliza left the darkness of her past and started a new life in the light of God’s saving grace.

Reflection

When Mormon missionaries knock on your door, what should you do? If you are comfortable doing so, make sure they agree to give you equal time and then share your testimony with them. If you are unsure of what to say, it’s best not to let them in.

If anyone tells you, “Look, here is the Messiah,” or “There he is,” don’t pay any attention.

Matthew 24:23