As part of Joseph Smith's brimming quiver of teenager brides, in May 1843, in Smith's Nauvoo store, he married an underage 14-year-old female named Helen Mar Kimball. Helen's father, Heber C. Kimball, officiated the wedding of his underage daughter to Smith.
Helen was the youngest of Smith's brides--and according to Helen, he had sex with her. Helen wrote about how her marriage to Smith was orchestrated by her father:
"Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he (my father) offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet's own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the altar: how cruel this seemed to my mother whose heartstrings were already stretched unil they were ready to snap asunder, for she had already taken Sarah Noon to wife and she thought she had made sufficient sacrifice but the Lord required more."
Smith pressured Helen to marry him, giving her only 24 hours to give him answer. Helen wrote:
"[My father] left me to reflect upon it for the next 24 hours. . . . I was skeptical--one minute [I] believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter and I knew that he would not cast me off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right.”
The next day, Smith came by to explain to Helen the “Law of Celestial Marriage,” and, having done that, to take her as his latest bride. Helen described Smith's pitch:
“After which he said to me, 'If you take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father's household and all of your kindred.' This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward."
Helen's mother was none too pleased with the marriage, as Helen explains:
"None but God and his angels could see my mother's bleeding heart. When Joseph asked her if she was willing, she replied 'If Helen is willing I have nothing more to say.' She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older and who better understood the step they were taking, and to see her child, who had yet seen her fifteenth summer, following the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come as the sun was to rise and set; but it was hidden from me."
Helen was under the unfortunate misimpression that her marriage to Smith was merely “dynastic.” She was to discover soon enough, however, that it was sexual. Helen later confessed to a close friend in Nauvoo:
"I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.”
(Helen Mar Whitney journal: Helen Mar autobiography: “Woman's Exponent,” 1880; reprinted in “A Woman's View;” FamilySearch.com record for Joseph Smith, Jr.; and Van Wagoner, “Mormon Polygamy: A History,” p. 53; cited in ibid)
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All that said and despite feeling taken advantage of by Smith, misled by her father about the sexual nature of a polygamous union and confused about its declared truthfulness, Helen ultimately--under the constant pressure of male Mormon priesthood "power"--accepted polygamy as a divinvely-revealed principle that, while she admitted she did not fully understand, nonetheless, obedience to which was a demonstration of faith to God. In her autobiography, she wrote:
"With all the false traditions in which we were born, and in consequence of the degenerate tide with which the human family has been drifting for generations past, and as the Lord had no organized priesthood on the earth, it is not to be wondered at that in our ignorance of His ways the feelings of our natures should rebel against the doctrine of a plurality of wives.
"I remember how I felt, but which would be a difficult matter to describe--the various thoughts, fears and temptations that flashed through my mind when the principle was first introduced to me by my father [Heber C. Kimball], who one morning in the summer of 1843, without any preliminaries, asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives, can be better imagined than told.
"But suffice it to say the first impulse was anger, for I thought he had only said it to test my virtue, as I had heard that tales of this kind had been published by such characters as the Higbees, Foster and Bennett, but which I supposed were without any foundation. My sensibilities were painfully touched. I felt such a sense of personal injury and displeasure for to mention such a thing to me I thought altogether unworthy of my father, and as quick as he spoke, I replied to him, short and emphatically, "No, I wouldn't!" I had always been taught to believe it a heinous crime, improper and unnatural, and I indignantly resented it.
"This was the first time that I ever openly manifested anger towards him, but I was somewhat surprised at his countenance, as he seemed rather pleased than otherwise. Then he commenced talking seriously, and reasoned and explained the principle, and why it was again to be established upon the earth, etc., but did not tell me then that anyone had yet practiced it, but left me to reflect upon it for the next twenty-four hours, during which time I was filled with various and conflicting ideas.
"I was skeptical--one minute believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have influenced me at that time or brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions. This was just previous to his starting upon his last mission but one to the eastern states. Fearing that I might hear it from a wrong source, knowing, as he did, that there were those who would run before they were sent, and some would not hesitate to deceive and betray him and the brethren, he thought it best that I should hear it from his own lips.
"The next day the Prophet [Joseph Smith] called at our house, and I sat with my father and mother and heard him teach the principle and explain it more fully, and I believed it, but I had no proofs, only his and my father's testimony. I thought that sufficient, and did not deem it necessary to seek for any further, but had I been differently situated like many were without a father and a mother to love and counsel me, probably my dependence, like theirs, would have been on the Lord, but I leaned not upon His arm.
"My father was my teacher and revelator, and I saw no necessity then for further testimony; but in after years the Lord, in His far-seeing and infinite mercy, suffered me to pass through the rough waves of experience and in sorrow and affliction, I learned that most important lesson, that in Him alone must I trust, and not in weak and sinful man; and that it was absolutely necessary for each one to obtain a living witness and testimony for him or herself, and not for another, to the truth of this latter-day work, to be able to stand, and that like Saul, we 'must suffer for His name's sake.'
Then I learned that 'the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge,' and that 'He is nigh unto all those that call upon Him in truth, and healeth the broken in heart and bindeth up their wounds.'"
(see Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, "Autobiography," circa 1839-1846, entitled "Life Incidents," published in "Woman's Exponent," 9-10 [1880-82]; and "Scenes and Incidents in Nauvoo," in "Woman's Exponent 11" [1882-83], at:
http://www.boap.org/LDS/Early-Saints/HWhitney.html)
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In the end, Helen Mar Kimball gave in to the man's world of Mormonism and surrendered herself to a life in its male-centric cave of polygamy--all in the name of faith.
Sad, indeed. She was a defiant, intelligent, inquisitive woman turned docile--unfortunately, like so many Mormon women victims of the Mormon Man Cult, hammered into submission by its patriarchs and then convinced brainwashed to believe and accept that it was all for her own good.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2014 04:35PM by steve benson.