Abstract: When Eliza R. Snow agreed to become one of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, she feared she would never be looked upon as a decent woman. Nevertheless, she accepted Joseph Smith’s proposal and eventually became a strong advocate of the practice. Reading about her understanding of plural marriage and the many testimonies of others who practiced it, I have realized that plural marriage teaches us much about humility, keeping God’s commandments, and following His prophets. In nineteenth-century America, it provided a way for women and men to set aside self and embark on a soul-refining journey filled with trials and obstacles that parallel many of the trials and obstacles of our day.

You could argue that the practice of plural marriage (or polygamy, as some refer to it) is as controversial now as it was in the nineteenth century. In the mid-1800s, Joseph Smith and other members of the leadership of The Church of Jesus Christ practiced it in the shadows — fearful that mainstream society would misunderstand their intentions in taking multiple wives.1

In modern times, the subject, unavoidable every fourth year in Sunday school, can still blow through a classroom of practicing Latter-day Saints like a bad smell no one wants to acknowledge. But plural marriage is an integral part of the Church’s history. Women and men rallied to maintain the practice in the mid-1800s when the U.S. Government threatened to incarcerate its practitioners. Despite their great efforts, however, plural marriage was abolished in 1890, leaving some women and children to fend for themselves as their husbands [Page 104]resumed a monogamous marriage with their first wives.2 Nevertheless, I find the practice to be a profound example of the refiner’s fire, in which we can find beauty for ashes, holiness for misery, and the keys to persevering in a world that regularly throws proverbial stones at us for holding firm to doctrine that challenges the cultural ideas of the day. It teaches us that living the commandments, controversial or not, does not preclude us from unanticipated fallout even while in the very act of sacrificing self to do what God has asked.

For several months I scoured the pages of Relief Society, Primary, Young Women’s, and Young Men’s minute books from 1869 to 1888 as part of research for a project at the Church History Department. I scanned one page after another of handwritten pages ranging from perfect penmanship and spelling to indecipherable lettering and broken English. On occasion, my eyes slowed enough to catch familiar themes that repeated from one ward’s minute book to the next. Salvation and unity were the most prominent among those themes, but, as you might guess, so is the topic of plural marriage.

Many women during that time expressed in Relief Society meetings their heartfelt testimonies of the sanctity and blessings of the practice of plural marriage.3 Nevertheless, it is clear that some members of the various congregations — both men and women