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I’m not sure how to put it – if I really think about it, there would probably be a great deal that she and I would disagree about.

If I focus on my “modern” opinions and perspective – I find there are many things I don’t agree with (commonly held beliefs by women and some early mormons at the time). I’m talking about marriage, child-raising, medicine, racism, slavery, politics, education of women, etc.

Yet within the time period, some of the people I’ve read have been quite courageous (with beliefs that transcend the time).

Even some of the beliefs expressed at the Seneca Falls Convention in 1848 (around the same time) I find I disagree with today. They were revolutionary at the time. Looking back on it though, it’s easy for me to say from my perspective that they didn’t go far enough. But I’m not being realistic.

I’d like to read what she had to say, as it probably would have been worth reading. I would definitely read similar accounts from the same time period to get a better feel for her society and culture (which chanson has already linked to some references…)

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In Nauvoo, before Joseph Smith’s death, only a minority of the Mormons knew about polygamy and were in on it. The Winchester family was among them. When the temple was completed after J.S.’s death, the women who had been married to him had to be sealed to him by proxy, and normally the proxy would be married to the widow “for time” in the same ceremony. Since Nancy Mariah Winchester was still a teenager, it made sense for (family friend) Heber C. Kimball to stand in for this proxy role (while he was at it, marrying six other J.S. widows), and then send her back home to her parents.

Nancy Mariah crossed the plains to Utah with her parents when she was about 20, and at that point she might have decided to reaffirm her marriage to HCK or she might have tried to find a different marriage. It’s possible that — seeing other women in satellite marriages to G.A.s, raising their children essentially as single parents — she decided she didn’t want that life for herself with HCK. If we can put any stock in the note the family later wrote on the family group sheet (saying that HCK arranged the marriage so that Nancy Mariah could be a mother in this life), it strongly implies that HCK and Nancy weren’t having marital relations.

Even though people like to say that early church polygamy was because of the overabundance of eligible women (compared to eligible men), I understand that from the overall demographics that wasn’t true — that in fact early church polygamy left many young men without the prospect of finding a wife back then just as modern polygamy does today (FLDS, etc.). In Nancy’s case, she would have been less attractive to men who were looking to “build up their kingdom” (since she and her offspring would be part of Joseph Smith’s kingdom), and that factor surely mattered to the early Mormons. Still, there were probably plenty of men (like Amos Arnold) who would decide that taking a wife for time would be better than not having a wife and family at all.

So, since Nancy stayed nominally married to HCK until her late thirties, I would speculate that she liked the independence of living essentially as a single adult, especially since she had the status of being a wife of Joseph Smith, so she didn’t have to deal with people pitying her as an old maid. I imagine that she chose not to really join HCK’s family, and that (since he had so many other wives to deal with) he didn’t care enough to bother to try to rein her in. Then, in her late thirties, she met a single man who was also in his thirties, and they fell in love and decided to start a family. HCK didn’t object, so he let her go, and she went on to have a normal marriage (by modern standards).

Again, all of that is basically pure speculation. I’m just looking at the few pieces of information we have and then trying to place myself in her shoes.

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According to documents (census, etc.), Nancy didn’t ever move in with HCK’s family, but rather contintued to live with her parents until her late thirties, when she married Amos Arnold. Then, according to a family tradition that was recorded in a note on their family group sheet, it was HCK who arranged Nancy’s marriage to Amos. According to the note, HCK arranged it so that she could have children in this life, and promised Amos Aronld further wives later (not sure if he ever got them). They had one child, and Nancy died less than ten years later.

From this, I suspect that HCK had a friendly, familial relationship with her, but didn’t really think of her as a wife (or wasn’t really attached to her as such).

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What a fun bit to have in the family history!

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in the closet, at least you should make him dance.

You think people who have Blackbeard the pirate in their family history are keeping it hush-hush?

Of course not. They’ll tell anyone who will listen.

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