Orson Pratt Brown - Life, Times, Family

THE CRUSADE AGAINST Mormon polygamy in the United States a century ago largely followed passage of the 1882 Edmunds Act. In writing the law, Congress amended existing legislation so as to forbid what it called simply, "unlawful cohabitation." Anglo-American legislators, in favoring monogamous marriage, had been traditionally content to erect criminal barriers only to the attempt at formalizing bigamous or other irregular liaisons. Mormons succeeded in escaping the penalties of such enactments by resorting to entirely private devices, such as religious performances when contracting plural unions. The 1882 revision made it possible to prosecute, fine, and send to prison Mormons who had been joined in polygamous relationships as the result of such informal ceremonies.¹

One of the consequences of this legislation was that, beginning in 1885, lands were found south of the U.S. border where polygamous families could locate away from the reach of the new law. By 1890, when Mormon President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto advising against further polygamous contractions in violation of the law, three communities had been founded in México, with another six destined to appear in the next 15 years. From these early years, until the exodus of the colonists at the time of the Mexican Revolution, it was clear to every Mormon involved that the church's wish to foster and protect the institution of plural marriage was the primary reason for the existence of such colonies in México.²

This notwithstanding, and despite the fact that this was one of the largest colonization efforts undertaken by the Great Basin church, Mormon

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writers and representatives did everything they could to mute the significance of the project, both at the time and for some years after. Every attempt was made to say as little as possible to journalists and outsiders about it. The church's official newspaper and individual spokesmen denied that anything like a large-scale movement of Saints to México was occurring or planned. Members, it was said, who had moved in that direction were only responding to crowding in the United States. Mormon farmers were simply trying to improve their circumstances and were doing so as individuals. Most importantly, all connection between their migration southward and the practice of polygamy was not only ignored but also explicitly denied.³ Similar efforts were made within the colonies to minimize visibility and reduce attention to the real reason for their presence there. The colonists were encouraged to conduct themselves carefully. Apostle George Teasdale, the authority responsible for directing affairs in México during the first years of the colonies' existence, upon hearing that a stranger was visiting one of the settlers, immediately summoned the owner of the home to explain who the visitor was and why he was there. The outcome of the episode was that an official "entertainer of strangers" was appointed and colonists were instructed neither to associate nor communicate with outsiders any more than was necessary.⁴ Men intending to reside in México were asked to sign restrictive covenants agreeing not to sell property to non-Mormons. Women were told to give no information to strangers and to avoid mingling with Mexican neighbors.⁵ For years, plural wives were instructed to identify themselves to non-Mormons as single women, as sisters, or as relatives visiting temporarily.⁶The colonists were told to be discreet about what was said in letters to friends in the United States, and sometimes were forbidden to take jobs outside the colonies.⁷W. Derby Johnson, Jr., Bishop in Colonia Diaz, summarized in his diary the substance of talks that he gave to church members there as follows, "Those who come to join us must have recommends. Parties in School House: Mexicans must not be invited [n]or we go to their dances." And, "Keep our mouths shut."

The reasons for such reticence are easily adduced. The national campaign to abolish Mormon polygamy in the United States had reached such proportions during the 1880s that church leaders were doing everything possible to survive as a church while, at the same time, preserving the principle of plural marriage.⁹ Statements were made by church authorities to the effect that the actual number of Mormons practising polygamy was greatly diminished, and by the mid- and late 1880s amounted to no more than 2% or 3% of the church's membership. Beyond this, on more than one occasion during

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these years, the public was told that Mormon leaders were no longer permitting the performance of polygamous contractions at all. ¹⁰ The church was doing everything it could to give the impression that it was bending to demands that plural marriage be discontinued. Clearly, it was important that the public know as little as possible about those communities in México where such marriages were still occurring and would continue to be performed with church approval for more than a decade after the 1890 Woodruff declaration. ¹¹

There is another reason why Mormon spokesmen were anxious to obscure the nature of marital patterns in the Mexican colonies; one that will occupy a significant portion of this paper. This has to do with what was and was not permitted by Mexican law. Numbers of Mormon writers have stated that polygamy was permitted legally in México.¹²This has been a comfortable assumption for church members because it seemed to satisfy the requirements of the Woodruff Manifesto. The truth is that not only were formal bigamous contractions forbidden in México but also privately solemnized polygamous marriages, as performed by the Mormons, fell thwart Mexican legal intent as well. This is most easily explained by a review of México's legislation on the subject.

Relevant Mexican statutes were based on Spanish codes. Although the sources of Spanish law were of a mixed and sometimes conflicting nature, the influences of Roman and canon law combined to produce a vigorous condemnation of polygamy. It was considered a heinous crime, "sumamente perniciosa." Spanish laws authorized condign[deserved or adequate] punishment for polygamy, including branding, imprisonment, loss of property, and being forced to serve in the galleys of the Spanish navy.¹³ The reason for such hostility was undoubtedly rooted in ancient Spanish concern for unsullied lines of patriarchal descent.

Additionally, those commenting on Spanish law justified the aversion to polygamy by saying that it was unfair to women, reducing them to slaves; that some men would have several wives whereas others would have none; and, most importantly, that it was contrary to the tradition of the Christian monogamous home.¹⁴Mexican national law was slow to take form due to repeated paroxysms of political disturbance. But even with the changes of the late 1850s secularizing the marriage ceremony there was no departure from the traditional Spanish commitment to matrimony as an ideal, "uniting one sole man to one sole woman." ¹⁵ Spanish compilations, with their opposition to polygamous marriage, served as the basis for legal procedure everywhere in the republic.¹⁶

Mexican federal codes not only reiterated Spanish

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concern with and opposition to polygamy but also declared their allegiance to monogamous marriage as an obligation of high importance by forbidding divorce except under narrowly defined circumstances." Frequently, the federal codes doubled as the basis for law in the states. Chihuahua, for example, adopted the federal criminal code for its own use in 1883, two years before the Mormons began arriving in large numbers. Sonora, where additional Mormon colonies came to be located, contrived a document more closely adapted to its particular needs in 1884.¹⁸ Both states issued new penal codes of their own in 1897 and 1909 respectively. And both included absolute prohibitions against bigamia or matrimonio doble, that is against formally contracted plural marriages.¹⁹ But, it may be said, Mormon polygamous unions were not formally contracted by public magistrates. Therefore, as the products of private religious ceremonies, Mormon polygamous arrangements were not, strictly speaking, in violation. of Mexican law. This, unquestionably, is the reason that some have alleged that those Latter-day Saints who went to México to practise plural marriage did so legally.

The difficulty with this argument is that it confounds the very purpose for which the Mexican statutes were drawn. This is illustrated by what the laws did with adultery. Determined as they were to preserve the traditional monogamous household against such things as polygamy and divorce, Spanish and Mexican legal authors made special allowances for sexual irregularities. They recognized that men were likely sometimes to lapse in sexual fidelity to their wives. Consequently, if they were discreet, men were permitted to consort with mistresses without calling into question the structural durability of their monogamous unions. Adultery, in the case of men, did not categorically constitute grounds for dishonor or divorce. ²⁰ And formal provision was made for heritable rights by children born outside of marriage as the result of such alliances.²¹ For men, as one authority put it, the act of adultery was not always the crime of adultery. But, we repeat, the reason for incorporating such blinds into the law was that, by so doing, the monogamous home would remain formally intact, in spite of whatever personal crises arose to assail it.²² Something of a parallel existed in the United States. After anti-polygamy legislation was passed by the Congress, many Mormons were outraged at what they considered to be the hypocrisy, the double standard, of those who made and enforced such laws against them. To the Mormons, vast numbers of homeless children, widespread prostitution, adultery and sexual deceit constituted a standing rebuke of those who condemned the Mormon marriage system which, the Saints alleged, had largely eliminated such evils.²³

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What Mormons seemed unable to grasp fully, although it was explained on several occasions, was that it was not the sexual derelictions of individuals with which the law was concerned so much as with preserving the form of the monogamous home. The purpose of the laws, as explained by legislators and judges alike, was to expunge the "semblance" of a competing and threatening order of American home life. This is why, in the face of Mormon consternation, convictions for plural marriage were allowed even when no sexual relations between spouses existed. The intent was to obviate, in the words of the Utah Commission, "the assault made by the Mormon Church upon the most cherished institution of our civilization-the monogamic system.²⁴ In other words, as in México, legislators were relatively indifferent to sexual misbehavior, or the lack of it, so long as the monogamous home remained unchallenged as a social ideal. It is also important to remember that advocates of Mormon polygamy in the last century believed that monogamy was an inferior contrivance, that it resulted in moral decline, and that it was largely responsible for many of the sexual ills of the day, including prostitution and abortion. Plural marriage, on the other hand, was the order of heaven and, when properly lived and understood, would redeem mankind both physically and socially. In other words, the Saints believed fully that polygamy, rather than monogamy, must be cultivated as the preferred marital arrangement in the home.²⁵ Inasmuch as it was the Mormon support for and participation in this domestic pattern that chiefly accounted for their presence in México, and given the commitment to monogamy inherent in Mexican law, Mormon polygamy clearly violated the intent of the statutes involved. It was not simply a matter of the Mormons taking advantage of Mexican moral laxity as permitted by loopholes in their laws. ²⁶ By ignoring the historical purposes that lay behind the loopholes, the Mormons were attempting to supplant those purposes with an order of marriage that the loopholes were designed to prevent. Evidence that Mormon polygamy was considered morally and legally unacceptable in México is to be found in responses by the Mexican press to Mormon colonization. Even before the colonies were established, fear was expressed that, if Mormon immigration to México should prove true, Mexican society would suffer because Mormon customs were so out of step with Mexican "principles of both public and private morality. "²⁷ After the first migrants arrived, the public was warned by Mexican writers that the sect, because of its practice of polygamy, was guilty of violating the laws and was a scandal to traditional Christian morality.²⁸ Such comments were

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made for years, characterizing the Saints as fanatical, anti-social, anti-family and disobedient to the laws.²⁹ As the editor of a prominent Mexican journal put it in the late 1880s, "If the Mormons on coming here practice polygamy they certainly are not submissive to the law of the land nor to the precepts of Christianity."³⁰ Further evidence that Mormon polygamy in México was looked upon as unapproved legally arises from admissions to this effect by Mormons themselves. In 1891, for example, Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., admitted to reporters that polygamy was against the law in México and that Mormons living there were abiding by those laws "in every particular."³¹ W. Derby Johnson, Jr., a Mormon bishop in Colonia Diaz, and the husband of three living wives, told a journalist from the United States the same thing, that polygamy was not being practised by the colonists because it was against Mexican law.³² In yet another interview, Bishop Johnson reassured Mexican reporters that "there is neither intention nor possibility of introducing the practice of polygamy in México. That is as impossible under Mexican laws as under those of the United States."³³

Anthony W. Ivins, chief ecclesiastical authority over all México Mormons, warned settlers in 1901 to take care for they were living in a land where plural marriage was in violation of the law.³⁴ And, in 1906, a Mormon from Colonia Dublán, another of the colonies, "roundly denied" to a Mexican newspaper that any of the colonists were living in polygamy because, as he expressed it, although Mormons believed plural marriage to be a divine institution, it was no longer practised because it was against the laws of both México and the United States.³⁵

At this point of our investigation, we must ask how it was that Mormon polygamy succeeded in being tolerated if, in fact, it contradicted Mexican legal intentions? To answer this, we must explore an episode that took place shortly after the first Mormon camps were established in the Casas Grandes Valley in the spring of 1885. At that time, local Mexican officials issued an order expelling the settlers from the country. ³⁶ While there were several reasons that accounted for this development, at least one of them is likely to have been hostility towards polygamy as incompatible with Mexican law.³⁷ Hoping to have the expulsion order rescinded, two Mormon Apostles, Erastus Snow and Moses Thatcher, travelled to México City for talks with national officials. Once there, and with the assistance of Mission President Helaman Pratt as translator, they gained an audience with cabinet level officers and with Mexican President Porfirio Diaz. We have Pratt's diary, and in it the most complete summary of what the

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Mormon leaders were told over the several days they were in the capital. In the first place, Secretary of Public Works Carlos Pacheco directed that the expulsion order be cancelled.³⁸ A major part of Diaz's plans for developing the nation's economy involved the establishment of foreign colonists on Mexican soil, especially on arid lands of the northern provinces. The Mormon reputation for being good farmers filled the prescription Mexican leaders and planners had built into the laws governing the stimulation of Mexican agriculture through colonization. ³⁹ Whatever local authorities in Chihuahua might have felt about the Mormons, Diaz's ministers were determined to implement their leader's economic policies. The Saints were assured that they could remain. According to Pratt's account, it was not until the third day, again in a meeting with Secretary Pacheco, that the subject of polygamy was discussed. The minister told the Mormon leaders that they could bring their plural wives and families to México, but they were to do it quietly. He indicated that he wished personally that México's laws could be changed so as to permit plural marriage to be practised openly. That not being possible, he made it clear that if charges were brought against the Saints because of their marriage practices, they would likely be taken to court and have to defend themselves there. He assured them, however, that those Mormons who were monogamous need have no fear of persecution in México. Pratt's final entry concerning this conversation was to paraphrase Secretary Pacheco as repeating again that the Mormons and their plural families were welcome, they could come and colonize in peace, but they were to do it quietly.⁴⁰

This interview is significant for a number of reasons. In the first place, the meeting with Pacheco in which polygamy was discussed did not include President Díaz. It was more than a week after this occasion before the Mormons were introduced to the nation's president. And when this occurred, Pratt's notes give no indication that anything at all was said on the subject of plural marriage.⁴¹ This does not mean that the president would have opposed the Mormons as colonists on account of their polygamy. It is only that, contrary to later Mormon comments, there is no firsthand evidence that President Díaz ever personally gave them permission to ignore Mexican law. This is reinforced by comments made to Anthony W. Ivins by George Q. Cannon when Ivins was instructed in the manner by which couples would be sent to him to be married in plural relationships. According to Ivins's son, Cannon said, "Now Brother Ivins, if you have occasion to meet Porfirio Diaz...we want you to tell him that we are NOT practicing polygamy in México."⁴²

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Secondly, it is clear from Secretary Pacheco's advice to the Mormons that he knew that what they were doing in their family affairs contravened Mexican legal intentions. This is why he repeatedly counseled them to be private and quiet about it. This would agree with a statement credited to Joseph F. Smith shortly after the Manifesto was drafted, in which he is supposed to have remarked, "There is a tacit understanding between the church and the Mexican government, that we may practice plural marriage but must outwardly appear to have but one wife."⁴³

We can also understand better why, immediately after its issuance, a copy of the 1890 Manifesto was sent to representatives of the Mexican government.⁴⁴ This gave support to the image cultivated by the Mormons of being law-abiding settlers.⁴⁵ We must also take notice that Pratt's account of this conversation refers only to the safety that colonists might feel in bringing their already existing plural families to México. Nothing of an equally explicit nature was said in connection with new plural marriages. Some might have believed that they had been given the right to marry new wives because of the welcoming spirit of government officials. If this was the case, however, it was entirely inferential. Some years later, Burton Hendrick, a non-Mormon journalist, claimed to have information that supports this view. Mexican officials, he said, gave the Mormon representatives to understand that they could bring already existing polygamous wives to México, but there were to be no new polygamous unions contracted on Mexican Soil. ⁴⁶ Finally, these interviews with Mexican leaders were important because they provided a pattern for Mormon encounters with government officials in Canada.

In that regard, it is significant that Apostles John W. Taylor, Francis M. Lyman and Brigham Young, Jr., were sent to the border region shortly after the time of these meetings and were apprised of the conversations that Snow, Thatcher and Pratt had held with Mexican authorities.⁴⁷ Apostles Lyman and Taylor were the Mormon leaders who later conferred with Canadian political officials in connection with the settlement of Mormons in Canada. What we know of negotiations between Mormon authorities and government leaders in México gives support to what we said earlier about the subdued nature of Mormon statements concerning their settlements in Chihuahua and Sonora. Efforts made to disguise the movement as inconsiderable and denials concerning the practice of polygamy not only comported with Mormon strategies of defense in the United States but also were in harmony with what they had been advised to do by Mexican officials as well.

We can conclude also, at this point, that a good deal of myth grew up

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in connection with the toleration of plural marriage in the Mexican colonies. There is no evidence, for example, as one account has it, that the Mormons approached Porfirio Díaz to ask about the legality of plurality of wives. The story goes that Díaz said no legal limitations existed, quipping, "It does not matter to México whether you drive your horses tandem or four abreast."⁴⁸ Rather, we can be sure that what the Mormons were doing, through the encouragement of polygamous family life, was quite out of harmony with at least the purpose, if not the letter, of laws south of the border, and that, despite a long tradition in Mormon history asserting otherwise, both Mexican officials and Mormon leaders at the time knew it.

Latter-day Saint settlement in Alberta commenced in 1887, only two years after the first Mormon camps were established in northern México. As with those in Chihuahua and Sonora, Canadian Mormons located sites close to the international border. And, as in México, the Mormons in Canada both prospered and multiplied. In little more than a decade, seven settlements were founded, with others to follow in succeeding years. Most importantly, as with those who went to México, the search for refuge from the crusade against polygamy in the United States constituted a major reason for the move there by those Mormons who located in the region.⁴⁹

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Once again, church leaders denied that Mormon interest in Canada had anything to do with polygamy. Every effort was made to represent the migration north as inconsequential, as but the result of farmers looking about to improve their lot. The Mormons were quite content with life in Utah, it was said. It was only that, being cultivators of the soil, some were naturally attracted to the fertile lands of the Canadian West.⁵⁰ And similar to Mormon polygamy in México, there has also been misunderstanding as to what the Saints encountered in Canada in connection with its laws.

Some, for example, have said that prior to the Mormon entry, anti-polygamy legislation did not exist in Canada.⁵¹ Because of this, as with México, it will be helpful to examine the Canadian legal experience relating to polygamy. To begin with, as in the case of Spain, there existed from the time of early modern England a strong statutory tradition opposing plural marriage. The practice was criminalized in the first years of the Stuart reign.⁵² Educated sentiment was often expressed against it. As an eighteenth-century polemicist put it, it was nothing less than "self-evident" that England, with its monogamy, was superior to India with its polygamy.⁵³ Blackstone, writing at about the same time, noted that bigamous relationships were properly punished as felonies because they constituted "so great a violation of the public economy and decency of an well ordered state."⁵⁴

And midway through the nineteenth century, the case of Hyde v. Hyde and Woodmansee (1866), involving a former Mormon polygamist living in England, held that such contractions were neither Christian nor licit.⁵⁵ English law and custom exercised an important influence on Canadian legal practice. As with México in its borrowings from Spain, conformity to the British model was a conscious legislative policy by Canadians.⁵⁶ By the time of the Mormon arrival, not only had the "British North America Act" lodged the regulation of marriage throughout the dominion with the central government but also the "Consolidation Act" of 1869 reaffirmed the most recent English statute prohibiting polygamy.⁵⁷ Beyond this, in 1886, one year before the Mormon migration began, Parliament declared, "Every one who being married, marries any other person during the life of the former husband or wife, whether the second marriage takes place in Canada, or elsewhere, is guilty of felony, and liable to seven years' imprisonment. "59

At the same time, the area embracing what is now Alberta was subject to a federal agency, the Council of the North-West Territories. A lieutenant governor, in concurrence with this council, was authorized to issue such ordinances as were necessary for the government of the region.⁵⁹ Pursuant to this authority, and nearly a decade before the first Mormon pluralists

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arrived, a decree was issued declaring that "precontract," or previous marriage to a living spouse, constituted an impediment to another legal marriage.⁶⁰ These enactments, in company with the English statutory and judicial traditions, clearly condemned formally contracted plural marriages. The question was whether privately arranged bigamous unions, as by the Mormons, would be any more acceptable to Canadian authorities than officially solemnized multiple marriages disallowed by their laws. In other words, Canada was faced with the same circumstance confronting México at the time of the Mormon arrival there in 1885, and by the United States prior to 1882.

Similar to what happened when the Saints began colonizing in México, dominion journalists raised questions about the suitability of Mormons as settlers on Canadian soil. Referring to the repeated problems Mormons had had with the law in the United States, the Edmonton Bulletin called them "treasonous" and as "nasty as Chinamen and more dangerous than ... Nihilists." However industrious they may be as farmers, it was essential, said the Bulletin, that they be given to understand that they must behave as Canadian citizens if they were to live in Canadian society.

Similar fears were expressed on the floor of Parliament, urging that Canada's legal condemnation of men taking multiple spouses be strictly enforced upon the new settlers.⁶¹ While it was not the single issue involved, plural marriage, more than anything else, was what concerned Canadians when the first Mormon colonists began crossing the Canadian-American border.⁶² Although the intent of Canada's anti-bigamy laws undoubtedly was to prevent the kind of marriages practised by the Saints, as in the United States before passage of the Edmunds Act, Mormon use of private ceremonies left them technically exempt from the letter of Canadian statutes. Because of the alarm raised in the press, however, and because of their experience in the United States, where after 1882 the laws were changed to comprehend private contractions, Mormon leaders took steps to obviate such a development in Canada. Reminiscent of their experience with the Mexican government at the time of the expulsion order in 1885, church authorities decided to approach Canadian officials directly and ask for permission to bring their plural families into the dominion.

Mormon leaders unquestionably hoped that they would be given the same kind of blind from the Canadian government that they had obtained in México. Canada, like México, was anxious to encourage immigration to and development of its vast lands in the central and western parts of the nation. Perhaps, as in México, the prospect of establishing a hardy population of Mormon farmers in those regions could

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be used to persuade government leaders to leave the laws as they were and to ignore their intent in exchange for the otherwise good citizenship the Mormons were sure to bring. Their request, however, was refused. Not only did the Mormons fail with their petitioning in Ottawa but also a later report by the mounted police indicating that they had certain knowledge that Mormon colonists were practising polygamy in Canada led to demands that, in the words of the Winnipeg Free Press, "The law in this country is that a man shall have but one wife at a time, and that law must be made to apply to Mormons as well as the Gentiles."⁶³ The result was, just as had been done in the United States, Canada's 1886 anti-bigamy statute was amended to criminalize such unions when contracted "in any... manner or form whatsoever, and whether in a manner recognized by law as a binding form of marriage or not." This amendment, if anything, was more particular and careful in its language than the Edmunds law in the United States from which it was borrowed. But to make sure there was no confusion, the enactment specifically indicated that it was "persons commonly called Mormons" and their practice of "spiritual or plural marriage" with which it was concerned.⁶⁴

Finally, illustrating Canadian congruence with views in México and the United States that it was the appearance of plural family life that must be repressed, provision was made for convictions with or without evidence of sexual relations between spouses.⁶⁵ Despite efforts to imitate and profit from their experience, the Saints in Canada failed to obtain the license granted them in México. With the amendment of Canadian law in 1890, identifying the private ceremonies employed in Mormon multiple marriages as prohibited, the intent of the earlier Canadian statutes was made explicit. Unlike in México, where legal intent also existed but was never reified [treated as substantially existing], the Canadians moved to meet Mormon plural marriage in the same way as it had been done in the United States with the Edmunds Act of 1882. The result was that, although plural family life existed in Canada after 1890, as it did in the United States, it was both less frequent and less openly acknowledged than in México.⁶⁶ It was undoubtedly due, in part at least, to their efforts to conceal such things that the Canadian colonists were criticized for displaying isolationist tendencies. While it was admitted that he made a good farmer, as one commentator put it in 1902, the Mormon simply was not to be trusted. "There is," he said, "a mystery in his life which baffles the observer."⁶⁷

Ironically, the large influx of Indian and other Oriental peoples into commonwealth nations since World War II has resulted in a liberalization of attitudes, especially regarding the heritable rights of polygamous wives

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and children.⁶⁸ Hence, although the Mormon community in Canada acquired increasing respect as years passed, lineaments of the old prejudice remained. For more than a half-century, Canada's Criminal Code continued to preserve not only the ban on polygamous marriages but also the 1890 law's specific reference to Mormons as a group with which the law was especially concerned.⁶⁹

Having discussed similarities in Mormon efforts to perpetuate polygamy in México and Canada, we can conclude with some observations regarding Mormonism's own historical treatment of these attempts. We have already shown that, at the time these colonizing efforts began, the church did everything it could to obscure polygamy as a reason accounting for members moving out of the United States. As we suggested, this was done, in México at least, because government leaders suggested that they be "quiet" about such things. It was also consonant with the image cultivated by Mormon leaders who, through the end of the century, denied that new plural marriages were yet authorized or performed anywhere in the church."

At the time of the Smoot investigation in 1904, and consistent with the policy followed during the 1890s, President of the Church Joseph F. Smith repeatedly denied that he or either of his predecessors (Wilford Woodruff and Lorenzo Snow) had authorized new polygamous unions since the Manifesto. No such marriages had occurred, he declared, with the approval of the church anywhere in the world.⁷¹ Later, after Senator Smoot was accepted into the Senate, a special address by the First Presidency in 1907 again alleged that, except for some few cases on the part of recalcitrants, the church had been "true to its pledge respecting the abandonment of the practice of plural marriage."⁷²

As a rule, Mormon commentators have tended to perpetuate the silence of those difficult, transitional years around the turn of the century. The modern church displays a distinct sensitivity to the entire question of its polygamous past. Although the number of exceptions has increased in recent years, the works of respected scholars treat plural marriage as an aberration whose significance for nineteenth-century Mormonism is minimized.⁷³ So far as continuation of the practice after 1890 is concerned, when acknowledged, it is usually said to have occurred in Canada and México because laws prohibiting polygamy did not exist there.⁷⁴ In most instances, however, like churchmen of a century ago, when discussing Mormon settlement in these countries, plural marriage is given little attention, or simply avoided. Mormon migration is explained primarily as a response to the need for economic improvement or the wish to carry Mormon

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teachings to foreign lands.⁷⁵ This same defensiveness no doubt lay behind the successful attempt by Latter-day Saint political leaders during the 1950s to remove from Canada's laws the old references linking the Saints to polygamous ways.⁷⁶ The memory of polygamy, as Thomas Cheney put it, has been an "incessant thorn-prick" in the side of the twentieth-century church.⁷⁷ Yet, to the degree that Mormonism's nineteenth-century commitment to plural marriage is screened by students of the Mormon past, to that same degree we defraud [cheat]our knowledge not only of Mormonism in its earlier years but also of Mormonism today. Institutions, like men, can only be comprehended when the integrity of their full experience over time is understood. By restating, as accurately as we are able, the devotions that compelled men and women to leave their homes for new, difficult beginnings in México and Canada, and by recalling both the subterfuge and the courage employed to deal with the circumstances they encountered, we do them, as well as ourselves, greater honor than by silence and denial.

NOTES:
1. The original law is found at U.S., Statutes at Large, Vol. 12, chapter 126, pp. 501-02 (1862). The amendment, or Edmunds law, with its use of the term "cohabitation," is at U.S., Statutes at Large, Vol. 22, chapter 47, pp. 30-32 (1882).

2. The Woodruff Manifesto was first published under the title of "Official Declaration," in Desert News, 25 September 1890 (hereafter, DN). So far as the purpose of the colonies was concerned, in the words of Anthony W. Ivins: "the condition of marriage existing among the Latter-day Saints was the main factor in bringing the Saints to México." "Juarez Stake High Council Historical Record, 1895-1903," 21 February 1896, Latter-day Saint Historical Archives, Salt Lake City, Utah (hereafter, LDSA). Standard historical treatments of the Mexican colonies are Thomas Cottam Romney. The Mormon Colonies in México (Salt Lake Citv: Deseret Book Co., 1938); Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, Colonia Juarez: An Intimate Account of a Mormon Village (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 19S4); the excellent study by Moisés González Navarro, La colonizacién in México 1877-1910 (M'x.-ico,1960), pp. 63-70; and the recent but discursive work by Agricol Lozano Herrera, Historia del Mormonismo en México (México, D.F.: Editorial Zarahemla, 1983), pp. 6-51.

3. Henry Lunt, as quoted in Warner P. Sutton [United States Consul-General at Matamoros, México], "Mormons," Consular Reports, No. 97, U.S. Congress, House Miscellaneous Documents, 50th Cong., 1st Sess., End of page 199 1887-1888, 23, p. 576; "The Mormons are not Gone Yet," DN, 4 February 1885; "Expressions From the People", ibid., 8 April 1885; "Expressions From the People," ibid., 14 April 1885; letter to United States Secretary of the Interior Lucius Q.C. Lamar from George Ticknor Curtis, ibid., 1 December 1886; the comments of John W. Young cited in Evening Sun [New York], 10 November 1888; clippings in "Journal History of the Church," 14 September 1885, p.11, and 7 October 1888, p. 7, LDSA; "President Woodruff His Views on the Present Situation," Woman's Exponent 18 (February 1890), p. 141.

4. Nelle Spilsbury Hatch, "George Teasdale," in Nelle Spilsbury Hatch and B. Carmon Hardy, compilers, Stalwarts South of the Border (Anaheim, Calif.: Shumway Family History Publishing Co., 1985), p. 683.

5. Joel H. Martineau, "The Mormon Colonies in México 1876-1929," typewritten manuscript, part 4, pp. 6, 8, 19-20, and 35, LDSA.

6. See, for example, Emily Black, "Mary Eliza Tracy Allred," typewritten manuscript, pp. 6-7, in "Collection of Mormon Biographies," 19/11/ 5, LDSA.

7. "Juarez Stake High Council Minutes, 1895-1917," 29 September 1900 and 25 May 1901, LDSA.

8. Diary of W. Derby Johnson, Jr., part 8, p.17, 17,25 December 1887; part 8,p. 32, 15 July 1888, in possession of Mrs. Beth Simper, Holbrook, Arizona. This theme was pursued at greater length in B. Carmon Hardy, "Cultural `Encystment' as a cause of the Mormon exodus from México in 1912," Pacific Historical Review, 39 (November 1965), pp. 439-54.

9. Among the best studies of the crusade against Mormon polygamy are Nels Anderson, Desert Saints: The Mormon Frontier in Utah (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1942), pp. 166-333; Leonard Arrington, Great Basin Kingdom: An Economic History of the Latter-day Saints 1830-1900 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp. 353-79; all of Gustive O. Larsen, The "Americanization" of Utah for Statehood (San Marino, Calif.: The Huntington Library, 1971); James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latter-day Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), pp. 377-434; Leonard J. Arrington and Davis J. Bitton, The Mormon Experience: A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1979), pp. 161-84; and all of Edward Leo Lyman, Political Deliverance: The Mormon Quest for Utah Statehood (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986).

10. "Epistle of the First Presidency," 4 April 1885, in James R. Clark, compilers, Messages of the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 1833-1964, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft,1965-1975), 3, p.11; and the comment of John T. Caine, Utah's territorial delegate to Congress, that polygamy was a "dead issue" in Utah, that it would not be revived, and that less than 1 % of the people living in Utah had ever been polygamists. U.S., Congress, House, Congressional Record, 50th Cong., 1st Sess., 18 pt. 8, pp. 7949-7953. For two independent studies indicating that, as late as 1880, polygamy was both more common and that it played a greater role in Utah's social life than heretofore believed, see Larry Logue, "A time of marriage: Monogamy and polygamy in a Utah town," Journal of Mormon

End of page 200

History 11 (1984), pp. 3-26; and Lowell "Ben" Bennion, "The incidence of Mormon polygamy in 1880: `Dixie' versus Davis Stake," ibid.,11(1984), pp. 27-42.

11. For discussions of the use to which the Mexican colonies were put in perpetuating polygamous marriage after the Manifesto of 1890, see Victor W. Jorgensen and B. Carmon Hardy, "The Taylor-Cowley affair and the water shed of Mormon history," Utah Historical Quarterly, 48 (Winter 1980), pp. 16-19; D. Michael Quinn, "LDS Church authority and new plural marriages, 1890-1904," Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, 18 (Spring 1985), pp. 15-19 and 57-98 (hereafter Dialogue );and Richard S. Van Wagoner, Mormon Polygamy: A History (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1986), pp. 152-53 and 161-94.

12. As but a sample of the many who have since accepted this view, see the inference of such belief in Romney, The Mormon Colonies, pp. 51-52 and 267; and Kimball Young, Isn't One Wife Enough? (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1954), p. 419. Direct affirmations of the legality of polygamy in México can be found in Jerold A. Hilton, "Polygamy in Utah and Surrounding Area Since the Manifesto of 1890" (master's thesis, Brigham Young University, 1965), pp. 6,13 and 18; James B. Allen and Richard O. Cowan, Mormonism in the Twentieth Century, rev. edn. (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press, 1969), p. 19; Kenneth W. Godfrey, "The coming of the Manifesto," Dialogue, 5 (Autumn 1970), p. 15; Annie R. Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz (Mesa, Arizona: published by the authoress, 1972), p. 14; and Davis Bitton, "Mormon polygamy: A review article," Journal of Mormon History, 4 (1977), p. 111.

13. The canons of the church had a direct influence on the compilations of many European and New World nations, transforming monogamy into what one scholar has called the "Grundsatz" of Western Christian society. Erich Vogel, Das Ebebindernis des Ehebruchs. Eine recbtsvergleicbende Arbeit (Heidelberg: inaugural dissertation, 1928 ), p.92. The Catholic emphasis on monogamous marriage was especially great in Spain. Joaquin Francisco Pacheco, El Cóndigo penal concordado y comentado, rev. edn., 4 vols. (Madrid: Imprenta de Manuel Tello, 1870), 3, p. 226; Rafael Altamira y Crevea, Cuestiones de historia del derecho y de legislacion comparada, 4 vols. (Barcelona: Herederos de Juan Gile, Editores,1913 ), 2, pp. 98-100, sec. 463; Luis Fern'ndez Cl'rigo, El Derecho de familia en la legislacion comparada (México: Union tipografica editorial Hispano-Americana, 1947), p. 37. For statutory examples of repeated sanctions against polygamy in Spanish law, see "De los adulteros, y bigamos," with references to earlier codes, in Novisima recopilacion de las leyes de Espana... (Madrid, 1805-1807), lib.12, tit. 28, leyes 6-9.

14. See, for example, the note attached to Carlos III's castigation of bigamy in 1770, at Nov. recoil., lib. 12, tit. 28, ley 10; also discussion of the subject in J. Francisco Pacheco's commentaries on the Spanish legal reform of 1870, in his El Codigo, 3, p. 21; the same in Pedro Gomez de la Serna, Elementos del derecho civil y penal de Espaha..., rev. edn. by Juan Manuel Montalban (Madrid: Liberia de Sanchez, 1877), 3, pp. 348-49 and 364; and Joaquin Escriche,

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Diccionario razonado de legislación y jurisprudecia, rev. edn. (Paris and México: Liberea de Ch. Bouret, 1888), pp. 378 and 1356.

15. Jorge Vera Espanol, "Juridical Evolution," in Justo Sierra, ed., México, Its Social Evolution..., trans. G. Sinti-ntilden, 2 vols. in 3 (México: J. Ballesco and Co., 1900-1904), 2, p. 742.

16. D. Manuel Mateos Alarcon, La Evolucion del derecho civil Mexicana desda la independencia hasta nuestros dias (México: Tip. Vda. de F. Díaz de Leon, Sucs., 1911), pp. 5-7; Toribio Esquivel Obregón, Influencia de España y los Estados Unidos sobre México (Madrid: Casa Editorial Calleja, 1918), p. 22; Miguel S. Macedo, Apuntes para lá historia del derecho penal Mexicano (México: Ed. "Cultura 1931), pp. 199-210 and 272; Jose Ma. Ots y Capdequi, Historia del derecho Español en America y del derecho indiano (Madrid: Aguila, 1969), pp. 30-36, 43 and 45-48.

17. Redaccion del código civil de México que se contiene en las leyes Espanolas ... por... Vincente González Castro, Vol. 1 (Guadalajara: Mario Melendez y Munoz, 1839), lib. 1, tot. 4, cap. 2, sec. 1, arts. 60, 63, 99, and 102; Cóndigo civil del imperio Mexicano (México: Imprenta de M. Vinanueva, 1866), lib. 1, tot. 4, cap. 6, arts. 185 and 191; Código civil del Distrito Federal y Territorio de Baja California (México: Imprenta Jos' Batiza,1870), lib. l, tot. 5, cap. 1, arts. 159 and 163, secs. 4-5 and 9; Cóndigo penal para el Distrito Federal y Territorio de Baja California sobre delitos del fuero com'n, y para toda la republica sobre delitos contra la federacion (México: Imprenta del gobierno, en palacio, 1871), lib. 3, tot. 6, cap. 7, arts. 831, 832 and 838; Codigo civil del Distrito Federal y Territorio de la Baja California reformado en virtud de la autorizacion concedida al ejecutivo por decreto de 14 de Diciembre de 1883 (México: Imprenta de Francisco Díaz de Leon, 1884), lib. 1, tit. 1, cap. 1, arts. 155 and 159, sec. 9; cap. 6, art. 268. In México, as in Spain, divorce was not legally possible until the twentieth century. See, for example, the Cóndigo civil [México, 1884], lib. 1, tit. 5, cap. 5, art. 226. To have allowed divorce, as to permit polygamy, it was believed, would corrupt the family and, perforce, society. Alberto Gaxiola G., "Notas sobre la evoluci'n juridico-social de la familia en México," (thesis, U.A. de México, 1936), p. 28.

18. Cóndigo- penal para el Distrito Federal y territorio de la Baja California... (Chihuahua: Liber'a de Donato Miramontes,1883); Cóndigo penal del estado de Sonora (Hermosillo: Imprento del gobierno, 1884).

19. Cóndigo penal del estado libre y soberano de Chihuahua, primera edn., oficial (Chihuahua: Imprente del gobierno en palacio, 1897), lib. 3, tít. 6, cap. 7, arts. 781-88; Cóndigo penal del estado de Sonora (Hermosillo: Imprenta del gobierno, 1909), lib. 3, tít. 6, cap. 7, arts. 72427.

20. Spain: Nov. recop., lib. 12, tit. 26, art. 1; and the commentaries of Pacheco, El Cóndigo, 4, pp. 292-94; Gomez de la Serna, Elementos, 3, pp. 343-44; and, Rafael Altamira y Crevea, Historia de España y de la civilización Española, rev. edn., 4 vols. (Barcelona: Herederos de Juan Gil¡, Editores, 1913),1, pp. 462-63, sec. 307. México: Cóndigo penal (1871), lib. 3, tít. 6, cap. 6, art. 821; Cóndigo civil End of page 202 (1884), lib. 1, tít. 5, cap. 5, art. 228. See also Manuel Andrade, Cóndigo civil del Distrito Federal y territorios reformado... (México: Botas ' hijo sucs., 1925), p. 41; Gaxiola G., "Notas," 27; and Francisco Gonzalez de la Vega, Derecho penal Mexicanos los delitos, 3 vols. (México: Editorial Porrua, 1944-1945), 3, pp. 232-33.

21. As regards mistresses and their children in Spain, "las barraganas" and "los hijos naturales," see Gomez de la Serna, Elementos, 1, pp. 95 and 308n; 2, pp. 75-82; In México, see the provisions at Cóndigo civil (1884), lib. 4, tit. 1, art. 3236; lib. 4, tit. 4, cap. 3, art. 3592; and the discussion provided by Don Luis Mendez et al., Cóndigo civil del Distrito Federal anotado y concordado con ... otras códigos Mexicanos y extranjeros... (México: Imprenta de Escalante, 1871), p. 31; Mateos Alarcon, La Evolución, pp. 22-41.

22. D. Yndalecio Sanchez et al., Cóndigo penal para el Distrito Federal y territorio de la Baja California ... anotado y concordado (México: Imprenta de Ignacio Escalante y Cia.,1872), p. 11. See also Pacheco, El Cóndigo, 3, pp. 108-09; Gomez de la Serna, Elementos, 1, p. 308n; Escriche, Diccionario, p. 98; "Adulterio," in Antonio de Jesús Lozano, Diccionario razonado de legislación y jurisprudencia Mexicanas... (México: J. Ballescá y Cia., 1905), pp. 95-96; and Gonzalez de la Vega, Derecho, 3, pp. 228.

23. For a sample of the Mormon volley on Victorian hypocrisy, see Journal of Discourses by Brigham Young, President of the Church óf Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints, His Two Counsellors, The Twelve Apostles, and Others, 26 vols. (Liverpool: published by F.D. Richards,1855-1886), 20, pp. 308-09;23, pp. 56-57; "The Way of the World," DN, 2 September 1879; "Discourse," DN, 13 June 1885; "New England Bigamy and Utah Polygamy," DN, 22 June 1882; "Discourse by Apostle Erastus Snow," DN,13 June 1885; "Utter Depravity," DN, 3 December 1885.

24. "Report of the Utah Commission," Report of the Secretary of the Interior; Being Part of the Message and Documents Communicated to the Two Houses of Congress at the Beginning of the Forty-ninth Congress, 5 vols. (Washington, DC: GPO, 1885), 2, pp. 887-88. For rulings by the courts emphasizing this same point, see United States v. Musser, 4 Utah 153, 7 Pac. 389 (1885); Cannon v. United States, 116 U.S. 55 (1886); United States v. Smith, 5 Utah 232,14 Pac. 291 (1887); and Mr. Justice Field's opinion in Davis v. Beason, 133 U.S. 341-342 (1890). As Mark S. Lee has pointed out, it was the high priority attached to the ideal of the monogamous home by Victorian society that best explains the reasoning in the famous Reynolds case of 1879. "Legislating morality: Reynolds v. United States," Sunstone,10 (April 1985), pp. 8-12.

25. It was the problems of widespread immorality and attendant ills that Apostle Moses Thatcher spoke to in recommending Mormon polygamy to the con- } sideration of Mexican readers when he opened the Mormon mission in México City in 1879. La Poligamia Mormona y la monogamia Cristiana comparadas... por el Elder Mois's Thatcher (México: Imprenta de E.D. Orozco y Cia., 1881), pp. 19-33. The question of polygamy's presumed social and hygienic superiority, and the expectation of its eventual displacement of End of page 203 monogamy, was the subiect of the author's "Mormonism's Nineteenth Century Socio-Biological Critique of Monogamy" (paper delivered before the Mormon History Association, Salt Lake City, 2 May 1986).

26. Franklin Spencer Gonzalez, "The Restored Church in México," typewritten manuscript, pp. 23-24, LDSA.

27. "Mormones," El Monitor Republicano, 5 February 1880. The first exploring party of Mormons to enter México in 1876, if we believe the account of their leader and chronicler, were castigated upon their appearance in Paso del Norte as heralds of a plague of immorality. Daniel W. Jones, Forty Years Among the Indians: A True Yet Thrilling Narrative of the Author's Experiences Among the Natives (1890; reprint edn., Los Angeles: Westernlore Press, 1960), pp. 242-43.

28. "Teorías mormonicas," La Patria Diario de México," 30 Julio 1886; "Mormonism in México," Mexican Financier, 31 January 1885; editorial, ibid., 2 May 1885; editorial, ibid., 14 March 1885; and the summary of editorial opinion provided in Warner P. Sutton, "Mormons," p. 576.

29. "Chihuahua antes y hoy," El Correo de Chihuahua, 27 February 1905; "La Poligamia en México," ¡bid., 30 Enero 1906; "Doce mil mormones para México," El Tiempo Diario Católico, 14 September 1906; the letter from the Mexican minister of public works in William Alexander Linn, The Story of the Mormons from the Date of Their Origin to the Year 1901 (New York: Macmillan, 1902), pp. 614-15; and the citations and comments of Mois's González Navarro, La Vida Social: Historia moderna de México. El Porfirato, ed., Cosío Villegas et al., 8 vols. (México: Editorial Hermes, 1948-1965), 4, pp. 179-180.

30. As reported in Sutton, "Mormons," p. 576.

31. "The Mormons in México," Deseret Weekly, 17 January 1891; the interview between Luis Hu ller and the Chicago Tribune, reported in "The Colonies and Railroads in México," DN, 2 February 1891; and that with John W. Young, in "Chihuahua, Sonora and Sinaloa," Mexican Financier, 7 March 1891.

32. Reported in "Information about México," Deseret Weekly, 24 January 1891.

33. "The Mormon Colonies," Mexican Financier, 7 February 1891.

34. "Historical Record, Juarez Stake, 1901-1906," 23 February 1901, LDSA. See also the comments of Apostle John Henry Smith, in "Juarez Stake Historical Record, 1907-1932," 7 March 1908, LDSA.

35. "La Poligamia en México," El Correo de Chihuahua, 30 Enero 1906.

36. A translated copy of the expulsion order is found in Andrew Jenson, compiler, "Juarez Stake Manuscript History and Historical Reports, 1895," 17 March 1885, LDSA.

37. "Mormones," La 'poca, 5 Mayo 1885; "The Mexican plan for settling the Mormon question," Mexican Financier, 2 May 1885; and "Against the Mormons," Salt Lake Herald, 27 September 1885.

38. Helaman Pratt Diaries, 3,12 and 13 May 1885, Helaman Pratt Collection, LDSA.

39. "Ley sobre colonización y deslinde de terrenos baldíos," in Legislación Mexicana; ó, colleción completa de las disposiciones legislativas expedidas desde End of page 204 la independencia de la república ...1867-1910. Edn. oficial...[Vols. 1-34 (1876-1904) by Manuel Dublán and Jos' María Lozano; Vols. 31-42, edited as "Colección Legislativa" by Agustín Verdugo, A. Dublán and A. Esteva], 42 vols. in 50 (México: Imp. gob., 1876-1912),16, pp. 663-67, núm. 8887, 15 Diciembre 1883.

40. Helaman Pratt Diaries, 3, 14 May 1885.

41. Ibid., 3, 22 May 1885.

42. H. Grant Ivins, "Polygamy in México as Practiced by the Mormon Church, 1895-1905," typewritten manuscript, p. 5, Special Collections Department, Marriott Library, University of Utah.

43. Joseph Henry Dean Diary, p. 107, 24 September 1890, LDSA.

44. Although I have not found anything comparable in the case of Canada, it seems likely that copies of the Manifesto were sent to members of the Canadian diplomatic corps in the United States, just as they were to Mexican authorities. The official publication of the Mexican government acknowledged formally that their ambassador in Washington, DC, had received a copy. See Diario oficial, núm. 102, 27 Octobre 1890.

45. At least one American observer, writing at the time of the Mexican Revolution, believed that had Diaz's successor, Francisco I. Madero, survived as president, he would have required that the Mormons discontinue polygamy and obey the law. John Lewin McLeish, Highlights of the Mexican Revolution Some Previously Unwritten History of the Beginning and Growth of Constitutional Government in the Southern Republic (n.p.: Menace Publishing Co., 1918), p. 133.

46. Burton J. Hendrick, "The Mormon revival of polygamy," McClure's Magazine, 36 (January 1911), pp. 459-60.

47. Jenson, "Juarez Stake Manuscript History," 5 June 1885. Later that summer, Apostles Lyman, Young, Taylor and Snow all made additional trips to México City, where they discussed land matters with cabinet members and were con firmed in their sense of welcome as colonists. I find no record dealing with these meetings that would indicate additional conversation about polygamy. Ibid, 3 July 1885, 15 July 1885, 13 August 1885; and Albert R. Lyman, Biography of Francis Marion Lyman 1840-1916 Apostle 1880-1916 (Delta, Utah: published by Melvin A. Lyman, 1958), p. 108.

48. Annie R. Johnson, Heartbeats of Colonia Diaz, p.14. The same story, as told by the daughter of one of the colonists, is found in Elva R. Shumway, oral history, interviewed by Leonard R. Grover, 24 April 1980, Mesa, Arizona, p. 8, BYU. A similar tradition also persists among Mormon Fundamentalists. See Verlan M. LeBaron, The LeBaron Story (Lubbock, Texas: Keels and Co., 1981), p. 45.

49. Those accounts, on which I have relied, concerning early Mormon colonization in Canada are chiefly "Brief Account of the Early History of the Canadian Mission, 1887-1895," Alberta Temple Historical Record, typewritten manuscript, LDSA; and the excellent, but often ignored, study of Lowry Nelson in C.A. Dawson, Group Settlement. Ethnic Communities in Western Canada, Vol. 7, Canadian Frontiers of Settlement (Toronto: Macmillan, 1936), pp. 205. 175-272. I have also consulted Andrew Jenson, "Alberta Stake," Encyclopedia History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Salt Lake City Deseret News Publishing Co., 1941), pp. 8-10; Archie G. Wilcox, "Founding of the Mormon Community in Alberta" (master's thesis, University of Alberta 1950); Lowry Nelson, The Mormon Village: A Pattern and Technique of Land Settlement (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1952), pp. 219-71; Melvin S. Tagg et al., A History of the Mormon Church in Canada (Lethbridge Herald Co., 1968); Lawrence B. Lee, "The Mormons come to Canada, 1887-1902," Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 59 (January 1968), pp. 11-22; and L.A. Rosenvall, "The transfer of Mormon culture to Alberta," American Review of Canadian Studies, 12 (Summer 1982), pp. 51-63.

50. "Not an exodus," Deseret Weekly, 22 June 1889. For yet other examples of the Mormon attempt to mask the connection between the flight of those moving to Canada and the anti-polygamy crusade, see "The `Mormons' in Canada," DN, 26 August 1889; "Mormons in Canada," Deseret Weekly, 7 September 1889; "Mormons in Canada," ibid., 14 December 1889; "Mormons in Canada," DN, 25 November 1889; "The `Mormons' in Canada," ibid., 20 December 1890.

51. Brigham H. Roberts, A Comprehensive History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Century 1, 6 vols. (Salt Lake City: published by the Church, Deseret News Press, 1930), 6, pp. 259 and 276; Austin and Alta Fife, Saints of Sage and Saddle (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956), p. 171; Hilton, "Polygamy in Utah," pp. 6, 13 and 18; Lee, "The Mormons come to Canada," p. 16; Godfrey, "The Coming of the Manifesto," p. 15; J. Max Anderson, The Polygamy Story: Fiction and Fact (Salt Lake City: Publisher's Press, 1979), p. 122; Brian Champion, "The Press, Parliament and polygamy: The Mormons come to Canada," Thetian (1981), p. 24.

52. "An Acte to restrayne all psons from Marriage until their former Wyves and former Husbands be deade," 1 Jac. 1, ch. 11 (1603-04); 26 Geo. 11, ch. 33 (1740); and, 9 Geo. IV, ch. 31, sec. 1(1833 ). See also the overview provided under "Bigamy," Encyclopedia of the Laws of England, ed., E.A. Jelf (London: Sweet and Maxwell, 1938-1941), 2, pp. 73-38.

53. James Cookson, Thoughts on Polygamy, Suggested by the Dictates of Scriptures, Nature, Reason, and Common-sense;... (Winchester: Printed by John Wilkes for the Author, 1782), p. 61.

54. William Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England (Oxford: printed at the Clarendon Press, 1769), 4.13.2.

55. Kenneth L. Cannon II, "A Strange Encounter: The English courts and Mormon polygamy," Brigham Young University Studies, 22 (Winter 1982), pp. 73-83, Another study, in 1966, found the Hyde ruling, with its refusal to entertain such a marriage for purposes of dissolution, general and binding in the British Commonwealth. D. Mendes Da Costa, "Polygamous marriages in the conflict of laws," The Canadian Bar Review, 44 (May 1966), p. 293.

56. See, for example, the "Colonial Laws Validity Act," 28 & 29 Victoria, ch. 63. For his assistance in connection with the Canadian legal background on polygamy, I wish to thank Mr. Vincent M. Del Buono, Senior Counsel, Human Rights and Criminal Law, Department of Justice, Ottawa.

End of page 206

57. "British North America Act," 30 Victoria, ch. 3, sec. 91. The "Consolidation Act,"with its condemnation of bigamy, is at 32-33 Victoria, ch. 20, sec. 58. And the slightly older English prohibition is to be read at 24-25 Victoria, ch. 100, sec. 57, Imp.32-33 Victoria, ch. 20, sec. "An Act Respecting Offenses Relating to the Law of Marriage," 49 Victoria, ch. 161, sec. 4.

59. "An Act to make further provision for the government of the Northwest Territories," 34 Victoria, ch. 16.

60. "Án Ordinance Respecting Marriages," no. 9,1878, in David Laird [lieutenantgovernor], Ordinances of the Northwest Territories, Passed in the Years 1878 and 1879 (Regina: printed by Nicholas Flood Davin, 1884), p. 45.

61. Untitled, Edmonton Bulletin, 3 September 1887; untitled, ibid., 31 March 1888; and the comments of M. Doyon in Canada, House of Commons, 28 Debates: 980, 3 April 1889.

62. The Mormons were not without journalistic support. See "Mormons All Right," Manitoba Daily Free Press, 3 January 1888; and the account of the visit to Mormon settlements by Minister of Customs Mackenzie Bowell, in "That Mormon Visit," Macleod Gazette, 31 October 1889. Some Mormons were reported to have told all who inquired that they had "eschewed polygamy." "Lee's Creek Mormons," Calgary Tribune, 14 November 1888.

63. Editorial, Winnipeg Free Press, 18 October 1889. Also, "That Mormon Visit," Macleod Gazette, 31 October 1889; untitled, ibid., 6 February 1890; "Mormons in Canada," Edmonton Bulletin, 21 December.1889; editorial, Regina Leader, 17 February 1890; editorial, Saskatchewan Herald, 19 March 1890. A brief account of the surveillance conducted by the NorthWest Mounted Police and their continuing suspicions of the Mormons is found in R.C. Macleod, The NWMP and Law Enforcement 1873 1905 (Toronto and Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, 1976), pp. 155-56.

64. 53 Victoria, ch. 37, sec. 11, subsections a-d. This enactment was incorporated into Canada's first Criminal Code (55-56 Victoria, ch. 29) in the Revised Statutes of Canada, part 5, sec. 278, pp. 104-05 (1892) (hereafter RSC). Despite the Canadian statute's greater particularity, there is no doubt that it was inspired by the purpose, if not the language, of the Edmunds law. See the comments of Sir John Thompson, minister of justice and author of the law, in House of Commons, 31 Debates, 3173, 10 April 1890; and James Crankshaw, The Criminal Code of Canada and the Canada Evidence Act..., rev. edn. (Toronto: Carswell, 1910), p. 349. To assure further that plural marriages as performed by the Mormons, could not legally occur, an 1892 law was added prohibiting the "solemnization" of any marriage except by those officers properly authorized by the state. 55-56 Victoria, ch. 29, sec. 279; RSC, part 22, sec. 279, p. 288 (1892). That this was aimed directly at polygamous Mormons from Utah, see W.J. Tremeear, The Criminal Code and the Law of Criminal Evidence in Canada... (Toronto: Canada Law Book Company, 1908), p. 255. The United States Congress had End of page 207 placed a similar provision in the Edmunds-Tucker Act: U.S., Statutes atLarge, Vol. 24, ch. 397, sec. 9 (1887).

65. 55-56 Victoria, ch. 29, sec. 279; RSC, part 6, sec. 311, p. 255 (1892).

66. Jessie L. Embry, "Exiles for the principle: LDS polygamy in Canada," Dialogue, 18 (Fall 1985), pp. 108-16; idem, "Two Legal Wives: Mormon Polygamy in Canada, the United States and México" in this volume.

67. John Davidson, "The foreign population of the Canadian West," The Economic journal, 12 (March 1902), p. 102; all of Edgar E. Folk, The Mormon Monster, or, The Story of Mormonism... (Chicago and Toronto: Fleming H. Revell Co., 1900); Herbert Wesley Toombs, Mormonism (Toronto: The Board of Home Missions and Social Service, Presbyterian Church in Canada, 1916), pp. 26-27; the brief sensation created when marriages performed by Mormon elders in Toronto in 1924 were temporarily invalidated, "Journal History of the Church," 18 June and 1 July 1924, LDSA; and the chronicle of anti-Mormon publications for this period provided by Howard Palmer in his "Polygamy and Progress: The Reaction to Mormons in Canada" in this volume.

68. See J.H.C. Morris, "The recognition of polygamous marriages in English law," Harvard Law Review 66 (April 1953), pp. 961-1012; and T.C. Hartley, "Bigamy in the conflict of laws," International and Comparative Law Quarterly, 16 (July 1967), pp. 680-703.

69. For example, RSC, part 6, ch.146, sec. 310, pp. 253-54 (1906); and, in the 1927 general revision of the Criminal Code, it was preserved in "Offenses Against Conjugal Rights," RSC, part 6, sec. 310, pp. 404-05.

70. See testimony given before the master in chancery, as published in "The church cases," Deseret Weekly, 24 October 1891. For more denials, later in the decade, see "The Brigham Young of 1896," DN, 10 October 1896; "Polygamy not the Issue," ibid., 22 October 1898; "The Manifesto," ibid., 15 July 1899; "Polygamy and Unlawful Cohabitation," ibid., 8 January 1900.

71. U.S., Congress, Senate, Proceedings Before the Committee on Privileges and Elections of the United States Senate in the Matter of the Protests Against the Right of Non. Reed Smoot, a Senator from the State of Utah, to Hold His Seat, 59th Cong., 1st Sess., Doc. no. 486, 4 vols. (Washington, DC, GPO, 1906), 1, pp. 102, 143, 177, 178, 184, 211, 317-18, and 485.

72. Clark, Messages, 4, p. 151.

73. For example, James B. Allen and Glen M. Leonard, The Story of the Latterday Saints (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Company, 1976), p. 278; Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton, The Mormon Experience A History of the Latter-day Saints (New York: Alfred A. Knopf,1979), p. 185 (in the case of the latter volume, see Bitton's comment that he and Arrington were "advised" to excise a chapter on polygamy from their book); "Ten years in Camelot: A personal memoir," Dialogue, 16 (Autumn 1983), p. 13.

74. See above at note 51. See also First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, "Official Statement," in Clark, Messages, 5, pp. 324 and 330; John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations: Aids to Faith in a Modern Day (Salt Lake City: The Bookcraft Co., 1943), p. 310; the

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comments and quotations provided in William E. Berrett and Alma P. Burton, eds., Readings in LDS Church History from Original Manuscripts..., 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1953-1958), 3, pp. 109, 117 and 124; Hyrum M. Smith and Janne M. Sjodahl, eds., The Doctrine and Covenants Containing Revelations Given to Joseph Smith, Jr., The Prophet with an Introduction and Historical and Exegetical Notes, rev. edn. (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1957), p. 837; Paul E. Reimann, Plural Marriage Limited (Salt Lake City: Utah Printing Co., 1974), pp. 28-29, 93,109 and 178-79; and the astonishing statement by a daughter of President Joseph F. Smith, who claimed to have researched the subject, in Edith Smith Patrick, oral history, interviewed by Leonard Grover, 19 July 1980, Orem, Utah, p. 20, LDS Polygamy Oral History Project, BYU.

75. Roberts, A Comprehensive History, 6, pp. 259 and 276; Ralph B. Keeler, "Un estudio social, económico, y educativo de las colonias mormonas en el Estado de Chihuahua" (Col. Juárez, Chih., México, n.d.); Albert Kenyon Wagner, "Chihuahua, Our Home" (field project, master's degree, Brigham Young University, 1957), p. 49; Russell R. Rich, Ensign to the Nations: A History of the LDS Church from 1846 to 1972 (Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Publications, 1972), p. 406; Clifford J. Stratton and Marsha Romney Stratton, "Catherine's Faith," Ensign, 11 (September 1981), pp. 53-54; LaVon B. Whetten and Don L. Searle, "Once a haven, still a home," ibid., 15 (August 1985), p. 43; Glenna M. Hansen, "México: a Timeless past merges with a teeming present," This People, 4 (February/ March 1983), pp. 31-34. Canada: Wilcox, "Founding of the Mormon Community in Alberta," pp. 9-10, 15, 120 and 133; Tagg et al., A History of the Mormon Church in Canada, pp. 24 and 49-53; William E. Berrett, The Latter-day Saints A Contemporary History of the Church of Jesus Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1985), pp. 272-73 and 306-07; Richard O. Cowan, The Church in the Twentieth Century (Salt Lake City: Bookcraft,1985), p. 32; Dean Hughes, The Mormon Church: A Basic History (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1986), p. 184; and Don L. Searle, "Cardston harvesting a pioneer heritage," Ensign 17 (April 1987), pp. 36-41.

76. This was due chiefly to work by John Home Blackmore and Solon Low. See 2-3 Elizabeth II, ch. 51, sec. 243 (1953-54). I am indebted to Professor Brigham Young Card of the University of Alberta for bringing this revision to my attention. I also wish to acknowledge Mrs. Dawn Monroe of the Public Archives of Canada in Ottawa for further assistance on the subject.

77. Thomas E. Cheney, Austin E. Fife and Juanita Brooks, eds., Lore of Faith and Folly (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1971), p. 133.

End of page 209

Mormon Polygamy[Polygny] in the U.S., México and Canada:
A Legal and Historiographical Review

Began as a revelation dictated to William Clayton by Joseph Smith Jr. on July 12, 1843

"Institutions, like men, can only be comprehended
when the integrity of their full experience over time is understood."

Compiled by Lucy Brown Archer

From "The Mormon Presence in Canada" USU, 1990

By Blaine Carmon Hardy

ORSON PRATT BROWN FAMILY UPDATES

ORSON PRATT BROWN 1863-1946

ORSON'S JOURNALS AND BIOGRAPHIES

ORSON PRATT BROWN'S PARENTS
- Captain James Brown 1801-1863

- Phebe Abbott Brown Fife 1831-1915

- Colonel William Nicol Fife - Stepfather 1831-1915

ORSON'S GRANDPARENTS

ORSON PRATT BROWN'S 5 WIVES

ORSON PRATT BROWN'S 35 CHILDREN

ORSON'S SIBLINGS from MOTHER PHEBE

ORSON'S 28 SIBLINGS from JAMES BROWN

ORSON'S 17 SIBLINGS from STEPFATHER FIFE

ORSON PRATT BROWN'S IN-LAWS

INDEX OF MORMON COLONIES IN MEXICO

INDEX OF MORMON MEXICAN MISSION

INDEX TO POLYGAMY IN UTAH, ARIZONA, MEXICO

INDEX TO MEX. REVOLUTION & THE MORMON EXODUS

INDEX OF SURNAMES

MAPS OF THE MEXICAN COLONIES

BROWN FAMILY MAYFLOWER CONNECTION 1620

BROWN's in AMERICAN REVOLUTION 1775-1783

BROWN's in AMERICAN CIVIL WAR 1861-1865

BROWN's in WARS AFTER 1865

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Mormon Polygamy[Polygny] in the U.S., México and Canada: A Legal and Historiographical Review