YOUR FATHER'S FIRST WIFE
You seem to feel sore over the statement that your father's "first wife died broken hearted and insane"; and you add, "If you mean to insinuate that this condition, if true, was the result of any act whatever on the part of my father, it is also slanderously false." I insinuate nothing; let the public judge the facts. Your father's first wife was his cousin; she refused to consent to additional wives, and when he persisted in marrying the Lambson sisters, she obtained a divorce in California. Julina and Edna Lambson were sisters and were married to Joseph F. Smith on the same day.[8]
Number of wives married to Joseph F. Smith since 1865: 6
Number of children born to him in 38 years: 42
Number of children born since plural marriage was prohibited in 1890: 13
Children of Julina Lambson Smith: 2
Children of Sarah Richards Smith: 2
Children of Edna Lambson Smith: 2
Children of Alice Kimball Smith: 3
Children of Mary Schwartz Smith: 4
Estimated income available for supporting five establishments: $75,000
Corporations, banks and factories of which Joseph F. Smith is a director: 20
The only Mormon Apostle who surpasses the record of President Smith is M. W. Merrill, with 8 wives, 45 children, and 156 grandchildren.—Collier's for March 26, 1894 [1904].
* * * * *
While in Utah I was informed that your father's first wife died broken hearted and insane. God and civilization know that a woman who loved her husband from youth up has enough to break her heart and send her insane when her husband will marry two other women, both sisters, in one day.
Perhaps you will be assisted to view the matter as I do, should you read the following in the Book of Mormon, Jacob 2:6, 7. Here it is stated, in consequence of polygamy, "ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives." Does this make the prophet an asperser or a scandalmonger?
I have answered your letter as it appeared in the Toronto Star as fully as space would permit.
Respectfully,
R. C. Evans.
Toronto, Ontario, March 1, 1905.[9]