Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage: A Discussion

by Joseph Fielding Smith; R. C. Evans

Joshua W. Roberts, Notary Public.

Witnessed by:

James H. Hart,

Samuel Harrison.

AFFIDAVIT OF JOHN W. RIGDON

State of Utah, County of Salt Lake. ss.

John W. Rigdon, being duly sworn, says: I am the son of Sidney Rigdon, deceased. Was born at Mentor, in the State of Ohio, in the year 1830, and am now over seventy-five years of age. My father, Sidney Rigdon, joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that year, and was in 1833 ordained to be Joseph Smith's first counselor which position he held up to the time Joseph the Prophet was killed, at Carthage jail, in 1844. That Joseph Smith and Sidney Rigdon moved from Kirtland, with their families, to the State of Missouri, during the winter of 1837, but Rigdon did not reach Far West, in the State of Missouri, until the last of April, 1838. That during the troubles in Missouri, in the year 1838, Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, his brother, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight and others, whose names I do not now remember were arrested and imprisoned in Liberty jail, about forty miles from the village of Far West, in Caldwell County, Missouri, where they all remained incarcerated for several months. That while said Joseph Smith, Hyrum Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Lyman Wight and others were prisoners in said Liberty jail, as aforesaid I, with my mother, wife of Sidney Rigdon, Emma Smith, wife of said Joseph Smith, and Joseph Smith, son of Joseph and Emma Smith, went to see the said prisoners during the latter part of the winter of 1838. We all went together in the same carriage and came home together. We stayed at Liberty jail with the prisoners three days and then left for home. The story that is being told by some of the members of the Reorganized Church, at Lamoni, that young Joseph Smith, now president of the said Reorganized Church, was ordained by his father, Joseph Smith, to be the leader of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints after his father's death, is not true, for I know that no such ordination took place while we were at Liberty jail; that if any such ordination had taken place I most certainly should have known it and remembered it, as I was with young Joseph, the Prophet's son, all the time we were there. If Joseph Smith had ordained his son Joseph to be the leader of the Church at his death, he would have done so in a manner that there could have been no doubt about it. Both of his counselors were then in prison with him, namely, Sidney Rigdon and Hyrum Smith, and it would have been in order for the prophet to have called upon them to assist him in such an ordination had it taken place, and a record of the same made in the Church books, so that all members of the Church might have known that such an ordination had taken place. But nothing of the kind appears in the Church books. My father and mother lived a good many years after the incarceration at Liberty jail, and I, who lived near my father, never heard my father or my mother mention that such an ordination ever took place in Liberty jail; and as I know myself that no such ordination took place in Liberty jail, and inasmuch as it is not claimed that an ordination of this character was bestowed at any other place, therefore I deny it as an untruth and a story gotten up by the Reorganized Church for effect.

Besides all this, if Joseph Smith, the President of the Reorganized Church was ordained while in Liberty jail, why did he, sixteen years after his father's death, receive an ordination under the hands of William Marks, William W. Blair, and Zenas H. Gurley? Would it not seem that one ordination (and that too, said to have been by his own father, the President of the Church) should have been sufficient? But further Wm. Marks, Wm. W. Blair and Zenas H. Gurley had all been excommunicated from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (excepting William W. Blair, who never belonged to it) before they "ordained" young Joseph to be President of the Reorganized Church, and therefore they did not have the authority to ordain him. The whole story of his being ordained by anyone having authority to do so is too preposterous to be entertained for a single moment, and should be rejected by all who hear such a story mentioned.

As to the truth of the doctrine of polygamy being introduced by the Prophet Joseph Smith, deponent further says: Joseph Smith was absolute so far as spiritual figures were concerned, and no man would have dared to introduce the doctrine of polygamy or any other new doctrine into the "Mormon" Church at the city of Nauvoo during the years 1843 and 1844, or at any other place or time, without first obtaining Joseph Smith's consent. If anyone had dared to have done such a thing he would have been brought before the High Council and tried, and if proven against him, he would have been excommunicated from the Church, and that would have ended polygamy forever, and would also have ended the man who had dared to introduce such a doctrine without the consent of the Prophet Joseph.

And deponent further says: Joseph the Prophet, at the City of Nauvoo, Illinois, some time in the latter part of the year 1843, or the first part of the year 1844, made a proposition to my sister, Nancy Rigdon, to become his wife. It happened in this way: Nancy had gone to Church, meeting being held in a grove near the temple lot on which the "Mormons" were then erecting a temple, an old lady friend who lived alone invited her to go home with her, which Nancy did. When they got to the house and had taken their bonnets off, the old lady began to talk to her about the new doctrine of polygamy which was then being taught, telling Nancy, during the conversation, that it was a surprise to her when she first heard it, but that she had since come to believe it to be true. While they were talking Joseph Smith the Prophet came into the house, and joined them, and the old lady immediately left the room. It was then that Joseph made the proposal of marriage to my sister. Nancy flatly refused him, saying if she ever got married she would marry a single man or none at all, and thereupon took her bonnet and went home, leaving Joseph at the old lady's house. Nancy told father and mother of it. The story got out and it became the talk of the town that Joseph had made a proposition to Nancy Rigdon to become his wife, and that she refused him. A few days after the occurrence Joseph Smith came to my father's house and talked the matter over with the family, my sister, Mrs. Athalia Robinson also being present, who is now alive. The feelings manifested by our family on this occasion were anything but brotherly or sisterly, more especially on the part of Nancy, as she felt that she had been insulted. A day or two later Joseph Smith returned to my father's house, when matters were satisfactorily adjusted between them, and there the matter ended. After that Joseph Smith sent my father to Pittsburgh, Pa., to take charge of a little church that was there, and Ebenezer Robinson, who was then the Church printer, or at least had been such, as he was the printer of the paper in Kirtland, Ohio, and a printer by trade, was to go with him to print a paper there, and nine days before Joseph Smith was shot at Carthage we started, reaching Pittsburgh the day before he was killed.