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Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?
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Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?
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- Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?
- Oliver Cowdery perceived the relationship between Joseph and Fanny as a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair"
- Even hostile accounts of the relationship between Joseph and Fanny report a marriage or sealing
Question: Did some of Joseph Smith's associates believe that he had an affair with Fanny Alger?
Oliver Cowdery perceived the relationship between Joseph and Fanny as a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair"
Some of Joseph's associates, most notably Oliver Cowdery, perceived Joseph's association with Fanny as an affair rather than a plural marriage. Oliver, in a letter to his brother Warren, asserted that "in every instance I did not fail to affirm that which I had said was strictly true. A dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger's was talked over in which I strictly declared that I had never deserted from the truth in the matter, and as I supposed was admitted by himself."[1]
Gary J. Bergera, an advocate of the "affair" theory, wrote:
I do not believe that Fanny Alger, whom [Todd] Compton counts as Smith’s first plural wife, satisfies the criteria to be considered a “wife.” Briefly, the sources for such a “marriage” are all retrospective and presented from a point of view favoring plural marriage, rather than, say, an extramarital liaison…Smith’s doctrine of eternal marriage was not formulated until after 1839–40. [2]
There are several problems with this analysis. While it is true that sources on Fanny are all retrospective, the same is true of many early plural marriages. Fanny's marriage has more evidence than some. Bergera says that all the sources about Fanny's marriage come "from a point of view favoring plural marriage," but this claim is clearly false.
Even hostile accounts of the relationship between Joseph and Fanny report a marriage or sealing
For example, Fanny's marriage was mentioned by Ann Eliza Webb Young, a later wife of Brigham Young's who divorced him, published an anti-Mormon book, and spent much of her time giving anti-Mormon, anti-polygamy lectures. Fanny stayed with Ann Eliza's family after leaving Joseph and Emma's house, and both Ann Eliza and her father Chauncey Webb [3] refer to Joseph's relationship to Fanny as a "sealing." [4] Eliza also noted that the Alger family "considered it the highest honor to have their daughter adopted into the prophet's family, and her mother has always claimed that she [Fanny] was sealed to Joseph at that time." [5] This would be a strange attitude to take if their relationship was a mere affair. And, the hostile Webbs had no reason to invent a "sealing" idea if they could have made Fanny into a mere case of adultery.
It seems clear, then, that Joseph, Fanny's family, Levi Hancock, and even hostile witnesses saw their relationship as a marriage, albeit an unorthodox one. The witness of Chauncey Webb and Ann Eliza Webb Young make it untenable to claim that only a later Mormon whitewash turned an affair into a marriage.