19 Joseph married many extra spouses and authorized other Latter-day Saints to practice marriage that is plural. The practice distribute gradually in the beginning. By 1844, when Joseph died, approximately 29 men and 50 women had entered into plural marriage, in addition to Joseph and his wives june. As soon as the Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, at the least 196 males and 521 ladies had entered into plural marriages. 20 individuals within these early marriages that are plural to help keep their participation private, though they anticipated a period as soon as the training will be publicly recognized.
Nevertheless, rumors distribute. A couple of males unscrupulously utilized these rumors to seduce ladies to become listed on them in a unauthorized training often known as “spiritual wifery.” Whenever this ended up being found, the males had been take off through the Church. 21 The rumors prompted users and leaders to issue very carefully worded denials that denounced religious wifery and polygamy but had been quiet by what Joseph Smith as well as others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural wedding. 22 The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no law that is marital than monogamy while implicitly making available the chance that people, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do this. 23