RLDS Church History Search

Chapter Context

RLDS History Context Results

Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 20 Page: 381 (~1864)

Read Previous Page / Next Page

381 "I visited the saints at Montrose and was kindly aided there. I visited Nauvoo and shared the kind and generous hospitality of President Joseph Smith, his wife, and mother, whom I found to be plain, unassuming people, given to hospitality without display. I could see no visible evidence of pretensions to holiness, none of the 'Stand by, I am holier than thou' spirit, but they seemed to move among their fellows as though the equals of any, and their deportment made it plain that they considered all men their equals who lived an honest, upright life.

"Sister Emma, the mother of Joseph, expressed her great pleasure at my going on the English mission, saying also, 'I always loved the English people.' The words were uttered with such deep earnestness that I felt their truth. She stood before me as a noble specimen of true womanhood, and I was glad to have formed her acquaintance.

"In conversation with Joseph I remarked, 'Brother Joseph, how shall I meet the charge of the Brighamites when they declare, as their leaders teach them, that your father practiced polygamy?' His answer was about as follows:-

"'Brother Derry, I was but about twelve years of age when my father was killed, and I am not supposed to know all the privacies of my father's family, but this I do know, that there were other females in Father's family besides my mother. I knew them before my father's death, I knew them two years afterwards, and I do know that during those years they never bore children. Now the whole world knows that my father was a proper man. My mother, of course, bore him children, and if these other women had stood in the relation of wives to him, or had been used as such, it is reasonable to suppose they too would have borne children.'

"To my mind the answer was decisive, especially when I remembered that the pretended claim of polygamy was that it was for the purpose of 'raising up a righteous seed.'

"I had not personally known the Martyr, and hence could not speak from personal knowledge, but this was, to my mind, a clincher for the Brighamites. The facts were that

(page 381)

Read Previous Page / Next Page