Description

Mormon polygamy has always been thorny, both for those whose lives it touched and for observers trying to understand it from the outside. In this session, we explore this historical briar patch from the perspectives of three people whose lives were directly affected by the realities of Nauvoo polygamy and by the controversies that followed thereafter. Amanda Hendrix-Komoto will examine the perspectives of Agnes and Ina Coolbrith and their disagreements with Joseph F. Smith regarding plural marriage. Mary Ann Clements will discuss Sarah Lawrence’s alleged 1872 denial of her Nauvoo sealing to Joseph Smith in historical context with Sarah’s evolving perspective on plural marriage later in life. Seth Bryant will examine Isaac Sheen, an early convert to the Reorganization who directly observed polygamy in Nauvoo and disagreed with Joseph Smith III regarding his father’s participation in plural marriage. Each example provides a lens through which we can better understand how individuals experienced Nauvoo polygamy and the traumatic legacy it left behind. These examples also showcase how the application of the academic historiographical method vs alternative epistemic frameworks yield different interpretations of the impacts of polygamy in the lives of those who experienced its realities. John Hamer and John-Charles Duffy will join for the panel discussion.

Mary Ann Clements is a trained genealogist and an independent historian. She enjoys using her genealogical skills to reveal stories of lesser-known figures and families in Mormon history. Her research interests also include Nauvoo counterfeiting and forged Missouri deeds. Mary Ann has been interviewed on the Sunstone Mormon History Podcast, Gospel Tangents, and Mormon Book Reviews.

Amanda Hendrix-Komoto is an associate professor at Montana State University, where she directs the graduate program in the Department of History and Philosophy. In 2022, she published her first book, Imperial Zions: Religion, Family, and Race in the American West and the Pacific with the University of Nebraska Press. Several institutions, including the Huntington Library and the Charles Redd Center at Brigham Young University, have funded her research. The Mormon History Association also gave her article “Mahana, You Naked” an award for best article of the year. She is currently finishing a biography of Joseph Smith’s niece Ina Coolbrith and has begun a biography of Minerva Teichert.

Seth Bryant is the associate pastor of the Salt Lake City congregation of Community of Christ, a former Director of the Kirtland Temple Historic Site, and a former US Navy Chaplain. He has graduate degrees from the University of Florida and Vanderbilt University. He coauthored a chapter on Conversion and Retention in Mormonism in the Oxford Handbook of Religious Conversion, and published with Sunstone a pointed analysis of the apologetics in the LDS Gospel Topics Essays.

John Hamer is a American-Canadian historian, mapmaker, and Community of Christ minister. He holds degrees from BYU and the University of Michigan and has served as the Executive Director and later President of the John Whitmer Historical Association, the Religious Studies Coordinator and a current board member of Sunstone, and as a minister for the Centre Place congregation of Community of Christ in Toronto. He is a leading expert on various divergent groups of the Restoration movement.

John-Charles Duffy is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Comparative Religion at Miami University in Ohio. He is a scholar of American religious history, specializing in religious diversity, Mormonism, and the intersection of religion as U.S. culture. He holds a PhD in Religious Studies from UNC-Chapel Hill and a MA in English from the University of Utah. He has also served as an editor for Sunstone Magazine and co-authored Mormonism: The Basics, published by Routledge.