There are 100s of polygamist groups and 1000s of lone plyg families in the Utah/Arizona area and other places.

Many of them are like the well know FLDS. They live in isolation and don't attend mainstream mormon wards. Some others do have members who go to mainstream morg churches in addition to participating in their plyg groups and family prayers and family nights.

These groups are so many and varied that some do spill over into the "normal" ward families.

I know this because this was my experience growing up. My family harbored polygamists and held meetings in our living room and still had regular church callings and attended public school. "The group" attended wards in Farmington, Ogden, Roy, bountiful, Clearfield, Murray and other towns and got together with the "prophet" for meetings and campouts.

My polygamist brother is in a "normal" ward in Mona and many of his polygamist kids still attend wards throughout Utah.

He's just one example. I've met many others who say this is fairly common practice.

Face it. Not all TBMs are exactly alike. Not all exmos are alike. Not all Jackmos are alike. And not all plygs are alike. They don't all wear praire dresses and hair styles. They don't all stay cooped up on their compounds. Some of them attend public schools and many of them attend the same wards as the posters on RfM.

No one in the ward I attended as a child thought I was living in a plyg compound. I dressed as they did and learned my Articles of Faith and attended dead dunking with them. I rode the school bus and cranked out the same homework they did.

The polygamists who attended meetings in our living room were generally like us. A few were found out and excommunicated. Most were not. Bishops would rather not deal with this issue and don't go out of their way to find out who is a polygamist and who is not.

Wardmembers tend to be gullible and assume everyone around them is like them. We all know of families who look picture perfect but who hide secrets, and polygamy is one of those secrets no one notices when they're busy doing talks and lessons, making Rice Crispy bars and cleaning church toilets.

The mormon church has a long history of lying and it still goes on. My reputation is more credible than that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2012 08:05AM by Cheryl.

Wow! An old roommate of mine has a sister who lives in Mona. I haven't talked to that roommate in years. Mona sure isn't a very big place and I've never heard of anyone from Mona other than this woman.

I believe your stories. It doesn't surprise me at all that there are polygamists living amongst the mormons.

I live VERY close to Paradise,Utah, and I do know that there are polygamists there. One of my friend's ex-SIL's joined the polygamists in Paradise.

I worked in a ward calling for a few years with a guy who was later found out to be a polyg. I had no idea. He hid it for years.

You are unbelievably right. I grew up in south SL valley and there were MANY kids who came from polygamist families, looked normal, went to seminary etc. at my high school. We had no clue they were polygamists at the time. Wifey and I used to teach primary 13 years ago in a downtown SLC ward and one boys father would show up once a month to be with his family; they all came to church regularly without him. It was a big deal for them when he would do his paternal duties and make an appearance. I dated some girls who came from polygamist families (and hated it); it was amazing to get older and discover just how many I'd known.

When I was younger and lived in Sandy back in the 60s, Warren Jeffs who is a year older than me attended school at Mt Jordan Jr high. He pretty much corralled all the other kids when it was time to be picked up at the end of the day.
Later on, one of his brothers, Blaine, was stationed in Germany in the army near where I was stationed and he attended the local servicemens branch regularly and participated in activities.
In Sandy, we also had the Barlow family. Two of the girls were friends with my sister, atteneded primary and MIA and participated in all activities just like other members.
I suppose they are everywhere, heck even my own dad had a second family that he kept hidden from my mother for over ten years, and then she dumped him when she found out about it.
When we moved back to Ephraim, Harmston was just getting his group started up. Since then people I grew up with have joined in with him, given all their property to his Everlasting Church or whatever he calls it. Like PT Barnum said, there is a fool born every minute.

Dh's family is from Sandy. FIL attended school with Jeffs and Dh's aunt is a Barlow.

Jim Harmstrom lived in my wife's ward in Harrisville, UT (Before we were married.) In the early 80s, he was our realtor who helped us purchase a home in Layton. This was all before he went to Manti.

My daughter always talked about where the polygs lived out in Herriman. This was before all the new homes were built out there.

I think it's really common in Utah although the above is the only first hand knowledge I have.

Barry

One of my best friends in elementary school was a Barlow. She kind of disappeared when we started middle school.

I had no idea at the time. I thought she just really liked wearing skirts and loved her long braids. It wasn't until years later that I put it together...

We had a plyg family living down the street from us when we lived in Murray, UT.

The bishop forwarned us not to "fellowship" them into activity, which I thought was rather unchristian at the time.

He said they wanted to be considered like normal folks, but that they were living in sin, so we couldn't possibly accept them into the ward.

Wow - how different those words seem today!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2012 01:43PM by PapaKen.

Cheryl! Thanks for sharing all of this. I always felt the FLDS groups were shafted, and followed correct church doctrine. Even though its a moot point now! Especially all the sacrifices early church women made. The Book "In Sacred Loneliness" really opened my eye.

I remember visiting my sister who lived in Utah before we actually moved here. We were going to Holladay to visit her fil. We passed a huge house on one of the corners with lots of trees. She pointed out that a polygamist family lived there. You could see the back of their balcony from the road and they wore the long dresses and hair high. I was really taken back by that and asked why nobody did anything. SHe informed me then, that there are too many families like that in Utah.

I started reading any and all book I could get my hands on about modern polygamy. It was so heartbreaking but also very interesting.

I really enjoy hearing your first hand accounts too Cheryl. Thanks

I appreciate your kind words.

It's my opinion that the law needs to come down hard on the FLDS and any group as abusive as they are. Unfortunately, atrocities will continue to intensify and increase as long as they're left to fester.

Warren Jeffs is a monster who committed unspeakable abuse on children when he was the headmaster of his school in SLC. I hope he rots in torment.

Cheryl, what is your best estimate of (say) the Utah population that lives in polygamy? Or of just the Mormon population, either in Utah or elsewhere?

We agreed that it must be hundreds of thousands by now. We both said it's impossible to estimate since polygamists lie and many of them don't record marriages or births.

I'm guessing that 25 to 30% of wards have polygamist members participation and far less than half of plygs attend ward functions.

Amazing. I had no idea. This thread feels like the tip of some iceberg. Where's the memoir Cheryl?

I refer to a lot of them as "urban polygamous" groups, only because they are blended in. My wife thinks I'm nuts to insist that there are secret polygamists among them, but there always have been. We knew one woman in the past who had gotten out of a secret polygamy group, divorced her husband, then married a regular LDS guy in the Air Force.

I also think that this is why the "mainstream" (oxymoronic, ain't it) LDS church is so soft on polygamists and normally sides with them, and why Utahns and Arizonans take no police or court action against polygamy.

Texas takes it seriously.

Very interesting information. When I lived in Utah, I was suspicious a couple of times of families. I didn't know them well but something seemed strange. I found out they were very right wing-fundamentalist types (not formally that I knew but just their views, the way they looked, etc.). It wouldn't be surprising to me if they were polygamists.

How does a right wing fundamentalist look like? Any signs that I can go by?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/10/2013 02:40PM by buddyjoe.

buddyjoe Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> How does a right wing fundamentalist look like?
> Any signs that I can go by?
======================================
Umm... the confederate flag in the back window of their pick-um-up truck?

The tattered and weathered Elect Romney 2012 sign in their yard?

The bumper sticker that says something about Barack HUSSEIN Obama next to the REPENT sticker?

I wonder if they hafta scrub church toilets too...?

I had never really even considered that possibility before but it makes sense. I'll have to reconsider some of the families from my home ward...there was one that was constantly moving which makes me wonder

I have said this before. My convert daughter's best friend in HS had a dad with another family.He would go back and forth. She was a Mormon girl who was real cool and never pushed Mormonism on my daughter....later other Mormon kids did. Well her dad was only around half the time. She did not like her DAD. He was so mean and would not give his girls money for anything so they worked a lot.This girl worked from 2pm -10pm her Sr. YR in HS. She had to.He gave his son everything. This girl told my daughter about her DAD so this is a fact. And we live in Vegas. He was a wealthy man who was into banking, loans, etc.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/29/2012 06:18PM by honestone.

Do they still believe that Adam was God, Cain and Ham were cursed, sex with non whites is punishable with death, the garden of Eden was located in Missouri, etc., etc.

Also, probably many others like moon men with Quaker hats, getting out of bed with the right foot, the moon turning red to signal the end of times and more.

A couple of my classmates at Forest School (9th East and 21st South, SLC) claimed that a large home across the street from the playground was a polygamist home. Years later a missionary companion confirmed that this indeed was a home of one of the families of Joseph Musser, her grandfather.

The husband of another former missionary comp joined a polygamist sect after they'd had 6 or 7 kids together. She divorced him.

My Jr. Gleaner teacher worked in real estate while putting her husband through school. She once told us that the realtors estimated that there were at least 30,000 polygamists living in SL and Davis counties at that time. This was around 1960.

Years later I was surprised to find out that my parents had gone to high school with Rulon Jeffs, who later joined or founded the FLDS. (Warren's Dad.) I was even more surprised to learn that Rulon once lived in our neighborhood--just a block or two from Forest School. Not quite in our ward boundaries. My folks never mentioned him, and I don't think they knew what he was up to.

We lived in Sugarhouse Stake, one of the older stakes. Knowing what I know now, I suspect there were a number of these families living within the ward and stake boundaries--but this wasn't something much talked about at the time, except for the above. Polygamy was just part of our "history."

Interesting Cheryl. I'm so sorry you had to grow up that way. That was one of my biggest nightmares as a kid.

I now wonder about my sisters family. I felt really weird when I stayed with her family a few years ago. Her husband seemed to be grooming me to be a second wife. It was weird. My sister was so jealous whenever he was around us, she cried when he complimented me, " BOO HOO I WISH YOU WERE PROUD OF ME LIKE THAT!"

He would even insist on taking care of all my mechanical needs on my car, he shoved the snow out so I could get to work and constantly was protective of me. Now I see, I think I was being groomed. Even the other families at tscc looked at us funny when I would sit with them at church. Lol. Not a chance in hell "bro."

My sister's in laws have polygamists in their family. The plygs tend to live in multiple trailers and blend with other Mormons socially.

OMG! Not a Mormon but I have a TON of family in the Mona area. My great grandmother was from there and I used to visit as a kid. Never hear that town named anywhere so I had to respond. It IS rumored that there was polygamy in my family but no one really talked about it. We used to joke that everytime we went to Utah we found MORE people we were related to. CRAZY!

I've thought about this a lot. I know dozens of LDS folks and I can't imagine that any of them are polygamists. I have known them for 30 plus years in some cases, been in their homes and their kids have grown up with our kids.

Living in So. CA for most of our married life turned out to be very different from our early years living in Married Student Housing at BYU in Provo. Coming from Oregon, that was culture shock for sure for me!

Interestingly, from all the family research done on my husband's side that has strong Mormon roots, none of it shows any polygamy, and some family members have done a boat load of research.

My SIL had a BF in high school (about 2000-01) who came from a polygamist family. THey were in CA and the other family (or families) were in UT. The dad was supposedly a truck driver so it didn't seem odd he was gone alot. Only my SIL knew this, everyone else thought they were a nice Mormon family.

Thank you very much Cheril. I really learned something today.