What a bunch of kooks. You can't get a straight answer from anyone as to how many wives Joseph Smith had. I don't believe that they even know how many child wives Brigham Young had. Ignorant.
That is the correct word, members are ignorant regarding Mormon history and doctrine.
They have no idea how many wives Smith had because most never knew he had more than one. When they learn that he did, they don't want to know any details because it contradicts everything they have been taught.
TSCC keeps members ignorant as long as possible... Until now. Today they are teaching as much truth as possible as fast as possible. For the leaders of Mormonism, this is the lesser of two bad choices. How do they know this? By revelation? No. The consultants from McKinsey & Company told them and backed it up with survey results.
Thus, seminary students are learning in class and from churchwide youth firesides the ugly history (topped with whipped cream) and the every changing doctrine of... changing doctrines.
It was interesting to me years ago when the relief society lessons were on the presidents of the church. Brigham's bio stated that he had one wife and then she died and he married another, or some such stupid thing. Everyone knew he had many many wives so it was really odd that the manual tried to pull that off.
Yes, mormonism is really kooky. What gets me is that there seem to be many people who think it is absolutely normal to believe in and do the things they do. Did you EVER feel that way? I know I didn't. Even at my most believing, I always felt kooky. I was always embarrassed to be mormon (everywhere but in Utah, where at least I could fit in). Was it just me? Or did most of you feel fine being openly mormon outside of mormon circles?
The answer is invariably, "Pay no attention to those distractions, and concentrate on the 4 principles of the gospel." Hey, you can get the 4 principles of the gospel in ANY Christian church, so, if that's THE message, why be a Mormon?
Nobody really knows. Even the LDS Church has to put a range on the number of wives Joseph Smith had ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/us/its-official-mormon-founder-had-up-to-40-wives.html?_r=0 ) Notice how it says up to 40 without giving a definitive number. It is usually placed between 30-40 depending on the sources and what you call a wife. The typical Mormon is clueless and will probably say 1, Emma.
Interesting that they can quote verbatim the Articles of Faith, scripture references, hymns, etc, but they can't give a number of JS wives. Someone needs to come up with a cute little ditty listing all the wives the same way they do the prophets for Primary kids.