My great great grandfather had 3 wives. I am the offspring of wife # 2.

When the subject of polygamy comes up with a nonmember, I rarely disclose that I am the product of one of the most radical practices in American history.

As a convert, I have no connection to polygamy. My husband came from a long genealogical line in Mormonism, but to my knowledge, those doing the research have not connected him (or his line) to any polygamous marriages.

I have wondered at different times whether I should be proud or ashamed.

Nothing to be ashamed of.

I'm not ashamed of my cousin Horny Joe nor am I too proud to ridicule him.

Smile, it wasn't your fault.

I'm from the offspring of my g-g-grandfather's polygamous wifey #2. So, yeah, me too.

But...I owe my existence to such a long chain of events that singling out one despicable institution for horny mormon men seems rather strained. Had my polygamous g-g-grandfather caught the measles on board his ship from England as a child, for instance (like his mother and sister did, both of whom died in New Orleans before heading across the plains), I wouldn't be there either. So as far as g-g-grandpa is concerned, his resistance to measles is just as important to my existence as polygamy ever was.

:)

I suppose we can all say but for the night of copulation none of us would be here.

What's more amazing is that 500 million sperm are released during ejaculation.

I suppose we have all won the lottery, depending how we look at it. :)

Two of my ggggrandfathers were polygamists.

Although it was their first wives who were my ggggrandmothers. One of them died when she was 30, prior to her husband moving from Nauvoo westward. My gggrandmother was his firstborn by his first marriage. He didn't take multiple wives until after wife #1 was deceased. He was even excommunicated before he was widowed by Smith when he tried to seduce another woman (this during Smith's dalliances.) He was rebaptized within a year and then allowed to take plural wives.

The other polygamist was more of a bigamist. He had two wives. His first lived elsewhere when he married wife #2. Wife #1 was my ancestor. His 2nd wife was about 40 years younger than he was. Only 2-3 of their 6-7 children lived to maturity. More of them died very young from starvation living in southern Utah as some of the earliest pioneers and cotton farmers who were sent there by Young to colonize. Both polygamous ggggrandfathers were bishops where they resided.

All the children born to the first union had reached maturity when he took on #2.

In Utah civil marriages weren't recognized w/the state prior to 1887. Some were really more bigamists IMO than polygamists because they just didn't bother to divorce.

I have hundreds of half-cousins born to those unions. But am myself not the descendant of a polygamous mother.

It was more interesting to me to learn my ggg ancestors fathers fought in the Revolutionary War, than some of their sons and daughters converted to Mormonism. One or two of them fought in the War of 1812. I find that more relevant to my overall family history. Some of my ancestors have been in America since the earliest colonists. I'm cousins of George Washington through both sides of my parents. Who are cousins of each other through the same great ancestors that are George's. My parents did not know this. I only found out in 2014 studying our family tree. On dad's side is through the Mormon lineage. On mom's side was through the Protestant/Anglican. That was zany to discover.

The ancestral set of great grandparents were Ralph Neville and Joan Beaufort. They had 12 children. One daughter is my dad's 18th generation great grandmother. One of her sisters is my mother's 17th generation great grandmother. One of their brothers was George's 10th generation great grandfather.

When I told one of my TBM brothers this, he was thrilled. He told me that George has always been his favorite president. He keeps the picture of George praying at Valley Forge on his office wall. :)

Amyjo,

We might be related if your ancestors lived in Westmoreland County, VA where my ancestors lived.

My direct ancestor, Thomas Butler III, knew George Washington's great-grandfather, John Washington, who was the first Washington ancestor to move to Virginia from England. They may have been neighbors since they were involved on the local board. Thomas Butler and John Washington also entered into several legal transactions with each other recorded in the Virginia county records.

Near the end of the 1600s, one of my Butler relatives, an 8th cousin 4th removed, Jane Butler, married Augustine Washington and they lived at Pope's Creek. They had four children, Butler Washington (died as an infant), Laurence Washington, Augustine Washington, and Jane Washington who died aged 14. The four children were my 9th cousins, three times removed.

Jane Butler Washington died, and her husband Augustine married Mary Ball, his second wife, and their first child was George Washington. Jane Washington, the first wife, is buried on the Washington family estate which is now part of the George Washington National Monument, one of the National Monuments in the country run by the U.S. Government.

The half-siblings, Laurence and Augustine, were instrumental in George Washington's education, teaching him on many subjects. The two half-brothers married and had children but none of them survived to adulthood, so no Butler-Washington descendants exist today. The two half-brothers (one at a time) owned the Mount Vernon home and land holdings, and when the last half-brother died with no living heirs, George Washington inherited the Mount Vernon estate.

Our relationship (if any) could be through George's other American family lines. My Butler family goes back to 1631 or a little earlier in the USA.

As a nevermo, I'm not aware of any polygamists lurking in my genealogy, other than being a great-niece by marriage to John Taylor, a grandson or a great-grandson of John Taylor, the 3rd President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. My great-aunt, a sister of my grandmother, married John Taylor and lived with him on a farm near a town not far from Cardston, Alberta, Canada, and converted to Mormonism herself.

That's really interesting. We very well may be related, many Americans are without knowing it lol. I didn't come to learn this until starting family research.

Did you know that most all of the US presidents are cousins to George Washington by some degree? A couple who aren't are related to him through marriage. The only exception is Gerald Ford who was adopted at birth, and has no records detailing who his birth parents are.

Would you mind sharing what family search engine you prefer to trace your ancestry? I'm trying to decide which one to sign up for, cousin. ;)

One of my past memories on FB this a.m. from several years ago was recycled for me to share today.

It reminded me when I learned about my parents were cousins dating back generations that there are way fewer degrees between one than the other connecting us to the same set of ggranparents.

My father's side I'm connected by 18 generations to the ggrandparents. And my mum's side by only 13 generations. Two sisters from that same family are my great grandmothers.

The closest generation to you is the one you count, in genealogy research.

It was one of the brothers to the two sisters who was George Washington's great grandfather, making us cousins.

Intriguing. Genealogy is fun for its own sake, not because of LDS propaganda of baptising the dead.

OTOH, your G-G-grandmother might have married a nice bachelor farmer and you'd be here anyway!

I believe there was almost a shortage of women once the Utah area was settled, and I'll bet, that in typical mormon style, men who couldn't find a wife (while the higher-up mucky-mucks were snagging the nice newly-arrived Norwegian babes) were told it was *their fault* if they were single.

I'm an only child of vanilla, once-married parents who are still married after something like 40 years. I brought up the eternal polygamy doctrine with my dad once and he insisted that he and my mom will both end up as "angels" because neither of them could ever accept that kind of relationship. It's such a taboo topic these days and brings up a lot of grief and pain from people who were subjected to it, as I recently realized. And I do feel bad for those people.

But for myself, I dunno. I simply couldn't imagine myself staying with a single person for more than a decade or two. Maybe it's lack of experience or fear of commitment but it is how I feel. I never want to get married or have any kids anyway. And for one I respect people who chose to pursue "open relationships" or polyamory. What gives us the right to judge or condemn those people? Of course I'm talking about totally consensual relationships with no coercion or manipulation, which was obviously not the case with most if not all early Mormons. I mean Joe specifically built the religion to revolve around polygamy to give him an excuse to sleep around.

But I used to have a friend whose girlfriend also had a boyfriend. She was totally happy with it. I hear a lot of people protest that they'd be too jealous or that it's not true love, but I've seen it firsthand and would argue that it does work -- for the right people. There's also the fact that our entire civilization began in polygamous tribes, and monogamy is a relatively new phenomenon. Obviously sexism and equality is a very big factor in such relationships and we should probably see just as much polyandry as polygyny. And from what I've seen of poly people, we do. I think monogamy is perfectly fine too and just as many people would chose single, committed relationships. But I think that this moral outrage and disgust over poly people NEEDS to stop, just as the outrage about the LGBTQ+ community has softened over the years.

Cue the flames in threee, two, one...

oneinbillions Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But I think that this moral outrage
> and disgust over poly people NEEDS to stop, just
> as the outrage about the LGBTQ+ community has
> softened over the years.
>
> Cue the flames in threee, two, one...

No flames.
Just want to point out that a religious institution of forced polygamy -- especially where young people are "groomed" to take part, and pre-teen girls are forced into "marriages" with dirty old men -- is very different from consenting adults making up their own minds about who to screw or live with.

The "moral outrage" is about the first kind. The kind the mormon church practiced for a long time, and splinter groups still do. The second kid...I don't care how informed consenting adults live their lives or who they screw.

Again, no flames.

I do agree that's it's hypocritical that as a society, we are willing to demand that government adopt laissez faire laws concerning unions between consensting adults, unless those unions include more than two adults.

I also think that when reared in a polygamist cult, the issue of "consent" is impossible to define or impose. Would any exmo define an adult TBM to be so of his or her own free will? I doubt it.

A person thus brainwashed to believe that polygamy is the only path to righteousness (salvation) would not be "consenting" of free will, but of fear.

I think that we should guard against the conflation of these two separate issues.

Add in the codified laissez faire laws concerning freedom of religion, and I think that the hypocrisy becomes less clear. It is the near-negation of any responsibilty on the part of religious leaders for the harmful consequenses of their own doctrines which defines "our" collective revulsion at the thought of them exercising "religious freedom" where polygamy is concerned.

I don't believe the hypocrisy begins with those who would "blanket" oppose polygamy (or polyandry), but with those who would insist that it is a "religious freedom," a term most of us would consider to be an oxymoron.

Since I was a convert, I have no connections to polygamy. My TBM ex-husband is the one with polygamy in his family history, as well as inbreeding because his parents were actually cousins.

Yes, my extended family wears their polygamy roots as a badge of honor. Quite the conundrum...

I am the end product of polygamy. Great grandpa had three wives at once--biological sisters. Thirty-five children who were both cousins and siblings to one another. Quite the menagerie. It's too bad he couldn't handle it. But then, my father could handle his nine.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2017 09:27PM by donbagley.

I have polygamists great grand parents on both sides of my family. But I don't like the phrase 'owe our very existence due to Polygamy'

So what. If my mother/father married differently I wouldn't exist (or I would look different). If I had married a different person, my kids would be different.

I do find family history interesting, but I, and no one else, has control over their ancestry. No one owes anyone, because of old history.

I am the results of a polygamous family. My great-granddaughter, on my father's side, had some 11 wives, and enough children to be second only to Brigham Young in this respect. His offspring are so numerous that genealogists are warned not to get into all his relationships on their computer, as this would shut it down. (Computers are unable to cross-reference his whole tribe.)

A am the results of his last wife, the one with whom he resided in Arizona until he died. She was much younger then he, was a red-head, and kept his books for him (as he never learned to read).

Even without being able to read he was a brilliant organizer and business man. He never lost a deal in horse-trading (among other things). In fact, he made money on horses as he would sell his fresh horses to those in need passing by, and then put their skinny worn-out horses in his fields to fatten them up to sell to the next person traveling through.

He ran his family like a corporation, with each child having an assignment, and the profits which they earned had to be shared with him (as he loaned them money to invest).

So--bragging rights, or not? I've never quite decided. I know he left several of his wives in Utah (as they didn't want to go with him to settle a new homestead, so chose to stay in Utah and enjoy what they already had. Even so, the kids were sent back and forth, for whatever advantage this offered them.

Oops. Should have read, "My great-grandfather", not "great-grand daughter".
(Excuse, please).

So what if anyone had polygamous ancestors? That doesn't mean anyone "owes them."

We don't have a choice of who our parents or grandparents are.

The fact is we are alive and we are worthy of a good life. We don't owe anyone for that.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2017 10:10PM by Cheryl.

I don't care either way. I had no say in the matter.

What matters to me is that I broke the cycle of mormonism. My kids are out, and my grand child has no idea what a mormon is. someday when she's old enough to understand, i'll tell her all about it.

If perchance I don't live that long, i've written it down so she doesn't get caught in the trap by the 100's of mormons on my side of the family. I don't want her to someday sign up thinking that her Nina used to mormon, so it must be a good thing.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/03/2017 10:17PM by janis.

Me. So many, I can't count. Including Parley P. Pratt.

I am a convert with no connection to LDS Polygamy

However, it's statistically likely that I 'owe my very existence' to drunkenness, rape, and probably incest, at some point back in my lineage.
there are definitely a few bastards in my background

do I support rape? incest?
No - not in any way, shape or form

I dont think that being a being a product of polygamy means you 'owe' it anything......other than a recognition that it existed

not me, my MORmON family had nothing to do with polygamy even when it was encouraged, which is a dead give away that they are pretty much nothing as far as being MORmON elite/ royalty goes, because elite MORmONS or MORmON royalty were polygamating when polygamy was allowed.

My family always touted that GGrandpa was a polygamist, and he was, and that we were from his second wife. While that is true, what my family never mentioned was the whereabouts of his first wife. She was dead when GGrandpa took my Ggrandma as his wife. Ggrandma was the nanny of his children from wife number one. Of course this means I am not from a polygamous union.

However, GGrandpa took two more wives. He got back from his mission in England just a couple of months before the 1890 Proclamation. At this time he had only two wives. By the spring of 1891 he had moved his family to Mexico and took a third wife.

I am the from the second to the youngest daughter of my great grandfathers second wife.

I'm adopted but as far as it's recorded in my adopted family history book there was no polygamy. That being said who knows the real truth.

My GGGF was a polyg.
I hot no problem with the way they practised it. I just have problem with child rape and so calle PRofits abusing their power to fuck their followers wives, aka rape them with his obscene amount of power no man should be hiven, ever.

I certainly am - in fact, on my Mom's side came illustrious Mormon pioneer men who became Mormon leaders and now have buildings at ByU named after them. I do not know of one successful marriage that came from these polygamous unions. The treatment of the wives of these grandpas was absolutely shameful. If there was a way to divorce oneself from your geneolgy I would do it in a heartbeat. The whole thing was shameful.

Yup. Two generations of polygamists all over both of my parents' lines.

Which includes our common ancestor Frederick Walter Cox, I might add.

Yup.