Posted by:
loislane
(
)
Date: October 12, 2018 07:17PM
Heber J. Grant was fascinating on many levels.
His father, Jedediah Grant died before he was born, a victim of too much rebaptizing in the wintertime.
His mother was forced to marry (for a while) Jeddy's brother, a hideous drunkard.
HOWEVER, BY who performed the marriage between Heber's mother and father, actually sealed Rachel Grant to Joseph Smith, which meant that JS would have been considered HJG's REAL father.
HOWEVER, HJG, was not particularly religious and made it abundantly clear that he did NOT get revelations.
HJG, started out believing in polygamy, married three fine women, but none of them bore him a son. He said he would keep on marrying until one of his wives bore him a son. He finally got a son, but the boy did not live long.
When HJG became president of the LDS church, he was down to one wife, the other two having died. Dunno what happened, but HJG became rabidly ANTI-Polygamous, and said that the WORST children in the world were born to such unions. Considering the fact that all three of his wives bore children to him, that wasn't very nice.
One tantalyzing rumour I read right here on this board was that HJG had a fourth SECRET wife, that being his secretary, and she gave birth to a boy who was somewhat addled in his brain. Mebbe that had something to do with Heber's turnaround.
As far as personality, he was hard-working, driven, raised by a fine woman with all the virtues of a New England spinster, which is basically what Rachel Grant was. HJG was NOT into revelation. He was a business man. I think at one point he mortgaged the temple to save the LDS church's financial situation. HJG was not particularly creative, but had lots of drive and would work at a skill over and over until he mastered it.
One of his daughters wrote a book about her childhood. HJG comes across as a loving, caring father, who valued respectability. She was sent to Radcliff University. She got piano lessons. All the things that says respectability, she got.
She repeated one anecdote where, as a little girl she got her mouth washed out with soap for cussing (She didn't KNOW she was cussing. When she caught her father HJG cussing, (he was merely repeating what someone else had said_ he humbly washed his own mouth out with soap to show that he wasn't above punishing himself.
I wish someone would right a bio of the man. A study in contradictions. Not particularly religious but wound up being president of the LDS church. Rabidly pro-polygamy, and then rabidly anti-polygamy. I think it was the respectability thing. Polygamy just isn't respectable.
HJG kept a journal, so there is plenty of primary sources.
Read his daughter's bio, read what the FLDS have to say about him and then form your own conclusions.\
One curious thing I remember about HJG as a missiom president is that he urged the young male missionaries to grow beards because he thought it made them look older, and thus more likely to be taken seriously.
My own father once asked HJG for a revelation about some personal matter and HJG's response was, "The Heavens are as brass to me."
At least he was honest in THAT regard.
Lois