Posted by:
loislane
(
)
Date: March 05, 2023 07:27PM
Rachel originally left Nauvoo because she was appalled by the very idea of polygamy. I guess at some point she changed her mind, because she returned to Nauvoo.
When she returned, she agreed to marry Jedediah Grant. BY was supposed to marry them, but at the very last minute BY decided to seal Rachel to JS, who was dead by then. JJedediah would be her time-only husband, but all children of the marriage would really be children of JS. I think Rachel was his 14th wife.
HJG was Rachel's only child, and was born after Jedediah died, due to a cold brought on by all the baptizing he did during Reformation Fever.
After Jedediah died, BY decided that all of Jeddy's 14 wives should marry Jeddy's no-good alcoholic brother. Rachel described it as the worst period of her life. After a while even BY could see this just wasn't working, and the wives could go their own ways, and not have to sleep with that alcoholic creepy husband that was forced on them.
Anyway Rachel comes across as a hardworking, Puritanical spinster-ish New England lady. She didn't get any financial help from BY, but she was very close to her son, who helped her make a living sewing. He worked the sewing machine treadle while she guided the fabric. HJG inherited his mother's work ethic, and had a huge zeal for self-improvement.
HBJ Grant was a hard worker from the beginning, being particularly tenacious when learning a new skill. He grew up absolutely believing in polygamy, saying at one time that he would continuing marrying new wives until one of them gave him a son. With one exception, his wives just kept on producing daughters. And then, his only son died at age 11.
HJG wasn't particularly religious, but this was Utah, and he came from Mormon Royalty, and JS was his REAL father, and BY took an interest in him, so it was more or less destiny that he would rise in the church, which he did, becoming the youngest SP ever, and, of course, eventually becoming church president.
By that time two of his three wives had died and he was now a monogamist. His views on polygamy had changed, and he was now virulently anti-polygamy. I think it had something to do with respectability. He had figured out that much of the world thought polygamy was just plain tacky.
But there are tantalyzing hints that HJG had other wives, and had children by those other wives. On this very forum, someone posted that a man, bearing a striking resemblance to HJG, who had a distinctive look to him, claimed to be Grant's son, by his secretary, who was a secret plural wife. Who knows? This man came across as feeble-minded, which made me think of HJG's later dictum that the WORST children in the world came from polygamous unions. VERY unkind for HJG to say that, considering he had fathered many children by his three wives.
ANyway HJG's striking turnabout on the matter of polygamy is something I would like to know more about. Grant was a child of polygamy, and had at least three wives, probably more.
But one of Grant's goals was to make Mormonism respectable, and to do that, you needed to ditch polygamy.
Wish someone would write an in-depth biography of Grant. Grant was a compulsive journal-keeper, so should be plenty of primary material
Oh, to answer the original question, HJG, was a child of JS by someone other than Emma, by Mormon standards, if not by the world's standards.