I am reading online A Mormon Mother by Annie Clark Taylor
http://content.lib.utah.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/tanner&CISOPTR=656&CISOSHOW=480

She is a second wife in the 1880s, when the feds are cracking down on polygamy. I am still reading it, but I just got to the part of her marriage. It is just embarrassing that she goes on and on about the sacred “principle” and I am thinking---you fool, old Joe the ‘ho just made it all up so he could screw anything with boobs and not be killed for it by an enraged father, brother, or husband.

What a con man, to turn lechery and lack of self control into a sacred concept for the gullible. It is just so sad and infuriating to read how Joe’s horn dog ways were turned into something that people were willing to go to jail for, in order to practice. Dumb, de dumb dumb.

The tragedy is the girls who are still brainwashed into believing this crap. Given the horrible abuses that polygamy continues to have in the US, it is a shame that Joe was not killed at a young age by one of the people he defrauded with his money finding seer stone.

This is a great book. Later on Annie concludes that polygamy is not of God and becomes much more non-literal in her belief regarding church. Her life in polygamy is heartbreaking to me.

There were so many lives torn apart because of it especially Annie's.

Annie goes on to question everything.
She questions her religion, she absolutely questions the very idea of blind obedience. She believes her ideas on child raising are better than her husband's.

She is absolutely there for her children. She teaches them to think independently.

This is Annie Tanner we are talking about. If there is another book by Annie Taylor I haven't come across it yet.

The reader is not surprised to learn that all of Annie's children turn out splendidly. They support her when their father has abandoned them and her.

Let's hear it for all Polygamous mothers and single mothers (same thing really) who cope as well as Annie Tanner.

They are the (until now) unsung heroines of Mormon history.

That some of them (Annie for instance, Sarah Pratt (Orson's first wife)) end up being unbelievers is no big surprise. They learn the hard way that no man is going to get them to the celestial kingdom, or even help get them through this world.

The world needs to know more about these heroic woman.

Let's hear them roar!

Lois

Tanner is indeed the correct name...one of her children being Obert C. Tanner who taught philosophy at the University of Utah and who founded the O.C. Tanner Co.

Sorry about the wrong name. Short term memory loss.....what can I say?

I am glad to hear that she loses the husband and finds her own way. I was not impressed with him....as a teacher he used his students as convenient wives even though the school administrator (or whatever the his title was) had told him that he didn't want him shopping for wives in his students. But, get them young before they can think for themselves.

Two books about the LeBaron wives in the 1940s to 1960s or 1970s--I think one is called "Favorite Wife." Rather mind bending.

I'll have to read the one you just posted about.

as an east coaster, I didn't realize the number of people who practice polygamy until I read some of the recent books by women who escaped. I was absolutely appalled that such violations of human rights where happening in the here and now. Girls who were raped as part of their marriage to old men. Just disgusting. And all of this is thanks to Joe the ‘ho Smith. May he burn in hell. Or come back life after life as a polygamous wife. [