Polygamy - Plural Marriage - Polyandry

Official Plural Marriage essays on LDS.org:

• Plural Marriage in Kirtland and Nauvoo
• Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah
• The Manifesto and the End of Plural Marriage
• Plural Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints

The essays are approved by the First Presidency and Quorum of the 12

Other information from official sources:

• Mormon Newsroom on Polygamy: lists the above three essays and provides a media friendly summary of the practice
• Joseph Smith Papers: summary of Nauvoo Journals, December 1841-April 1843. Second half of the essay discusses Nauvoo plural marriage using Joseph Smith's journal and other sources
• Joseph Smith Papers: Journal, March–September 1838. summary of Nauvoo Journals, December 1841-April 1843. Second half of the essay discusses Nauvoo plural marriage using Joseph Smith's journal and other sources

Additional reading suggested by official sources:

• Richard Lyman Bushman, Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Knopf, 2005) (referenced in footnote 33)
• Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith [(Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997) (referenced in footnote 29)
• Brian C. Hales, Joseph Smith’s Polygamy, 3 vols. (Salt Lake City: Greg Kofford Books, 2013). (referenced in footnote 20). Many of Brian Hales' sources are available from his website: www.josephsmithspolygamy.org/ 
• Helen Mar Kimball Whitney, Autobiography 1881, Church History Library, Salt Lake City,  Available online at byu.edu (referenced in footnote 27)

Key issues and events mentioned in the LDS sources. Everything in "quotes" is taken directly from official LDS sources with the source linked:

• Polygamy was illegal in the 19th century: "In Joseph Smith’s time, monogamy was the only legal form of marriage in the United States" (LDS source)
• Joseph's plural marriages were not recognised by the state, but were instead a religious ceremony or "sealing," These were either "sealings for time and eternity" or "sealings for eternity only...  Joseph Smith participated in both types of sealings."
• "Sealings for time and eternity included commitments and relationships during this life, generally including the possibility of sexual relations."
• "Eternity-only sealings indicated relationships in the next life alone."
• "The exact number of women to whom (Joseph) was sealed in his lifetime is unknown... Careful estimates put the number between 30 and 40." (LDS source, see also footnote 24. Joseph's familysearch.org file has 24 of his plural wives listed)
• Some of Joseph's plural wives were already legally married to other men: "Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married... Estimates of the number of these sealings range from 12 to 14." LDS source, see also footnote 29)
• One of them, Zina Diantha Huntington married her husband, Henry Jacobs on 7th March 1841
• Zina was sealed to Joseph Smith on 27th October 1841
• Zina and Henry went on to have two sons together, the first born in January 1842
• After Joseph's death Zina was sealed to Brigham Young, with whom she had a daughter in 1850 after Zina and Henry had separated. She also became the church's third relief society president after the death of Eliza R. Snow. 
• Eliza R. Snow had married Joseph on 29th June 1842 and, after his death, "became a plural wife of President Brigham Young on 29th May 1846. 
• Joseph Smith's first plural marriage was to "...Fanny Alger, in Kirtland, Ohio, in the mid-1830s... Joseph Smith had married Alger, who lived and worked in the Smith household, after he had obtained her consent and that of her parents" (LDS source)
• Oliver Cowdery was excommunicated in 1838. The second of nine charges against Cowdery was "insinuating (Joseph Smith) was guilty of adultery." Joseph and Cowdery were close friends. Joseph had "intrusted (Cowdery) with many things" and had apparently confirmed to Cowdery "the reality of a confidential relationship with Alger." Cowdery characterized "...the relationship as 'a dirty, nasty, filthy affair of his and Fanny Alger’s.'" (LDS Source, see footnote 54)
• "After the marriage with Alger ended in separation" Joseph does not appear to have taken any additional wives "...until after the Church moved to Nauvoo, Illinois." "...Louisa Beaman and Joseph Smith were sealed in April 1841." 
• "Emma likely did not know about all of Joseph’s sealings." Plural marriage was described as an "excruciating ordeal" for Emma. (LDS source)
• "Emma opposed plural marriage"
• "In the summer of 1843, Joseph Smith dictated the revelation on marriage" (now D&C section 132).
• "The revelation on marriage required that a wife give her consent before her husband could enter into plural marriage" (LDS source)
• The revelation also said that if permission was not given by the wife then "she then becomes the transgressor; and he is exempt." (132:65). The revelation also warns Emma that if she will not receive the law she "shall be destroyed." (132:64)
• Joseph went on to marry women without Emma's consent. "He may have thought Emma’s rejection of plural marriage exempted him from the law of Sarah. Her decision to “receive not this law” permitted him to marry additional wives without her consent. (LDS source)
• Plural marriage was done in secret: "Participants in these early plural marriages pledged to keep their involvement confidential." After rumours began to spread, members and leaders issued "carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural marriage." (LDS source)
• On 1st October 1842 the church's periodical, the Times & Seasons, edited by Joseph Smith, published an article called "On Marriage" (Times & Seasons is reference in the Nauvoo Polygamy essay on LDS.org, footnote 23).
• The article quoted the 1835 version of the Doctrine and Covenants (section 101): "Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again." the T&S article added: "We have given the above rule of marriage as the only one practiced in this church."
• Section 101 was retained in the 1844 version (as section 109), an edition approved by Joseph Smith before his death
• The revelation now found in D&C section 132 "...was not made public until Elder Orson Pratt, under the direction of President Brigham Young, announced it at a Church conference on 29 August 1852. The revelation was placed in the Doctrine and Covenants in 1876." (LDS Source) 
• In the T&S publication, Relief Society leaders said: "We the undersigned members of the ladies' relief society, and married females do certify and declare that we know of no system of marriage being practised in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints save the one contained in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants" (LDS Source)
• Eliza R. Snow signed the Relief Society statement. She had married Joseph 3 months earlier on 29th June 1842