I recall that many early Mormons were often attacked in the 1800’s because of the pervasive belief that they abducted local women and forcibly made them part of polygamous households. In seeking to get some info on this for a GD discussion about SSM and polygamous marriages I went googling for some historical proof of this assertion, but really could not find anything. Per the wiki link below it seems early Mormonism was actually female empowering (for the time).
Were these accusations entirely false or not? How did early Mormons get women to come on board?
Just a wild guess but alcohol consumption was a lot higher back then. Something like seven times per capita than it is now, IIRC correctly. Of course part of that was water and milk purification wasn’t widely done and brewing alcohol does purify it. The LDS are known today for rejecting, or at least limit, drinking alcohol. So if they were comparably more sober back then, more likely to be able to get ahead (as Dean Wormer says fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life). So if your choice is being the sole mate of a drunk, prone to violence man or sharing a sober, more prosperous man, which would you choose?
I’m fairly into Mormon history and I have never come across a verified/verifiable account of Mormon’s abducting women, at least in a systematic way. I’m sure somewhere along the line a Mormon somewhere has abducted a woman. But there was never any attempt to do some sort of bride kidnapping like the rape of the Sabine women or the Benjamite kidnapping of the daughters of Shiloh.
As to why women preferentially joined the church back then, who knows? But the pattern still holds true today. Converts today are nearly half again more likely to be female than male (58% vs 42%). I figure they join to day for many of the same reasons they did back then. But I don’t know what those reasons might be.
Off hand, I can’t think of a single instance of Mormons being accused of women stealing. Perhaps the OP can be more specific about his recollections.
It is important to remember that before the Mormons emigrated to Utah, they didn’t practice polygamy openly. Thus, it is unlikely these accusations (if they ever did occur) happened before they moved to Utah. In Utah, they openly practiced polygamy in the new settlements they founded. Thus, how could they steal women when 90% of the settlers were Mormons? Sounds like this may have been some hyperbole. At one point the national Republican party was very anti-Mormon, labeling polygamy and slavery as the twin relics of barbarism. (In hindsight, they weren’t too wrong.)
Early Mormons (pre-Utah) were unpopular because they voted as a block, gave preferential business treatment to their co-religionists, and took over areas where they moved. Joseph Smith was eventually killed for his actions related to polygamy, but they didn’t involve stealing women.
ETA: Perhaps the OP is misremembering and conflating the movies Paint Your Wagon and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
Also keep in mind that during the pre-Utah time, women didn’t have much in the way of rights or resources to excercise the rights they did have. A woman voluntarily joining the Mormon church against her family’s wishes could be construed as abduction by those opposed the faith.
Also, many Mormon men were killed by local mobs, leaving large numbers of women and children unable to care for themselves. It was considered unseemly for a woman to rely on a man not related for, her and her children’s, care and support. With plural marriage, these widows were protected and supported through the violent time in Missouri, across the plains, and into Utah.
I would argue that doesn’t rise the accusations you were asking about. Augusta Cobb was neither abducted nor forcibly married. She was baptized LDS on June 29, 1832, by Samuel Smith (one of Joseph Smith’s brothers). Brigham Young visited the Boston area a number of times between 1834 and and 1843. And Mrs Cobb was a wealthy and prominent member of the church in Boston. They would have met many times over those 9 years. Her husband never converted. In the spring of 1843 she gave birth to a son who she (interestingly) named Brigham. She then ran away with Young that fall, in September, taking only her two youngest children (including Brigham).
That doesn’t scream abduction to me. That seems more to indicate adultery and loss of affection. More than a bit reprehensible. But it doesn’t look like a kidnapping. Add in the fact that Augusta traveled back to Boston in 1844 to deal with Henry Cobb. And then she didn’t return to Young until 1846. She had plenty of opportunity to recant her leaving with Young, but never did. Cobb filed for divorce after she left in 1846. Here is a quote from the Cobb divorce proceedings as published in the Boston Post:
Nor was she a meek and mild wife to Young. She threatened him with divorce several times and had a number of estrangements with Young. Although she did always reconcile. She had plenty of opportunity to leave Young and a support group that would have helped her. She wasn’t abducted, she went quite willingly.
None of this is meant to excuse Brigham Young. He was in my opinion a theocratic tyrant and a fairly evil man… think a 19th century David Koresh. But like Koresh I don’t think he had to kidnap anyone. He was reputed to be remarkably charismatic.
As an aside interestingly Augusta’s son James Cobb moved to Salt Lake in 1858 and joined the church as a favored “son” of Brigham. After some marital problems James divorced his first wife Mary, who then married Brigham Young. One of Young’s son’s, John Willard Young, then later married James and Mary’s daughter Luella, who eventually divorced John and married Nathanial Brigham, who was one of Young’s cousins.
The issue the cite I gave was responding to was not whether Mormon’s* actually abducted women*, but whether I had mis-remembered that they had a reputation for doing so by people who attacked and persecuted them. I think the cite proves that the popular reputation (undeserved or not) for doing so was not my imagination. This is also buttressed by Captain Amazing’s Zane Grey reference.
It wouldn’t surprise me if women who came on their own free will weren’t assumed to have been tricked and taken. Women can’t think for themselves, after all.
As for why it’s more attractive to women: pretty much all organized religions are. You have a sense of a community, and a bunch of people teaching you to do things that are best for that community. Even my own branch of Christianity has dealt with it, with it always being little old ladies who stick with it and women getting their husbands to convert.
Sounds like old hate propaganda, though I can remember reading of my Great Uncle marrying a girl and returning to Utah… her family might have seen it as abduction… since their marriage system was unusual, and she left her home area.
Fair enough. You were right. The caricature of Mormons in the late 19th century did indeed include women stealing. However, as Mormons were living at the time in their own completely theocratic desert kingdom in Utah, it’s hard to credit them regularly stealing women from thousands of miles away. No doubt many Mormon women weren’t happy with their polygamous unions, but there wasn’t a lot women could do at that time, plus they were thousands of miles away from any kind of secular authority.
Alas, this is a myth cherished by Mormons the world over, but it is a myth. Both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young “married” women whose husbands were still alive and present! Hardly taking care of widows. Polygamy has always been about having sex and procreating with large amounts of women and exercising power, not social welfare. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.
Keep in mind that back in the 1830s people read and believed in the Bible more than today. If you read the Old Testament there are plenty of the patriarchs: Abraham, Issac, Saul, David, Solomon among others who were polygamists. There were certain rules spelled out as to how the wives were to be treated by it was legal. As to whether it was outlawed by the time of Jesus, that is debatable. Some people say the parable of the 10 virgins, Jesus is acknowledging it, others say that telling people the church is as one wife, Paul is denouncing it. An LDS man can convince some women that God had sanctioned polygamy.
The over-simplified version I heard was that back then, in general, men were into drinking and women had to stay home and were into religion. When the Mormons had to move, local prejudices being what they were back then, the women often went with them. As mentioned above, a lot were already married to men who did not share ther zeal for the “whacky newfangled religion”, but the women left anyway.
If you are running a relgious settlement that runs about 5 to 1 women to men, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how God will tell you to solve the problem.
For all their many faults, I’ve never read that the early Mormons actually abducted women. As noted above, women wooed away, or persuaded to join the faith, might have been seen by those they left behind as having been “abducted” or “seduced,” though. Just more grist for the anti-Mormon propaganda mills.
I highly recommend Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven (Under the Banner of Heaven - Wikipedia) for an interesting and, as far as I know, accurate portrayal of Mormon history from the earliest days to now. Fascinating book.
Reminds me of the scene…
Mr. Watson - “The girls’ mother is no longer with us.”
Pokey Jones - “Oh, I’m sorry. When did she die?”
Mr. Watson (surly) “I didn’t say she was dead. I said she’s no longer with us.”
-Highway 61
Back when I was a Mormon, this was the most common excuse for polygamy. But according to Brigham Young (sorry, I can’t find the cite), there were more men than women in Utah when polygamy was at its peak. So something doesn’t add up.
According to Brigham Young’s pissed-off wife Ann Eliza Webb Young, missionaries in England would deny that polygamy was practised in Utah. They would marry English women and bring them home to Utah, and then the new wife would discover that she is a polygamist. That kind of deception sounds like kidnapping to me. But It’s important to note that Ann Eliza was often full of shit, so her accusations are probably more of a “caricature of Mormons” than history.
This is an invitation to controversy, for sure. O.k., I’ll risk it.
Here is another possible contributor to this typical myth about Mormons (which I take to be a matter of exaggerated interpretation but not without some provocation; early Mormons were energetic in gathering plural wives, which was a cultural and religious taboo in America). I claim no special knowledge about the Mormon church or Mormon history, but here is the Wiki bio (caveat emptor) of a major 19th century figure in the church, Parley P. Pratt, who was a local boy where I live today.
If you go to the section on his death, you will see that he was thought to have “stolen” the wife and children of the man who tracked down and killed him. He disagreed with this interpretation, and so did his (plural) wife, who was still legally married to the man who killed Pratt. This killing had larger, indirect historic consequences, as the entry says. You may judge for yourself the truth of the charge and the nature of events that led to it.
Such events might contribute to a larger accusation of abductions.