structural:expansion
Polygamy

By some accounts, Smith had been teaching a polygamy doctrine as early as 1831, and there is evidence that he may have been a polygamist by 1835. Although the church had publicly repudiated polygamy, in 1837 there was a rift between Smith and Cowdery over the issue. Cowdery suspected Smith had engaged in a relationship with Fanny Alger, who worked in the Smith household as a serving girl. Smith did not deny having a relationship, but he insisted that he had never admitted to adultery. "Presumably," historian Bushman argues, "because he had married Alger" as a plural wife.

In April 1841, Smith secretly wed Louisa Beaman, and during the next two-and-a-half years he secretly married or was sealed to about thirty or forty additional women. Ten of his plural wives were between the ages of fourteen and twenty; others were over fifty. Ten were already married to other men, though some of these polyandrous marriages were contracted with the consent of the first husbands. Evidence for whether or not and to what degree Smith's polygamous marriages involved sex is ambiguous and varies between marriages. Some polygamous marriages may have been considered solely religious marriages that would not take effect until after death. In any case, during Smith's lifetime, the practice of polygamy was kept secret from both non-Mormons and most members of the church. Polygamy caused a breach between Smith and his first wife, Emma; historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich summarizes by stating that "Emma vacillated in her support for plural marriage, sometimes acquiescing to Joseph's sealings, sometimes resisting."