Wife of Joseph Smith – Fanny Alger

Fanny was hired as a teenage servant girl to help in Emma and Joseph Smith’s household. She was only 16 years old when Joseph Smith allegedly sent her father’s brother-in-law, Levi Hancock, on behalf of Joseph to ask for her hand. Joseph and Fanny were supposedly married in 1833.

This relationship took place 10 years before Joseph claimed to have received the revelation on plural marriage from God and even 3 years before the sealing power was restored by God to Joseph. Because of these facts and other problems with the marriage accounts, historians and apologists for the LDS church continue to debate whether Fanny was a plural wife or simply an affair. Regardless, three years later, in 1836, Joseph’s “celestial relation” with Fanny was discovered and Emma was furious. Ann Eliza Webb Young, one of Brigham’s plural wives, stated of the event:

“Mrs. Smith had an adopted daughter, a very pretty, pleasing young girl, about seventeen years old. She was extremely fond of her; no own mother could be more devoted, and their affection for each other was a constant object of remark, so absorbing and genuine did it seem. Consequently it was with a shocked surprise that the people heard that sister Emma had turned Fanny out of the house.

This sudden movement was incomprehensible, since Emma was known to be a just woman, not given to freaks or caprices, and it was felt that she certainly must have had some very good reason for her action. By degrees it became whispered about that Joseph’s love for his adopted daughter was by no means a paternal affection, and his wife, discovering the fact, at once took measures to place the girl beyond his reach.”

Former LDS apostle William E. McLellin wrote to Joseph Smith’s son, Joseph Smith III, that:

“[Emma] went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!!  . . . [Emma] discovered that Joseph had been celestializing with this maiden, Fanny, who acknowledged the truth, but Joseph denied it in toto and stigmatized the statement of the girl as a base fabrication. Emma, of course, believed the girl, as she was very well aware that no confidence could be placed in her husband, and she became terrible worked up about it. She was like a mad woman, and acted so violently that Oliver Cowdery and some of the elders were called in to minister to her and ‘cast the devil out of sister Emma.”

Joseph’s sexual relationship with Fanny was a source of major contention between Oliver Cowdery and Joseph Smith. Oliver called the relationship a “dirty, nasty, filthy scrape [or affair].” In turn, he resigned from the church and Joseph excommunicated Oliver Cowdery, despite Oliver’s role in bringing forth the Book of Mormon and restoring the Priesthood by the laying on of hands from John the Baptist, Peter, James, and John.

After Emma kicked Fanny out of the Smith household, she left the Mormons and married a non-Mormon within a year. When asked about her relationship with Joseph Smith she refused to provide any detail, stating only:

“That is all a matter of my own, and I have nothing to communicate.”

Fanny was 16 | Joseph was 28 | She was single | The relationship occurred in early 1833