Wife of Joseph Smith – Helen Mar Kimball

Helen Kimball was the daughter of Apostle Heber C. Kimball and Vilate Kimball. Heber wanted to have his family sealed to Joseph Smith in the afterlife so Joseph and Heber planned that Helen should marry Joseph to accomplish this. Helen was initially horrified at the prospect:

“Without any preliminaries [my Father] asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives…The first impulse was anger…my sensibilities were painfully touched. I felt such a sense of personal injury and displeasure; for to mention such a thing to me I thought altogether unworthy of my father, and as quick as he spoke, I replied to him, short and emphatically, ‘No I wouldn’t!’…This was the first time that I ever openly manifested anger towards him…Then he commenced talking seriously and reasoned and explained the principle, and why it was again to be established upon the earth. [This] had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake.”

“[Father] asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph…[and] left me to reflect upon it for the next twenty-four hours…I was sceptical-one minute believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have influenced me at that time or brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions.”

As one of the more controversial of Joseph Smith’s relationships, fourteen year old Helen married Joseph, a man over twice her age, two months before the revelation on plural marriage was recorded. She did so only after her father persuaded her, and only because she loved and trusted her father, believing he would not ask her to do something that was not right. After the marriage Joseph would not allow Helen to attend parties or social events which made her very angry because other kids her age were enjoying being young adults. She expressed how she felt:

“During the winter of 1843, there were plenty of parties and balls. … Some of the young gentlemen got up a series of dancing parties, to be held at the Mansion once a week. … I had to stay home, as my father had been warned by the Prophet to keep his daughter away from there, because of the blacklegs and certain ones of questionable character who attended there. … I felt quite sore over it, and thought it a very unkind act in father to allow [my brother] to go and enjoy the dance unrestrained with others of my companions, and fetter me down, for no girl loved dancing better than I did, and I really felt that it was too much to bear. It made the dull school still more dull, and like a wild bird I longed for the freedom that was denied me; and thought myself a much abused child, and that it was pardonable if I did murmur.”

Helen was married for just one year before Joseph Smith died in June 1844. She was a widow by 15 years old. Helen later married Horace Whitney, the older brother of her best friend and another of Joseph’s teen brides, Sarah Whitney. Although Horace later married two other women through the practice of polygamy, both women were at least 18 when they joined the Whitney family.  Helen vigorously defended a woman’s right to practice polygamy, while admitting that it was a very difficult lifestyle.

Helen was 14 | Joseph was 37 | She was single | The marriage date is May 1843