Emily Dow Partridge Young Smith was a plural wife of the Prophet Joseph Smith.
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From the Emily Partridge Young (1824-1899) Autobiography
To read more, visit the Emily Partridge Young (1824-1899) Autobiography on the Joseph Smith Forum Reference!
The first intimation I had from Brother Joseph that there was a pure and holy order of plural marriage, was in the spring of 1842, but I was not married until 1843. I was married to him on the 11th of May, 1843, by Elder James Adams. Emma was present. She gave her free and full consent. She had always up to this time, been very kind to me and my sister Eliza, who was also married to the Prophet Joseph Smith with Emma’s consent; but ever after she was our enemy. She used every means in her power to injure us in the eyes of her husband, and before strangers, and in consequence of her abuse we were obliged to leave the city to gratify her, but things were overruled otherwise, and we remained in Nauvoo. My sister Eliza found a home with the family of Brother Joseph Coolidge, and I went to live with Sister Sylvia Lyons. She was a good woman, and one of the lord’s chosen few. Emma, about this time, gave her husband two other wives–Maria and Sarah Lawrence.
Early in the spring of 1843 the Young Gentlemen and Ladies’ Relief Society was organized. Brother Joseph gives a short sketch of the rise of that society.
. . . After the prophet’s death, I again entered into plural marriage. I was married to President Brigham Young according to the law of proxy, and received my blessings in the Temple at Nauvoo. I had one son born in Nauvoo; he was name Edward Partridge Young Smith. The Saints were again driven from their homes, and I crossed the Mississippi River about the middle of February, 1846, and was again without home or shelter, an outcast and a wanderer in the dreary wilderness, without even the necessaries of life. My babe was about three months old. I was not quite twenty-two, and had been driven, with the Saints of God, by mobs, four times, and all for my religion.1
