The 19th Wife (12 page)

4.

On the clear, frozen morning of January 21, 1846, the Webbs and their housegirl gathered at the Nauvoo Temple. Although still under construction, the Temple had been used by Brigham for several months for services and sealing and endowment ceremonies. At the time the Temple was one of the largest buildings in the western United States. Built of white limestone cubes, it was like a beacon to the river traffic going north and south.
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Much of what we know about the sealing and the wedding ceremony comes from
The 19th Wife.
Chauncey wore a high collar that irritated his beard. Elizabeth was in a plain dark dress with narrow silk cuffs. Lydia had draped a new lace shawl across her shoulders. Her iron hairpins caught the winter sun. According to Ann Eliza, Chauncey and Elizabeth appeared solemn, while Lydia seemed giddy.
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Brigham began the ceremony by sealing Chauncey and Elizabeth. The sealing ceremony varies little from most Christian wedding ceremonies. The difference, of course, is that instead of “until death do us part” the couple is united through eternity. Although this is typically one of the happiest moments in the life of a member of the LDS Church, we cannot assume it was so for Elizabeth. “She believed she would be with her husband forever—no doubt a comforting thought—but at what price?” asks Ann Eliza. “My mother stood in the Temple and the sunlight came down upon her. I believe if my mother ever had a moment of doubt, it was now.” Elizabeth’s account of this day was all but destroyed. Yet among the fragments one curious line leaps out: “oh my faith!”

With Chauncey and Elizabeth now sealed, Brigham instructed Elizabeth to step aside. He guided her to his left, replacing her with Lydia, who “was bouncing on her toes.”
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Quickly he united Chauncey and Lydia in marriage. Their vows were also similar to those used at most Christian weddings. Here, at death, their marriage would cease. In the afterlife, Chauncey would have one wife, the woman who had just been ushered aside. How did Elizabeth feel as she stood by and listened to her husband devote himself to a girl almost half her age? How did she feel, knowing they would all return home, share in a wedding feast, followed by her husband withdrawing to Lydia’s bedroom to consummate the marriage?

We must rely on her children, and our imaginations, for the answer. Ann Eliza writes: “After supper, the newlyweds retired to Lydia’s room off the kitchen. My father had purchased a new brass-post bed. The lamplight reflected off the brass exotically, casting the room in a golden glow. My mother saw Lydia go in first, sit upon the bed, and remove the pins from her hair. Her hair fell to her shoulders in a flaxen wave. She brushed it out and it shone around her head like a halo. When my father came to Lydia’s door she held her hand out and said, ‘Come.’ He closed the door behind him, leaving my mother to the dirty dishes in the pan.”

Gilbert, Elizabeth’s illegitimate son, witnessed the same scene, recording it in his diary.
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“Lydia seemed eager for the night to come to an end. Her foot tapped as we ate and she said she was too tired for singing. After supper she disappeared into her room. Soon my father followed. I helped my mother with the dishes and the pots. I went outside to fetch water from the well. I had to pass by Lydia’s window. I would be a liar if I said I did not look in. I witnessed what I expected—a mound of flesh. I didn’t like the idea that they were doing this because of God. It’s terrible to see your own Pa in such a manner.”

It is worth noting that we have diaries and letters from many women who praised the day a second (or third, fourth, or even fifth wife) entered her house. A sister wife meant a woman was fulfilling her religious obligations. It meant she was that much closer to Heaven. More practically, a sister wife also meant help with the household chores and, typically, some relief from conjugal relations. Many women found joy in the institution. But many did not. The evidence suggests Elizabeth was among those who mourned the night she passed her husband to another woman. As one Pioneer woman described it a decade later, “A piece of my soul chipped off that night and fell away.”
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A curious postscript to Chauncey’s first plural marriage: Brigham himself may have entered into up to eleven plural marriages the same month. The numbers have been a source of debate for more than 150 years. I have little hope of settling the matter here. According to some accounts, on January 21, 1846, the same day he sealed Lydia to Chauncey, Brigham took two wives himself, Martha Bowker (1822–1890) and Ellen Rockwood (1829–1866). The evidence for these weddings is far from ideal: mostly secondhand testimonies or statements made long after the fact. Yet given the secretive and illegal nature of plural marriage in general, and especially those of the leader of the Latter-day Saints, it is understandable that there is little paper trail.
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5.

According to Ann Eliza, the wedding night was an extended affair. Like many homes in Nauvoo, the Webb house, although comfortable, was not large. It is easy to imagine noise traveling from one room to the next, across the floorboards or through the space where a door meets its jamb. “My father tried to quiet the girl,” Ann Eliza writes in
The 19th Wife.
“But she did not care. Lydia squealed like a pig at the docking of its tail. Someone less forgiving might say she wanted my mother to hear.” This is the kind of secondhand reporting and passive-aggressive tone that Ann Eliza uses throughout her memoir; it’s why many have dismissed it as unreliable. No doubt Ann Eliza is taking sides here; her bias is hardly veiled. But when compared with Gilbert’s version of events, one can see that she was more or less reporting the truth, even if her tone is sharpened: “That first night,” Gilbert writes in his diary, “Lydia made herself known to my father and the rest of us too. I went to the barn to sleep, knowing the horses to be more quiet and always preferring their company.”

“People change.” That’s Ann Eliza’s assessment of Lydia following her marriage to Chauncey. The former house girl now expected to be treated as the woman of the house. Almost at once she refused to participate in the household work, demanding that Chauncey hire a girl to take over her old chores. She wanted a replica of every finery in Elizabeth’s wardrobe: hat, pin, and glove. There was a nasty spat over a piece of jewelry Chauncey had given his wife when Ann Eliza was born, a pearl on a gold stick. Ann Eliza reports a fight between the two women. “Lydia scratched my mother until there was blood,” she writes in her memoir. Elizabeth responded with a slap and pulling Lydia’s hair. Ann Eliza analyzes this particular episode astutely: “So often plural marriage reduces a thoughtful, generous, mature woman to a sniveling, selfish little girl. Perhaps it is the cruelest outcome: the removal, and destruction, of a woman’s dignity. I have seen it too many times to count. I forgive the men who have done this to womankind, but I never forget.”

“In conjugal matters,” Ann Eliza writes frankly, “[Lydia’s] demands were even greater.” It was common in a plural marriage for the newest wife to resent sharing her husband’s affections with the previous spouse or spouses. According to Ann Eliza, “In the first two weeks of marriage, my father spent each night with his new bride. He offered little attention to his original wife. When it was time to retire he would kiss my mother on the tip of the nose and slip into Lydia’s room. I know my mother wondered if she would ever see her husband again.”

Even so, Lydia complained to Chauncey that he was spending too much time with the first Mrs. Webb. Gilbert recalls the young bride sighing, “And what am I supposed to do while you’re with
her
?”

As monstrous as these recollections make Lydia out to be, we should remember that she was still a teenager, naive, and devout. She was cast into a situation that even the savviest courtesan might not know how to maneuver. She feared that the secretive nature of her marriage meant it could be quickly abandoned, annulled, or even denied. During the first month of marriage, Lydia wrote her mother: “You were right, Mother. The meaning of marriage can be unknowable. I try to keep him happy, but sometimes I do not know what will please him, and what will cause a wrinkled look of displeasure. I do not cry in front of him, or before the children, and certainly not Mrs. Webb. When I feel the need, I go outside with the animals. My faith comforts me more than ever, for I know that God and His Son will now welcome me, when the time comes, for I have fulfilled my duty. I am now Wife.” We must bear this in mind before we condemn Lydia: Her spiritual leaders had told her this was her path to Salvation.

Elizabeth put up with Lydia’s selfish behavior for only so long. One evening she spoke with her husband. “I have drawn up a chart,” she said. “On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, you will spend the evening with her.”

Chauncey relented immediately. “You’re right. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays will be yours. I’ll spend Sunday night alone, here in the keeping room. That’ll even it out.”

“On Sundays,” Elizabeth said firmly, “you’ll be with me.”

6.

Such disharmony in the Webb household took place while the Saints were preparing for their greatest test yet. The Exodus was scheduled to begin with the spring weather, but new threats of massacre compelled Brigham to declare Nauvoo no longer safe. On February 4, 1846, in the dark heart of winter, the first Saints crossed the Mississippi to Sugar Creek, Iowa. Brigham did not make the treacherous crossing for another eleven days, staying behind in Nauvoo to perform several Endowment Ceremonies to Saints anxious to be blessed before abandoning their beloved Temple. By March 1, some two thousand Saints huddled in wagons and tents in Sugar Creek. Their journey had begun, yet their destination was still unknown. From here Brigham led the Saints roughly 350 miles, at a rate of approximately six miles per day, to what would become a yearlong way station on the Nebraska side of the Missouri River, Winter Quarters, an exposed encampment roughly six miles upriver from the site of present-day Omaha.

Chauncey and his family remained in Nauvoo until early April 1846. He was too busy building wagons to join the early emigrants. Eventually they too packed up, leaving behind nearly all their possessions and wealth. The Webbs—Chauncey, his two rival wives, and three children—joined the Exodus, crossing the Mississippi in two bonneted wagons pulled by three yoke of oxen. They carried a year’s supply of provisions, their clothing, and their faith. The Webbs reached Winter Quarters by midsummer. By September, some twenty thousand Saints had gathered there, each having placed his or her life into the hands of Brigham Young. Once a city rivaling Chicago, Nauvoo was now a ghost town. The wondrous Temple—the pride and handiwork of thousands of Saints—was abandoned. In a few years it would be in ruins, resembling a pile of ancient rubble in Rome or Greece, with animals sleeping among its stones.
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The Nauvoo Temple would not rise again until 2002.

For Elizabeth Churchill Webb, this event would prove momentous. This is the moment she buried her Testimony in the time capsule, leaving for us an eloquent, if incomplete, record of her faith.

7.

As every LDS member knows, the Saints would end up staying in Winter Quarters for almost a year. Under Brigham’s direction, they laid out blocks of flimsy tents, open-sided dugouts, and simple log sheds, building a temporary city to survive the winter of 1846–1847. Brigham called it the Camp of Israel. The settlement included community facilities such as a gristmill, a school, and several workshops to produce basic goods. Among these was Chauncey’s wainwright shop. Here, with help from his stepson, Gilbert, he built and repaired the wagons that would carry the Saints on their upcoming journey.

In January 1847, in a Revelation, God instructed Brigham to lead the Saints to the Rocky Mountains. The Heavenly Father assured His Prophet he would know the exact place to build their new Zion when he saw it. Word spread through Winter Quarters that a long journey would begin soon; everyone busied themselves with final preparations. For the Webbs, however, this meant their own departure would have to be delayed. Once again Chauncey’s wainwright shop was needed to support the departing Saints, the majority of whom left Winter Quarters in the spring and summer of 1847. By the time Chauncey’s work was done, it was too late for the Webbs to depart for Zion; the autumn snows would catch them. The Webbs would have to wait through the winter of 1847–1848 before they could join the new settlement in Utah.

According to Ann Eliza, during this time Chauncey was under the misperception that his plural marriage remained a secret. “Sometimes a husband is wrong about very much,” Ann Eliza observes. In every society—from the forums of ancient Rome to the dorms of BYU—the romantic life of others has always been subject to gossip. The early Saints were no exception. Everyone knew that Lydia was now the second Mrs. Webb. As Ann Eliza puts it, “The girl made sure of that.”

Elizabeth’s pain from sharing her husband with Lydia was renewed when, in November 1847, Lydia announced she would have a child. Gilbert’s record of how Lydia told Elizabeth she was pregnant is worth quoting at length.

My mother set out a stew and didn’t say much, minding her own business in the way that she had since Lydia became her rival. The wind was fierce, blowing through the chinks in the logs. My mother never sat to join us, she ran from the table to the hearth and back with the biscuits and the drippings and everything else. Anyone would see the difference now, what with my mother in her apron with the gravy stain above her heart while Lydia sat at the head of the table in a Summertime dress too thin for November. Her complexion was as white as the frost on the water in the well. “Children, your father and I have something important to tell you,” Lydia said. “Soon you’ll have a baby brother or sister.” She took my father’s fist and held it up like she had won a relay race.