170 years ago today - Jun 8, 1851

While he was alive, Joseph Smith married the wife of Simeon Dagget Carter in Nauvoo. Lydia Kenyon Carter was listed as "Lydia Smith [--] wd of Joseph Smith (Prophet)," when she was sealed to James Goff on 8 June 1851. Born in 1799, she was 44-years-old (menopausal) when she became one of the Prophet's polygamous widows, after which Reynolds Cahoon sealed her as a polygamous wife to Heber C. Kimball on the same day the apostle sealed Cahoon to his first polygamous wife. The latter two had also married before the Prophet's death. Legally married to Simeon D. Carter since 1818, Lydia (mother of their three children) resided with him in Nauvoo and Utah --despite her marriages to Smith, Kimball, and Goff.

[Endowment House Record Book (1851-1854), Entry 65, for marriage of "Lydia Smith" (born on 11 December 1800) to James Goff on 8 June 1851 (Film 183,393--not available to the general public), LDS Family History Library, but with typescript available to the public in Quinn's Research Files, Beinecke Library; Lyndon W. Cook, The Revelations of the Prophet Joseph Smith: A Historical and Biographical Commentary of the Doctrine and Covenants (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1985), 74; Kenney, Wilford Woodruff's Journal: 1833-1898 Typescript, 6: 305 (12 December 1866), referenced in "Evidence For The Sexual Side of Joseph Smith's Polygamy," Comments by D. Michael Quinn on Session #2A "Reconsidering Joseph Smith's Marital Practices," Mormon History Association's Annual Conference, Calgary, Alberta, Canada, 29 June 2012 (unabbreviated version, revised during July)]

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