Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger

Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger’s relationship joined domestic trust to a secret plural marriage, exposing an early conflict between Joseph Smith’s private conduct and the public secrecy surrounding plural marriage. Alger had been welcomed into the Smith household and was close to Emma Smith; after Emma discovered Joseph’s relationship with her, Alger was expelled. The episode shows how intimacy, household roles, and concealment intersected in the beginnings of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages.

Introduction and Household

Alger’s parents were among the early converts to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and she was introduced to Joseph Smith in 1830. By the winter of 1833, at age sixteen, she had moved into the Smith household as a domestic servant. The account emphasizes her closeness to both Joseph and Emma, particularly Emma, who was described as deeply devoted to her. Alger therefore entered the household not as an acknowledged rival, but as a young member of its domestic life whom Emma had come to love.

Marriage and Secrecy

In February or March 1833, Joseph took Alger as a plural wife. The book presents her as possibly the second woman, after Emma, whom he formally married. Joseph tried to keep the relationship secret, even as his involvement with Alger unfolded within a household where she and Emma had been close. The arrangement placed private marital conduct beside the public appearance of an ordinary household, and made disclosure a source of immediate personal conflict.

The episode is set within Joseph’s wider effort to keep plural marriage from public knowledge and from all but a select circle of followers. In 1832, he told that inner circle that he had received confirmation that taking more than one wife was a true principle, while saying that the time to practice it had not yet come. The account interprets this distinction as a matter of public disclosure: the practice had begun, but its public acknowledgment had not. Joseph’s relationship with Alger thus belongs to a period when his private conduct and the limited circulation of his teachings were deliberately kept apart.

Emma’s Discovery and Alger’s Expulsion

Emma eventually discovered Joseph and Alger together. By the fall of 1835, she had thrown Alger out of the Smith household. The outcome ended Alger’s place in the home and made the costs of Joseph’s secret relationship visible within the family. The narrative underscores the contrast between Emma’s earlier affection for Alger and her expulsion after the discovery, without suggesting that affection protected Alger from the consequences of the conflict.

Significance

The account characterizes Joseph as acting impulsively and as treating the intensity of his attachments as evidence that plural marriage could not be contrary to God’s wishes. It also notes that he drew on Old Testament accounts of patriarchal plural marriage to support that understanding. This framing makes the relationship more than a private attachment: it illustrates how Joseph’s personal desires, religious interpretation, and concealment reinforced one another. Alger’s position in the household, and her removal after Emma learned of the relationship, reveal the human and domestic consequences of that secrecy.