Joseph Smith and Helen Mar Kimball

Joseph Smith and Helen Mar Kimball’s plural marriage in Nauvoo in May 1843 illustrates how Joseph Smith presented plural marriage to a young woman as a divine command carrying consequences for her family’s salvation. Helen was fourteen, and her later account preserves the pressure surrounding her agreement rather than a history of their married life.

Place in Joseph Smith’s Plural-Marriage Practice

The marriage took place during the years when Joseph Smith was introducing plural marriage among the revelations and practices of the Nauvoo period. Between 1840 and 1844, he married about forty women. The account describes several as shocked or revolted when he disclosed what he said God required of them, and identifies Helen, at fourteen, among the girls who were still pubescent.

Joseph Smith formally codified the revelation on plural marriage on July 12, 1843, two months after marrying Helen. The teaching was kept secret and was not acknowledged until 1852, eight years after his death. Their marriage thus preceded the formal codification described in the account, within a practice that was being advanced through private claims of revelation.

Proposal and Agreement

Joseph Smith explained to Helen that God had commanded her to become his plural wife and gave her twenty-four hours to comply. Helen acquiesced. Her later account, confided to a friend, conveyed that she was young and had been told that the salvation of her whole family depended on her agreement. The episode therefore links the marriage not only to Joseph Smith’s prophetic authority, but also to the spiritual stakes he placed on Helen’s decision.

The account does not describe a mutual courtship or provide details of their subsequent domestic life. It focuses instead on the proposal’s terms: a command attributed to God, a short deadline, and the claim that Helen’s choice affected the salvation of her family.

Marriage and Its Significance

Helen Mar Kimball married Joseph Smith in Nauvoo in May 1843. Her youth and the stated consequences of refusal distinguish this account from a simple record of a marriage: it shows how religious authority could shape the choices presented to a prospective plural wife. Helen’s later disclosure to a friend also gives the episode a surviving personal perspective, preserving the distance between her acquiescence at the time and her description of how that decision had been framed.

Read alongside the later formal codification and delayed public acknowledgment of plural marriage, Helen’s marriage shows the doctrine taking shape through private declarations of divine command before it was openly recognized. The account’s central emphasis is on the asymmetry of the encounter: Joseph Smith spoke as a prophet conveying God’s requirement, while fourteen-year-old Helen was given a day to decide under the asserted consequence for her family’s salvation.