The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints officially banned polygamous marriages in the 1890s, but what many people don’t realize is that even before then, many of these marriages were conducted secretly, including dozens of marriages involving the church’s founder, Joseph Smith, and it wasn’t until 2014 that the church acknowledged smith had at least 40 wives. The result of this early secrecy and longtime reluctance to discuss these marriages is that many of the women who were involved have been all but lost to history. The historian Todd Compton is trying to change that.
Todd Compton's recent book is In Sacred Loneliness: The Documents, which describes the materials and processes he used to track down and tell the stories of many of the wives of Joseph Smith, the founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,.
