1200: Zina D H Young
Third General President of the Relief Society of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Born: 31 January 1821, Watertown, New York, United States of America
Died: 28 August 1901, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States of America
“Sisters, it is for us to be wide awake to our duties. The kingdom will roll on, and we have nothing to fear but our own imperfections.”
Zina is known today for having three husbands, two of whom were Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. While early practitioners of the Latter-Day-Saints faith were often polygamous in the sense that one husband would have multiple wives, Zina did the opposite, being a single woman/wife with multiple husbands. As you will see the further along you read this article, Zina’s marital status has been a source of confusion and contention for over one hundred years.
Zina was born to a strict Presbyterian family and was the seventh of nine children. The family prayed together, sang hymns, and read from the Bible daily. Zina’s father read from the Bible so extensively, he taught his children that none of the religions of the day lined up with how the Bible described the Christian religion and how it should be practiced. When Zina’s family first learned of the new faith, known today as “Mormons” but more accurately called Latter-Day-Saints, her entire family converted in 1835, save for one brother.
In 1840, according to the church’s own website, Zina was “privately taught” about plural marriage from Joseph Smith himself. What exactly being “privately taught” meant was not described, but Zina initially declined the offer, and refused two more times in quick succession after that. The following year, she married her first husband Henry Jacobs (although this marriage was a civil one, and not performed in a church or religious setting). A few months after that, Zina received a “personal revelation on plural marriage” (according to the church’s website) and was sealed* to Joseph Smith. Evidently Joseph Smith had been continually asking Zina, in secret, to marry him even after she was married to Henry. At the time of Zina and Joseph’s sealing, Zina was pregnant with her first child, her husband Henry’s child. After Joseph’s death, Zina was sealed to Brigham Young**.
To put it in more plain language, Zina’s first marriage was a civil wedding only, while her next two had deeper religious meaning. Zina was married to her civil husband, Henry, and Joseph at the same time, and was married to Henry and Brigham at the same time as well (but she was not married to both Joseph and Brigham at the same time—her marriage to Brigham only occurred after Joseph had died). Zina married Brigham in 1846. Zina also stated her civil marriage, to Henry Jacobs, was an unhappy one, and they separated at some point during her life, but records are uncertain as to when the separation occurred. To make it even more confusing, Zina never elaborated on exactly what was so “unhappy” about her marriage to Henry—and Henry would spend the rest of his life after their separation pining for Zina.
At the time, polygamous or polyandrous marriages in the church were kept quiet as much as possible. Records indicate that on all three occasions Joseph approached Zina to ask for her hand in marriage, he came to her one on one to discuss it in secret. Joseph had already been married to Emma, the wife he is most often associated with, and at least one other woman named Louisa (although one source indicates he already had at least five other wives), before Zina finally married him. Today, the LDS Church has admitted their records indicate Joseph eventually had at least forty wives, however, these wives were supposedly mostly wives for “eternity” only—meaning they were not consummated marriages in this life, consummation would occur in the next life instead.
An article I found went even furth into discussing how many times it took Joseph proposing to Zina before she finally said yes. According to the article (linked below), Zina later recounted that Joseph told her brother to tell her, “Tell Zina I have put it off and put it off until an angel with a drawn sword has stood before me and told me if I did not establish that principle [plurality of wives] and live it, I would lose my position and my life and the Church could progress no further.”
(If this sounds like the most confusing game of Telephone you’ve ever heard, don’t worry, it feels like that to me as well). Essentially Zina kept saying no, and so eventually Joseph went to Zina’s brother, and asked Zina’s brother to convince Zina to marry Joseph. Joseph told Zina’s brother to tell the story quoted above, that if Zina did not marry Joseph he would literally be killed by an angel and that the entire church would collapse.
While this may seem extremely manipulative today, there is, once again, more to the story. Zina (supposedly) did not marry Joseph based on this one story/quote alone. Later in life, Zina would state that she only chose to marry Joseph after the Lord came to her in several dreams, telling her that he wanted her to partake in a “Celestial Marriage” (as her marriage/sealing to Joseph was called by the church). It was only after Zina received this message from the Lord that she decided to go ahead with the marriage to Joseph.
(It should also be noted that, while Zina was in her early twenties at the time of her sealing to Joseph, he was sixteen years older than her).
It is also still up for debate as to whether or not Zina’s first husband Henry knew his wife had been married/sealed to Joseph Smith from the get-go. Some scholars believe that Henry was not informed of his wife’s second marriage until after it had already taken place, and therefore he couldn’t do anything about it, while others insist he must have known because of how close he and Joseph Smith were. As late as 1842, Henry was reportedly telling people how much he loved his wife’s “loveliness” and “fidelity,”—he probably would not have used the word fidelity if he knew she was married to another man.
Those who believe Henry was aware of Zina’s sealing to Joseph include Henry and Zina’s own granddaughter, who claimed, “Henry signed a paper relinquishing his right to Zina for eternity. The slip he signed is still in the records of the Salt Lake Temple.” However, as of 2006 (when the article which mentions this was written) that piece of paper had not been located. If the story is true, however, Henry knew within months of his own marriage to Zina that she would also be marrying Joseph.
One has to wonder, looking back from a modern perspective, if Zina and Henry’s marriage was unhappy because of her plural marriages, the first of which she seems to have been coerced into, whether she realized it herself or not.
When Zina was sealed to Brigham Young, she was heavily pregnant with her second child (that had been fathered by her first husband, Henry).
To make it even more confusing, around the time Zina moved in with Brigham Young and several of his other plural wives, her first husband Henry left on a mission for the church. While serving on that mission, Henry married another woman. So now Zina had two husbands and Henry had two wives. Some scholars believe Brigham Young forced Henry to abandon Zina and marry someone else, but there is no definitive proof this is true. It is rather convenient timing, however.
For those unaware of early Latter-Day-Saint history, the members of the church were intensely persecuted by other white Christian settlers. The church initially began in New York, before moving to Ohio and then Missouri. The Saints were pushed out of Missouri and into Illinois, where they founded a settlement called Nauvoo. However, it was while living in Nauvoo that Joseph Smith was killed. After his death, Brigham Young took over as head of the church (although not all of the congregants believed in Brigham Young, so the church splintered apart after Joseph's death. The vast majority of the congregants did follow Brigham Young however). The Saints ended up fleeing Illinois and headed westward, like so many other settlers on the Oregon trail. Brigham's followers eventually ended up in Utah, as they are most known and associated with today, but they stopped in several places along the way, including Iowa.
Back to Zina.
Zina and Henry arrived at Mt. Pigsah, in what was then the Iowa Territory, on May 18th, 1846. By June 1st, Henry had left on a mission and he and Zina would never live as husband and wife again. Their second son had been born March 22nd of that same year. Zina’s father wrote in his diary on July 2nd, that Brigham had requested Zina, and her children move into Brigham’s household. She did not immediately move, however. Zina’s father passed away in August, and at that time, she was living with her sons, but not with Brigham. By the time winter set in, however, she had moved into Brigham’s household and had declared herself divorced from Henry.
When Henry left on his mission in June, he had not given up on their marriage. In a letter he wrote to Zina in August, he mentions how much he still loves her and the children and hopes for the future. Part of the letter reads:
“Zina I have not forgotten you, my love is as ever the same, and much more abundantly, and hope that it will continue to grow stronger and stronger to all eternity, worlds without end, when families are joined together and become one consolidated in truth, when the keys of the Resurrection will be restored, and the fullness of the Gospel given the Law of the Celestial Kingdom be in force and every man and woman will know their place and have to keep it. Though there will be shiftings in time and revisions in eternity, and all be made right in the end. You told me in your letter that you calculated to start the next morning for the big camp. Well, may the Lord bless you and my little children with life and good health and a safe journey. Take good care of the cow and steers and all I left with you. Keep it safe till I return, for I will then again give my best respects to Brother Brigham and family.”
I don’t know about you, but to me, that does not come across as a man ready to give up on his marriage and family. By the end of the paragraph, it is clear Henry knows Zina is going to take the children away to live with Brigham. While Henry cannot argue with her over this fact, seeing as Brigham was now president of the church and also married to Zina, it is clear that he is not happy with this decision. He is wishing her the best while also remaining hopeful that things might change once he comes back home.
Henry’s mission lasted just over a year. He arrived back in the same city as Zina by November of 1847, yet by that time he had married another woman and taken in her five-year-old-son as his stepson. Zina and Henry would remain in the same settlement for around six months, during the winter of 1847/1848, and yet there is no evidence the two ever spoke a word together, much less lived as husband and wife. Clearly, during that year Henry was away from Zina, they both settled on the dissolution of their marriage and moved on…but again, there is no evidence Henry was happy with this solution. There are no records that indicate the pair ever received a legal divorce either, which meant that technically they remained married until they died. This can be easily explained away though. The most likely time they would have filed for divorce, while living in Iowa, was practically impossible to do. Iowa Territorial Law dictated that a divorce had to be granted by a district court, and the settlement Zina and Henry lived in was in unincorporated land with no district court anywhere even close to being nearby.
With all of that said, Zina was much more than just her marriages. Yes, she was married to three men, two of whom were founding members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints, but she was more than just a wife.
Zina had three children in total, two sons with Henry Jacobs and a daughter with Brigham Young. She also went on to adopt three or four more children (sources differ) that were born to another of Brigham’s wives.
Though she had limited medical training of her own, Zina became a midwife to her people and helped deliver countless babies over the years. She opened a nursing school and taught obstetrics classes. She even became a member of the board of the Deseret Hospital. Zina spent twenty-one years traveling around Utah to help create Relief Societies. Once becoming General President, Zina helped expand Relief Societies to other areas outside of Utah as well. The goal of the Relief Societies was to help provide and improve local medical care and give classes on nursing in the beginning. Today, the Relief Society is the women's based organization within the church that continues to focus on philanthropic endeavors. Zina served as President of the Relief Society for the entire church from 1888 until she died in 1901.
Zina was also a suffragist, attending conventions and becoming the vice president of the National Council of Women. She served as president of the Deseret Silk Association (after learning how to care for silkworms to foster silk production) and was the matron of the Salt Lake City Temple from 1893 (when the temple was dedicated) until her death in 1901. She also worked for the temples in Logan and St. George, Utah.
The practice of plural marriage, or polygamy, within the church began to be phased out around 1890—which happened to coincide with the time Zina was serving as General President of the Relief Society. Six years later, Utah became the forty-fifth state to enter the union of the United States; largely because the LDS faith had abandoned the practice of plural marriage. To read more about Utah's path to statehood, click here.
The most frustrating part about trying to study Zina’s life is the fact that every easily locatable source online (outside of Wikipedia) is from a Latter-Day-Saint’s based website. Two of the main sources I have listed are official pages from the church’s actual website, one is from a site called “Joseph Smith’s Paper’s” one is called “Joseph’s Smith’s Polygamy” and another is from “FAIR Latter-Day-Saints.” The only sources I have listed below that are not affiliated with the church are a Wikipedia article, an article from NPR recounting how many wives Joseph Smith had, and finally Zina’s Find a Grave profile. While church records can give a great insight into a person’s life, in this case it also means there is great bias into the research behind Zina’s story. I myself am not affiliated with the Latter-Day-Saints but have many family members who are church members. LDS folks are some of the kindest and most loving people I know, but just like with all religions, there are always bad seeds as well. I did my best to pick through the bias and report on Zina’s story as best I could, while also trying to make it as not-confusing as possible.
*Sealing is the word used for marriage conducted within the Latter-Day-Saint religion for those unaware. A sealing ceremony usually means an individual’s soul is sealed to another’s for all eternity, although a temple divorce is possible in certain circumstances.
**Although interestingly enough, many of Joseph Smith’s plural wives who were later sealed to Brigham Young, were sealed to Brigham in the current life only, according to the church. The reason for this is because Joseph Smith had made it known before his death, that the majority of his forty-odd “plural wives” should be remarried to the church’s apostles. The LDS church always has a president and twelve apostles that run the church, and Joseph was the first president. Brigham was sealed to either seven or nine of Joseph’s wives, while the other eleven apostles all received some of his other wives. Zina was apparently allowed to choose which of the twelve she would marry, and she chose Brigham. At the time of Brigham and Zina’s sealing, her first husband Henry was standing in the room and evidently gave his approval for the match, even though Zina was only weeks away from giving birth to their second child.
Badges Earned:
Find a Grave Marked
Located In My Personal Library:
No Place for a Woman: The Struggle for Suffrage in the Wild West by Chris Enss
Uppity Women Speak Their Minds by Vicki Leon
Sources:
https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/history/topics/zina-d-h-young?lang=eng
https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/person/zina-diantha-huntington-young
https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/plural-wives-overview/zina-diantha-huntington/
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6740557/zina-diantha-young