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My first entry into the world of so-called Mormon polygamy began on June 17, 2010 when I attended the second annual conference of Safety Net, an organization that seeks “to assist people associated with the practice of plural marriage, whether an active polygamist or exiting polygamist.” Safety Net strives for neutrality toward the actual practice of plural marriage so they can “meet physical, emotional, and educational needs.”The goal of their annual conferences is to increase awareness of the issues surrounding the practice of plural marriage, present individual stories of polygamy, and discuss resources available to those wanting to leave polygamous family structures.

Polygamy is, for many Americans, Mormonism’s defining feature. Even now, over a century after the main church abandoned the practice, images of Latter-day Saint polygamy persist in the popular and scholarly imagination. Most accounts of Mormon polygamy have either emphasized sexual experimentation and marital reform on the one hand or biblical primitivism on the other.While these accounts are at least partly true—Joseph Smith did believe that he was replacing a failed system of marriage, and he and his colleagues frequently invoked Bible patriarchs to explain their behaviors and doctrines—polygamy was also a solution to a specific set of contemporary cultural problems—remarriage after bereavement—refracted through biblical interpretation.

Mary Cooper and James Oakey, my maternal great-grandparents, married in 1840 and settled in Nottingham, England. Victoria was on the throne, and occasionally the citizens of Nottingham came out to pay honor as the queen in her carriage passed through on the way to Belvoir Castle. Mary gave birth to seven living children. James became a designer and maker of lace and also helped to develop new lace-making machinery.

According to his official history, that’s all Joseph Smith said to his mother after God the Father and Jesus Christ appeared to him while he prayed by himself in the woods. Whether or not Presbyterianism was true was a more pressing question for the young Joseph Smith than it is for most of you. Sometime in the mid-1820s, Lucy Mack Smith and several of Joseph’s siblings joined a Presbyterian church. Joseph must have wrestled with his mother’s choice. Like his father, though, he never joined any Protestant church. But it was surely a major point of controversy and discussion in the family.