{"id":53639,"date":"2026-05-23T02:18:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T08:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/?p=53639"},"modified":"2026-05-21T00:23:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T06:23:38","slug":"historiography-and-helen-mar-kimball","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/2026\/05\/historiography-and-helen-mar-kimball\/","title":{"rendered":"Historiography and Helen Mar Kimball"},"content":{"rendered":"

Stephen C.\u2019s most recent research roundup<\/a> led to some discussion of Michelle Brady Stone\u2019s article in the Journal of Mormon Polygamy<\/em> (JMP), \u201cConstructing Helen: Absences, Ambiguities, and Adjustments in the Historiography of Helen Mar Kimball<\/a>.\u201d Whatever status is conferred by peer review, and whatever reservations one might have about the journal, research publications ultimately have to stand on the strength of their own evidence and arguments. Fortunately JMP is an open-access journal, so we can just read the article and see for ourselves.<\/p>\n

Stone\u2019s article is a historiographic essay, which means she examines trends and patterns in how scholars have approached Helen Mar Kimball and the documentary evidence of her life, rather than directly attempting to re-evaluate the documents themselves. And in that regard Stone certainly uncovers noteworthy material about the uncertain dating of Helen Mar Kimball\u2019s sealing to Joseph Smith at the age of fourteen in early June 1843, which serves as a marker for other uncertainties related to the sealing and the caution with which scholars have treated them (or not), and how various people have read things into the documents based on their (sometimes lurid) assumptions that the texts themselves cannot support. If you\u2019ve ever suspected that some luminaries of Mormon Studies are not entirely careful in the conclusions they draw from documentary evidence, you will find material to support that view in Stone\u2019s article, which is on the whole quite accessible and clearly written.<\/p>\n

If you have done serious academic research before, you are likely familiar with the odd things you find when you dive into the footnotes. Ideas get fossilized in the scholarly record based on slender evidence, with an original formulation that is not nearly as confident or authoritative as later citations, and even famous scholars can be careless with documents. (This is partly an occupational hazard of historical research: It is difficult to find the right balance between getting bogged down in documentary minutiae, unable to see past the scribal punctuation practices just a few inches from the end of your nose; or flying 20 miles above the surface, blithely ignoring the intricacies of the textual terrain in your soaring interpretations, entirely untethered from evidence.)<\/p>\n

Stone has identified some real discrepancies between Helen Mar Kimball\u2019s outspoken defense of polygamy, and how she seems to have described her sealing to Joseph Smith; and in how contemporaries depicted Helen compared to other women sealed to Joseph Smith (in short: they didn\u2019t; her sealing was all but ignored or unknown, and Helen did little to confirm the fact of her sealing when asked). Considering the outsized role Helen Mar Kimball, as the youngest of the women sealed to Joseph Smith, plays in today\u2019s debates about plural marriage, there is a surprising amount of uncertainty, and for that alone Stone\u2019s article is worth reading.<\/p>\n

Stone does not deny the reality of Nauvoo-era polygamy, although Stone\u2019s serial problematizing of the documents related to Helen Mar Kimball at times veers toward special pleading. Students are certainly allowed to problematize prior scholarly interpretations. Ultimately, however, grown-ups have to propose solutions to historical conundrums, even at the risk of being wrong.<\/p>\n

And there are some facts that can\u2019t be explained away by analyzing the historiography. Although reticent at other times, Helen Mar Kimball described her sealing to Joseph Smith in a letter written to her family in 1881. Stone points out multiple times that this autobiographical document was unknown before 1975, is of unknown provenance, and seems to diverge from Helen\u2019s other numerous public statements in defense of polygamy. But the document is also an autograph in her own hand and can\u2019t be dismissed. (It\u2019s also viewable online and quite legible; see for yourself<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

So let me wade into a contentious debate far outside my area of expertise. The solution to the perceived contradiction between Helen Mar Kimball\u2019s public defenses of polygamy, and the autobiographical family letter of 1881, is probably not to treat her defense of polygamy as her true perspective, or to treat the family letter as the actual truth, or even to locate the truth somewhere in between. Rather than contradicting each other, Helen Mar Kimball\u2019s writings can be read in harmony with each other.<\/p>\n

Just like her published defenses of polygamy, her family letter of 1881 was also meant for others to read. It is a representation of her life, not her life itself. The 1881 letter, just like other publications, offered a vigorous defense of polygamy and of the prophet Joseph Smith:<\/p>\n

…the promises made to me the morning that I was sealed to the Prophet of God will not fail and I would not have the chain broken for I have had a view of the principle of eternal salvation and the perfect union which this sealing power will bring to the human family and with the help of our Heavenly Father I am determined to so live that I can claim those promises.<\/p>\n

One source of difficulty is that much of the key passage is verse. People sometimes treat poetry as a distillation of truth, but verse is just another way to make statements based on linguistic convention. There is no guarantee that Helen Mar Kimball was a gifted poet (Kent will have to field that question), or that this bit of verse makes for a successful poem, or that every allusion comes across as intended. In fact, we should be more cautious in our interpretations, as the conventions of verse can distort meaning. Was Helen\u2019s note that \u201cpitying angels wept\u201d an allusion to the lustful clutches of a predatory prophet from the youngest inductee into his harem? Unlikely, since the 1881 letter strongly affirms both the principle of plural marriage and the prophethood of Joseph Smith.<\/p>\n

In her 1881 letter, Helen Mar Kimball contrasts her perspective as an adult with her limited teenage perspective, but her teenage foolishness can include both her naivet\u00e9 before the sealing, and her dooming after it. The weeping angels might be excessive poetic diction, or they might reflect teenage angst as viewed from a mature perspective.<\/p>\n

Rather than making vague allusions to the prophet\u2019s seraglio, Helen Mar Kimball specifically identified the hardships that her sealing to Joseph Smith entailed: rumors spread in Nauvoo, her friends treated her differently, and she could no longer attend dances and other social events (although not in June, but only after December 1843, when her father finally put his foot down against her presence at what he saw as morally dubious activities).<\/p>\n

Thy happy dreems all o\u2019er[,] thou\u2019rt doom\u2019d alas to be
\nBarr\u2019d out from social scenes by this thy destiny[.]
\nAnd o\u2019er thy sad\u2019nd mem\u2019ries of sweet-departed joys
\nThey sicken\u2019d heart will brood and imagine future woes,
\nAnd like a fetter\u2019d bird with wild and longing heart,
\nThou\u2019lt dayly pine for freedom and murmur at thy lot.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If the lines of verse seem overwrought, then perhaps that is the point. \u201cWe have lived happily together for over 35 years,\u201d Helen writes, later in the same letter, about her marriage to Horace Kimball Whitney, whom she married in February 1846. Stone notes that another autobiographical account by Helen Mar Kimball describing these years suggests an \u201colder woman\u2019s bemusement as she looked back at her fourteen-year-old self imagining her life was over\u201d (32) \u2013 and the same argument could be made about the 1881 family letter.<\/p>\n

Historiography is genuinely fascinating, but there\u2019s a reason that the obligatory chapter surveying previous research typically gets dropped before dissertations get published. The thorny historical problems still need to be solved (and there will always be a need for people who will push back on established consensus and pound on the documents). It seems like the pieces are in place for a compelling argument about Helen Mar Kimball\u2019s sealing to Joseph Smith that respects the documents while putting the most salacious interpretations to rest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Stephen C.\u2019s most recent research roundup led to some discussion of Michelle Brady Stone\u2019s article in the Journal of Mormon Polygamy (JMP), \u201cConstructing Helen: Absences, Ambiguities, and Adjustments in the Historiography of Helen Mar Kimball.\u201d Whatever status is conferred by peer review, and whatever reservations one might have about the journal, research publications ultimately have to stand on the strength of their own evidence and arguments. Fortunately JMP is an open-access journal, so we can just read the article and see for ourselves.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":67,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latter-day-saint-thought"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/67"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=53639"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53653,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53639\/revisions\/53653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}