Did Joseph Smith Really Have 33 Wives? It Was Actually Way More

In the show Under the Banner of Heaven, Dan Lafferty states that Mormon prophet Joseph Smith had 33 wives when justifying his own polygamous desires.

Did Joseph Smith Really Have 33 Wives? It Was Actually Way More

WARNING: Spoilers ahead for Under the Banner of Heaven episode 4!

Under the Banner of Heaven sees Dan Lafferty justify polygamy through Joseph Smith’s staggering 33 wives, but the real number was much higher. Dan’s embrace of polygamy through The Peace Maker was the true moment he descended into his religion-fueled delusion, with the text still being cited today as a source of validation for fundamentalist Latter-day Saints polygamy movements. While historians have debated whether or not Smith actually wrote it as claimed by Dan, Under the Banner of Heaven’s inclusion of the Mormonism founder’s polygamy is based on truth.

In Under the Banner of Heaven episode 4, Dan becomes set on his path toward polygamy, believing he must follow the word of the prophets during the Latter-day Saints’ earliest days. The episode then sees Allen recall Joseph Smith propositioning his wife Emma about polygamy, with Emma rejecting the notion. At the same time, Joseph appears to get another revelation from God that she must obey his will or be “destroyed.” In another example of using religion as a way to justify one’s personal gain, Dan tells his wife, Matilda, that Joseph Smith had 33 wives, so denying him the power of further wives would be going against Joseph’s teachings.

While 33 wives is already a shocking number, the truth of Under the Banner of Heaven’s claim is much worse. In actuality, the LDS church has confirmed that Joseph Smith had “up to 40 wives,” with other sources putting the total even higher. When considering the research of Fawn M. Brodie, the writer of the 1945 Joseph Smith biography No Man Knows My History, and various Mormon historians, the true count of Joseph Smith’s plural wives could include as many as 51 women – nearly 20 more than stated in Under the Banner of Heaven episode 4.

However, the only marriage of Joseph Smith that was performed in an official civil ceremony was to his first wife, Emma Hale, with the 40 or 50 others only being considered religious unions. These marriages were “sealed” through Mormon wedding rituals, as shown in Under the Banner of Heaven episode 3 for Brenda and Allen, which didn’t translate to legal civil unions. Nonetheless, the polygamy of Joseph Smith was often documented and supported by dangerous LDS sects like those in Under the Banner of Heaven, with Dan Lafferty’s horrifying statement that Joseph took a wife as young as 14 years old also being completely true. Joseph Smith’s 14-year-old wife was Helen Mar Kimball, who was married to the 37-year-old Smith at the insistence of her father, who wanted to improve their standing within the church.

Joseph Smith’s plural wives continued to cause issues between the Latter-day Saints and the United States government, with nearly all sectors of the American public condemning polygamy. Following Smith’s death in 1844, some Latter-day Saint officials continued to practice polygamy, and while this put the religion at odds with the American public and government, plural marriages weren’t officially outlawed in the U.S. until 1862. Furthermore, it wasn’t until 1890 that LDS president Wilford Woodruff renounced polygamy in the church. Of course, this didn’t stop all Mormon sects from practicing polygamy like Joseph Smith, with such beliefs serving as a significant underlying factor in Under the Banner of Heaven’s true story of Brenda Lafferty’s murder.