50 Years in Polygamy: Big Secrets and Little White Lies Read online

  Independent polygamists scattered across the Salt Lake Valley and elsewhere: approximately15,000 members.

  Smaller polygamist groups comprise:

  The LeBarons (the Church of the Lamb of God): approximately 500 members.

  The Kingstons (the Latter Day Church of Christ, or Davis County Cooperative): approximately 2,000 members.

  The Missouri Community: approximately 500 members.

  The Nielsens/Naylors: approximately 300 members.

  The Petersons (Righteous Branch of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints): approximately 200 members.

  James Harmston/TLC (True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days): approximately 150 members.

  The above numbers come from reports in the (Utah State) Safety Net’s Primer in April 2011. However, the TOTAL of 40,500 polygamists is an extremely inaccurate figure. My father had close to 200 grandchildren when he died. If all 200 of those grandchildren remained Fundamentalists and on a low average had only seven children each, that would give Dad 1,400 great grandchildren. Those figures don’t include the great-grandchildren my nephews have fathered with other wives. But I’m grateful to say, many have not stayed in polygamy. Therefore, assuming only one-half of those great-grandchildren have stayed, or will stay, Dad’s polygamist posterity today would total around 700. Keep in mind this figure comes from only one-half of Dad’s posterity. Multiply 700 by only 100 polygamist men of my father’s generation, many of which had much larger families than his, for a total of at least 70,000 members of the AUB sect, let alone all the rest of the polygamist population across the county.

  CHAPTER 1

  Curtains Wide Open—

  The Beginning

  On our front porch, which also served as our laundry room, I climbed out of Mom’s galvanized tin tub, which was half full of cold, murky bathwater and ringed with lye soap residue. The stiff yellow towel that had hung on our clothesline for a whole day felt scratchy around my five-year-old chubby body.

  Inside our three-bedroom basement house, photos and memorabilia concealed most of Mom’s pastel-blue tricot bedspread. I wanted to sprawl out on the silky softness, but instead I carefully sat on the corner of the bed. As I stared at a five-by-seven picture of a younger version of her, I thought my heart would burst with pride.

  “Mom, you look so pretty in this picture!” I said.

  She quickly wiped tears from her cheeks and nose.

  “What’s the matter, Mom?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It seems like I’m always crying . . .”

  To me, she was beautiful, no matter what her age or whether her eyes glistened with tears of sadness or sparkled with joy.

  In her younger years, my mother, Vera Cooke, was a vivacious, slender, blue-eyed blond. She loved to hang out with her friends, attend LDS Church activities, swim, dance, and roller-skate. But most of all she loved to hike.

  Listening to her reminisce made me happy. I pictured her wonderful adventures as if they would someday be mine.

  “The twelve-mile hike up the steep hill to the Black Canyon Dam was as easy as pie!” Mom told me years later. “I used to pick apples, sell magazine subscriptions, and watch children to earn spending money.” Then Mom blushed as she brought her voice to a whisper, maybe so dad couldn’t hear. “It was summer, and I was nineteen years old when I fell for Leslie Fenton. He was tall and handsome!” She giggled. “We’d been going together for quite some time when a real pretty girl came up and asked me if I was in love with him. You know what I told her? I was thinking, Well, I guess I am, in a way, but the words that suddenly shot right out of my mouth surprised me. ‘No, I guess not, so you can have him.’”

  Mother sighed. “I wonder who he married and where he’s living now. Sometimes I wonder how different my life would be if I had stayed with him in the LDS Church, and not lived plural marriage with your father.” After a long pause she said, “Well, you know what, Sophia? I really believe the Lord must have put those words in my mouth to keep me from marrying the wrong man.”

  In Mom’s junior year of high school, her family moved from Emmett, Idaho; to Saint Anthony, Idaho; so they could be near relatives. Mom didn’t want to leave her school and friends, so her parents gave her permission to move back to Emmett. There, she worked for her room and board and finished her senior year of high school.

  One Sunday, my mother attended church with her aunt and her sister Alice. It just happened to be the LDS meetinghouse where her future husband was teaching the adult Sunday school class.

  “When I saw your mom across the room, my heart stopped. I fell head over heels in love with the most beautiful woman on earth,” dad often recounted years later.

  And each time he would boast about his gorgeous wife, Mom would pipe in, “And Owen Allred was the most handsome young man I’d ever laid eyes on.” Then they’d snuggle and laugh.

  A few weeks after my parents’ mating dance began, Dad had to leave town to finish a logging contract. The three months he was gone seemed like an eternity to him. His only thoughts were to get back to Emmett where he could be near Vera, who was now his fiancée.

  What Mom didn’t know about my Dad and his family would change the course of our lives forever. Before long, he took her to meet most of his father’s large polygamous family. My paternal grandmother, Mary Evelyn Clark, had been sealed to Byron Harvey Allred “for time and all eternity” as his second plural wife. The sealing was performed by LDS Apostle Anthony W. Ivins. This wedding ceremony took place in Colonia Juarez,, Chihuahua, Mexico, on June 15, 1903, thirteen years after the LDS Church’s 1890 Manifesto (see Allred, Byron Harvey Jr. diary, page 68.).

  A highly respected man, Byron Harvey Allred was known for his skills, wisdom, and integrity. My grandfather held many important positions in Idaho during his lifetime. Beginning at age twenty-two, he served two years as a state legislator. He was a member of Idaho’s Council of Defense during World War I, and a state director of the U.S. Boys’ Working Reserve. Grandpa served as Speaker of the Idaho House of Representatives in 1916, and state director of the Family Market in 1917. He aspired to run for U.S. Congress in 1918, but his LDS stake president urged him not to, saying Byron’s religious pursuits would not be an exemplary representation of the LDS Church’s views.

  In one of Mom’s recollections, she told me, “Your grandfather Allred encouraged each one of his children to fast and pray to gain their own testimonies as to whether they should remain in the LDS Church, or whether they should live plural marriage. When we were first dating, your father wasn’t sure of his own testimony, so he was quite reluctant to talk to me about his parents’ religious beliefs and the lifestyle his father and some of his brothers and sisters were secretly living.”

  My mother said, after she met Owen’s parents, his brother Rulon and his three wives, and some of the other siblings, she came to love and trust them. She felt they were honorable, faithful people. All of them accepted her as well. She said they immediately started treating her as if she was already a member of the family. “And you know, Sophia,” Mom continued, “nothing about their polygamous lifestyle was repulsive or offensive to me. From the very beginning, I had no prejudices to overcome. I felt like I finally belonged.”

  As months went by, Rulon and Byron spent many long hours preaching the importance of living polygamy. They answered questions from any and all prospective candidates—including my parents—and influenced many potential converts with their powerful personal testimonies. They also delivered compelling sermons about an alleged eight-hour meeting, which became the theological basis for many Fundamentalists to continue living polygamy after the Manifesto.

  Concerning this supposed meeting, Grandpa Allred recorded in his book A Leaf in Review: “LDS President John Taylor disclosed to fourteen men and women who were present, the Lord and Joseph Smith had visited him the previous night and directed him concerning his priesthood duties. Du
ring the meeting, Taylor ordained and set apart five men to perpetuate the fulness of the gospel (polygamy) outside of the mainstream LDS Church” (ibid, 185–89).

  My father proposed to my mother just after her twenty-first birthday in February 1935. Their marriage was solemnized in the LDS temple in Logan, Utah. Luckily for them, their local Church leaders didn’t question them about their adherence to the laws prohibiting polygamy. My parents were extremely grateful to fully participate in the LDS temple ceremonies. Afterward, they bought a wedding ring and spent the night at the Eccles Hotel in Logan.

  “While we were honeymooning,” Mom told me, “your dad’s brothers moved our things into a tiny shed they’d fixed up as a bedroom close to Grandmother Allred’s house. The first night we got back, just after we had turned out the lights, Dad’s coworkers from the sawmill started making a terrible racket outside. They began yelling and rattling tin cans. Minutes later, they crashed through the door and kitchen window. ‘Get dressed and come out peaceably or we’ll take you to the top of Freeze Out Mountain and make you walk home barefoot,’ they yelled.

  “Back then all the folks in Emmett gathered in town on Saturday evenings to dance and visit with one another. When someone got married, they would shivaree them. They’d try to separate the bride from the groom as a prank. So that night, right there in front of everyone, the guys unloaded a wheelbarrow, lifted me into it, and told Owen to push it to the end of town and back. He pushed it all right.” Mom chuckled. “Your dad ran so fast no one could keep up with him! He kept on going until he ran the two of us right back home.”

  Mother said she felt supremely happy to be caring for her beloved husband while their testimonies of plural marriage continued to grow. But most of all she looked forward to the birth of her first child.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mom’s Devils

  1937–1946

  Grandfather Allred died in January 1937, fifteen years before my birth. My parents were in St. Anthony visiting my mother’s parents when they received a letter from Grandpa, asking them to rush back to Emmett so he could see them and his six-month-old grandson one last time. They were heartbroken when they found out they were too late.

  The day before Grandpa died, he told my grandmother, Mary Evelyn, “I will be going home in a few days—I am going to die.”

  “Whatever do you mean, Harvey?” Grandma laughed nervously. “You’re feeling better now than you have in a long while.”

  “Can’t you understand, Evelyn? It’s time for me to go. My father is coming for me tonight.” Then Grandpa gamely chased Grandma around the kitchen, pretending to swat her with his rolled-up newspaper. Grandpa died peacefully in the middle of the night.

  The same month Grandpa Allred died, my mother lost her two-and-a-half-year-old sister, Ruthie. She had a high fever and was convulsing. Mom’s parents searched all day to find a doctor in one of the small towns around Emmett, but were unable to find one. Ruthie died in my Grandmother Cooke’s arms.

  To add to Mom’s stress, she miscarried a few months later. When the doctor gave her morphine for the pain, she had a bad reaction to it. Before she fell asleep, her body began to shake and quiver. Mom’s aunt knew something was wrong when she couldn’t wake her nearly six hours later. She pounded on my mother’s chest and poured water on her face, trying to revive her. Mom finally regained consciousness. Her first horrific reaction to morphine was passed off by the country doctor as “bad luck.”

  After those three ordeals, Mom was extremely grateful to regain her health and take her first trip from Idaho to Salt Lake City with her mother-in-law, Mary Evelyn. As a lasting testimony to her children, my mother delivered the rundown in her journal:

  For nearly a week, I had a wonderful time renewing old acquaintances, meeting new converts, and attending religious meetings with them. We toured Temple Square and enjoyed an organ recital in the Tabernacle.

  Another one of the highlights of my trip was when Owen’s sister, Beth, her husband, and his other two wives took Mother Mary Evelyn and me to see Joseph Musser. That day he related to us his personal testimony of the Eight-Hour Meeting.

  The next day when we went back to see Brother Musser again, he gave each of us a patriarchal blessing. When he laid his hands on my head to give me the blessing, I could feel the Spirit of the Lord permeate my whole being. Brother Musser told me of things that would happen in the future. He said God expected much of me, and I should live the “law of Sarah” by giving Owen wives as Sarah in the Bible had given Hagar to her husband for the purpose of bearing children. Brother Musser told me to support my husband in righteousness, and though I may go through many trials and tribulations, God would not give me more trials than I could endure. Brother Musser said, if I would live up to these things, I’d have grand blessings and rewards in heaven. As he spoke, I knew Joseph Musser had been inspired and was a true prophet of God.

  The following April, when Mom was in labor with my sister Lucinda, another doctor gave her a dose of morphine. This time, she nearly died. It was decided she was allergic to the drug, and if it were ever administered to her again, she would not survive.

  *****

  From approximately 1938 through 1941, polygamist meetings were held in various homes throughout Idaho, the Salt Lake Valley, and in the squalor of Short Creek, Arizona, now known as Colorado City. My parents wanted to move to Salt Lake so they could be closer to their loved ones and a larger community of believers.

  Early one morning in January 1942, Mom decided to ask God for direction concerning their dreams of moving. Mother told me, she poured her heart out to God, and He gave her a clear answer: “You will move to Salt Lake City, where you will get to see your sister Alice again.” By the end of March, my parents and their three children—Don, Lucinda, and Francine—had moved from Emmett, Idaho, to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they set up camp on the back lawn of Uncle Rulon’s large tract of property.

  Mom recalled, “Owen commenced to revamp Rulon’s huge granary into a nice, big three-bedroom home for us. Meanwhile, I washed all our clothing outside and enjoyed living in the tent, but only on good-weather days.” She added, “There were two ponds, two flowing artesian wells, and an outside privy on the property. I was so happy to be there I would sing and dance. But it was near winter before we were able to move into our new house.”

  During this time, Dad fell in love with one of Mom’s closest and dearest friends. Because Mom had gained a testimony that plural marriage was necessary for a person to attain the celestial kingdom in the afterlife, she was eager to follow those religious dictates and encouraged Dad to court her friend Alice.

  Alice spent days at a time with my mother, reading, sewing, cooking, and laughing. While the three of them waited for Alice to get a little older, Mom tried to emotionally prepare herself to enter into celestial marriage.

  My dad was also courting a young woman named Eleanor. She and Alice had also become very good friends. Since Eleanor was older than Alice, it was decided she would be Dad’s second wife, while Alice would plan her wedding for the following June.

  Just one month before my brother Luke was born, mother’s desire to live the law of Sarah came to fruition. In May 1943, my thirty-year-old mother placed nineteen-year-old Eleanor’s right hand into her husband’s right hand to symbolize her willingness to give him another wife.

  When I asked Mom what happened to Alice—why she never married Dad—Mom said sadly, “Alice came to help me when Luke was born, and we spent a few more hours together, but for some crazy reason, she just up and disappeared.”

  “The first year after your dad married Eleanor, things went quite well,” Mom told me. “Oh, some things were unfair.” She tensed up. “But the next few years became my trials from hell!”

  By then, Dad had nearly completed the remodeling of the granary into a three-bedroom home. Mom’s four children slept in a small bedroom adjacent to her larger one. At the opposite end was Eleanor’s room. While Dad took a turn sleeping with his young
wife, Mom often found herself in turmoil as the sounds carried through the thin walls.

  *****

  As my father turned his attentions from his first love, my mother, to Eleanor, his young, dark-haired beauty, he began to demonstrate a marked inability to calm and soothe Mom’s anguish. In addition, Mom believed the devil and his imps (on whom she blamed her suppressed jealousy, as well as her feelings of inadequacy and depression) were attacking her soul, and they would surely be the cause of her demise.

  Aunt Eleanor, on the other hand, was a light in the dark to Dad. She was happy, attractive, energetic, and strong-willed. Her concern was not for mother or mother’s children. After all, she felt they had enjoyed my father’s undivided time and attention for seven years, and now it was her turn. She was busy plotting how to gain all of Dad’s love and attention for herself, and manipulating him into believing her objectives were for the greater good of the entire family.

  Other women living on Uncle Rulon’s property became concerned as they observed the unfair situation. They advised Mom to stick up for herself. They told her that to let Eleanor have her way all the time wasn’t good for Eleanor’s salvation, either.

  It was never a part of my mother’s nature to manipulate or coerce others. Neither did she have the appropriate skills to assertively defend herself. Therefore, her attempts to make things equal and fair ultimately failed. In fact, the more she tried to express her needs and desires, the more defensive Eleanor became—and the more determined she was to have her own way.