My Great-Great Grandfather had three wives. His second wife wrote a book about her experience as a polygamous wife.
Her story is immortalized in the book by Juanita Brooks, ed., Not by Bread Alone: The Journal of Martha Spence Heywood, 1850-56 (1978).
Historians consider her diary of the years 1850 to 1856 one of the best personal accounts of that period in Utah. It documents, among other things, the new territory’s intellectual life, the settlement of Nephi, and polygamous family life. Unflinching in her honesty, Martha Heywood records ambivalent feelings about her marriage and the dissatisfaction of some Nephi settlers with her husband’s leadership. Her own self-examination was rigorous; and her diary remains a testament to her integrity.
My Great-great grandfather basically left her alone after he married my 15 year old great-great grandmother, his third wife, when he was 45. My g-g-grandmother, Mary Bell, had been raised by him as his foster child from the time she was orphaned at age 8, in Nauvoo, IL.
It is disgusting - not a story of respect at all.... and Joseph Leland Heywood was seen as an early leader in the LDS Church.
Sounds the same as many stories that have come out regarding mormon polygamy. how the claim that they treated their women ‘better’ is beyond me.