Nauvoo, the Revelation, and the Public Announcement

The practice began privately and stayed private for more than a decade. The revelation setting out the doctrine, recorded in 1843 and now printed as section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants, presents plural marriage as part of a larger teaching about marriage sealed for eternity, and defends it by appeal to Abraham, Jacob, David and Solomon, on the reasoning that a restoration of all things includes what the patriarchs were commanded to do.

The church's own published essays state that Joseph Smith was sealed to between thirty and forty women during the Nauvoo period, that some were already married to other living men, and that the youngest was fourteen. Those essays also record that the practice was taught to a small circle and denied in public, that this caused deep distress to Emma Smith, and that the sources leave a number of questions unresolved. The atlas reports what the custodian has published about its own history rather than characterising it.

Public teaching began in Utah. Orson Pratt announced the doctrine at a special conference in 1852 at the direction of Brigham Young, and for the next four decades plural marriage was preached openly, defended in print, and practised by a minority of Latter-day Saint families, with estimates of participation varying by place and period. It was bound up with the wider doctrine of celestial marriage and with an understanding of exaltation as a family condition, which is why it could not simply be dropped as a policy.