Zina D. H. Young - Marriages and Children

Marriages and Children

Zina recorded in her autobiography that when she was twenty and being courted by Henry Bailey Jacobs, she received a secret proposal from the prophet, Joseph Smith, Jr. As Smith was already married to his wife Emma, Zina claimed Smith explained to her that the Lord was restoring the ancient order of plural marriage (Van Wagoner 1992, p. 44). Zina declined the proposal and on March 7, 1841 she married Jacobs. Nauvoo mayor John C. Bennett conducted the ceremony.

Zina wrote that within months of her marriage to Jacobs, Smith sent word to her that he had "put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth I would lose my position and my life." She and Smith were married on October 27, 1841, a date Zina celebrated as her anniversary of her marriage to Smith. At the time of her marriage to Smith, she was about seven months pregnant with a child (Zebulon William Jacobs), which has been confirmed to be that of Jacobs by DNA evidence. Jacobs was eventually aware of the wedding, because after Smith's death in 1844 Jacobs stood by while Zina was sealed to Smith in the Nauvoo Temple. After the 1841 wedding, Zina and Henry Jacobs continued to live together, except when he was away serving a mission Zina and Henry Jacobs had another son, Henry Chariton Jacobs, on March 22, 1846, almost two years after Smith's death.

Soon after Joseph Smith was killed in 1844, Zina was married to Brigham Young. In May 1846, Brigham Young called Henry Jacobs to serve a mission to England. During Jacobs' absence, Zina began living openly in a marital relationship with Brigham Young, and continued to do so for the rest of her life, without ever obtaining a divorce from Henry Jacobs. She had one child with Brigham Young, Zina Prescinda Young, in 1850.

One account, written by a former Mormon, states that soon before Henry was to leave on his mission, after the Latter-day Saints had left Illinois and were camped in Iowa,

Brigham Young spoke in this wise, in the hearing of hundreds: He said it was time for men who were walking in other men's shoes to step out of them. "Brother Jacobs," he says, "the woman you claim for a wife does not belong to you. She is the spiritual wife of brother Joseph, sealed up to him. I am his proxy, and she, in this behalf, with her children, are my property. You can go where you please, and get another, but be sure to get one of your own kindred spirit."

Henry struggled with the arrangement and, in later years wrote to Zina, “...the same affection is there...But I feel alone...I do not Blame Eny person...may the Lord our Father bless Brother Brigham...all is right according to the Law of the Celestial Kingdom of our God Joseph.”

In later life, Zina commented that women in polygamous relationships "expect too much attention from the husband and . . . become sullen and morose. . . ." She explained that "a successful polygamous wife must regard her husband with indifference, and with no other feeling than that of reverence, for love we regard as a false sentiment; a feeling which should have no existence in polygamy."