Which Partridge sister occupied Room No 10 with Joseph Smith?
Posted: Tue May 16, 2017 2:41 pm
From In Sacred Loneliness:
"His words astonished me and almost took my breath—I Sat for a time amazed and finally almost Ready to burst with emotion ...
In almost an agony of feeling ... I looked him Straight in the Face & Said: ‘Brother Joseph This is Something I did not Expect & I do not understand—You know whether it is right. I do not. I want to do just as you tell me, and I will try. But if I [ever] should Know that you do this to Dishonor & debauch by Sister I will kill you as Shure as the Lord lives’" (p. 296).
Convinced Joseph was a prophet, Benjamin and Almera both consented to the marriage and in April of 1843 Almera became Joseph’s twenty-first wife. Joseph was 38 and Almera 30 at the time. Benjamin provides some seldom-recorded details of the marriage ceremony and writes that after the ceremony. "the Prophet asked me to take my Sister to ocupy Room No 10 in his Mansion Home dureing her Stay in the City." Benjamin later records that about three weeks after he [Benjamin] and Almera returned home, "The Prophet again Came and at my house ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister that the month previous he had occupied with the Daughter of the Late Bishop Partridge as his wife" (pp. 297-298).2 Whether this refers to 19 year old Emily Dow Partridge or 22 year old Eliza Marie Partridge is unclear since Joseph had taken both of them as plural wives on March 4 and March 8 respectively, though neither were initially aware of Joseph’s marriage to the other.