Hannah Maria Goddard: Mormon Pioneer, Plural Wife
The first time I heard a bit about Hannah’s life, I thought it had to be wrong. It was on an anti-Mormon website, and a bit of a scandal involving an eventual president of the Church. But the story checks out, from multiple sources including Brigham Young University.
Hannah was the eighth of nine children born to Percy Amanda Pettibone and Dan Goddard in Schuykill, Pennsylvania. The oldest, Dan Jr., was nineteen years older. She was a little girl when they moved to Charleston, Coles County, Illinois. In 1837 her cousin Lorenzo Snow visited their home while serving a mission for the recently-formed Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. It was a momentous visit that would have profound consequences for the family. The neighbors were invited to hear Lorenzo speak. He wrote that he felt daunted by the task, his first time preaching to a crowd, especially once he had a group of strangers looking at him. He felt unsure what to say, but when he opened his mouth, suddenly he felt the Holy Spirit flooded him with words. He was a convincing missionary and found great success in sharing the Mormon version of the gospel with the Goddard family. Percy Amanda and Dan converted, as did nine-year old Hannah and her ten-year old brother William. The Goddards’ second-oldest daughter, Mary Adaline, known as Adaline, a 24-year old married mother of two, also joined the church.
Today if someone decides to join the Methodist Church, for example, they may describe it as life-changing. But it probably wouldn't be an all encompassing lifestyle change. Their involvement would not include moving to an all-Methodist town, or contributing as much as they could possibly spare of time and resources towards building up the town and the church. They would not face harassment and persecution. Nor would they believe that their church was led by a living prophet - a man walking around amongst them, joking and playing with his children, yet receiving direct revelation from God. But this was all part of joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
In 1839, seeking a place where they could build up the Kingdom of Zion and live in peace after being driven out of Missouri by mobs, the church purchased land along the banks of the Mississippi River. It included the very small town of Commerce, Illinois. Joseph Smith named the new town Nauvoo, which he said meant 'beautiful.' The Saints, as members called themselves, set about building their beautiful city. The Goddards did not move there right away, but after the July 1841 death of Hannah's father Dan, Percy Amanda was on the 1842 city tax index.
What a wonder the city must have seemed to faithful church members! They made tremendous sacrifices laboring to build a temple where their unique religious rites could be held.
Upheaval and Marriage
Adaline had a third child 1839, but then separated from her husband, George "Geer" Hendrickson, around 1844. Maybe religion played a role, as he did not join the Church. She wanted to gather with the Saints in Nauvoo, and now she did. The Goddards experienced the last years in Nauvoo, as it became the most populous city in Illinois, surpassing Chicago. Missionary success in Europe meant floods of immigrants; new converts, with the joy and challenges that brought.
But all too quickly, life in Nauvoo was over as the Saints once again experienced persecution, and eventually the murder of their leader, Joseph Smith.
It had to be challenging for single mothers like Percy Amanda and Adaline. Single women were at a tremendous disadvantage in the nineteenth century. There were few options for supporting oneself, and even fewer if one had children. Women also gained status by marriage. Marriage was – and is – especially important in the LDS (Latter-Day Saint) Church. In the beliefs of the church, one can only enter the highest level of heaven by being a “worthy priesthood holder,” a male church member in good standing, or for women, by marrying a worthy priesthood holder.
So when cousin Lorenzo Snow offered to marry her, it was probably a welcome offer. Adaline was 33 with three children to support. Lorenzo was a bit unusual as he was a bachelor until he was 31, and entered into polygamy all at once. (In contrast, most men taking a plural wife were already married and had to face talking to their wives about bringing a new wife into the home.)
The records are complicated and differ as to dates, but Adaline wasn’t the only one to marry her cousin on her wedding day. Her 17-year old sister Hannah did too. Sisters were often married as plural wives to the same man. Historians Holtzapfel and Hedges say both married Lorenzo 19 Jan 1845.
It was a chaotic time as the prophet, Joseph Smith, was dead; the Saints were involved in what would be a multi-year mass exodus to Utah and the church was in a succession crisis, with families often split apart by individual decisions about whom to follow.
February 1846 Lorenzo led a family party of seven in two wagons out of Nauvoo. With him were wives Charlotte and Harriet Squires, Sarah Ann Pritchard, Adaline’s two younger sons from her first marriage -- and Hannah. Adaline, who had just discovered she was pregnant, stayed behind with her mother and 12-year old son.
Brigham Young wanted to move everyone outside the United States and ideally, right away. But realistically, moving some 12,000 people, many impoverished, on a trip that took wagons and teams of oxen and provisions to last two or three months took money. The church didn’t have it nor did many members. A series of way stations were established in Iowa and Nebraska, where the Saints hastily built log cabins and planted crops for those who would come after them. Men such as Lorenzo Snow were appointed leaders of these communities. The Snows would stay almost two years in Mt. Pisgah, Iowa. But first, there is their own exodus story.
Exodus
They managed to travel nine miles on their first day and sewed a couple of wagon covers together, which they made into a tent. This was their shelter on freezing February nights. Lorenzo wrote of their circumstances:
There were a hundred families gathered in there before us and now others were constantly arriving. We had been but a few days in camp when we had to put up with the inconvenience of a snow storm. The weather turned severely cold and the Mississippi froze so hard that teams and heavy loaded wagons crossed over in perfect safety.
Although they suffered from the cold, they celebrated the hard freeze of river as it helped them get away. Lorenzo wrote of returning to Nauvoo “a number of times” to check on his family left behind, and made arrangements for them to be brought to him in spring. They broke camp on March 1st, and traveled slowly, with men stopping to pick up day labor to buy provisions for their families. It took them a month to travel 110 miles. Lorenzo wrote of mud and the balkiness of his horses. He exchanged them for a team of oxen, but finding food for them was difficult.
They rested a few days, and when they moved on it was very rainy and muddy and they had several creeks to ford. When they were fifteen miles from the next camp, the axel on one of Lorenzo’s wagons broke. “It was then raining hard and quite cold,” he wrote. “We immediately pitched our tent and made a good hickory fire. I then went back to my wagon that I had broke to fix some plan to get Sarah Ann [who was sick] to the tent, for she rode in this wagon and was so feeble she could not walk. The water and mud was very deep and we could not get to the wagon without wading.”
They were fifteen miles from camp and nine or ten miles from the nearest house, and Lorenzo was not a mechanic. Fixing the axel did not seem promising. However, a man who had been a stranger for whom Lorenzo had done a favor happened to come along, and happened to be a wagon maker. In the next few days, the wagon was repaired and they were on their way again. But it couldn’t be so simple. One of the wagons became stuck in the mud. They had to take everything out and carry the items many yards to find a dry spot to set them on. Then of course they had to pull the wagon out of the mud and reload it. They had a dinner and breakfast of dry crackers as they could find no wood for a fire.
When they finally reached camp it was in a place with timber and “an abundance of grass” for the cattle. This greatly lightened the mood and gave everyone a good rest. After a short time there, they were on the move again. In May, they stopped to build houses, fences, and plough the ground for crops. This was a place they would call Mt. Pisgah, one of the way stations.
In June Lorenzo fell deathly sick. He was sick for several weeks and it was thought he would die. It was at this time that Adaline and her mother and son arrived from Nauvoo. The family was offered a home to move into, which was most welcome after three months living out of a tent. That summer, illness and death were rampant. Lorenzo wrote that there were few well enough to help the sick and bury the dead.
In early September, Hannah decided she had enough. She wasn’t the only one. Porter and Calvin Squires, cousins of his wives Charlotte and Harriet, “had got uneasy,” in Lorenzo’s words, and wanted to return to Ohio. “I tried to reason upon them the impropriety of leaving the church,” Lorenzo wrote, “and promised them a home and fare as good as we had so long as they would continue with the saints, but it was all to no purpose, so I let them go.”
Hannah, whom Lorenzo described as “a member of my family” left “contrary to my council and went back among the Gentiles [non-Mormons] thro’ the persuasions of her mother.” Percy arrived at Mt. Pisgah with Adaline in June. By early September, she’d encouraged Hannah to leave. But there was much more to it than discontent. There was something major that Lorenzo left out. In September, Hannah was three months pregnant, but the baby was not his.
Hannah had gotten involved – fallen in love, one hopes – with Joseph Ellis Johnson.
Scandal
Joseph Ellis Johnson at around the time Hannah became involved with him
Joseph was 11 years older and married to Harriet Snider when he became involved with Hannah. He was a New Yorker from a remarkably large family of 16 children. Everyone except his father converted to the church in its infancy; he was baptized in 1832. Five of the Johnson brothers brothers went to Utah.[1]
He became a good friend of both Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, and married Harriet in Nauvoo in 1840.
Joseph's July 1848 diary reveals a lively person who enjoyed some worldly fun. He wrote of enjoying a “grand fandango” with friends, playing euchre, drinking cherry bounce and Irish whiskey, and "dancing with a heap of pretty gals till 2 o’clock in the morning.”[2] He mentioned a lot of socializing with alcohol involved. He made one reference to seeing his wife Harriet, waiting at home. (Joseph Smith revealed the “Word of Wisdom,” which bans the consumption of alcohol, in 1833, but it wasn’t until 1851, at Brigham Young’s suggestion, that it was voted on and made a commandment for members.)
When Hannah left Lorenzo, she moved in with Joseph Ellis Johnson. Lorenzo wrote that she went to live with Gentiles, but Joseph was a church member. What Lorenzo may have meant, however, was that they were living amongst the “Gentiles,” obviously not part of the gathering of Saints in camps preparing to journey to Salt Lake. Their first child was born just after New Year's in 1848 when Hannah was 19.
In 1849, due to his actions with Hannah, Joseph Ellis Johnson was stripped of his priesthood authority – his good standing in the church. He was brought before a church council at which Brigham Young presided. Testimony was recorded as follows (with spelling corrected):
Orson Hyde: There is a matter of Bro Johnson to be laid before the Council….his priesthood was required to be laid down until he came here. A Miss Goddard, wife of Lorenzo Snow became in a family way by Bro Johnson – she was living in his house – we deemed it improper for her to be there – he sent her away to a retired place – she was delivered of a child – she is again living in his house in Kanesville – he wishes to retain his fellowship in the Church. He says he has [met with] bro Snow and he was satisfied.
Joseph E. Johnson: I am come purposely if possible to get the matter settled and atone for the wrong I have done—I have neglected to lay it before you before this –bro Hyde’s statements are all correct – true – all I can do is beg for mercy – I became acquainted with the girl & the consequences are as they are – I saw bro Snow at Kanesville and he was satisfied – I am come here to atone for the wrong I have done.
The secretary recorded comments that made it clear that Joseph was not trying to excuse his conduct.
I never heard any conversation that said it was right to go to bed with a woman if not found out – I was aware the thing was wrong.
Marriage
Reports state that Lorenzo released Hannah from her sealing to him. Whatever arrangements were made for Hannah and Joseph to be considered married in the church at that time are not known. Hannah and Joseph were not sealed together until 1861 after they had six children together. This is because the two lived far from the Endowment House in Salt Lake City where special marriage rites could take place, and before the temple was built in Salt Lake.
Joseph moved his double family to Omaha, Nebraska. In both Iowa and Nebraska he moved comfortably in and out of Mormon and non-Mormon circles. As a member, he seemed a rather reluctant one, with probably mixed feelings about Church rules. His son Rufus said he avoided appointment to Church offices whenever he could. He was cited several times for selling spiritous liquors and used tobacco - after the Church officially adopted the Word of Wisdom. Joseph had his fingers in a lot of pies. He owned and edited newspapers such as the Council Bluffs Bugle, farmed, made real estate investments, owned a blacksmith shop, and sold merchandise. They lived comfortably, according to Hannah. She told her daughter Christie that, "we were considered quite well to do. Our smoke house was filled with meat, our cellars packed with provisions of all kinds." This was something Christie reported in her diary many years later, probably when Hannah was contrasting years of hardship Utah.
But with their souls at stake, relatives and friends wrote letters from Utah pleading with the Johnsons to join them. Esther LeBaron, one of Joseph's sisters, was one of the writers, sending Hannah a letter mentioning that Brigham Young was not happy that they hadn't moved to Deseret yet. "Better to be in Salt Lake with a clean shirt on than be [in Council Bluffs] with a million in gold," she reported that Brother Brigham said.
In 1856 Joseph secretly married an English immigrant, Eliza Saunders. He kept the marriage secret from Harriet and Hannah as long as he could because he knew they would not be happy about it. She was 23 years younger than him and only 16 when they married. (His oldest child was 15-year old Mary.) Joseph had other good reasons to keep the marriage secret: her parents did not approve of polygamy, and it was against the law. Eventually, the law caught up with him in Iowa where he operated several businesses, and he was charged with bigamy. Non-Mormon friends helped stall court action, but it was a problem that wasn't going away. In 1860, he sent Eliza and her children to Salt Lake. He still seemed reluctant to move himself. But finally, in 1861, he yielded to pressures to go to Deseret (the name the Church gave Utah), bringing Hannah and Harriet with him.
Hannah and Joseph had two more children after their marriage was official, in the eyes of the church, at least. Hannah’s last child was born in 1864, a namesake daughter who died in infancy. They had a total of eight children, burying half as babies. Records can be a little sketchy but Joseph had a total of about 32.
After only a year in Salt Lake, he bought land about 70 miles outside and called it Spring Lake Villa. There he started a store selling seeds and gardening supplies, a print shop and newspaper.
St. George
A few years after they settled in Spring Lake, Joseph wanted a warmer climate. His son Charles, his oldest by his third wife, wrote of their 1865 move to St. George in a long train of wagons with the printing press and contents of the store, ready to set up shop in this new place. Joseph, Hannah and the rest of the large family lived in tents until Joseph could get a house built. They were twelve miles from the Arizona border and 360 miles from any town of consequence.
There Joseph again opened a garden and nursery supply store and in 1868 continued newspaper publishing. In 1870 he also founded the Utah Pomologist and Gardener, a monthly publication. His son wrote that their home was the only one with a library, that his father owned several hundred books. Home. Which home was Charles referring to? Hannah and her sister wives were enumerated in three separate homes on the 1870 census, with a total of 15 Johnson children ranging from two to 16. In Eliza's house there were also two teenaged English immigrants, the Cornwell brothers, who worked in Joseph's gardening business. Joseph was enumerated in the house Hannah and her children lived in. It would be fascinating to know more about what it was like to live in this extended, sprawling household of 21 individuals.
St. George may have been isolated, but for several months in 1874 Dr. C.C. Parry, botanist at the National Herbarium in Washington D.C., stayed with them while he scouted for new plants, naming several after Joseph.[1] This had come about because Joseph sent letters and plants to Dr. Parry and piqued his interest in fieldwork in Utah. Next came Dr. Edward Palmer of the Smithsonian Institute, who excavated Indian mounds.[2] Brigham Young built a winter home next-door to his old friend Joseph and came on a regular basis. One of Brigham's daughters married Joseph's son Charles.
Even with all his businesses, Joseph found it hard to make a go of things in St. George and to support his large family. Dr. Parry wrote a colleague that he had talked to Joseph about collecting the exotic Utah plants and seeds for sale and said Joseph was interested. "He is anxious to do something in that way. He is pretty broken down himself but has an active promising boy Charles who I hope will do some good work. I have given him some training and he is apt. They will make it a business to collect "Joshua," Agave, Cacti, to ship this fall. Johnson is very hard up and poor (too much polygamy)," he said in his letter.
Around 1880, Joseph was happy to be called to a mission to settle part of Arizona, along with his nephew Sixtus Ellis Johnson, and two of his brothers, Joel and Benjamin. According to his son Charles, he saw it as a fresh start.
What happened to Hannah and Joseph's relationship? In 1880 Joseph was enumerated on the 1880 census living under one roof with Harriet and Eliza, both identified as his wives in St. George on June 3, 1880. (By that time, only nine children lived with him, ranging in age from a 27-year old son to a baby.) But Hannah was enumerated in her own household in Washington, Utah, just short of five miles from St. George. She lived one house over from her daughter Josetta, who married carpenter Albert K. Ross at age 23, after being widowed at 22. Hannah lived with her daughter Frances, 19, and a seven-year old girl identified as her adopted daughter Minnie. Minnie and her parents were all born in Denmark. Hannah's other two biological children were married. Christy married Isaac Turnbaugh and lived in a Mormon colony town of Panaca, Nevada. (Christy's obituary said that she had worked in the Washington Cotton Factory in Washington, Utah when she was young. The "Cotton Mission," of which the factory was a significant part, was one of Brigham Young's projects to create Mormon self-sufficiency. Christy likely worked one of the spinning or weaving machines.) Julia was married to James Cassidy and lived in Silver Reef, Utah, about 22 miles from St. George, in the same county. The three Johnson houses had been merged into one, and Hannah and her children chose to live near Joseph, but not with him.
Arizona Colonizing
As early as 1849 when members of the Mormon Battalion returned from California by way of Arizona, Brigham Young dreamed of Mormon colonies raising sugar cane and cotton there. It was not practical at that time. In the 1870s Brigham revived the idea with vigor. European converts continued to stream into the Salt Lake Valley, where the good land was already taken, and Brigham said the city was overcrowded. He also said it was the duty of the faithful to build up the kingdom of God by spreading it out. Another motivation was Brigham’s desire to convert the Indians.
Colonization in Arizona was not successful in Brigham’s lifetime, but the next president, John Taylor, wanted to continue Brigham’s initiatives. In 1878 Snowflake was founded and became a success. Life was hard there, though, and travel to Salt Lake not for the feint-hearted. David Udall described his journey from southern Utah to St. Johns, Arizona saying, “Most of the country through which we passed was desolate beyond belief.”
Joseph was 63 when he was called to Arizona Territory, and colonization in such a hard place was better suited for a young man. But he was game. His oldest brother Joel was released from this mission call due to age, however, before he could make the trek. There were some 500 colonists who moved with Joseph. Hannah had been living separately from Joseph and her sister wives Harriet and Eliza, but she and her adult daughters Josetta and Julia were part of the Arizona colony.
Joseph had two children in Arizona by his youngest wife, Eliza, then died of pneumonia in 1882 at age 65. His youngest child was just two months old. His family was left in straightened circumstances. Hannah was 54 when she was widowed.
Later Years
All of Joseph's wives relied on the support of grown children, something that was common among polygamist wives.
Hannah was still in Maricopa County, Arizona in 1900. She lived with her daughter Josetta, Josetta’s only child, Stella Ross, who was 17; and Josetta's 10-year old nephew, Robert Cassidy. Robert was the son of Hannah’s daughter Julia, who divorced her husband in June 1895 on grounds of abandonment. (She remarried in December.) But how were they supporting themselves? Josetta's husband was still alive, but she wasn't living with him. (His 1900 census records have not yet been found.)
Joseph Ellis Johnson’s first wife, Harriet, also stayed in Arizona and when she died in 1905 was buried beside him. The younger third wife, Eliza, returned to Salt Lake City where her oldest son Charles supported her. [3]
Sometime after 1900, Hannah and two of her daughters, Josetta and Julia, moved to San Diego. Josetta's husband lived there. After Josetta died in 1908, Hannah made her home with Julia. Only one of Hannah’s eight children, Christianna, known as Christie, would outlive her.
On the 1910 census Hannah lived with Julia, Julia’s husband Thomas Jensen, a dairy rancher, their four children, and two of Julia’s children from her previous marriage, Robert and Philip Cassidy. A Swedish farmhand also lived with the family.
Julia was killed in 1918 when the car her husband was driving was struck by a San Diego & Arizona train. Hannah died almost exactly a year after her at 91, laid to rest after a long, challenging pioneer life.
Note: Where does Hannah connect in my family tree? Her grandmother, Rosetta Amanda Barber, was the sister of my fourth great-grandfather, Roswell Barber. I orient myself around this branch of my family through my third great-grandfather, Myron Fitch Barbour, whose life spanned the nineteenth century from 1811 to 1900. Hannah’s mother, Percy Amanda Pettibone, was Myron’s first cousin. So Hannah was his second cousin. Therefore, Hannah and I are distant cousins.
As for Percy Amanda, in the hardships of the extended exodus, she left the church and lived with her daughter Susan until her death in 1876.
Sources:
The quotes from Christie Johnson's diary and Ester LeBaron's letter were included in Huefner and Young's article.
Beecher, Maureen Ursenbach. “The Iowa Journal of Lorenzo Snow,” BYU Studies Quarterly, Vol. 24, Issue 3, Article 3, 1984.
Cluff, Judy Harris. “The Life Story of Julia Hills and Ezekiel Johnson,” 2008, posted on Ancestry.com.
Davis, Daniel. "Appreciating a Pretty Shoulder: The Risquie Images of Charles Ellis Johnson," Utah Historical Quarterly, Vol. 74 (Spring 2006), pp. 131-146.
Holzapfel, Richard Neitzel and Andrew H. Hedges. Within These Prison Walls: Lorenzo Snow’s Record Book, 1886-1897, Provo, Utah: Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Books, 2010.
Huefner, Michael S. and Shauna Anderson Young. “Joseph R. Johnson: Author of Frontier News, Promotion and Progress,” Great Plains Quarterly, Vol. 33, No. 3 (Summer 2013), pp. 141-159.
Johnson, Charles Ellis. Short Autobiography of Charles Ellis Johnson, Found in his papers at his death in 1926. https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=906122
Johnson, Joseph Ellis. Diary No. 1, 1848, Joseph Ellis Johnson Papers, University of Utah, https://collections.lib.utah.edu/details?id=906122
Jorgeson, Danny L. “Early Mormon Marriage, Family, and Networks of Kinship: Begats and Horizontal Genealogy In the Case of the Later Cutlerites At Nauvoo,” John Whitmer Historical Association Journal, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014), pp. 127-150.
Lindbloom, Sharon. “A Mormon Detective Story,” Mormon Coffee – It’s Forbidden But It’s Good blog, https://blog.mrm.org/2015/04/a-mormon-detective-story/
Quinn, D. Michael. “LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages, 1890-1904,” Dialogue, 1985, https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V18N01_11.pdf
Ricks, Joel. “Mormon Colonization in Arizona (1950). Joel Ricks Collection, Paper 11. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/19682953.pdf
Snow, Eliza R. Biography and Family Record of Lorenzo Snow, One of the Twelve Apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Deseret News Company: Salt Lake City, 1884.
Welsh, Stanley L. "Utah Botanical Explorer Charles Christopher Parry (28 August 1823-20 February 1890)," The Great Basin Naturalist, Vol. 48, No. 1 (31 January 1988), pp. 9-18.
Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023
[1] Charles Christopher Parry (1823-1890) was described as “one of the most genial and loveable of naturalists.” A surgeon by training, he spent over 30 years collecting plant specimens, especially in the Colorado Rockies and along the Mexican border.
[2] It’s rather curious that Charles Johnson described this as Palmer’s focus. Palmer (1831-1911) became known as the Father of Ethnobotony. It must have been interesting for him to stay in a house with three wives and over 20 children.
[3] There is speculation on the Benjamin Franklin Johnson Family Organization website that she became the eighth wife of his brother Benjamin on 3 March 1885. Certainly, that would give her financial support. But I think that’s unlikely. Charles said he supplied his mother with a house and that after a brief time living in the St. George house, she remained there for the rest of her life. He does not mention a marriage, nor does her obituary.
[1] His brother Benjamin had 46 children with seven wives. Joel had five wives and 31 children. Joseph Ellis had at least 29 children with his three wives. George Washington Johnson had three wives and 18 children, and William had 12 children with his one and only wife! That’s a lot of cousins for Hannah’s children, and that’s just from these brothers. Benjamin would serve 14 terms in the Utah Territorial Legislature. Joseph Smith took two of the brothers’ sister as plural wives.
[2] He’d been married for eight years and had four children when he wrote this. Cherry bounce was a cherry-flavored alcoholic drink that was a favorite of George Washington.
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