This post is a followup to last week’s That Time Brigham Young Said “No!” to Polygamy. Please understand that neither that post nor this one is intended to reflect negatively on Peter Shirts or this family – Peter made recognizable contributions to the survival of the Church and to exploring and settling the frontier world in which he lived. I know nothing negative about his character – his preferring the wilderness to settled communities unquestionably made family life difficult, but such a preference was not wrong in itself.

These posts are, rather, intended to illustrate one case where plural marriage – significant as it was to the Mormon community at this era – was deemed improper in the circumstances, or less important than other principles. The more context we can give to this illustration, the better we might understand how historical polygamy functioned among our ancestors.

The note from Peter Shirts to Brigham Young requesting permission to marry polygamously was (according to Brigham’s response) dated 10 February 1860. I do not have a copy of that note – if it survives, it could very well be filed among the confidential correspondence, because it seems likely that in addition to requesting permission to marry again, Peter might have referred to some of his recent marital history in a way that modern Church archivists treat as confidential … it might have referred to Peter’s multiple divorces, in other words, perhaps explaining personal circumstances.

Divorces requested by plural wives were evidently easily granted (not so easily granted, however, when it was the husband who requested divorce). It isn’t always easy to get documentation of such divorces; the Church treats them as confidential matters. In the recent past, if you had reason to suspect that your ancestor had been divorced and could give an approximate date, an archivist would consult the divorce files and confirm that a divorce had been granted on such-and-such a date, but would not provide you with a copy of any supporting document, or even the citation to a specific document. I do not know if that is current policy – such policies do change from time to time, and I have no right to speak for the Church, but if that is relevant to your own research I don’t suppose it could cause any harm to at least request the information.

In Peter Shirts’s case, however, there is public documentation for a divorce at about the time he requested permission to marry again: A clerk in Brigham Young’s office sent divorce papers to Peter Shirts’s bishop, and the transmittal letter is publicly available in the Brigham Young papers:

Enclosed please find a bill of divorce granted bro. Peter Shirt’s wife, Ann Elizabeth, by President Young. So soon as brother Shirts pays you $10.00 get his signature to the bill and give him the “duplicate” and forward the other two parts to this office.

$10, by the way, was the standard fee for divorce, and, so far as I have ever seen, was always paid by the husband, regardless of who requested the divorce.

The July 1860 date of this transmittal is a few months after Peter’s request to marry again, and so possibly had nothing to do with Brigham’s refusal to give permission – but it does seem likely to me that the Shirts couple were already having trouble in February, and that Brigham was aware of that trouble.

Another of Peter’s marital woes that Brigham was doubtlessly aware of had to do with the 1859 death of Peter’s wife Belana Pulsipher. Belana had divorced Peter late in 1857 and had taken their three children to live with her mother. When Belana died in 1859, Peter appealed to Brigham to regain custody of his children. That recent appeal, with its reminder of Peter’s earlier divorce, was undoubtedly called to Brigham’s mind when Peter sought permission to marry again.

So these failed or failing marriages and the reasons for them certainly played a role in Brigham’s denial of permission for Peter to take yet another plural wife. Brigham understood the circumstances and wouldn’t allow Peter to inflict them on another woman, but Brigham did not condemn Peter as a man … just as a husband and father.

Peter, however, did not seem to understand what Brigham was faulting him for. The husband-and-father-hood part seems to have gone right over Peter’s head, and Peter seems to have thought Brigham was scolding him only for considering a move to the Uinta Valley without having previously sought Brigham’s permission.

In March, just a month after the letter telling him he couldn’t marry again, Peter responded to Brigham’s letter in writing. You’ll have to exercise your historical skills to puzzle out some of the nonstandard writing in his response – but notice that Peter proposes to go “beyond Soda Springs” in Idaho, or even into the Yellowstone region – surely some of the most wild and unsettled lands within reach, and perfectly illustrating Brigham’s assertion that Peter was “a little wild” and drawn to places “unpleasant and unsafe” and to where no family could reasonably be expected to live. Peter doesn’t hide his wish to move to such a place – he merely apologizes to Brigham for Brigham’s mistake in thinking that Peter would go somewhere like “uinty” (Uinta) without first getting Brigham’s permission.

Dear sir it is with regret that i rite to you to bother or tak up your time but circumstances rather compell me at this time and i hope you will excuse me for i want to doe right, halving sold my house and lot last winter for a set of saw mill irons and have now home i wish to to goe some place where i can make it profitable to bild a mill and make lumber and be pr[o]fitable to my self and brethern and i will not goe to any settlement made without your sanction if i now it for i should expect not to prosper if i did therefore i wish to goe to a place where it would met your sanction, i will mention a few places that i have ben told you wished to have settled this season Cub crick some Springs 6 or 8 miles beyond sody springs and the yellowstone now if these places are to be settled this season i am on hand to help but would prefer the yellowstone if it meets your sanction never the less your wish is my will Brother Brigham i am sorry to have cased you to think that i wanted to goe to uinty or any other place without your sanction or even out to one side by myself for i promised you to stay in the settlements 3 1/2 years agoe and i have not had a desire to goe out one side since and would not on any consideration but chastisement is good some times to make us rem[em]ber the lord and i hope to once more gain your confidence by keeping the commandments of the Lord

In response, Brigham wrote to Peter telling him that he, Peter, should be satisfied with Cache Valley. The other places Peter mentioned were not yet places of Mormon settlement. Brigham surely knew Peter well enough, though, to realize that Brigham’s suggestion of Cache Valley as a place where “people are rapidly settling” would hardly attract a man like Peter, and, in the end, he invited Peter to join an expedition to explore the Yellowstone if – if – such an exploring company were formed.

Brigham remained aware of and in touch with Peter Shirts the rest of his life. In 1866, when Peter and his wife and children had had a very close call with survival in southern Utah, Brigham remarked that “it should make him more careful in the future. There is an old saying, and a very true one, that ‘the pitcher that goes often to the well gets broken at last’; having escaped this time he should be doubly careful, and be willing to take counsel about taking care of himself and family.” I don’t really know whether Peter ever did become any more willing to “take counsel” in such matters …

… but it all goes a very long way toward explaining why, in the case of Peter Shirts, Brigham Young denied permission for a man to marry a plural wife.