In 1842 Patty participated in a Mormon ceremony that was of overwhelming importance to her. She wrote about it in her later diary: "I was sealed to Joseph Smith by Willard Richards March 9 1842 in Newel K Whitneys chamber Nauvoo for time and all eternity. Sylvia my daughter was presant when I was sealed to Joseph Smith."
One of the major doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints centers around the eternity of family relationships. How this belief translated into practice in the early years is difficult to explain. Todd Compton notes: Because of the complexity of Mormon marriage practice and experimentation, there is a great deal of ambiguity concerning what constituted marriage in early Mormonism, and Mormon theological terms for marriage and plural marriage can be confusing. I define as marriage any relationship solemnized by a marriage ceremony of some sort. "Sealing" as used in early Mormonism is a complex term that deserves extensive study, but as it developed in Nauvoo Mormonism, it often meant the linking of man and woman for eternity as well as for time, i.e., eternal marriage. when a man and a woman (not siblings or parent-child) were "sealed," the sealing was always a marriage.27
To Mormons many of the sealings could be termed "spiritual marriages." There were non-marital sealings as well, through which members were "adopted" into the eternal families of other, usually leading Mormons. Both of these were religious rituals intended to assure one a place in eternity. Sealings were also performed to guarantee single or widowed women temporal support. Still others were marriages meant to be consummated here and endure hereafter. Some sealed marriages were polygamous, and some in the early years of the church involved polyandry as well as polygyny. Then and now, one holding priesthood authority must perform the sealing ordinance for worthy recipients for it to be valid.
How Patty regarded her sealing to Joseph Smith is problematic. But being sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith was so important to Patty that some years later, on July 3, 1867, she personally saw to it that the ordinance was further validated. Joseph F. Smith stood in for his uncle.
The Woodruff Manifesto of 1890 ostensibly put an end to polygamous sealings, and the practice of sealings to church authorities changed in 1894, when Mormon president Wilford Woodruff presented a revelation stating that children should be sealed ''to their parents and they to their parents as far back as the records can be obtained." Until Woodruff's pronouncement, as Patty's diary confirms, it was common for individuals to be sealed to revered church leaders. Since Woodruff's revelation, however, emphasis, focus, and practice have centered on church members completing accurate genealogical research and performing temple ordinances by proxy for their deceased ancestors. Of course, Patty's copious genealogical records (omitted from this volume) indicate that she began to fulfill that responsibility even before Woodruff's dictate, as soon as the Logan Temple was completed and dedicated in 1884.
Although Patty's husband, David, would have been in Nauvoo when her own sealing to Joseph Smith took place, his reaction is an imponderable. But on June 11, 1842 he started for Maine with a "Bro. Pack." Patty regretted his leaving: "He left me alone, and I am very lonesome." During her husband's absence, Patty apparently concentrated even more diligently on her profession as midwife. She also recorded in her diaries, as always, the names of familiar church figures with whom she associated, such as Joseph Smith, Willard Richards, and Joseph's mother, Lucy Mack, or "Mother Smith."
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