Brigham
Young's main house, The Beehive, sits on the edge of Temple Square.
As the leader and prophet of the Saints and as appointed governor of the
Utah territory and of Indian affairs, Brigham Young lived here very comfortably
with his third wife. Look at the quantity and quality of the furnishings in
his house. Most of his Mormon "brothers and sisters" (as Mormons
call each other) must have lived very simply in pioneer days. The affluence
of their leader was particularly striking because in the beginning Mormons
believed in communalism, as expressed in their ten percent tithing in products
(initially, stored in the village Bishops' storehouses) and now in cash,
church-run farms, transportation, factories, and stores for their members
who need welfare.
Brigham Young had at least 20 wives, perhaps as many as 57 wives, and he sired an estimated 57 children. Only 20 percent of Mormons married several wives; polygamy was largely practiced by well-to-do Mormons. "Plural marriage" was abandoned by the main Mormon church in 1890, when the president of the church declared that Mormons should follow the laws of the federal government, which prohibited polygamy. On a recent visit, a church-member tour guide said that Brigham Young married so many women to take care of them because they had lost their husbands -- in other words, polygamy was practical not religious. Joseph Smith would have disagreed! By 1887 more than 85,000 Mormons from England, Scandinavia, and other parts of Europe had cross the Atlantic and migrated from port cities to Utah. Click on each photo to see more.
