Emma Discovers Joseph Smith’s Secret Relationship With 16 Year-Old Fanny Alger

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Painted scene inside a dim wooden barn lit by a handheld lantern. From left: Emma Smith, a dark-haired woman in a gray-green period dress with a stern expression, holds the lantern aloft. In the center, Joseph Smith stands in a brown coat, vest, and white cravat, looking caught and troubled. To the right, 16 year-old Fanny Alger in a white bonnet and apron-like dress grips Smith's arm with a frightened look.

A painted dramatization of the moment Emma Smith reportedly discovered her husband Joseph with 16 year-old Fanny Alger, their household helper widely identified by historians as Joseph Smith's first plural wife. The Mormon Church considers their sexual relationship to be one of the earliest incidents of plural marriage in the founding period of the Latter-day Saint movement, but Oliver Cowdery called it a 'Dirty, nasty, filthy affair.'

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