The Morgan Affair has been a curse hanging like the Sword of Damocles over Freemasonry for two centuries. It’s a subject that just won’t go away, but even after all that time, there remain some interesting aspects to explore. One of those crops up from time to time after I’ve given a presentation about Morgan. The question comes right out of left field: “Steve… after Morgan disappeared, did his wife marry Joseph Smith?”
Yeah, THAT Joseph Smith… the guy who founded the Mormon religion.
The answer to that question is controversial, confusing, and complicated. While doing research for The Imperfect Storm, I ran into documents that told what may have actually happened. It turns out Morgan’s wife’s story is just about as weird as his. So let’s explore the life of Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris… Smith.
Lucinda Pendleton was born September 27, 1801. Against her father’s wishes, she married William Morgan October 7, 1819, in Richmond, Virginia. In the ensuing years, while Morgan struggled to find work, the couple moved to Little York (Toronto), Ontario, Rochester, and finally, Batavia, New York. The couple had three children, Harriet (1822), who died as an infant, Lucinda (1824), Thomas (1825).
After Morgan disappeared, area Freemasons attacked the marriage like a school of hungry piranhas. They claimed Morgan, aged 45 at the time, had robbed the cradle, abducting a 16-year-old girl from her home and causing her father to die of a broken heart. If it makes a difference, Lucinda was 18 at the time, not 16. Masons claimed Morgan frequently beat and mentally mistreated her. They even attacked Lucinda herself, making accusations about her moral character that, in the words of author William Leete Stone, were “as cruel as the grave.” Most of this was likely not true, based on Lucinda’s affidavits and testimony, her concerned reaction and frantic search for the missing Morgan, and her disdain for the Freemasons, refusing to accept their financial assistance.
Four years after Morgan went missing, Lucinda married his former friend and supporter, George Washington Harris. Again, the Masons were quick with their accusations, charging her with adultery since they claimed she knew Morgan was still alive.
Meanwhile back at the spiritual ranch, at about the same time and in roughly the same area, a guy named Joseph Smith, guided by an angel, took possession of a set of Golden Plates, translating their contents into the Book of Mormon.
There is no evidence clearly indicating when Lucinda met Joseph Smith. He began his seminal work on Mormonism and, in 1830, completed work on the Book of Mormon in Palmyra, New York, some 60 miles from Batavia. Having organized the church that same year in Fayette, New York, Smith moved his operations to Kirtland, Ohio, where he established the first Mormon temple in 1831. In those days, that journey would have doubtless taken him through Batavia where he may have met Lucinda right around the time she married George Harris.
Such a meeting may have sparked Lucinda’s interest in the Mormon faith, but it was another four years until she and George became Mormons, after they had moved to Terre Haute, Indiana.
Based on a divine revelation in 1831, Joseph Smith declared Independence, Missouri to be the location of Zion, prompting him to establish a church there. Mormon followers flocked to the new location, prompting significant tensions with the native residents.
Given this friction, the Mormons moved their settlement to the town of Far West, Missouri in a sparsely populated area of Caldwell County. In 1838, Lucinda and George joined that community. If Lucinda Morgan Harris and Joseph Smith had not met prior to that time they certainly met then since Smith and his family moved in with Lucinda and George. Smith wrote, "On the 14th of March as were were... entering Far West [we were] received under [the] hospitable roof of brother George W. Harris, treated [with] all possible kindness, and refreshed ourselves [with] much satisfaction."
Their stay together was short-lived. That same year animosity escalated into violence leading to the Mormon War. On October 27 Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued an executive order, saying the Mormons should be driven from the state and declaring, “their outrages are beyond all description.” Smith was arrested. After his release the following year, the Mormons, including Lucinda and her husband, moved to Commerce, Illinois, which Smith renamed Nauvoo.
Amidst all this, there is speculation that Lucinda and Smith carried on a long-term affair. Many years later Sarah Pratt, a good friend of Lucinda, related her story saying Smith had made advances toward her. Distraught, she went to Lucinda to (in her words} unbosom her grief. To her astonishment, Lucinda laughed, called her foolish and said, “I don’t see anything so horrible in it. I have been his mistress for four years.”
During that time there certainly was ample opportunity for Joseph and Lucinda to be alone together since in July 1840, her husband George was… perhaps conveniently… sent on a 14 month mission to the eastern states. Even after George’s return Smith and Lucinda were seen together without him.
Joseph Smith had enemies. On June 27, 1844, many of them banded together in a mob that killed both Joseph and his Brother Hyrum.
B.W. Richmond, an acquaintance of Smith and a non-Mormon was visiting Nauvoo at the time. He attended Smith’s funeral procession and made the following observation in a Chicago Times article:
“While [Smith’s] two wives were bewailing their loss, and prostrate on the floor with their eight children, I noticed a lady standing at the head of Joseph Smith’s body, her face covered, and her whole frame convulsed with weeping. She was the widow of William Morgan… now the wife of a Mr. Harris…”
From this, contemporary historian Todd Compton concluded in his book Sacred Lonliness “Lucinda Harris was crying over the body of her husband (Joseph Smith), just as she had her 1st husband (William Morgan).” In other words, Compton assumes a body found at Oak Orchard Creek in 1827 was Morgan’s. This is most likely not true. Additionally, there are simply no records of a traditional marriage between Joseph and Lucinda.
However, the Mormons have a more sacred form of uniting a couple… sealing or eternal marriage.
In what one might regard as… at best… a strange ceremony, documents show on January 2, 1846 at 6:28 AM, none other than Brigham Young sealed Lucinda Pendleton Harris and Joseph Smith “for time and all eternity,” in the Nauvoo Temple. Smith had been dead for 18 months so Lucinda’s husband George served as a proxy for Smith. Following that, Young sealed Lucinda… now called Lucinda Smith… and George Harris as husband and wife not for eternity, but “for a time.”
That time, by eternal standards, was short. In 1853, Lucinda legally abandoned Harris “without cause.” Three years later, George filed for divorce, claiming desertion.
Harris died in 1860. In the interim since the divorce, the Utah Latter Day Saints Church excommunicated George Harris due to inactivity.
After her divorce became official Lucinda moved to Memphis and lived at the home of her and William Morgan’s daughter, Lucinda Wesley Morgan Smith. Questionable records indicate she may have worked as a nurse. She died in 1856 at the age of 55.
Her story did not end there. On April 4, 1899, in the Salt Lake Temple, the Mormon Church once again sealed Lucinda and Joseph Smith. No one knows the reason for the second sealing but in the eyes of the Mormon Church, Joseph Smith, Jr. And Lucinda Pendleton Morgan Harris Smith are twice forever sealed.
