"On February 2, 1846, in an inner room in the Nauvoo temple, Zina Huntington Jacobs stood by the side of Brigham Young, presiding apostle and de facto president of the Mormon church... Somewhat apart stood Henry B. Jacobs, whom Zina had married in a civil ceremony in March 1841. She was now seven months pregnant with their second child... That Henry Bailey was inside the temple shows that he was considered a faithful, worthy Latter-day Saint.
"Zina and Brigham turned toward each other and Kimball sealed (married) Zina to Joseph Smith for eternity; Brigham stood proxy for the dead prophet, answering in his stead when the ceremony required a response... as was customary in temple proxy marriages, Zina and Brigham turned to each other and were sealed to each other for time. Once again Henry stood as witness. One suspects that none of the four participants in these ceremonies understood their full significance. Henry and Zina probably felt that they would continue living together as husband and wife, as they had during Joseph Smith’s life. Young had married some women by proxy with whom he never lived... But Brigham Young would eventually decide that Zina must become his wife fully, and the story of Zina Huntington would run its enigmatic course.
"Zina... was a polyandrous plural wife of both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. It is well documented that she married Henry Jacobs in March 1841 and continued to live with him until May 1846, bearing him two children... It is also well documented that Zina married Joseph Smith in October 1841 and Brigham Young in February 1846. While ‘official’ Mormon biographies have Zina marrying Smith and Young after she left Henry, her marriages are so well documented that one is forced to reject this sequence and confront the issue of Nauvoo polyandry... as was the case with many of Joseph Smith’s plural wives, Zina lived in his house before her marriage to him... Apparently in the midst of Henry Jacobs’s suit, Joseph Smith taught Zina the principle of plural marriage and then proposed to her. One can only imagine the shock this must have caused her. The ‘cult of true womanhood’ in nineteenth-century America required that a woman live by the ideals of purity, piety, domesticity, and submissiveness; and Smith’s new doctrine offended against domesticity (the sanctity of the home), piety (typical American religious mores), and purity (the belief that sexuality should be reserved for monogamous Christian marriage). So it is not surprising that despite her religious reverence for the Mormon leader, she either flatly rejected his proposals or put him off. Furthermore, she was probably in love with Jacobs, and may have revered Joseph’s wife Emma, whom she probably realized would be unsympathetic to an extramonogamous union... Smith was always persistent in his marriage proposals, and rejections usually moved him to further effort, so he continued to press his suit with Zina at the same time that she was courting Henry. And Smith usually expressed his polygamous proposals in terms of prophetic commandments. In addition to the religious dilemmas she faced, Zina was also choosing between two men, both of whom she cared for in different ways. In early 1841 Zina made here choice: she would marry Henry Jacobs, her romantic soulmate. The engagement was announced. By making this decision, she probably felt that she had put an end to Smith’s suit and to the specter of polygamy in her life. It is not known whether Henry knew that Smith had also proposed to Zina, but it is known that he was a close friend and disciple of Smith. According to family tradition, as the day of marriage approached, Henry and/or Zina asked Smith to perform the marriage, and he agreed... but Smith did not appear, so they turned to John C. Bennett... to officiate. Zina must have felt a sense of relief and finality as she and Henry exchanged vows and began their married life in Nauvoo.
"However, Zina learned soon afterwards, undoubtedly to her complete astonishment, that Smith had not given up. Again according to family tradition, she and Henry saw Smith soon after the marriage and ‘asked why he had not come... he told them the Lord had made it known to him she was to be his celestial wife.’ Once again Zina was plunged into a quandary. Smith told them that God had commanded him to marry her. However, he apparently also told them they could continue to live together as husband and wife. According to family tradition, Henry accepted this, but Zina continued to struggle. If polygyny offended against the American cult of true womanhood, polyandry offended even more. Nevertheless... submissiveness required her to obey. Disobeying Smith would also be an offense against Mormon piety. So polygamy divided the cult of true woman hood against itself. If a woman interpreted Smith’s polygyny and polyandry as sacred, she would become entirely devoted to the new system... Zina remained conflicted until a day in October, apparently, when Joseph sent Dimick to her with a message: an angel with a drawn sword had stood over Smith and told him that if he did not establish polygamy, he would lose ‘his position and his life.’ Zina, faced with the responsibility for his position as prophet, and even perhaps his life, finally acquiesced... Apparently, Henry knew of the marriage and accepted it. He believed that ‘whatever the prophet did was right, without making the wisdom of God’s authorities bend to the reasoning of any man’... Zina and Henry stayed married, cohabiting, throughout Smith’s life.
