New Historical Claim Re: Eliza Snow

[pam]

The fact that the first time I'm hearing of this is coming from the Salt Lake Tribulation always leaves me skeptical and questioning.

[Blackmarch]

On 3/4/2016 at 10:42 PM, Ironhold said:

http://www.sltrib.com/lifestyle/faith/3613791-155/shocking-historical-finding-mormon-icon-eliza

In a new claim put forward by BYU-Idaho professor Andrea Radke-Moss, Eliza Snow was gang-raped during the Missouri period by outsiders hostile to the church. She further claims that the assault rendered her unable to have children, and that her marriage to Joseph Smith was motivated by his sympathy for her plight. 

If the claim is true, then IMHO this puts a rather horrific new spin on what happened during that period of time. 

don't know if that is the case, but if so that would not surprise me at all. not really a new spin at all, more like an uncovering of something victims cover up because the pain and indignity of recounting such events. Such sort of thing was not rare.

really the interesting new bit of info here, is the reason given why JS had a marriage to her.

[Vort]

Actually, that such things happened to the sister Saints is very old news indeed. We have plenty of contemporary accounts from Saints who witnessed (or suffered) gang rape at the hands of the societal riffraff and scum that constituted much of frontier Missouri. We may not have known that Sister Snow specifically suffered such things, but for that news to come as a surprise only demonstrates our own naivete. Our ancestors were well aware that this had happened; they simply had the propriety not to speak openly of gang rapes and such.

[JonnieZ]

Having perused the comments, may I add that Sister Snow, as well as many other sisters were horrically abused by the mobs in Missouri. Richard Bushman gives a pretty good account of events in Rough Stone Rolling. He uses primary sources and describes the ferocity of anti Mormon behavior at that time. It is interesting that historians (and rightly so) write about the abuse of the natives and Mexicans that were battered, abused, and annihilated during Manifest Destiny, yet for over a hundred years have failed to address (unrightly so, even as a nation) the attrocities that the early church experienced during the Missouri and Illinois years.