SALT LAKE CITY — In Leslie O. Peterson’s mind, Fanny Alger’s almond-shaped face, with its soulful green eyes and rosebud mouth, is framed by close-cropped brown hair and perched atop a long, slender neck.

That is the way Mrs. Peterson, a Utah artist, painted the 16-year-old Ms. Alger, who in the early 1830s is believed to have slipped away to a barn from her job as a serving girl to the Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma, and quietly become his first plural wife.

The details of the union remain a bit fuzzy, even among historians. But that this marriage and Smith’s many others may have happened at all was a revelation to Mrs. Peterson, 60, who until last fall believed Smith had married just one woman.

“Then the essay comes out from the church and says, ‘Nope, it’s not just Joseph and Emma,’ ” said Mrs. Peterson, a fifth-generation member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “It’s Joseph and Emma and 33 other women.”