This is an ongoing series to remember the early women of Church history who are largely forgotten today. You can read the previous entries here.

Agnes Moulton Coolbrith was born in 1811 in Scarboro, Cumberland County, Maine.She was baptized in Boston in July of 1832 and gathered with the saints in Kirtland, Ohio. There she boarded in the home of Joseph and Emma Smith. On July 30, 1835, Agnes married Joseph’s brother, Don Carlos Smith. [1] Agnes was eight years his senior. Don Carlos was a printer and ran a printing press, but traveled much of the time to do missionary work for the church in Pennsylvania and Ohio.



Three years later, when Joseph fled Kirtland for Missouri, Agnes and Don Carlos followed. When Don Carlos left for another mission to help raise funds for the church, Agnes found herself alone and caring for two children. Her home was burned and looted by the mobs and she fled in terror, carrying her two-year-old and six-month-old daughters through snow and an icy river.





Don Carlos

I turn I gaze beyond the stream

From whence I came propelled by steam

There I behold by my fireside

The choice of youth Agnes my bride Her soft and tender voice I hear

Which Sounds delightful to my ear

With her I find that pearl of price

By some abused by some despised Hark! I hear the prattlings of [children] more precious than fine gold

A gift of God to us we now behold

Their tender minds may they imbibe

The precious jewel by me described This is the pearl the richest price

Bestowed on me whilst here in life…[2]

By many accounts, Don Carlos was deeply taken with his wife. In Todd Compton’s “In Sacred Loneliness,” he includes several letters written to Agnes from Don Carlos. One letter ends with this love poem:

Eventually the couple settled in Nauvoo with their now three daughters. Several accounts relate that Don Carlos was vehemently opposed to polygamy. His printing partner Ebenezer Robinson recounts him saying, “Any man who will teach and practice the doctrine of spiritual wifery will go to hell; I don’t care if it is my brother Joseph.”[3]

During the summer of 1841, Don Carlos contracted malaria and passed away at age 25. On his deathbed, Joseph Smith asked Don Carlos if he had a last request, to which he answered, “Yes, I have, Joseph Smith, I want you for the rest of your life to be an honest man.” (Joseph F. Smith denies this claim, made by Don Carlos’ daughter Ina). [4]

In spite of Don Carlos Smith’s opposition to the practice, five months later Agnes would marry Joseph Smith, allegedly as an Old Testament marriage (where the brother married another brother’s widow). The marriage was guarded with secrecy. On January 6, 1842 Brigham Young wrote a cryptic entry in his journal using Masonic symbols. Decoded, it reads: “I was taken in to the lodge J Smith was Agness”. The abbreviation “was” means “wedded and sealed”. On the same day in Joseph’s diary we find: “Truly this is a day long to be remembered by the saints of the Last Days; a day in which the God of heaven has began to restore the ancient order of his Kingdom…all things are concurring together to bring about the completion of the fullness of the gospel”. [5]

Later that spring, at a meeting of the women’s “Relief Society”, Emma Smith announced that a young woman, Clarissa Marvel, “was accused of [telling] scandalous falsehoods on the character of Prest. Joseph Smith.” Eager to prove her husband innocent of improper behavior, Emma initiated an investigation. A few days later, Clarissa signed the following statement: “This is to certify that I never have at any time or place, seen or heard anything improper or unvirtuous in the conduct or conversation of either President Smith or Mrs. Agnes Smith…I never have reported any thing derogatory to the characters of either of them.” By this time, Joseph and Agnes had been married almost four months.

After Joseph Smith’s death, Agnes married Joseph and Don Carlos’ cousin, George Albert Smith. As George Albert and the rest of the Saints were leaving for Utah, Agnes wrote, “I have no other one to ask but you my mind is much troubled about comeing…I want to come and I do not want to come I feel alone all alone if there was a Carlos or a Joseph or Hyrum there how quickly would I be there.” Agnes ultimately did not migrate to Utah. She married a fourth husband, William Pickett, and eventually moved to California, essentially leaving her Mormon past behind.

To avoid identification with her former family or with Mormonism, Agnes reverted to using her maiden name, Coolbrith. Her daughter followed suit, and shortened her name from Josephine to Ina to further conceal the relationship. Her daughter Ina Coolbrith was an American poet, writer, librarian, and a prominent figure in the San Francisco Bay Area literary community. Called the “Sweet Singer of California”,she was the first California Poet Laureate and the first poet laureate of any American state.





Ina Coolbrith

Many years later, her marriage to Joseph Smith still shrouded in secrecy, Agnes wrote to her nephew, Joseph F. Smith: “I acknowledge none greater…than those that belong to the household of Joseph our Dear Dear Dear departed one Joseph…I could say many things to you…that I know and that has been told me by those that are dead and gone but perhaps you would not believe me no I know that you would not so it is best for me to keep silent.”

In 1876, just months before her death, Agnes was visited by David and Alexander Smith who were on a missionary journey, promoting their anti-polygamist RLDS religion. They were undoubtedly surprised by what “Aunt Agnes” had to say. Lucy Walker visited Agnes eight years later and wrote:

I had a very pleasant visit at Oakland, [California] with Ina [Coolbrith, daughter of Agnes Coolbrith], who received me with much tenderness and affection… From her, I learned many things I was glad to know, one fact was, that her mother bore testimony to the “Boys” [Joseph and Emma Smith’s sons, members of the RLDS Church who visited in 1876] in regard to the faith and teachings of their Father and told them that what they had seen, and heard in Salt Lake was Truth, that those women were their Father’s wives, and it was useless to promulgate falsehood to the world, and advised them to desist. They pretended not to believe, but she could plainly see they were stung with the truth of her testimony.

David seemed struck dumb, astounded at the living testimony of so many – What could their object [could] be! Alexander said he would not take any bodys word – not even Aunt Agnes. Jos. [Joseph Smith, III] would not talk on the subject. After they left [they] sent \Ina/ what purported to be the ‘History of their Father with their Mother’s dying testimony—and desired her to place them in the Library—She wrote them She could not with the knowledge She had—that they were false.. (Emphasis in original.)

Agnes Coolbrith separated herself spiritually and physically from the Utah Church. However, when RLDS missionaries came teaching Joseph Smith was not a polygamist, Agnes directly challenged their testimony by recalling earlier events in her own life. Reportedly, her last words were “O! what a dupe I have been; what a dupe I have been!” Agnes’ daughter interpreted this as referring to her association with Mormonism while Agnes’ nephew, Apostle Joseph F. Smith, believed it a reference to marriage to William Pickett and her separation from the Church. [6]

Agnes has an incredible history, but it is also worth looking up and researching her daughter Ina if you get a minute!

Sources:

1. http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~colby/colbyfam/b372.html

2. Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 150.

3.Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 152.

4. Ina Coolbrith, quoted in J.F. Smith to Ina Coolbrith Apr, 20, 1918, J.F. Smith collection, CA.

5.http://www.wivesofjosephsmith.org/07-AgnesCoolbrith.htm

6.www.josephsmithspolygamy.com/See discussion in Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith. Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1997, 169.