C.C.A. Christensen and the Problem of Polygamy

C.C.A. Christensen’s grave marker in the Ephraim Cemetery (in Sanpete County in Central Utah) offers a couple surprising insights about his life. The monument celebrates his poetry instead of his painting—although he’s now likely the best-recognized nineteenth-century Mormon artist, during his own lifetime he was appreciated more for his writing.

Another detail hiding in plain sight is less likely to come as a surprise to those familiar with nineteenth-century Utah’s family and social structures. The grave marker’s other sides commemorate several of Christensen’s family members, including, on the left, his wife, Maren “Mary” Frederikke, and on the right, his wife Eliza “Elise” Rosalia. C.C.A. married Elise shortly before immigrating to the United States in 1857. Ten years later, he married Mary as a plural wife. Elise and Mary each had seven children with C.C.A., and all but two lived to adulthood. The family eventually settled in a single property in Ephraim, although, at least by the 1880s, each wife had separate houses.

Christensen’s experience exemplifies some of the complexities of polygamy in Utah Territory. The history of polygamy often gets simplified to something like this: Mormon settlers practiced plural marriage openly beginning with their arrival in Utah, then the US government began prosecuting polygamists after the Civil War, forcing Wilford Woodruff to issue his “manifesto” ending Mormon polygamy in 1890.

The lived experience of plural marriage was much more complicated. Lack of federal legislation on the subject before the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act meant that the practice was legal in Utah Territory for a decade after it was publicly announced in 1852. Many Latter-day Saints were later prosecuted for living in relationships that were legally sanctioned when they entered into them. Adding to the confusion, Mormon leaders adamantly defended their right to sanction plural marriage as an exercise of religion protected by the First Amendment. Even after federal legislation criminalized the practice, many church leaders assured members that they would not face prosecution because they believed the law could not be enforced. The US Supreme Court’s decision against the LDS Church in Reynolds v. United States, 1879, proved this perspective false. When C. C. A. Christensen married Mary in 1867, he may have believed, like many other Mormons at the time, that his right to marry was protected by the Bill of Rights.

Instead, Christensen learned by the late 1880s that the his plural marriage made him a target for federal prosecutors. Even after the Reynolds v. United States decision, multiple legislative steps were required to curtail Mormon influence in judicial administration and begin securing large numbers of convictions of Latter-day Saint polygamists. Christensen left on a mission to Scandinavia from 1887-1889, the most intense era of anti-polygamy enforcement. His call may have been issued in part to provide him legal shelter, as many other men left the country during that time as strategy to avoid prosecution.

After his return, however, he was charged with “unlawful cohabitation,” and tried in the First District Court in Provo. Two of his children testified in his behalf, assuring the court that even if their father were plurally- married, he had not been illegally cohabiting. His daughter, Diantha, noted that he had been out of the country for the prior two years, and that even before that, “there has been an understanding in the family that for several years my father has been obeying the law. He has not visited the second wife as he used to do formerly.” This was critical evidence because “unlawful cohabitation” as charged in the indictment could only be considered illegal if it could be shown to have occurred after October 1, 1886. Christensen’s son Frederick William corroborated this testimony, noting that Mary had moved into a separate house, but he admitted that “Mary’s children call the defendant father,” and that he had seen his father and Mary together at parties, although less frequently following the mission.

Even with their testimony, C. C. A. was convicted. The church-owned Deseret News opined that “there was not a scintilla of evidence to prove the defendant guilty, but an obedient jury brought in a verdict of guilty.” Despite the specific legal definition of “unlawful cohabitation,” a term created to encompass relationships even when participants denied ever having been married, many federal prosecutors interpreted all Mormon polygamous marriage as violating the law regardless of the specifics of the relationship. From this perspective, merely ending a sexual relationship with a plural spouse was insufficient to avoid prosecution.

After his initial conviction, C. C. A. Christensen was fortunate to obtain a rare legal victory. His attorneys discovered that “one of the trial jurors had sat upon the grand jury which found the indictment,” a clear violation of legal process, and he was granted a new trial. By the time of his second trial in April, 1891, Woodruff had already issued the “manifesto,” and federal prosecutors agreed to end enforcement of anti-polygamy laws. Interestingly, Christensen’s case was not dismissed, but when it went to trail, “The evidence for the prosecution was heard and the prosecuting attorney asked that the jury be instructed to return a verdict of not guilty, as he did not consider the evidence sufficient to convict.”

And, from a simplistic view, at least, that was the end of C. C. A. Christensen’s polygamy problems. But what about the two wives and two families that were still obviously very much a part of his life? Following Woodruff’s 1890 proclamation, Mormon polygamists were faced with the dilemma of maintaining their families while also following the law. Many Latter-day Saints felt that ending sexual relationships with all but one wife—or at least claiming to have done so—was sufficient. This is how Christensen’s family remembered the aftermath of the polygamy era. His granddaughter, Norma Jensen Taggart, remembered that later in life C. C. A. lived solely with his first wife, but after Elise’s death in 1910, he moved into the house with Mary. Presumably the couple considered themselves still married despite the intervening events that had necessitated at least the appearance of their physical separation.

Christensen’s biography reflects an additional complication in understanding polygamy in nineteenth-century Utah. While we have a significant amount of information about the theological lens through which Christensen interpreted his plural marriage and the legal process that he encountered, I have yet to find any sources revealing either Elise or Mary’s perspectives. Was Christensen responsible for initiating the second marriage, or was he urged by church leaders like many men of the era? What did Elise think? Did she approve, or have any voice in the process? How did Mary feel as an impoverished twenty-three year old recent immigrant with only one sister as family support in Utah? Did she understand the marriage as a relationship based on love, or was it more about support, or even coercion? How did the complicated relationship evolve over time for all three? Even though the patriarchal structure of Utah polygamy privileged men’s voices over women’s, numerous women in territorial Utah found positions of power to articulate their diverse perspectives on the subject—but women of modest social class from rural Utah like Elise and Mary Christensen seldom had these opportunities. My research hasn’t really focused on Christensen and his family’s biography, though, so I’m hoping that the sources are out there somewhere waiting to be discovered.