Neil Andi Anderson: Melissa Schindle - a 5 dollar offer

Comparing to someone else
doesn't make your church true.
This Arrogance prove how
dirty you are in a discussions.
This also proves you know nothing
rather copy paste to a weak sources
And claim you know something
About your claim.

Okay, here let me help you in your so called 5 dollar payment for a night. Seems like you know nothing about it. Let's dive in, and take a closer study.

#9: Melissa Schindle

Palmer continues to quote John C. Bennett’s publication, History of the Saints, by reproducing an affidavit from Melissa Schindle (p. 14):

In the fall of 1841, she was staying one night with the widow Fuller, who has recently been married to a Mr. Warren, in the city of Nauvoo, and that Joseph Smith came into the room where she was sleeping about 10 o’clock at night, and after making a few remarks came to her bedside, and asked her if he could have the privilege of sleeping with her. She immediately replied no. He, on the receipt of the above answer told her it was the will of the Lord that he should have illicit intercourse with her, and that he never proceeded to do any thing of that kind with any woman without first having the will of the Lord on the subject; and further he told her that if she would consent to let him have such intercourse with her, she could make his house her home as long as she wished to do so, and that she should never want for anything it was in his power to assist her to but she would not consent to it. He then told her that if she would let him sleep with her that night he would give her five dollars but she refused all his propositions. He then told her that she must never tell of his propositions to her, for he had ALL influence in that place, and if she told he would ruin her character, and she would be under the necessity of leaving. He then went to an adjoining bed where the Widow [Fuller] was sleeping got into bed with her and laid there until about 1 o’clock, when he got up, bid them good night, and left them, and further this deponent saith not.

MELISSA (her X mark) SCHINDLE.

Subscribed and sworn to before me, this 2d day July, 1842. A. FULKERSON, J. P. (seal).81

Palmer evidently takes this affidavit at face value, writing that on an “1841 evening … Melissa Schindle was propositioned by Smith,” and “Melissa rejected” Joseph Smith’s offer (p. 14). 

However, the affidavit’s credibility is questionable on several grounds.

Schindle’s illiteracy, indicated by her signing an “X,” shows that she would have required assistance from other individuals including, potentially, John C. Bennett to compose the document. Two weeks after the affidavit was published, Melissa Schindle’s moral character was questioned in Nauvoo’s secular newspaper, The Wasp: “Who is Mrs. Shindle? A harlot.”82

Catherine Fuller (see case #10) was tried before the Nauvoo High Council on 25 May 1842 for immoral activity with John C. Bennett. During her trial, she accused Bennett of also sleeping with Melissa Schindle.83 D. Michael Quinn lists her as one of Bennett’s “free-love” companions.84

The events described in the affidavit include several details that seem implausible. In 1841 Nauvoo, no man even Joseph Smith was likely to be allowed to wander into a room where women were already in bed sleeping at ten o’clock at night.

Schindle’s claim that Joseph Smith “told her it was the will of the Lord that he should have illicit intercourse with her” depicts him as an adulterous hypocrite, acknowledging from the onset that the relationship would have been “illicit.” Such a depiction of the Prophet contradicts the numerous other public and private evidences that Joseph taught and practiced a different moral standard.

It is also implausible that the Prophet would offer Schindle to “make his house her home” if she would acquiesce. It seems clear that Emma, the Prophet’s legal wife, would not have tolerated such an arrangement at their Nauvoo homestead. 

(The Smiths did not move into the spacious Nauvoo Mansion until August of 1843.)

The offering of money, “five dollars,” is also singular. None of Joseph’s plural wives reported any promises of material benefits or financial favors to them. Plural wife Lucy Walker recalled Joseph telling her as he discussed a plural sealing with her: “I have no flattering words to offer.”85 There is simply too much here that does not add up.

Sources 

81. John C. Bennett, letter dated 27 June 1842, “Bennett’s Second and Third Letters,” Sangamo Journal, Springfield, Ill., 15 July 1842. Reproduced in Bennett’s History of the Saints: or, An Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism (Boston: Leland & Whiting, 1842), 253–54, https://archive.org/details/historysaints00benngoog

82. The Wasp, “Extra” edition, Wednesday, 27 July 1842. The Wasp names her “Shindle,” while Bennett’s Sangamo Journal and History of the Saints account uses “Schindle” (see note 81 above).

83. Catherine Fuller testimony before the Nauvoo High Council, 25 May 1842; copy of holograph in Valeen Tippitts Avery Collection, Utah State University, Logan, Utah. See further discussion on pp. 219–20 below.

84. D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1994), 536.

85. Quote in Lyman Omer Littlefield, Reminiscences of Latter-day Saints: Giving an Account of Much Individual Suffering Endured for Religious Conscience (Logan, Utah: Utah Journal Co., 1888), 47

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Provide a reliable source
Rather trash and a stupid
hearsays from your INC media.