George D. Smith argues that the Nauvoo documentary record describes plural marriages with relationships during this life, even when wives lived in separate households. His demographic account places Joseph Smith’s marriages within the spread of a secret marital system and the dissent that followed it.
- George D. Smith, “Nauvoo Roots of Mormon Polygamy, 1841-46: A Preliminary Demographic Report,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 34, no. 1–2 (2001): 123–158.
Most of Smith’s plural wives boarded with other families, whom he visited periodically.