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[50 plus wives? That is a definite lie of commission.]

Yes, you should stop lying OldMountainMan. Apparently there were actually 55.

Brigham Young’s Wives and
His Divorce From Ann Eliza Webb

In 1868 Brigham Young, at age sixty-seven, married Ann Eliza Webb, an attractive twenty-four year old divorcee with two children. Young had already married dozens of other women. LDS scholar Jeffery Johnson, writing on Brigham Young and his wives, explained:

“Sixteen women gave birth to Brigham Young’s fifty-seven children; Emmeline Free had ten; six wives had only one child. The oldest child, Elizabeth Young Ellsworth, was fifty-two at Brigham’s death and the youngest, Fannie Young Clayton, was seven. Eleven of the sixteen women survived him. None of the women who bore him children canceled their sealings or remarried....

“The first documented divorce was from Mary Woodward on 13 December 1846, his wife of less than a year. In a brief but warm letter that day, he wrote: “In answer to your letter of yesterday, the 12 inst; I will say, you may consider yourself discharged from me and my counsel” and added that he would be glad to help her if she and her children were ever hungry (Brigham Young papers).

“Divorce records are sketchy for the emigration period, but two women who had been sealed to him in the Nauvoo Temple left him then to marry other men. ...

“On 18 June 1851 Mary Ann Clark Powers wrote from Kanesville, Iowa: “I wish you to release me from all engagements with you for time and eternity....” (Brigham Young papers). This request was granted.

“After the Church began recording divorces in 1851, Mary Ann Turley and Mary Jane Bigelow obtained divorces in 1851, Eliza Babcock in 1853, and Elizabeth Fairchild in 1855 (Divorce Certificates, Brigham Young papers). They were under twenty when they married Brigham Young and had never become part of his household. They all remarried; and Mary Jane, Eliza, and Elizabeth remained in Utah. “Almost twenty years later in 1873, Ann Eliza Webb applied for a civil divorce. The case came to trial in 1875, and the court ordered Brigham to pay $500 per month allowance and $3,000 court costs. When he refused, he was fined $25 and sentenced to a day in prison for contempt of court (Arrington 1985, 373). There is no record of application for a Church divorce, but she was excommunicated 10 October 1874 and devoted much of the rest of her life to publishing her somewhat sensational memoirs and giving anti-Mormon lectures.

“Twenty-one of Brigham Young’s fifty-five wives had never been married, six were separated or divorced from their husbands, sixteen were widows, and six had living husbands from whom divorces had apparently not been obtained. Marital information is unavailable for six.

“From a twentieth-century perspective, the polyandrous marriages seem most problematic. Three of these women (Mary Ann Clark Powers, Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, and Hannah Tapfield King) were married to non-Mormons, which meant, according to the theological understanding of the times, that their salvation could not be assured. Mary Ann Clark Powers, married to Brigham Young 15 January 1845, later said she had not “bin a wife to” Powers after the sealing and expressed relief when Powers went to California. She received a divorce from Brigham Young in 1851 (Powers toYoung, 18 June 1851, Brigham Young papers).” (Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought, (”Defining ‘Wife’: The Brigham Young Households,” by Jeffrey Johnson, 1987, Vol. 20, No. 3, p.62-63)