Did Joseph Smith have more than one wife?

At one time during the early years of the church there were many widows that needed to be taken care of. For this reason, and a few others, the Lord revealed to Joseph Smith that he and other men in the church should take more then one wife. So yes, Joseph did have more then one wife.

We don't know how many because of the reason listed above--since so many of the marriages were political contracts with older widows to allow them to keep their property, to assure that he would pay their mortgages, etc. , it is assumed that there were many polygamous relationships that were not only non-sexual, but where the two may have never met one another. The church hasn't practiced polygamy since 1890 The answer above gives an apologetic view to Mormon Polygamy and in some areas not 100% accurate. There is no historical evidence for the amount of widows compared to men in the Church in the early 19th Century.

That argument is not accepted by historians and holds no water. The reason for the revelation calling Joseph Smith to live "the Principle," as it is called among some Fundamentalist groups, or Polygamy is contained in the revelation itself. He received the revelation because he was inquiring of the Lord concerning David, Solomon and Abraham's practice of plural wives.

Storian Todd Compton in his book "In Sacred Loneliness" provides ample evidence that Joseph Smith had at least 28 plural wives and possible up to about 32 maximum. So, to answer your question, yes, Joseph Smith did have more than one wife. The argument above that Joseph Smith was married to them only to help them financially also holds no water, he was steeped deeply in debt and could not have rendered much, if any, financial support for those women.

Joseph Smith did meet his wives and there are arguments for sexual relations between the two. However, the sexual relations must have been few and rare because in that time period there were no serious contraceptives and if Smith were running around with nearly 30 women on a regular basis there would be nearly dozens of documented and plausible illegitimate children. The thing is there are none.

No one has found evidence supporting that any one person was an illegitimate child of Joseph Smith through any of his wives other than Emma Hale Smith. There are possibly 3 cases that could argue to be Smith's illegitimate children however none are accepted by scholars as plausible, let alone true. While many Latter-day Saints would like to think that all polygamy ended in 1890 there were many Members who did not accept the Manifest from President Wilford Woodruff and continued to perform and engage in Polygamous marriages.

This is why we see so many fundamentalist Mormon sects today like the one Warren Jeffs once lead.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.