Statement 1: Only 2 percent of men in the LDS church ever practiced polygamy at any given time.
     William Edwin Berrett's The Restored Church (Deseret Book Company, 1961) quotes this statistic. "Plural marriage was never at any time a general law for the entire Church, and was never at any time practiced by over two percent of the male population," Berrett says (182). Figures given during the Reed Smoot hearings in Washington suggest the rate was closer to 3 percent.
     Other sources, however, suggest these percentages are too low. Several studies also suggest the percentage of polygamous households varied considerably from community to community, making it difficult to obtain a reliable churchwide estimate.
     One study analyzing 40 Mormon towns using 1880 data found the percentage of polygamous households ranged from 5 percent in South Weber to 67 percent in Orderville, where Zemira Palmer is buried with his two wives, Sally Knight and Caroline Jacques. "Almost 40 percent of St. George households were polygamous compared to 11 percent in nearby Harrisburg/Leeds. In Rockville only 10 percent were polygamous, while 67 percent of Orderville was. In South Weber, north of Salt Lake City, 5 percent practiced polygamy, compared to nearly 30 percent in Bountiful" (Mormon Polygamy: A History 91).
     Other studies have found a 15 percent rate in Springville and a 63 percent rate among LDS men in the Mexican colonies, where Joseph Henry James settled with his three wives in 1885. Meanwhile, Leonard J. Arrington and Davis Bitton estimate 5 percent of LDS males (generally Church leaders), 12 percent of LDS women and 10 percent of LDS children were from polygamous households (qtd. in Mormon Polygamy: A History 103). Finally, a study mentioned in Mormons in Mexico says 10 percent of men in the Church practiced polygamy during the peak of the period.
     So is the 2 percent figure fact or fiction? It depends on which sources you think are most reliable. It could be 2 percent, 3 percent, 5 percent, 10 percent -- or 67 percent if you take your sample from Orderville.

Statement 2: A married man had to get permission from his wife before entering a plural marriage relationship.
     Doctrine and Covenants 132:61 suggests this pattern: "If any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then he is justified."
     There is some evidence, however, that this pattern was not always followed. Critics of the Prophet Joseph Smith accuse him of marrying several women without the consent of Emma -- and sometimes without her knowledge. Historian Richard S. Van Wagoner (Mormon Polygamy: A History) gives credence to these reports. However, all information regarding polygamy in the LDS Church from the 1830s to 1852 is sketchy at best. There are many journals, interviews and reports from this transitional period that give conflicting accounts.
     After 1852, when Brigham Young announced the doctrine publicly, plural marriage became more regulated. However, even after 1852 it is difficult to say whether married men always obtained the consent of the first wife before marrying additional wives. "Though the first wife's consent was supposedly required by scripture, it was not always sought or willingly given," writes Van Wagoner (90). Another historian, Jessie L. Embry, says on this topic: "Descendants of plural marriages tend to agree that a husband had to obtain the consent of the first wife before he could marry again and had to be asked, or at least have the permission of, Church officials as well. However, no records are known of a set procedure for obtaining that permission" ( Mormon Polygamous Families: Life in the Principle 53). Embry says that in some cases the first wife was not even informed of subsequent marriages. The transcript from the Reed Smoot hearings quotes President Joseph F. Smith on the topic of consent, which adds insight:
     Q: "Is it not true that ... if she refuses her consent her husband is exempt from the law which requires her consent?"
     A: "Yes; he is exempt from the law which requires her consent. She is commanded to consent, but if she does not, then he is exempt from the requirement."
     Q: "Then he is at liberty to proceed without her consent, under the law. In other words, her consent amounts to nothing?"
     A: "It amounts to nothing but her consent" (1:201).
     Among James and Hatch patriarchs (including the Kartchner, Merrill, Palmer and Standifird lines), the scant information available suggests that the first wife's consent generally was obtained -- perhaps in every case. Cyrena Dustin, for one, confirms in her autobiographical sketch that she gave consent before her husband, Philemon C. Merrill, married Mary Jane Smith in 1851.

Statement 3: Many Latter-day Saint men lived with large harems of wives.
     This notion most likely originates from the exaggerated tales of travelers reporting back to the East during the period of polygamy. Mark Twain, called "the gentle blasphemer," has fun with the topic of polygamy in Roughing It, Chapter 15, where he reports about a visit to a Salt Lake City bar:
     "... And the next most interesting thing is to sit and listen to these Gentiles talk about polygamy; and how some portly old frog of an elder, or a bishop, marries a girl--likes her, marries her sister-- likes her, marries another sister--likes her, takes another--likes her, marries her mother--likes her, marries her father, grandfather, great grandfather, and then comes back hungry and asks for more. And how the pert young thing of eleven will chance to be the favorite wife and her own venerable grandmother have to rank away down toward D 4 in their mutual husband's esteem, and have to sleep in the kitchen, as like as not. And how this dreadful sort of thing, this hiving together in one foul nest of mother and daughters, and the making a young daughter superior to her own mother in rank and authority, are things which Mormon women submit to because their religion teaches them that the more wives a man has on earth, and the more children he rears, the higher the place they will all have in the world to come--and the warmer, maybe, though they do not seem to say anything about that."
     Statistics, however, prove the salacious tales of LDS bishops living with a dozen wives to be more fiction than fact. Although estimates vary greatly, studies on Mormon polygamy agree that the majority of LDS men remained monogomous. Even among polygamous men, the majority married only one additional wife. "Stanley Ivins's 1956 demographic study (using samples of 6,000 families), pointed out that of the 1,784 polygamous men in the group, 66.3 percent married only two wives, 21.2 percent married three, 6.7 percent married four, and a scant 5.8 percent married five or more women" (Mormon Polygamy: A History 91).
     The James and Hatch families followed this general pattern, although a higher percentage were polygamous. John Hatch, Hyrum Nelson, Price Williams Nelson, Gad Morris and Alma Zemira Palmer all married their first wives during the years of polygamy but remained monogamous. Joseph James, Newel Knight, Dudley Justin Merrill and Seth Adelbert Merrill married second wives as widowers but remained monogamous. Among those that became polygamists, James Lake Jr., a bishop, led the way with six marriages, although his first two wives died in turn before the period of polygamy -- meaning he did not become a polygamist until his fourth marriage and never lived with more than four wives. Likewise, Lorenzo Hill Hatch married his second wife as a widower and did not become a polygamist until his third marriage. He married a total of four times and had three polygamous wives. Joseph Henry James and Philemon C. Merrill also had three polygamous wives. All other polygamists in the James and Hatch lines (including William D. Kartchner, Samuel Merrill, Zemira Palmer and John Henry Standifird) never had more than two wives at a time.