“We know a few details about Melissa’s [Lott] marriage to [Joseph] Smith[, Jr.]. In court testimony given later in her life, she gave frank testimony, within the bounds of Victorian language, that there was a sexual component to the relationship. She testified that she was Smith’s wife ‘in very deed,’ though she also said that there were no children born as a result of the marital bond. We know that the marriage was secret, as were all of Smith’s plural unions. In the Temple Lot case, Melissa testified, ‘I did not go to church with Joseph Smith, was never seen on the streets or in public places with him as his wife during his lifetime.’”

Todd Compton, In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 15 December 1997), 598.