Benjamin Covey

Sources

1. First wards in Utah created 150 years ago, Church News, February 6, 1999.
2. Law and Order in Winter Quarters, Journal of Mormon History (JSTOR), June 1, 2006.
3. Pedogamy: "Sealing Girls to Old Men", Utah Bee, August 22, 2023.

• 1. First wards in Utah created 150 years ago

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  By Feb. 22, 1849, the city had been sectioned off to the point that the organization of the 19 wards could commence. According to the Journal History, the First Presidency, the Twelve and others met at the home of George B. Wallace. There, they ordained and set apart these men as bishops of the respective city wards: David Fairbanks, First Ward; John Lowry, Second; Christopher Williams, Third; William H. Hickenlooper, Sixth; William G. Perkins, Seventh; Addison Everett, Eighth; Seth Taft, Ninth; David Pettigrew, Tenth; Benjamin Covey, Twelfth; Edward Hunter, Thirteenth; John Murdock, Fourteenth; Abraham C. Smoot, Fifteenth; Isaac Higbee, Sixteenth; Joseph L. Heywood, Seventeenth; and James Hendrix, Nineteenth. A number of brethren were set apart as counselors to the bishops on that day.

• 2. Law and Order in Winter Quarters

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  Stout received a report that Benjamin Covey was "practising a wicked and abominable thing," and Brigham Young requested an investigation. It showed "that he is guilty of seducing two girls not over twelve years of age." The council tried him, convicted him, excommunicated him, and released his wives and children from any obligation to him.

  [Footnote 123: Stout, January 28 and 31 and February 2, 1848; March 11 and 12, 1849; High Council, March 9 and 11,1848. Lorenzo H. Hatch "prefer[red] a charge against Benjamin Covey for missuseing Adeline Hatch a sister of mine, and Sleeping with her unlawfully." Covey later became bishop of a Salt Lake ward.]

• 3. Pedogamy: "Sealing Girls to Old Men"

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  Child sex abuse has been in the church since pioneer times. Hosea Stout mentions a Benjamin Covey who raped a couple of 12 year old girls, was excommunicated, then rebaptized, and then made bishop all within a year. However, pedophiles don't generally change.

  However, sometimes Mormon men went too far in their predations upon young girls. 56-year-old polygamist Benjamin Covey was excommunicated briefly in Winter Quarters in 1848 for having sex with two girls, both under the age of 12, whom he had been fostering in his home in Winter Quarters. (As a personal note, while still in Nauvoo, 46-year-old Covey— married to Almira Mack, first cousin of Joseph Smith— committed adultery with my 24-year-old 3rd great aunt, Diana Cole, and she became pregnant. He married her polygamously in January 1846 and she gave birth to their only child four months later in May. She died of tuberculosis in Winter Quarters a few months after her only child died and just as all the following occurred.).

  Covey was called to face the church's High Council at the Winter Quarter's Council House on March 11, 1848, but church leaders were well aware months earlier of his miscreant behavior. Nauvoo's police chief Hosea Stout recorded in his journal on January 28, 1848,that Bishop Daniel Garn and another man reported to him that Benjamin Covey "was practicing a wicked and abominable thing...and wanted us to look to it." Stout informed Brigham Young, who then "wanted the matter looked into." Five days later, Stout wrote that he had been investigating Covey's case and "it is now plainly manifest that he is guilty of seducing two girls not over twelve years of age which was reported to the president."

  The High Council minutes report that they met on March 11, with Alpheus Cutler presiding. Theodore Turley and Frederick W. Cox were the council members appointed, respectively, to defend and prosecute him. Not all witnesses called had shown up, but it was decided to proceed anyway. After they testified, Covey "made his statement in reguard [sic] to the charges preferred [sic] against him." Stout reported in his diary that day, "It appeared that two girls about the same age lived with him both of whom he had defiled, which is abundantly proven. He was cut off from the church with the understanding that his wives and children were under no obligations to him." Brigham Young motioned that Covey be cut off and the vote by the church's High Council to excommunicate him was unanimous.

  Covey's punishment for sexually abusing two very young girls under his care did not last long, however, and he was soon back in the good graces of Brigham Young and reinstated into full membership. Within two months of the trial, Young invited him to join his pioneer company to the Salt Lake Valley, which left Winter Quarters on June 5, 1848. Covey was then ordained Bishop of the Salt Lake 12th Ward on February 22, 1849, one year after his excommunication.

  Covey's sin seems not to have been pedophilia per se, but that he was not married to the two young girls he raped. Later, even "friendly" accounts from Utah report that girls as young as 10 were getting married to adult men there, although I was only able to document girls 11 and older marrying. Their stories of both acquiescence to and rejection of pedogamy will be told in future segments in this series.