Helen Mar Kimball

[He explained] the principle of Celestial marrage [plural marriage]...After which he said to me, 'If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation [and] exaltation and that of your father's household [and] all of your kindred.['] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God [and] his angels could see my mother's bleeding heart ‑‑ when Joseph asked her if she was willing... She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older [and] who better understood the step they were taking, [and] to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come...; but it was all hidden from me.

I would never have been sealed to Joseph had I known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of our whole family depended on it.