When Sarah, Abraham’s wife, could not bear him children, she told him to also take her maid for a wife, so that the family could have children. When Jacob served a farmer for seven years for his daughter Rachel, he was given her younger sister Leah instead, and had to serve another seven for his second wife. These were two of the most common passages in the Book of Genesis cited by the early Mormon Church to support the practice of polygamy, started by the founder Joseph Smith and continued by his successor Brigham Young.

On this day October 6, in 1890, after an enormous pressure campaign by the federal government Mormon Church officially outlawed polygamy. They had little choice but to comply, as they were threatened with arrests and seizure of their temples.

LDS President Wilford Woodruff made a statement that in a vision, God told him to cease the practice of polygamy, and declared  “Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.”