These sealing ceremonies generally took place in meetings of church members who had earlier participated in rituals, or ordinances, that would later be performed in the Nauvoo temple.32 In Joseph Smith’s journal, Richards referred to meetings of this group by a variety of names, including “council,” “quorum,” “council of the quorum,” and “prayer meeting.”33 Members of this group first met on 4 May 1842 when, in Richards’s words, Joseph Smith taught nine men about the “washings & anointings, endowments, and the communications of keys . . . & all those plans & principles by which any one is enabled to secure the fulness of those blessings which has been prepared for the chu[r]ch of the first-born, and come up, and abide in the prese[n]ce of Eloheim in the eternal worlds.”34 This group met four more times by the end of June 1842, after which it did not meet again until 26 May 1843, almost a year later. On this date, Joseph Smith evidently repeated the same instruction to some of the same men, probably to prepare them for the additional ordinance of being sealed to their wives. Several were sealed just days later.35 In a separate ordinance performed the following September, Joseph and Emma Smith were “anointed & ordd. [ordained] to the highest and holiest order of the priesthood.”36 Other members of this council—including all nine members of the Quorum of the Twelve who were living in the area and their wives—eventually received the same ordinance, which Wilford Woodruff, a member of the council, often referred to as a “second anointing” in his journal.37 In addition to participating in these rituals, the growing number of men and women invited to attend these meetings often prayed together and received instructions from Joseph Smith about teachings and doctrines related to the temple.

34 JS, Journal, 4 May 1842; Historian’s Office, JS History, Draft Notes, 4 May 1842. “Elohim” is Hebrew for “Gods,” though it is generally translated as the singular “God.”

35 According to the manuscript history of Brigham Young, Joseph Smith administered “the first ordinances of endowment” on 26 May 1843. On 28 May 1843, Joseph Smith and James Adams were evidently sealed to their respective wives, Emma Smith and Harriet Denton, and on 29 May 1843, Hyrum Smith, Brigham Young, and Willard Richards were probably sealed to their respective wives, Mary Fielding Smith, Mary Angell Young, and Jennetta Richards Richards. (Historian’s Office, Brigham Young History Drafts, 69; JS, Journal, 28 and 29 May 1843.)

36 JS, Journal, 28 Sept. 1843. Joseph Smith had previously taught the importance of receiving the full blessings of the priesthood and of becoming priests and kings “not to the kingdoms of this earth but of the most high god.” (JS, Journal, 23 July 1843.)

37 See, for example, Woodruff, Journal, 21, 25, 26, and 28 Jan. 1844. Later, the history of Brigham Young used the same term for this ordinance. (Historian’s Office, Brigham Young History Drafts, 91a; “History of Brigham Young,” Deseret News, 24 Mar. 1858, 17.)