My Memoir, Part 19-O: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer —
And More Perils of Polygamy
“Leaders who win the respect of others
are the ones who deliver more than they promise,
not the ones who promise more than they can deliver.”
Mark A. Clement
Taking up where I left off in my blog “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy — Part 19-N”:
It seems I got off onto a little bunny trail a few blogs back. So it’s high time we backtrack — get back to where Uncle Ervil and my parents were manipulating my love life in the name of polygamy to get me married off to “Billy” — back to where, in July of 1963, my sixteen-year-old-self was in the process of being pawned off in a prearranged marriage to ten-years-my-senior William Preston Tucker (leader of the infamous French missionaries excommunicated from the LDS/ Mormon church around 1958).
Since Uncle Ervil wasn’t able to do anything about his sister/my mom throwing a jackhammer into his plans to trade me to Homer Babbit for land, Ervil manipulated another of his nieces into marrying Babbit in my place.
Yes, smooth-talking Uncle Ervil soon had one of his brother Wesley’s daughters, my red-haired sixteen-year-old cousin Jenny Lou LeBaron married to Homer. Poor Jenny Lou! At the time, she was only visiting the LeBaron colony. But visiting the LeBaron colony was dangerous. She ended up homesteading as forty-three-year-old Babbit’s polygamous bride. Her parents weren’t by her side to protect her from her uncle Ervil’s revelations and manipulations!
My parents “protected” me by betraying me! They had raised me to believe I could trust them impeccably because they were Saints. But they were frauds. For years, they regularly snuck into and read my private diaries, unbeknownst to me that this was going on. Then discussed among themselves my thoughts and business meant for my eyes only. (I found this out only many years after-the-fact.)
Thus, they not only knew every personal thought that went on in my adolescent brain. (No wonder they had become so down on me!) But also, inadvertently, during their daily entertainment, learned of Ervil’s devious plans to marry me to Homer Babbit behind their backs!
That’s how my parents got the bright/”bride” idea to turn around, themselves, and manipulate my love-life and who I was to marry! They boggled Ervil’s plans to barter me to Babbit, by replacing them with their own plans to barter me to Bill.
After all, I had written in my journal, “Bill Tucker is the man I’m really in love with, not Homer!” However, there was a selfish method to my parents’ madness: It brought far more prestige to them to have me married to Bill rather than to Babbit. I don’t know which was worse for me in the end! (I was so in love with Bill but he shattered ‘n’ battered me. Babbit would’ve built me up, appreciated and loved me.)
Since Jenny’s parents weren’t around to snoop into her diaries, Ervil won the second time around. He got Jenny married to Homer in a heartbeat. Then set to work to convince his bosom-buddy Billy to comply with my parents’ wishes that he marry me.
(Ervil had quickly seen how Bill’s marrying me would work for him. For one thing, Homer wouldn’t wonder why I hadn’t ended up marrying him after all Ervil’s wheelings and dealings with him!)
(Continued in: “My Memoir: Esther LeBaron McDonald de Spencer — And More Perils of Polygamy — Part 19-P”)
Excellent expose by renowned speaker Steven Hassan, author of “Combatting Cult Mind Control,” and leader in recognizing brainwashing and mind control techniques.
STEPHANY SPENCER: 