The Polygamists: A Look Inside Pinesdale, Montana
Montana Kaimin/May 3, 2024
By Bayliss Flynn
“I had a silly question once about the polygamist lifestyle. They asked me if we all slept in the same bed. That’s just ridiculous. I mean, that’s got to be a big bed.”
(Flynn):
While the reality show “My Five Wives” was filmed in Utah – not Montana – it might seem familiar to those who’ve heard about Pinesdale, just 45 minutes from the campus of the University of Montana. Lots of people, it seems, are interested in the kind polygamy both the show and the town are known for. They’re reading “Under the Banner of Heaven” by Jon Krakauer or, more likely, watching it as a recent miniseries on Hulu. “Sister Wives,” “Escaping Polygamy,” “The Book of Mormon,” “Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey” – there is no shortage of shows, plays and books that try to explain or expose or make fun of religious practices that allow for multiple spouses.
In the Bitterroot Valley, between Victor and Hamilton, is the town of Pinesdale. Montanans give you a knowing look when you mention it. The town has a population of around 900, but you’ll only find a few last names of families living there. It’s primarily occupied by members of the Apostolic United Brethren, a breakoff Mormon fundamentalist group that practices polygamy, or plural marriage. Some of those names are associated with UM, too. Inga Watt, a 20-year-old freshman chemistry major, grew up in Pinesdale as part of the Jessop family. She said her grandpa, Morris Yeates Jessop, had six wives and 60 kids.
(Watt):
“I don't think my grandpa ever really knew my name, honestly. Maybe he heard it, but it was never, ‘Oh, hi Inga,’ when you saw him, it was, ‘Hi sweetie, how you doing?’ It was never your name. It's definitely a way different grandpa than most people have. You don't have that same relationship because you can't. There's so many of you.”
(Flynn):
I’m Bayliss Flynn and this is your Kaimin Cast for the week of April 22, 2024.
I reached out to more than 20 people affiliated with Pinesdale. Three agreed to speak with me. Chris Jessop is a 30-year-old comedian who has a podcast called “Polyganometry” where he talks with some of his many relatives. For his standup sets, a lot of his material springs from his experience growing up in Pinesdale.
Scene tape–comedy club (Chris Jessop):
“There’s a lot of rumors that people associate with growing up in polygamy. You know like child brides, incest, huge families? I just want to stand before all you guys today and just put those stupid rumors to rest. They’re true, all of them. Yep, all of them. First one, child brides, right? I don’t know if you guys have watched any Netflix documentaries recently, but Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey? Yeah, Uncle Warren is great at family reunions. He’s a little touchy.”
(Chris Jessop):
“There's this acronym that's used to describe people who are kind of on the way out. It's called PIMO, P-I-M-O, which stands for physically in, mentally out. That was something that I started to experience pretty heavily when I was 12 and 13 years old, because I was waiting for the moment. And, they talk about it all the time in church and in priesthood meetings, which is like the male version of the religion that you did separately. They would always talk about feeling God's spirit, feeling the spirit and opening yourself up to that opportunity because it's a good, powerful thing because it highlights your relationship with the divine and all this other great stuff. What they were describing was like this still, small voice, this warm and fuzzy feeling. It seemed like everybody else was experiencing it except for me. It really made me feel very insecure when I was younger and how God felt about me, I was like, ‘Am I broken? Does God not like me?’ And I mean, I have tattoos now. That's against the Bible. Maybe God doesn't like me. I don't know. I started to realize, I hate going to church. I really hate it, and I don't want to be there. This isn't a great time. I feel more connected with the divine spirit by going on a hike in the woods with my family and eating KFC out of a bucket next to a waterfall than any other time ever. So why don't we just do that? And what's great too, my parents and my older sister and I, we're all experiencing that at the same time, but we didn't know about it with each other. So we all kind of realized at the same time, we're like, ‘Wait, you don't like going to church?’ ‘Yeah, I don't like going to church.’ ‘Yeah, I hate this. You hate this too?’ ‘Dude, let's not go to church. Let's not go to church!’”
(Flynn):
The Latter Day Saint movement that came to be called Mormonism came out of this belief that God revealed himself to Joseph Smith in the 1820s. In the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 17 million people subscribe to that idea. The Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints disagrees with the LDS succession of prophets. While the FLDS and LDS churches both use the Book of Mormon, some splinter groups in the FLDS church practice polygamy. Many FLDS members believe that plural marriage allows you to get to the highest kingdom in heaven. In 1862, the United States criminalized polygamy. The LDS church later renounced the practice and began excommunicating those still participating. In 1954, the Apostolic United Brethren was founded as a polygamist faction that splintered from the FLDS. Pinesdale was established in 1961 as a haven for the polygamist group. In Pinesdale, former residents said the men legally marry one wife and have just ceremonies with the other wives. 35-year-old Megan Jessop grew up there. She graduated from UM in 2017 with a degree in creative writing and literature. She now lives in Portland and works in publishing.
(Megan Jessop):
“I was lucky enough to live in a fairly big house with a forest in my backyard and a creek nearby and a field nearby where we'd just go play. We'd build forts. My little sister used to go fishing in the creek nearby with buckets and catch minnows and bring them back for pets growing up. So it was this sort of charmed childhood where we just had free reign to play and let our imaginations just run wild. But at the same time, I go back and it's just this small little, condensed, everybody's either related or if they're not related, like everybody knows everybody, everybody believes the same way. There's not a lot of outside influences. I even have felt this way a bit with Missoula, when I was at UM, too, sometimes it just feels so small. If I felt that way in Missoula, I definitely felt that so much more in Pinesdale because there's nothing in Pinesdale. It's like your options are to go elsewhere or you be a stay at home mom, which is kind of the expectation I was growing up with. You get married, you have kids, you be a good Mormon housewife.”
(Chris Jessop):
“You can kind of think of it like just rural Montana, side of the mountain, ranch town. I grew up right across the road from a cow pasture and my neighbors to the south were my grandparents, my neighbors to the north were my aunt and uncle. I'm related to everybody around and growing up there it was super safe, we never locked our doors. I could just walk to my friend's house that's across town, which is only about a mile away. It was a great time. They say that it takes a village to raise a child. It's great when the village is your family too. But anyway, it was just so much fun to grow up around people that cared about you, and that was a huge perk of growing up in Pinesdale. I was surrounded by people who wanted nothing but the best for me.”
(Flynn):
On a Sunday morning a block from UM’s campus, I walked into the Institute of Religion-The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I spoke to Coleson Child, a 26-year-old elders quorum president at the ward, which represents young LDS adults in Missoula and Lolo. He said over half of his 30-person congregation are students at UM. The university’s admissions office said there have been about 15 new freshmen and transfer students from Pinesdale who have attended the university over the last three years and about 20 high school students take UM classes through the Dual Enrollment program.
(Child):
“They're very different from what we practice, and they're not members of our church. I've met several people from the FLDS Church, and they're not our enemies in any way. A lot of people feel like we have tension between us, but I don't feel that's the case. Again, we believe a lot of the same things. We have several members of our ward that actually grew up in Pinesdale and they moved out and then joined our church at that point. They're in this close-knit community, which can be great in a lot of ways. And they do talk good about a lot of the stuff that happens there. But at the same time, like being that close-knit group, they come to a more worldwide church through the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and it's almost like they express a little bit more freedom to pursue religion and to worship God in a little less of a restricted manner. I feel like that's just kind of natural what happens when you have a smaller group like that in an isolated location.”
(Flynn):
Child maintains that the Mormon off-shoots are very distinct. While the Church of Jesus Chirst of Latter-day Saints has 1.3 million followers on Instagram, the Apostolic United Brethren has no website or phone number.
(Child):
“So whenever you see groups that are called Mormons, I feel like it's just kind of a blanket term at this point to include everybody. But it's just kind of inaccurate at this point. There's a lot of reasons why President Nelson in recent years has encouraged us to specify the name of the church. That's why I've tried to say the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which is a mouthful, but it's important to identify that these other groups who are called Mormons, again, we don't believe the same things. We might believe a lot of the same things, but we're not the same organizations, not the same churches. As far as what's portrayed in the media, I'm seeing a lot more accurate representation of that – people recognizing that we're not all the same church. And what we do and what we believe definitely segregates the different groups. So, it's important to make sure that, again, Mormons is just not an accurate term anymore. It's just so generic at that point.”
(Flynn):
In 2014, the Pinesdale community began to fracture over support for Apostolic United Brethren leader Lynn Thompson when he was accused of sexually assaulting his daughter and two nieces and embezzling money. Some AUB families broke away and started a new group called the Second Ward. Others left the church and town entirely. The AUB follows some doctrines and practices changed or abandoned by the LDS Church, like plural marriage. Unlike the breakoff group, the LDS church has reformed over the years.
(Child):
“In recent decades, the church has been trying to really showcase how important the women's role in the church really is. A lot of misunderstandings over the years from people thinking about what a woman's role is supposed to be through her husband. But we also have so many women in the church that are not married, so what are they supposed to do? But women have been getting involved so much more in the church than ever before, especially young women. It's been a beautiful thing to watch the women realize that they have more power and more responsibility than they ever realized, and it's been really good.”
(Flynn):
The AUB owns much of the land in Pinesdale. They allow residents to build or rent for cheap. The men tend to go into trades. They become handymen or carpenters. Families own cabinet and window companies. Pinesdale seems like a lot of small Montana towns. Former residents said it’s an easy walk to the post office, school, church, city hall and the bulk store that is open only one hour a week. The kids take dance classes, participate in spelling bees and play in ping pong tournaments. There are ponds and lots of flowers bloom in the spring. The homes are modern, but not typical. They’re several stories tall to fit multiple family units. All three former Pinesdale residents said many of the houses are not sided because a house under construction pays less in taxes.
(Megan Jessop):
“I was just wrapping up undergrad when I learned how much money my parents were paying on their eight bedroom, two bath. And I was like, ‘Are you freaking kidding me?’ Because I pay more than that in rent for a two bedroom place. Are you freaking kidding me? I was so mad. I just kind of told my dad, ‘I never want to hear you yell at me when it comes to stuff like this. I never want to hear it because you don't understand what it's like to live.’ The way they're able to do that is just because it's recognized as church property. So the church owns land, they're able to get it for less money. They don't have to pay property taxes on it because the church owns it. And then they just pay the church a fee to rent the property.”
(Flynn):
Pines Academy is the only school in the town. It goes until sixth grade and each grade has about 15 students. Chris Jessop said the school teaches preparing yourself for marriage, eternal perspective and obedience. After Pines Academy students mostly go to Corvallis and Hamilton High Schools. The transition to public school in seventh grade was difficult for Inga Watt, the UM freshman.
(Watt):
“I got bullied a bit for my political views because I was more left leaning than my peers. It got to a point in either late middle school, high school where I was very vocal about how I thought if a guy was doing something stupid, I'd be like, ‘Yo, messed up.’ A lot of times I notice that if I said anything, it'd be, ‘Doesn't matter, you're a Piney, don't care.’ I was immediately shut down, and the excuse was I was a Piney because it was an easy point. Where it's definitely something I almost equate to–like it's obviously not anywhere close to being racism or homophobia–but it's normalized. Obviously you can't be racist or else you will get in big trouble at school. But it was okay to be demeaning and bigoted towards Pineys even though we had no choice and no one batted an eye because it didn't matter because it's like, ‘Oh, you're from a cult. It's fine. But you can be bullied.’”
(Flynn):
Chris Jessop had more of a sense of pride when it came to the Piney nickname. Growing up he rocked a blue shirt with the words ‘Pineys rule’ on it. Chris Jessop and Watt are second cousins. Jessop has 139 first cousins. Watt has 60. She remembers crying with one of them about not wanting to be polygamist and feels like her family name has followed her all the way to UM.
(Watt):
“I want to leave, honestly, Montana. Because I have met so many random people and they're friends with your cousin. There is no new. So many people I've just met randomly have dated my cousins. People I've been romantically interested in have dated cousins. It's weird, it's like, ‘How do you know someone I know?’ And then there's just so much overlap everywhere, so it's not really a fresh start. And I know so many people in Missoula. And it's just a little bit away from my family, a little bit away from Pinesdale, but it's still close enough.”
(Flynn):
Megan Jessop feels similarly.
(Megan Jessop):
“Growing up in Montana, even in Missoula, because Missoula's only like an hour north of Pinesdale, I would get it all the time where if I went to a bar and showed somebody my ID and they'd be like, ‘Oh, are you from Pinesdale?’ And I'd be like, ‘Yep.’ Or ‘Are you related to so and so?’ ‘Yep.’ There were so many times too where they'd be like, ‘Oh, are you related to Kevin Jessop?’ And I'd be like, ‘I don't know which one,’ or ‘I don't know, maybe, probably, I don't know, I haven't met them, but probably.’ Because Jessop is such a big name, and there's so many of them, and I know for a fact that I have like first cousins that I've never even met, and that I don't even know. But it was kind of a silver lining or a benefit when I moved away like people aren't going to be so familiar with it anymore if I move away from Montana – from being close to Pinesdale. If they know anything about Pinesdale, or if they know anything about Jessops, I usually get one of two responses when people hear that I'm from Pinesdale. So it's either, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to know everything. Tell me everything.’ Or, ‘Oh my gosh, you poor thing.’”
(Chris Jessop):
“I was in a climbing gym in Utah, in Salt Lake City. I was living there for a few years. And I'm just at the climbing gym, just bouldering. And this girl walks in and I look at her. I'm like, ‘God, she looks so familiar. God, where do I know–nah, whatever.’ I mean, I'm not really thinking too much about it. Just acknowledge that she probably looks familiar or whatever. So I'm bouldering a little bit. She boulders a little bit. Whenever we're done doing our thing or taking a rest, trying to figure out the problem, we're both sitting on chairs that are right next to each other. And it just couldn't leave my brain. I'm like, ‘I know who that is. Who is this? Who?’ And I'm like, ‘Okay, I got to ask. I got to ask.’ And I just take the breath to turn and she turns as well. And I go, ‘Hey, I don't mean to be weird, but,’ and she goes, ‘Are you a Jessop?’ Like she finished my sentence. Turns out it's my second cousin, Kasia. When you see a Jessop, you see a polygamist, there's a look, you know.”
(Flynn):
Megan Jessop and Inga Watt said that there is a culture of absent fathers in Pinesdale. The men can’t maintain relationships with their many kids and especially have trouble connecting with their daughters. Watt said the lack of supervision fosters abuse that gets swept under the rug. The media have been bringing some of that abuse to light.
(Watt):
“It's the way I connect with people sometimes. When I first met my roommates, when I moved in with them, It was like, ‘Oh, have you seen Keep Sweet: Pray and Obey?’ ‘Yeah, that's my family.’ Warren Jeffs is technically my second cousin by marriage. It's weird. Like the shows Sister Wives and My Five Wives, with Sister Wives, one of his wives lived in Pinesdale and my dad went to school with him growing up, and In My Five Wives that is just my uncle. So it's cool, it gives me something to talk about because I'm not nearly as affected as some of my cousins who have had just crazy traumatic stuff. So I'm able to sort of be able to be more light about it. Like there's definitely some stuff in there that I'll start crying. But normally, I love talking about it. It's super interesting. Not many people can say that they're from a cult.”
(Chris Jessop):
“The more people know about it, the more people get educated. The problem, of course, is because the media coverage is kind of twinged towards these intensely negative and uncomfortable things that happen because they're the truth and that's good to know. Unfortunately, sometimes the truth is uncomfortable and that's okay. It took me a few days to watch Keep Sweet: Pray, and Obey. I don't know any of the people in that documentary on a personal level, but when you see your last name show up on nearly every interview where you're talking about pretty harsh stuff, it's like, oof, you need to take a break. It can be triggering for people, but it's also a sign that even though it's a trigger, all that means is something that you can probably work on, and look at, and start to cultivate into something that is a little bit more of a healing. It's just a sign that there's a wound that needs to be stitched up.”
(Flynn):
Watt, Chris Jessop and Megan Jessop all left the church while they were growing up.
(Megan Jessop):
“My family is a little bit different than a lot of families in Pinesdale because my dad only had one wife. I think the younger families are kind of more that way. It kind of set us apart and had a sort of stigma about it. He didn't quite follow the religion as closely as he was supposed to and I think he really internalized that, he thought that his dad was disappointed in him because he didn't practice it.”
(Chris Jessop):
“It was just kind of like a regular kind of family growing up in a not normal situation, or unconventional, I guess is probably the best way to describe it. I was kind of the unique one in a way because I didn't have more than one mom. Like, when I was a kid, it was kind of like this sticking point of tease, you know? Where it was like, ‘Chris only has one mom!’”
(Flynn):
Chris Jessop is challenged by his upbringing and said that racist behavior was taught in Pinesdale. The AUB forbids Black men from holding the priesthood. U.S Census Bureau data states a 93% white population in the town.
(Chris Jessop):
“I said all the slurs. I used them. I did feel that way. That's the way it was. That's the way it was taught and that's the thing as far as the indoctrination. This goes out for any Mormons out there, you can look it up in your own Book of Mormon, or if you're in a hotel, just open the drawer and look it up. But second Nephi chapter five, verse 21, is the verse that essentially justifies and explains the curse of black skin that you might have heard reference to in Mormon discussions. I remember my first time kind of like having a moment where it was like, ‘Wait a second, what the heck am I thinking?’ It was after Star Wars: Attack of the Clones came out on DVD. And I was over at my friend's house, and we were watching it at a sleepover and Samuel L. Jackson as Mace Windu was in that movie and he was the coolest guy because he had a purple lightsaber. The purple one? Dude. Like in my head at that age, I was like, ‘This is the coolest thing ever. This guy is awesome, right?’ And I was gushing over this guy and like just watching the movie and being so enthralled. And my friend kind of looks over at me and he kind of taps me and he's like, ‘No man.’ And he used his derogatory words to describe how he could never be cool because he's that. And I remember thinking, ‘That has nothing to do with it! That has nothing to do with it!’ Thankfully Star Wars helped cure my racism. That thread started to pull at it and then all of a sudden it was gone from there. You have to have a lot of rebound when you realize how deep the indoctrination regarding those specific things goes and it takes a while. Your verbiage has to change. You have to rewire your brain, and that takes a while.”
(Watt):
“Definitely the boys were the most racist, they were the most homophobic. Like 2008, 2012, I remember there was just so much racism. I had kind of a crush on Obama, honestly, I think the most attractive president that we've had. So when he got elected, I was like, ‘He's kind of cute.’ I was like a 10-year-old. But he was just a guy that's hot. And everyone was just like, ‘He's Black. He would never be allowed in this town. We hate him.’ It's like, why do you hate him? No other reason other than he's Black. So that was really interesting growing up. And of course, lots of homophobia when gay marriage got legalized. There was the waves of hate when things like that got legalized.”
(Flynn):
Pinesdale residents wear modern clothes but maintain modesty, not showing much skin. Underneath are their white temple garments, a type of underwear that serves as a symbolic reminder of their covenants and they are seen as a source of protection from the evils of the world. The Mormon churches have been frequently criticized for their treatment of women and the LGBTQ+ community.
(Chris Jessop):
“From the religion standpoint, it was this responsibility of holding the priesthood and this divine kind of, you are the Lord, you're kind of the leader of your family and it's your decision and it's very seriously taken. But in practice that led to this sense of entitlement which lent to issues regarding the treatment of women which you see all over the place in polygamist circles, and regardless if it's the FLDS, the AUB, the Second Ward, there are unhappy women. The men's roles were kind of taken as like, ‘Yeah, yeah, women, don't worry about it, we got it because we're men, remember? Because we have the divine priesthood because we're men, remember?’ That's how it works. And it's like, well, wait a second. Why can't women have the priesthood? ‘Well because we're men.’ And it's not really much past that, which is unfortunate. I don't think it's fundamentalists who are the problem, it's fundamentalism that is the problem. I was doing an interview with my Uncle Brady, who is the star of My Five Wives, and he told that to me. And yeah, so fundamentalists aren't the problem, it's fundamentalism that's the problem. And I think that rings true, because if you take anything to the radical perspective, it's probably not going to be good towards anyone. And the way that it kind of works in the world is that if that is the case, typically the victims are the women. And another thing that is very unfortunate about fundamentalism, in the Mormon sense, there's a huge, huge gap involving sex and how it's talked about. It develops in this very unhealthy perspective. Consent is this thing that's kind of weird sometimes because of the entitlement that we spoke about earlier about how, ‘Well, I'm the man, so this is the way it goes. You have to please me, says in the Bible.’ Sometimes that's how the men feel. Fortunately, at least the very vast majority of the men that I interacted with when I was growing up in Pinesdale, were men who couldn't get enough of their wives, adored their wives and did whatever they could to make them happy and healthy and well. Marriages are marriages, of course, and they have their own issues, but as far as the culture of that, I don't think that sexual violence and physical violence are encouraged by any means. But I do know that it is not really handled in the most effective of ways in regards to victimhood and blaming those who are the victims of those crimes and instances, and being like ‘this is the way it has to be because God said so.’”
(Flynn):
In Pinesdale, amongst the boys and men, Watt said there is a strong culture of gun ownership. Pets and animals were used as target practice and treated as disposable.
(Watt):
“The boys in school, and a lot of people, were like, ‘I hate cats, I will kill a cat on sight.’ Like hate cats because they're of the devil was what they'd say. So a big thing where it's like casually killing animals. Big thing. We've had two of our dogs get killed in Pinesdale. One of them was just right down the field from our house, she went missing, didn't know where she went, she went to chase a deer. We found her, I don't know, half a year later? And she was a skeleton with an arrow through her, down in the field. And that was obviously super traumatic. And then we have our other dog. She had puppies and one of them was older. Her and the puppy went out to the field, and we don't know what happened, but our dog that lived came back with 13 shotgun bullets in her because it sprays. So we assume the other one died. One of my other friends, her dog got killed because he – I don't think even went into the chickens – was by them, and got killed by neighbors for the chickens without really a warning. A lot of dogs get killed – and cats. People don't care about cats. I remember my mom saying when she was younger, she saw some sort of dead cat hanging in the woods. People just killing cats because they feel like they're lesser animals and have no remorse or sympathy. And like, I remember the boys talking about how they would kill cats. They'd love to kill cats.”
(Flynn):
The members I spoke with left the AUB because they had ethical issues with their teachings. Watt said there was a mass exodus from 2010 to 2020. U.S. Census Bureau estimates the population decreased by 130 people in that time frame. Watt said Pinesdale was down to just about half the population being part of the AUB. She thought polygamy was dying out, but in the past few years, after the death of Lynn Thompson, the AUB leader accused of sexual assault, she’s not so sure. After 2020, the population in Pinesdale began to rebound. Watt thinks the AUB and polygamy are here to stay.
(Watt):
“I don't know if it'll ever go away because there's just enough indoctrination and enough brainwashing, just conditioned to be polygamist.”
(Flynn):
In other news, a look ahead to this year’s fire season and the people fighting them.
In sports, Monte and the Griz Spirit Squad make history competing at Nationals.
And in arts, a sneak peak into the MCT’s ‘Beauty and the Beast.’
For more information about any of these topics and more, pick up a copy of the Montana Kaimin this Thursday. Or, head to our website at montanakaimin.com. For the final Kaimin Cast of the school year, I’m Bayliss Flynn. Thanks for listening.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this episode listed last names of those living in Pinesdale. An updated version omitted those specifics.
To see more documents/articles regarding this group/organization/subject click here.
