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KING STRANG OF BEAVER ISLAND
| 1st |
MARY PERCE ... She left him after his first multiple marriage and went back to Voree, Wis., to live. She never returned to Beaver Island. |
| 2nd |
ELVIRA FIELDS ... Married secretly to Strang on July 13, 1849, after he had his revelation about polygamy. She traveled with him for almost a year, disguised as his nephew and secretary, and using the name Charles Douglas. Strang proclaimed her to be his Queen on July 8, 1850, the day of his coronation. She was the mother of Charles Strang, who was publisher of the Charlevoix Journal in the late Eighties. He was a publisher in Lansing until his death in 1920. |
| 3rd |
BETSY McNUTT ... Strang married her on a whim. Her publicly expressed wish to be his wife appealed to his vanity. One of her sons practiced law for a short time in Charlevoix. |
| 4th |
SARAH WRIGHT ... She had one son by Strang. This was a favorite of the Monarch, who christened the boy James J. After Strang's death she remarried to a Dr. Wing, and herself became a successful medical practitioner in Springfield, on Utah Lake. |
| 5th |
PHOEBE WRIGHT ... Sister of Sarah Wright, of whom very little is known. |
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Strang had children by all of his wives, many of whom settled on the mainland after his death, some changing their names to avoid trouble with the "gentiles."
There were no more than 20 plural marriages on the Island, mostly because of the scarcity of women. Strang was the only one with more than two wives.
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