In Leslie O. Peterson’s mind, Fanny Alger’s almond-shaped face, with its soulful green eyes and rosebud mouth, is framed by close-cropped brown hair and perched atop a long, slender neck.
That is the way Mrs. Peterson, a Utah artist, painted the 16-year-old Ms. Alger, who in the early 1830s is believed to have slipped away to a barn from her job as a serving girl to the Mormon Church founder Joseph Smith and his wife, Emma, and quietly become his first plural wife.
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