She inherited a reverence for the Supreme Being and always received the best teachings from her parents. Her father's time was mostly spent in the ministry. On his return from a European mission, he heard Joseph teach the principle of celestial marriage, and was commanded by Joseph to take a certain lady for his second wife. He felt as though he could not obey this and live in it, and must be released from the command, and he expressed the same to Joseph, who went and inquired of the Lord, and receiving an answer, commanded him the third time before he obeyed. Her mother bore testimony that she also went to the Lord and plead with Him to show her the cause of her husband's trouble, which his haggard face and wretched days and nights betrayed and he dared not tell her. He told her to go to the Lord and she did so, and He answered their prayers. She saw a vision and the principle was revealed to her in all its glory. She saw the woman that he had taken, and she went to him and told him what the Lord had shown her. She said she never saw him so happy, and he cried for joy. She took the second wife to her bosom, and from that time an unkind word never passed between them. Helen knew nothing of the order till June, 1843, when her father revealed it to her. She says of this: "Had I not known he loved me too tenderly to introduce anything that was not strictly pure and exalting in its tendencies, I could not have believed such a doctrine. I could have sooner believed that he would slay me, than teach me an impure principle. I heard the Prophet teach it more fully, and in the presence of my father and mother. "On the 3rd of February, 1846, I was married to H. K. Whitney, eldest son of N. K. Whitney, by Brigham Young. We were the last couple sealed in the Temple at Nauvoo. We were among the exiles who crossed the river on the 16th of the same month, intending to go over to the Rocky Mountains that year. But when the government demanded the strength of our companies to fight for them, we had to seek a place to quarter for the winter. I was sick most of the time while there. Some of the journey we had to walk, and our food being poor and scant, the infant and the aged, all classes, were swept off by death--the latter by scurvy and sheer exhaustion. The next year my husband was one of those chosen to go as a pioneer, and he had to go though the day of trial was upon me.