The Mormon church acknowledges in a new essay that founder Joseph Smith had a teenage bride and was married to other men's wives during the faith's early polygamous days, a recognition of an unflattering part of its roots that historians have chronicled for years.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints says most of Smith's wives were between 20 and 40 years old. One of them, however, was a 14-year-old girl who was the daughter of Smith's close friends.