Part 1 on Deeds, where we go deep into laying the foundation of what the deeds were, how they worked, where they are recorded, and what sources we rely on to connect them to polygamy.
Part 2 will go into specifics and look at the problematic anomalies of the two very important July 12, 1843 deeds — the deed to Emma and her children, and the hidden deed to Hyrum.
Part 3, with statistics professor John Kidd will respond directly to Bill Reel’s claims and attempted statistical analysis.
Please consider supporting this podcast:
Links to previous podcasts:
84: Exposing the Expositor Part 2 – Polygamy, Game Over
85: Proving William Clayton’s Journals are NOT Contemporaneous w/Jeremy Hoop
70: The *Godfathers* of Mormon Polygamy with Jeremy Hoop
Maid of Iowa Links:
Lease to David Hollister
Agreement with Arthur Morrison
Introduction to Moffet Administrator
Trustees Land Book A
Trustees Land Book B
Susan Easton Black compilation (must be logged in to Family Search)
Joseph Smith and the Legal Process: In the Wake of the Steamboat Nauvoo, Oaks and Bentley
Nauvoo: Kingdom on the Mississippi:
Hardcover
Paperback
Transcript:
[0:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy, where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for Mormon plural marriage. As always, I want to thank everybody who has supported this channel and continues to do it. It is such a help. In fact, right now, as I’m recording, my house is being cleaned, which is so one. I cannot tell you how wonderful that feels to know that my family is going to be ok and not be too upset and resentful about the immense amount of time I spend working on this podcast. So, thank you so much. If anybody else feels like they can contribute, it really is a huge help for the huge amount of time I put in. And I want to always as always invite people to please consider listening to this podcast from the beginning, at least, well enough to understand the scriptural case, we lay that polygamy was never of God. And then more recently, but this last year, the historical case, we lay out that polygamy actually was never of Joseph Smith. I am really excited to now finally be bringing you what I thought would be one episode on Deeds, but it’s going to be three episodes on Deeds because there is just so much incredible information to get into. So, thank you so much for joining us as we go deep into the weeds of the deeds. Ok, I think we are ready to begin. So I have to say this episode has been weeks and weeks, probably months in the making. Well, I should say this series of episodes, what what again has turned into an entire series of episodes. I first have to sincerely thank Bill Reel for inspiring this entire line of deep investigation. Um I do have to admit that. At first, I was a little bit annoyed that I had to spend so much time and do so much work on refuting what I thought was kind of a weak argument. It didn’t sound at all compelling to me, but I felt like in order to refute it adequately, I had to have a thorough understanding of the deeds. And so it was so much work and I first I thought I would just refute it, refute the statistical analysis that Bill presented. So I contacted several university statistics professors had conversations, pretty fun conversations with several of them. I sent them his statistical analysis and we discussed it and one of them agreed to um come have a conversation with me. So I’ve had that, that was months ago and I thought I’ll just release that and be done with it. But I did want to get a little better understanding and holy cow, it has been like a bottomless pit of, I’ve just been floating in the endless ocean of financial papers and real estate papers and deeds and trying to make sense of all of this in my ADD brain. Did I mention my husband does all of our finances? Because this is not my happy place. But I actually think it was worth it because now that I have spent all of this time in it, I actually have to sincerely thank Bill for proposing and presenting his theory because if I hadn’t done all of this work, I would not have found several of the things that I have found that have given me4: a far better understanding of what I think was going on in Nauvoo. And I think that there is now even stronger evidence to show that William Clayton’s journal is not reliable, was not written on the days that things happened. At least this Nauvoo portion of it, at least the portions of it dealing with, the things we’re going to be talking about in these three episodes. So right now I want to explain why deeds matter. But I’m actually going to let both Bill Reel and Don Bradley explain according to William Clayton’s journal, and William Clayton is the source for this. It was on July 12th, 1843 that Joseph, Hyrum, and William Clayton were together in the upper room of the red brick store, wrote the revelation, right? And then it was later that day that William Clayton wrote this deed to Emma with all of the unencumbered lots because Joseph was worried about their marriage. So they’ll talk about it a little bit more or she was, they have their various reasons. So we’ll go ahead and we’ll start with Don Bradley.
[4:24] Don Bradley: Joseph and Emma according to Clayton’s journal for that day are making an agreement. It looks like a separation agreement. Emma wants to make sure that she’s gonna have property if they split up. Right? So Joseph instructs Clayton to deed this property to Emma, the thing is, we have the deed. Ok. Yeah. Ok. We have the deed. It is dated July 12th, 1843. And in this deed, Joseph Deeds, Emma exactly the things that Clayton’s journal for that day says he instructed Clayton to deed to Emma.
[5:06] Michelle: Ok. So now let me play the Bill Reel clip talking about this.
[5:13] Bill Reel: So then I think we get to some really interesting things here and we go back to the William Clayton journal. If you remember what we read earlier. Wednesday 12th. This AM I wrote a revelation consisting of 10 pages on the order of the priesthood showing the designs in Moses, Abraham, David and Solomon, having many wives and concubines after it was wrote, presidents Joseph and Hyrum presented it and read it to Emma who said she did not believe a word of it and appeared very rebellious. Joseph told me to deed all of the en unencumbered lots to Emma and the Children. He appears much troubled about Emma. So me wondered what would happen if I went and found Emma Smith’s land deed. And what I find is that she’s given all of the unencumbered lots in Nauvoo. So I’ll read about a third of these. There’s no sense in reading all of it, but I’ll read about a third of these.
[6:08] Michelle: Ok. I cut out the part with him reading it. But that right there what he just read is all of the evidence for it. Now he’ll go and then he shows us the deed just as Don Bradley does. Now we’ll hear what he says about it.
[6:18] Bill Reel: I’ll stop there. That’s about a third of them. As you can easily see, Emma Smith got all of the unencumbered lots, which then adds additional credibility to William Clayton’s journal entry that he was absolutely speaking the truth,
[6:34] RFM: right. If we can track him down and corroborate that he’s correct in one part of this contemporaneous diary entry, which you have done, then it gives additional weight to the rest of it.
[6:44] Michelle: Ok. I think they laid out the argument quite well. I wanna make sure that we thoroughly understand it. And as I said, unfortunately, II, I wanted to fit it all into this one, but by about midnight. I was like, I’m gonna split it into three because it was just too much work, getting it all done and ready to go in the slide show done. So we’re gonna split it into three parts, but we will get there and we will talk about it. There are just some important things that we have to cover first. But I want to go on this brief aside and share a claim that Lindsay Hanson Park makes in this episode. And then I see talked about in the Joseph Smith papers as well. So I think it’s worth addressing. So let’s just do this little aside quickly and you’ll hear what I’m talking about
[7:24] Lindsay Hansen Park: when he dies. It becomes clear to her. Wait a minute, I thought I was protected and I’m not. And so she spends those next two years and it’s not until the 1860’s that she is a, she would have actually been protected in these laws and she doesn’t have those legal protections at that time.
[7:39] Michelle: Ok. So she talks about this a bit more as well. I just wanted to give that a quick recap. What she is talking about is the Illinois Married Women’s Property Act, which was passed in 1861 which officially allowed married women to old own property. So because the law was passed, this is a common mistake I see being made in feminist theory and just in history in general, is when a law was passed, then we assume that the exact opposite of that law existed previously throughout all time. Right? And so I want to talk about that. It’s a common mistaken notion and, and it just isn’t accurate, it’s false. And so this law, this law did build in official protection for women against a controlling husband. And it was motivated actually by a case where a man was trying to control his wife’s property against her wishes. And it’s so interesting because if you read through that case, you can see that this actually was not seen as acceptable in that day and age, but they realized she didn’t have legal protection. And so that had to be fought out in the courts. And as a result, this law was passed at that point, right? So it’s when they saw a need for it, it’s not that women before that, coverture did exist, but it wasn’t the go to the standard that always happened. And, and there are a couple of reasons that this matters. It’s because first of all, Lindsay Hansen Hansen Park implies that Joseph was trying to break the law by writing a deed to Emma. We’re gonna get into that more as well. But I hate saying a deed to Emma because that’s just not accurate at all. But, you’ll see that they were actually that, that’s not the case at all. And then the Joseph Smith papers kind of ignores some of these problems with this narrative by saying, well, because of coverture, it was still his anyway. And we’ll, we’ll get into it a little bit more. But I want to clarify what this law, this 1861 married woman’s women’s property act was. It says a married woman’s own property, “shall not be subject to the disposal control or interference of her husband”. There is zero evidence that Joseph was ever trying to control Emma’s property against her wishes and the fact that so many deeds to both married and single women, both the nauvoo deeds and other deeds throughout the country were written to women. Deeds were registered to women shows that that was the assumption of the day, right? Please recall deeds had legal documents. They had to be signed and witnessed by, I guess what we have the equivalent of a notary public, right? A recorder, whoever it might be. And then they were often entered into government official government records if contracts to women were illegal or even even meaningless that we wouldn’t find so many deeds to women both in Mormondom and in the broader society. And so I wanna share a couple of examples. So let me give you this slide. We’ll go right here. This right here is a deed from Ebenezer and Eleanor Moore, Eleanor Moore to Emma Smith. And this wasn’t even from Joseph. Right. You, there’s a previous, arrangement being made that they are going to give them property, but they don’t make out the deed to Joseph. They don’t even make it out to Joseph and Emma, which is really common. Most of the deeds that I see are with a husband and a wife, like Hiram and Mary did a lot of deeds and, Emma and Joseph wrote a lot of deeds out together. But this one was specifically just to Emma Smith. And there are other examples as well. So you can see the date on this deed is actually October 1st, 1836. This was an Ohio deed, right? There are, there were deeds written in Ohio and later in Nauvoo to women. There are many other examples of deeds to women. I have easy access to the ones written to Emma since they were included in the Joseph Smith papers because she’s his wife. But I think it’s very strong evidence that the general assumption was that women could have and sign deeds, these deeds would not be signed, sealed, delivered and recorded in by government recorders if they weren’t considered legal and valid. And so, it’s not that anyone was trying to get away with anything or that there was funny business. This was not an uncommon thing to have happened. There’s more we’re going to talk about in all of these deeds. I’m trying to like pace myself and stay with my script because I just keep wanting to go off in every direction. Lindsay also makes the claim that Emma’s huge, huge, massive property problems after Joseph’s death were because of this coverture right, because there wasn’t yet the married women’s property act; that actually is not true at all. And I understand how this happens. Like you learn about one little fact and then since you know that, you tend to apply it to everything, I think that that’s a common thing to have happen, it just isn’t accurate and it displays actually a lot of ignorance about the actual situation. And so I wanted to clarify it and I’m hoping that we can do better that we can be more accurate and more knowledgeable as we approach these topics. So, ok, so now let’s go back to Clayton’s journal that Bill Reel showed us and that we’re talking about it. So before we go on to make any additional claims about land deeds, we first have to sort out exactly what was going on at this time. So I’m going to share with you William Clayton’s journal. I’ve color coded it to make it easy, for July 12th, July 13th and July 15th. And this isn’t the complete record. This is all that we have, right? Because the journal hasn’t been released. So all we have Andrew Ehat’s notes that, that have been printed. So he already read what it said on the 12th. Right. He wrote a revelation about polygamy and then Joseph and Hyrum presented it to Emma. She didn’t believe a word of it. So Joseph told me to deed all the unencumbered lots to Emma and the Children. I want you to remember that. It’s all the unencumbered lots. We’ll get into that, probably in part two. That’s the claim, he appears much troubled about Emma, right? So they make all kinds of assumptions about it that will go into. And then on the 13th, he says this, “Joseph sent for me. And when I arrived, he called me up into his private room with Emma and there stated an agreement they had mutually entered into, they both stated their feelings on many subjects and wept considerably. Oh may the Lord soften her heart that she may be willing to keep and abide his holy law.” So that’s interesting. Right? Because, well, you’ll see as we go forward and we talk about this, how this all just gets conflated together. They try to act like the deed is a part of the agreement that they made, which, but the deed happened first, right? And then we have July 15th and this is a really important entry that we’re going to talk about quite a bit in this episode. It says, Made deed for one half steamboat made of Iowa from Joseph to Emma also a deed to Emma for over 60 lots. So I believe at this time, Joseph had bought a half share in the ma boat, the steam of Iowa, which we’re going to go into. And it seems that he had the full share a little while after that, it’s a little bit fuzzy on the details. But so, so we have to get this straight. The 12th is when Clayton made a deed for all of the unencumbered lots, which is what we present to validate Clayton’s journal, right? Which? Oh, ok. I’m gonna, I’m gonna wait, we’ll get there. And then the 13th is when the tearful arrangement was made, right? Because Joseph and Emma loved Clayton so much, they invited him into their private conversations where they were trying to save their marriage according to this narrative or trying to work things out. And then on the 15th, a deed was made for the steamboat, Maid of Iowa, right? So the reason that this matters so much is because it has to fit in with that narrative and it really doesn’t. And so I want to look at how people try to deal with that. I hope that’s clear, please, in the comments, let me know if it’s not clear. Let me clarify one more time. So the deed should be a result of the arrangement they make, right? So the deed comes first, then comes the tearful agreement, then comes another deed, a second deed for the steamboat Maid of Iowa and over 60 city lots. Now, if William Clayton wrote a, a deed for all of the unencumbered lots on the 12th, how would be there be 60 more lots to deed to her on the 15th? Where would those lots come from? And we should have two separate deeds, right? Because the one on the 12th was written before the agreement was made and before the second deed was made on the 15th. Do, are you following with me? This is a really specific narrative that Clayton is laying out. And so let’s go ahead and look at how Don Bradley talks about that.
[16:42] Don Bradley: So in William Clayton’s journal, under this exact date, he says he talks about the revelation that just
[16:50] Michelle: let me clarify when he says under this exact date, he’s talking about July 12th, the yellow entry, the day of the revelation was written down. I’ve started to call it Revelation Day for myself. So he’s talking about Revelation Day the 12th under this exact date. And then this is what he says is included:
[17:07] Don Bradley: to dictate. He says that it’s read to Emma that Emma does not believe it. Joseph and Emma have an argument about this and then Joseph calls Clayton into the room to witness an agreement that Joseph and Emma make with each other. And that Joseph and Emma are both crying as they make this agreement. Right. And then afterward, Joseph instructs Clayton to deed most of his lots that he owns, his real estate in the city of Nauvoo to Emma and his half interest in the steamboat, the Maid of Iowa.
[17:43] Michelle: Ok. Now that you know exactly what he’s talking about, I hope that’s clear why that is so problematic. I admit when I first heard him say that I was like, where is he getting this? And I just hadn’t remembered what the next entries in William Clayton’s journal says. So he’s taking all three of those entries and putting them together on one day to claim that it supports the deed that he then presents, right? Do you understand why this is a problem? I really hope you do. I think that, it’s troubling to me that the self proclaimed primary researcher on Joseph’s polygamy should be this confused and mistaken on this topic. And, it does again and again, it calls into question to me whether historians and researchers should be given the special credibility that they’re given as experts on this topic because it just, I think we should all just be held to the same standard, right? And if we’re presenting good facts, then they’re good facts. If we’re presenting good evidence, they’re good evidence, we have to stop saying, well, the historians agree because this, the, this is why this work is really important. It doesn’t matter what the historians agree on if it’s not based on good evidence and if they’re wrong. And so, anyway, but to cut Don Bradley some slack, it is not entirely his fault because intentionally conflating the dates in these entries to obscure what the record actually says is a common tactic used by various write writers to sell this narrative. So let me give a couple of examples. I’m gonna add this back to the stage and we will look at how Richard Bushman talks about this in Rough Stone Rolling, right? So if you want to read along with me , “knowing her basic faith, Hyrum thought Joseph should show Emma a written revelation on plural marriage. Hyrum had been reluctant to accept the principal himself until Brigham Young explained that it allowed him to be married to both Jerusha Barden and his first, his deceased first wife and to Mary Fielding his current spouse. Ok? I have to say when I was reading this, I sent a couple of people got a couple more frustrated messages because what! where is he getting that? What? And so I went ahead and looked up the footnotes. So I’m going to go ahead and this is a sidetrack again. But I, I hope you can start now that we’ve done enough work. I hope that you like me are starting to be able to see what resources or what sources these writers are relying on to make these claims, Right. So he’s, he’s giving us the narrative. That’s Brigham Young’s narrative that Hyrum had opposed polygamy until Brigham explained it to him adequately. And then he’s throwing in there out of the blue that it was that Brigham explained to him that he could be married to both Jerusha Barden and Mary Fielding. And so let me give you the first piece of evidence and that is, we’re gonna go right here to Brigham Young’s October 8th, 1866 sermon that he gives that we’ve talked about before, but it’s just too rich. So I thought we would read it again. He says, “I will now go back to where I met Hyrum. He said to me, I am convinced that there is something that has not been told me. I said to him, brother Hyrum, Joseph would tell you everything the Lord reveals to him. If he could.” Now remember, this is 22 years plus after Joseph and Hyrum’s death, Joseph and Hyrum were confidants. Best of friends. Brothers, Hyrum sat by Joseph holding his leg when he was a boy. We’ve gone over these topics before, right? But here Brigham Young is inserting himself in between the two of them 22 years later on his, literally his high horse, right up on his pulpit with nobody calling him on any of this. And this is the version he gives us. So I’m skipping ahead. “I said to him, brother Hyrum, I will tell you about this thing, but you do not know of it. If you will swear with an uplifted hand before God that you will never say another word against Joseph and his doings and the doctrine he is preaching to the people. He replied, I will do it with all my heart and he stood upon his feet saying I want to know the truth and to be saved. And he made a covenant there never again to bring forward one argument or use any influence against Joseph’s doings.” So Hyrum covenanted with Brigham that he would never again say these horrible things about his brother. “Joseph had many wives sealed to him. I told Hyrum the whole story and he bowed to it and wept like a child and said, God be praised.” It just took Brigham explaining it. You know, Joseph couldn’t help Hyrum understand it, only Brigham could. “He went to Joseph and told him what he had learned and renewed his covenant with Joseph and they went heart in hand together while they lived and they were together when they died and they are together now defending Israel.” So I think that’s a source that we should look at with somewhat of a critical eye and see if there’s any evidence to support that narrative other than Brigham Young’s claims, right? But so we’ll go back because apparently it’s good enough for the historians. So Richard Bushman writes it in with the addition which I believe comes from Hyrum’s October 8th sermon which was altered before being cut completely from church history to make it sound like he was sealed to both Jerusha and Mary, which was not the case. So anyway, those are the sources he relies on. So now we’ll go ahead at the same time, he had the spiritual confirmation. So many others reported on May 29th, the day of after Joseph was sealed to Emma Hyrum was sealed to his two wives. Again, the evidence for that. Ok. We’re just gonna go on. In July, Hyrum argued that writing, the revelation would win over Emma to be sure of its accuracy, he asked Joseph to use the Urim and Thummim, but the prophet said he knew it perfectly. Again, this is just William Clayton. This is William Clayton’s later affidavit. On July 12th, 1843 revelation day, Joseph dictated to William Clayton for three hours in the upper office of his store. Again, remember we covered these episodes so I hope you can see all of this with a critical eye. If not, please go back and watch the “exposing the expositor” episodes. “‘Emma once said Hyrum’s words were irresistible to her, but when he presented the revelation, she was adamant, he came away from Emma saying he had never received a more severe talking to in his life.” We go on to the next day, it was Revelation Day, right. He says, “the next day, Joseph and Emma talked for hours. Clayton was called into the room near the end to hear an agreement they had mutually entered into. They both stated their feelings on many subjects and wept considerable, they were in impossible positions. Joseph caught between his revelation and his wife, Emma between a practice she detested and belief in her husband.’ The agreement represented some kind of compromise. Ok. Emma was beginning to think practically about the consequences of sharing her husband with other women. Two days later, Clayton made a deed for her of the steamboat Maid of Iowa and 60 city lots.” So there he kind of conflates them all as well. And then he gives credence to the second deed, the July 15th deed to for the city for the Maid of Iowa and 60 city lots, right? So I hope you can hear how that’s kind of just carefully all blended in together. He at least is not relying on the July 12th deed, the Revelation Day deed like John Bradley is, but you can hear how it’s just blended together. I’m going to also share what Brian Hales has to say about all of this. So this is from Joseph Smith’s polygamy, Brian Hale’s website, and this is called “Emma Smith’s Path through polygamy.“ Brian Hales writes, “evidently the second part of the agreement, this agreement that they made.” Right. And, and I have to say a code word, I think I say it later on. But a code word for Brian Hales is “evidently” because every time he uses it that I have seen, it means that there’s no evidence for it. Right. He’s just, it’s his narrative purely. “So evidently, the second part of the agreement was designed to assure that if anything happened to Joseph or their marriage, Emma would be financially supported.” So Don Bradley paints it and, and I’ve heard others paint it sort of as a separation agreement, right? And he paints it as they just wanted to be sure that Emma was secure. William Clayton recorded that “only hours after Emma rejected Hyrum and the revelation, Joseph told me to deed all the unencumbered lots to Emma and the Children. He appears much troubled about Emma.” I hope you’re understanding what’s happening here. Right. He talks about this agreement that they made, but then goes back and says, only hours after the revelation was read that Joseph told Clayton to deed this lot. So the problem again is the agreement was made after the deed was already written and he doesn’t address that really big problem. And he goes on to quote what we already read from Richard Bushman, that they were both in tears and he was, they were in impossible positions caught between the revelation and his wife and Emma caught between the practice she detested and the belief in her husband. So the agreement represented some sort of compromise. Again, that’s all completely speculative because the only source there is for this at all is William Clayton’s journal. And this one deed from Emma that actually does not fit the narrative at all. I really hope that the conflation they make is clear. If not, please go back and look again at William Clayton’s journal and then look at the narrative they tell and see if you can see what I’m talking about, if you haven’t yet understood it because it is a little bit tricky. So the next thing I wanna do since we’ve shown how this evidence all comes from William Clayton’s journal, I think it’s again important to discuss whether or not William Clayton’s journal is valid as a contemporaneous record that is reliable in terms of telling the truth. So again, it’s not been released by the church, right? I believe it was in 2017, which is now what, seven years ago that they promised to release it. Still no signs of it from what we’ve been told, don’t hold your breath, right? So I think that it is fair to assume adverse inference, right? To assume that whatever it contains would not be good for whatever narrative people are trying to tell in whatever way. So anyway, that’s a big problem and we’re not able to see it. But again, we can see certain parts of it in the Joseph Smith papers; I’ll show you one of them either in this episode or next episode and you can see very clearly that it was not written as a contemporaneous journal, a daily record as it were. It’s what’s called a clean copy or a fair copy, which basically means a final draft that’s been finished and through all of its edits. So if you haven’t already, please go back and watch my episodes with Jeremy Hoop on William Clayton’s journal. I think that it’s pretty solid evidence and pretty difficult to overcome. And then another thing again to take into consideration is that we have a lot of evidence that Clayton along with Brigham and Heber, was pursuing polygamy in England before ever even coming to America or Nauvoo right? We have all of this evidence from their journals, from letters they were writing. It’s all just a ridiculous mess. And so those are important things to take into consideration. Also, you know, William Clayton had pregnant wives in Nauvoo before Joseph was killed, right? These are all things that we should pay attention to. So the claim we have at this point is that William Clayton’s journal is valid because it’s supported by, it’s substantiated by Emma’s deed. Right? And Emma’s deed is valid because it’s substantiated by William Clayton’s journal. So that’s where, that’s what we’re going to get into. And so there’s one more piece of evidence that is brought up about Revelation Day and that is Joseph Smith’s own journal. So here it is. And this is again, Revelation Day. Let’s see if I can zoom in and hopefully make it a little bit bigger so that you can see it. But the date is Monday on Wednesday, July 12th Revelation Day, right? And it’s this very strange entry that at the top says only received a revelation in the office in presence of Hyrum and William Clayton. So again, it’s substantiated, right? Is what we claim. So I have several questions about this source. First of all, there’s an important distinction that these aren’t the critical things, but you can see it says received a revelation, right? William Clayton’s journal says wrote a revelation because he didn’t receive the revelation this day. He wrote it for memory, right? That’s kind of an important distinction. And also, I think it’s good to know that Richards wasn’t there. So I think that’s an important distinction to realize that this is Willard Richards, not, this is Willard Richards Journal. His version of what he claims happened again, often after the fact as we’ll go into so these are the questions with this entry. How did he know about it? How did he learn about it? Who from? Right. When was it written down? We cannot use this other source to substantiate those other sources. They are all very fuzzy and questionable sources. We’ll go into this a little bit. So if we come over here and click on the historical introduction, as with nearly all the entries in Joseph Smith’s previous Missouri and Illinois journals, Joseph Smith neither wrote nor dictated the text of the entries in his memorandum books. They are based on Willard Richard’s observations. It says, “despite the second hand nature of the entries, however, Richards, a close friend and associate and frequent companion of Joseph Smith was able to capture in detail, Joseph Smith’s words and actions on many occasions.” So this is also an important paragraph. “Richard’s new title of Historian was significant as well. On the first of December 1842 he began working on the history of Joseph Smith. Richards, therefore, likely expected that the contemporaneous journal entries he was keeping for Joseph Smith would eventually be used as the basis for Joseph Smith’s history.” OK. I’m just going to read a little bit more, “Richards employed various techniques in keeping the journal for a few entries. He made lightly penciled notes and returned later with a quill pen to expand the entry.” This is how he’s editing it. “The textual evidence in other entries indicates that they were written several days after the date they bear.” Now there’s no reason to limit it to several days. We have no idea how much later they were written. We just know for a fact that they were not written when they claim to have been written. This is not actually a journal, “in some instances, Richards left blank spaces and even blank lines apparently intending to add details later.” It also talks about all of the different kinds of erasures that were made. “There were wipe erasures made while his ink was yet wet, as well as later revisions such as knife erasure of words written in ink that had dried.” I wondered how they had erased things and those other sources I’ve looked at. So it’s good to know they actually did it with a knife and scraped it away the paper, I guess the paper at that point would allow that. “The various ways in which Richards wrote and revised entries resulted in the journals, uneven texture.” So that’s how much it was changed and modified. Basically saying not only is this not Joseph Smith’s journal, it’s not even a journal, it’s a creation, right? It is a motive, and I’m not saying that we should throw it all out at all. No, I look at this the same as I do William Clayton’s journal, I’m sure it’s mostly accurate. I also know there was a lot of motivation going into it and a lot of later modification. And as we see what they did with the history going forward to paint the narrative that they wanted painted, we can see that it’s happening in this record as well, so it needs to be taken in light of that understanding. And we’ve already looked at some examples of this, right, the October 5th journal entry that then went through the later changes to go from Joseph preaching adamantly against polygamy to Joseph being the one mighty and strong, the only one with the powers and keys to dictate polygamy, right? And then I’ve already showed you the May 4th, 1842 entry that goes from pretty much nothing, just a meeting, into all of a sudden Joseph giving the endowment, the Temple Endowment, right? There are many examples of this. So I think another thing that’s useful to look at is that like William Clayton, Willard Richards also a devoted Nauvoo polygamist who already had wives. We talk about that a little bit later, but there is so much evidence of both Willard Richards polygamy in Nauvoo and William Clayton’s polygamy in NAuVOO, that it’s like not even contested there. There is so much evidence in letters and in journals and things like, I don’t know, um, Children, Children with their polygamist wives, right? None of that evidence exists at all for Joseph Smith, which should like make us wonder why is there so much evidence for these other guys and not for Joseph Smith when they all were hiding it. Right? And so, anyway, we’ll go into that a little bit more. But it’s really interesting to see how these two people, Willard Richards and William Clayton were dedicated polygamists who work central parts to creating this new narrative, who were both in the perfect place to be able to create the narrative they wanted to go into the historical record. And so, let’s go on and I want to show you a little bit more about this journal just to kind of give you a little bit more understanding of what’s going on here, so you can see it for yourself. So go ahead and share this screen; we’re going back to Joseph’s journal entry from July 5th. I’m just gonna show you a couple of days to hopefully give you a sense of what we’re talking about. So you can see that we’ll just do this really quickly. These aren’t, you know, I’ll let us let you dive into these journals in your own time.. So July 5th, and you could see he came back later and wrote Wednesday, right? When he had a blue pen. And then the same thing happens the next couple of days. Is it not gonna let me turn pages? Same things happens on Thursday, right? And so they’re just sparse notes. Some of these days, we don’t know if July 6th was written on July 6th or not, but we know that the Thursday was added later for sure. And it continues on. It’s going very slow. So this is an interesting one, July seventh, I wanna look at this because you can see it goes back and forth. So July 7th right written. So the 5th, 6th, 5th, 6th and 7th, it could have all been written at the same time. We don’t know, but then the blue pen was added later. So we can see the entry at the beginning and then what he added in blue later on and then came back again when he was using black and added more writing to it, right? Unless those were spaces left blank that he was going to add to, which is also a possibility. But you can see him using that black pen later on. So it looks to be without its space that it came back later. Oh, ok. Now we can see the day he started using the blue pen, right? So either, I mean, you can assume that it’s Saturday, the 8th of July that he started using the blue pen and went back and wrote those days, or he might have been writing this later as well. We can’t make all of these assumptions. And then there’s that black pen that he used that I would guess probably what he used to add the extra bit to the previous day. Also looking at this, you can see why it’s so helpful to have it on the Joseph Smith papers. So they’ve done the transcripts for us. Then on the 9th, there’s a long sermon. So I’m gonna skip over this. That’s all taken in the blue. And then, it also has, you can see a little bit added to it in the black. And then here we come, this is the part I wanted to get to. This is all leading up to Revelation Day, right? Monday, July 10th. Nothing, he hasn’t added anything. Tuesday, July 11th hasn’t added anything. And then all of a sudden we get to that Wednesday, July 12th day where he writes that one little tidbit and then has a little something to write at the bottom, maybe to substantiate it, right? And then again, the 13th, he says “in conversation with Emma most of the day”, he adds that later in pencil. And then we come to the 14th. Nothing much. And that is the end of this journal. So you can just accept for, I’m just gonna go to this very back, so the 14th is the end of this book of Joseph Smith’s journal, right? But later added on the back and it’s acknowledged in the Joseph Smith papers that this was added later by Thomas Bullock, is a list of wives and marriages that were performed, Right. So this was added, we don’t know at what point, but most likely still in NAuVOO when it was too secret to record. Right? And we have just, this is one of the central evidences they used to tell us about polygamy, and it has the weddings that Joseph either performed took place and it’s not part of his journal. So if you hear that there’s evidence of plural marriage in Joseph’s journal, this is part of what they’re referring to that had absolutely nothing, well, none of the journal had much to do with Joseph Smith at all. But this is gonna be a fun source to go into at some point. So now I’m gonna show you this next screen, which is, this is the next journal book. And so this is the next day, July 15th, 1843. So that ends on the 14th with nothing much entered and now we get the 15th. And if you remember this is the day (so the 14th is when there was that tearful conversation) another deed was made on the 15th. I would assume that they’re still struggling, right? They’re still, as Brian Hales quotes Richard Bushman, that they’re in this terrible situation, both trapped between, polygamy is just wreaking havoc on everything, but it’s pretty fun what this says. So, and this is the day that William Clayton says the deed is made out for the Maid of Iowa at Iowa and over 60 city lots. So it says Saturday, July 15th at the home 6 p.m. with his family and about 100 others, took a pleasure excursion on the Maid of Iowa. So this terrible, terrible couple of days, right? They come up with this agreement. This deed is made when, and they go for a pleasure excursion! They host 100 people. Emma in this situation is hosting a hundred people and going on a pleasure excursion on the Maid of Iowa from Nouvoo, landing to the north part of the city and back at dusk, theater in the evening. Right? And so I just think it’s interesting to look at these things a little bit more critically and go, ok, what’s going on? What really is going on with these stories that we tell? And so I know this isn’t necessarily directly related to deeds, but I think it is important because these are the sources we rely on to tell us what the deeds mean, right? The deeds are the only hard evidence we have. And these are the people who give us the picture of what they mean. These two nauvoo polygamists who like I said, we have so much evidence of their polygamy, including Children from polygamous wives, as opposed to Joseph Smith who has no evidence of polygamy at any point, no Children with any wife other than Emma. No letters, journals, finance is the only, the only evidence they’ve been able to find are these deeds and they claim this as evidence, which is why we’re going to get into them. But to the contrary, we have a huge record from Joseph and Emma and Hyrum claiming that he is not a polygamist. We have the consistent word of his entire family, his siblings, his Children, his wife, his brother, so much more. Plus the entire record shows that Joseph was not a polygamist, unless we rely on these people, these Nauvoo polygamists in their special places and their later recollections, and the traitors of Joseph Smith that we have already done quite a bit and we will get more into going forward people like John Bennett, who we are going to talk about a little bit. So that was the reason that I thought that was worth going into. Now, something I think we also should talk about. I have this at the end, I moved it to the beginning. So because I think it helps us just substantiate a few things. So the Maid of Iowa that we’ve been hearing so much about right. So again, you heard Don Bradley mention it and we’ve heard others mention it. So it’s the 15th, the pink entry that William Clayton claims he made a deed for the maid of Iowa and over 60 city lots. It’s interesting because the deed we have for Emma is just over 60 city lots and is not all of the unencumbered lots case. Sorry, I was not gonna,I’m getting ahead of myself and I don’t wanna do that. So there’s one of your sneak previews for the next episode. But, as we go ahead and look at this, I want to talk about the maid of Iowa to give you a little bit under a better understanding what it is we’re talking about. So here’s the summary that it was a small passenger steamboat that was purchased, it’s a little confusing, Joseph Smith apparently bought a half share into it, but then he ends up owning the whole thing. So maybe he bought the whole thing. I need to get more clear on that evidence. But Joseph Smith, in any case, purchased this steamboat, the Maid of Iowa, June 2nd 1843, for the purpose of transporting British converts to Nauvoo. They usually landed in New Orleans and he bought it to bring them up the up the Mississippi river to Nauvoo. And it was also used for other purposes since they had it, like shipping workers and materials for the temple. They would occasionally hold church meetings there. They would use it for a meeting house or for gatherings and entertainment like we read about on July 15th, right? So that’s what the Maid of Iowa is. So you’ll remember that Don Bradley said, he conflated it all, and said that on that very same day we have a deed that includes the maid of Iowa. He’s wrong about that. The deed that we have does not say anything about the maid of Iowa. So we’ve already looked at what the different journal entries say happened on the 15th. Right. William Clayton says that he made this deed and Willard Richards says that they went on this pleasure cruise on the Maid of Iowa, right? This pleasure excursion. And so you may be interested to know because in this case, I do have which one I think is more valid because they very well could have gone on the Maid of Iowa. But what is useful to know is that there is no deed written July 15th or any other time from Joseph to Emma for the steamboat made of Iowa with or without 60 city lots. that didn’t happen now. Ok,, let’s give the devil his due. Obviously, people claim, well, it’s not like we have every deed. That’s true. We absolutely do not have every deed, but we do know that. Well, we’re gonna get into sources, the deeds that William Clayton wrote for church property. We have those and it will show you why we have those and the various sources we have them. And so you could say it’s possible that he preserved all of the rest of the deeds and just not this one. He also never registered it with the city or the county despite he himself being the recorder, I guess we are getting into a little bit of it now. And you know he made sure that he kept all of the deeds he wanted to keep. But I just don’t think it’s a good argument. because not only is there no deed giving Emma, the maid of Iowa, there are two other deeds that are recorded that we do have that very clearly show that the maid of Iowa was not deeded to Emma, that proved that this deed was never written. And so let’s go ahead and show you these two deeds. This is why it’s useful to actually do this much research because these stories are so much more complicated than people want to realize. So this deed was written from Joseph and Emma, it was a lease, not a sale that is leasing the maid of Iowa to David S Hollister. It was written the 2nd of December 1843. And you can see right here, I’ve blown up the parts that are important, Joseph Smith and Emma Smith leasing the steamboat made of Iowa to David Hollister, and it is signed. This deed is signed. This is an important thing to be aware of; all of the deeds I’m going to show you are signed because deeds are signed, that’s what makes deeds effective, right? So you can see right there, Joseph Smith and Emma Smith and David Hollister signed. Often the person that is the grantee that is being given the deed doesn’t sign, but it has the entire terms. And you can see that Joseph and Emma together are leasing the maid of Iowa to David Hollister. And again, you can’t use the whole coverture thing because if that were the case, then there would be no reason to write a deed to Emma at all. Right. If Joseph had deeded the maid of Iowa to Emma, then he wouldn’t be signing a deed to lease it to somebody else, Emma would just be doing that. And then I’ll show you another deed that was written another deed about the maid of Iowa. You can see right here. I’ve blown it up for you again. The steamboat made of Iowa. This was June 15th, 1844. They lease it again. And you can see the signatures again. Joseph Smith signed this deed. Emma wasn’t even involved in this deed this time. So this, the maid of Iowa was Joseph’s right. And, and I guess what I’m trying to point out is we have these deeds. We have two deeds of Joseph writing deeds about the maid of Iowa. We don’t have anything to Emma. Right? I think that that’s useful to recognize and to acknowledge and it should make us wonder what’s going on with William Clayton’s journal. But there are actually more important reasons to get into this deed, this the claim of this deed, to get into the case, the maid of Iowa because it sheds a lot of light on what was going on with these different characters. When these things were happening between specifically Emma and William Clayton and, and others as well to see why William Clayton might have been writing these things in his journals, and yes, it’s up to everyone to decide. I can’t claim to be authoritative at all. I would never do that. I just think that there are a lot of really good questions to ask here. So it’s important to know the maid of Iowa became a huge part of the giant mess of contested property after Joseph was murdered. Emma was being loaded with all of the church’s debts and she was not being given access to to church assets. She was very concerned about it. She wanted things to get solved and resolved. Here she is uh it kills me here. She is pregnant, widowed, trying to take care of her Children, her husband’s ailing mother pregnant and, and wondering what in the world is going to happen to her husband is gone. What’s going to happen to his church and what’s going to happen to her and her family because of this giant financial mess that I don’t know if she knew it was a mess at this point, but she is entangled in so many different things. The amount of stress that she must have been under just kills me. So I want to read, um, what is written in the Joseph Smith papers about the maid of Iowa and I’ll link this below. This is, This is their summary of it. And then I’ll read William Clayton’s journal after Joseph Smith’s death. “On the 27th of June, 1844 the boat entered a period of contested ownership. In mid August 1844, Emma Smith, acting on the advice of attorney James W. Woods, sought to claim the boat is a personal asset of Joseph Smith along with other properties belonging to Joseph Smith as trustee and trust. However, William Clayton, acting on the orders of recently elected church trustee, Newell K Whitney and Apostle Brigham Young refused to hand over the papers connected to the boat. Clayton, Whitney, and Young claimed that the boat was a church asset and that Joseph Smith’s estate proceedings should not interfere with the business of the trustee and trust.” There’s more to this. It does get really even worse, but that’s going too deep into the weeds. But the more that I have read and understand this, the more clear it has become to me that at least in my opinion, from what I see, William Clayton was a snake, he was a schemer just like, just like John Bennett. And the things that he is involved in should be treated with great skepticism unless they can be verified by other sources. He’s not the only one that I think is a schemer, but he’s the one I’m talking about right now. So let’s go ahead and read this journal entry. “August 5th, 1844”, so this is a year and a month after the pleasure cruise, right? “I went to see sister Emma as she had sent for me early this am. I found her very cross. esquire James W. Woods told me what he wanted done with regard to settling up the estate.” What is basically happening, Emma in her desperate situation has hired an attorney to help her figure out this giant mess. “He wanted a full list of all of the titles and the names of the trustee and trust and not conveyed away whether deeded or bonded and by whom conveyed to the trustee. Also a list of all land conveyed to him as trustee and by him, conveyed away and to whom conveyed also a list of lands in his individual name. Also a list of such personal property as was in his name as trustee of trust until of his death. Also a list of all the notes and accounts and given their value and whether good or bad. Also a list of all property, both real or personal belonging to their heirs. Besides this, he wanted me to produce the papers pertaining to the transfers of the maid of Iowa and recommended Emma to have the boat included in the schedule.” Ok. So this is all really interesting, right. The attorney is going to William Clayton and telling him what he needs to be able to get to the bottom of this, to be able to figure out the mess and try to separate out what is the family’s, what is the church’s, how this could be taken care of? Right. That’s, that’s what he’s asking for. William Clayton thinks that these are terribly unreasonable demands, as we’ll continue to read “I felt as though he was laying a deep plan to find out the situation of the public and private matters of the church and to lay a trap for our ruin.” Why would Emma be laying a trap for the ruin of the church? Right. That she had given her life to? “I did not feel free to give him the papers of the boat until I could get counsel. Emma seemed very much dissatisfied because I did not go in the morning and because I yielded to do anything else until she had her business settled.” Yeah. Do you think she might be dissatisfied. This is over a month and a half after her husband’s death, she’s had to get a lawyer involved because there’s no help coming. And still he won’t cooperate. Right. I think she deserves to be dissatisfied and upset. “After dinner. I went to see Elder Brigham Young and have his counsel. I laid the matter before him and he advised me not to give Woods any accounts pertaining to the business of the trustee and trust. We both went over to brother Whitney’s and stated the matter to him. He also was opposed to Woods interfering with the business of the trustee and trust. I then went to see Emma.” Surprising, right? All of these guys are like, no, we don’t want any oversight into the documentation. “Then I then went to see Emma. I found her alone and began to talk to her and tell her what I thought was intended to do. She grew warm and said that all the business of the trustee must be presented. We had no secrets that must be kept back from the public for she was determined to have everything settle d now. I replied to her that there were many things that I was unwilling the world should know about and should not lend my hand to ruin the church.” So according to Emma, there are no secrets. All of this information has to be available. According to him, Nope, there are secrets that we can’t have out, they’ll destroy the church according to William Clayton. “She then grew more angry and said I had neglected her in the business and there was nothing that had President Smith’s name to that should not be investigated. She said she had no secrets nor anything she was unwilling the whole world should know. I told her that there were some things which she would be unwilling the public should know. She denied it.” So he’s telling her, you do have secrets. “She denied it. I said I knew things that she did not want the world to know. She said if I harbored any idea that she had ever done wrong, it was false. I answered what I have seen with my eyes and heard with my ears. I could believe. She said, if I said she had ever committed a crime, I was a liar and I knew it. I replied, Sister Emma, I know, I don’t lie and you know better what I know. I know and although I never have told it to any soul on earth, nor never intended to yet, it is still the truth and I shall not deny it. She then several times called me a liar and said she knew I was her enemy and she never had been so abused in all her life. I told her I was not her enemy, nor never had been. She said I neglected her and spent my time in the secret council of the 12. And it was the secret things which had cost Joseph and Hyrum their lives. And she says, I prophesy it will cost you and the 12 your lives as it has done them. She repeated this two or three times in a threatening manner. I have no idea what to make of any of this. I wish I could read it from Emma’s perspective or from a third party perspective. I wish I could be a fly on the wall. Right? Don’t we all wish that for all of this? “And said in a manner that I understood that she intended to make it cost our lives as she had done by President Smith.” So right there he’s writing in the journal the same thing that Brigham Young goes on to claim that that Emma was responsible for Joseph’s death, that Emma had intentionally killed Joseph, right? She had intentionally tried to poison him numerous times and then she had convinced him not to wear his garments, whatever that means according to Brigham Young, that’s a big claim to dig into, right? So here he said that she killed Joseph and now she had threatened to kill him and all of the 12, Emma’s this big murderer, right?” I told her I would rather die than do anything to ruin the church. She raged very hard and used many severe threats and told me she had now proved I was an enemy to her and she did not want such persons about her to do her business.” So this is what it is. She’s been trusting William Clayton. This is when she learned that she couldn’t trust him. Right. It’s heartbreaking to realize what happened. Yeah, I don’t blame her for not wanting him doing her business. I’ll continue on. “I coolly replied that I was her friend and she would prove it so. And I had done nothing but what I felt perfectly willing to meet her and Joseph together and answer for it. I also tried to show her that she had misinterpreted my words for, I did not mean what she said I did. I told her I had run at her call all night or day, whenever I could get a chance and have suffered abuses which I would never would have borne from any other woman in the world. She would not listen to anything I could say. And I left her, I still feel to befriend her all I can, but she will now try to destroy my character and influence, no doubt, but I have no enmity towards her and I am determined I will not give way to it. She is blind as to her best interest and those who are her best friends, she is the most bitter against; she is cherishing and putting her trust into the hands of traitors and murderers and they will use her up,” (everyone who he doesn’t like as a murderer) “For she will not listen to the advice of her friends nor be at peace with those who wish to do her good. I feel to pray that God will soften her heart and show her the danger she is exposing herself to and to bind her up that she may not have power to destroy thy servants, oh God. I went and told President Young the whole circumstance and he told me to have no fear but rejoice.” So again, the Joseph Smith papers, William Clayton, acting on the orders of recently elected church trustee Newell K. Whitney and Apostle Brigham Young, refused to hand over the papers, right? And that’s how he shapes it at the end, that Emma is a murderer, he’s so righteous and she just can’t see what’s in her best interest and who her friends are and who her enemies are. It’s really hard to take. We can confirm much of the truth of this journal entry, I believe, which he tries to paint Emma in a negative light. I don’t think he understands how it comes across, but we can at least understand part of what was going on with the maid of Iowa from the history. So this is from volume 7 chapter 29 of the history of the Church composed by Brigham Young, right, or compiled by Brigham Young’s historians. This is Wednesday the 9 of April 1845. “I met in the council with the 12 of the bishops at the church office. We agreed to advise Peter Mann and Jacob Pert to return the from Rock River, whether they had been to work on a coal mine, Ruben Mcbride to put the Kirtland property in the best state possible without paying out money to come to by and by”. this is the part, “the bishops were instructed to sell the steamboat made of Iowa for what they could get for it”, right? So it became a huge mess in this contested property because there was no paperwork available and people were making claims all over the place. And so Brigham Young kept possession of it and told them to sell it for what he could get from it. He’s trying to gather up all of the money that he can. And I know that we say that it’s because he was trying to bring the Saints West. And you know, and there may be some truth to that, but we also see from the future how Brigham Young handles his stewardship, shall we say? Right? If anyone hasn’t been following this podcast, just look at the Gardo House that’s a fun place to start. So anyway, I just this again is heartbreaking, right? So I think it gives us insight into the situation and what was happening, what Clayton was worried about. He felt like Emma had things she could expose him about. It sounds like to me and he’s trying to compose a narrative that paints her in a negative light and him in a positive light, he’s worried about the maid Iowa, that’s happening right there. Right. “Oh, I’ll make, I’ll claim that a deed was written to Emma and then I’ll claim that another deed was written where Emma deeded it to Joseph as trustee and trust,” which is part of what I skipped over because it just gets really deep in the weeds. But I start to get the picture that William Clayton actually is creating this narrative to try to back up these financial records. I can’t explain all, but I don’t know all of the motivations. That’s not what I’m trying to take on right here. I just wanted to show you what he claims about the maid of Iowa, what actually exists about the maid of Iowa and then what ended up happening, right. So Emma’s lawyer suggested that the maid of Iowa should be considered Emma’s property or given to Emma. He doesn’t want that to happen. He doesn’t want any transparency. So we instead get some journal entries. It’s at least worth considering because it seems to me that that’s the most likely scenario in all of this because what we can show is that his journal entries are, I don’t want to say a bad word, they’re not valid. Ok. So we’ll go on. I’m, I just want to explain the situation a little more Emma wanted and expected transparency. So the final financial situation of the church and her family could be accurately sorted out. She wasn’t trying to pull anything, she wasn’t trying to do anything dishonest. She just wanted transparency and help getting this all figured out. Right. William Clayton, Brigham Young, Whitney. apparently Heber C Kimball, on the other hand, they wanted exactly the opposite of transparency, the transparency that she was desperate for. They wanted to have complete control of the records, in my opinion, so they could hide, alter and forge documents to shape the narrative and claim and do whatever they wanted with the property of the church, the finances, the history of the church and the church as a whole without any oversight or accountability. That’s pretty much what they did, right? And I think this is a good circumstance to demonstrate that Emma, Joseph’s widow and partner in all of his assets. was given no papers, no information, no help and no support. Her husband, the president of the church, they had both given their entire lives to. who had spoken about his concern that there were traitors in his midst and false brethren, had been killed. And as his pregnant widow, caring for both their Children and his ailing mother, she was immediately forced to deal with the massive stress about finances, but far worse, the double dealing and dishonesty of her husband’s associates who had power over her and power over all of the finances, and who apparently hoped that she would just fall in line behind them, maybe even become one of their wives, potentially, so they could take over any and all property they claimed that had been deeded to her, right? It’s a possibility also and they wanted her to just go along with the new order of things, as Brigham would later call it. But that is not who she was. And I believe that the fact that that she was a strong woman who had integrity, who had gumption and who would not just go along with what they wanted is a big part of why Brigham hated her so bad and went on to make all of these accusations against her. Why William Clayton made all of these claims? Polygamous generally don’t like strong women who oppose them. They’re happy with strong women who will promote their narrative, but not if it ever aims back at them, they can be strong to the world, but completely submissive to the hierarchy,, is the order of the day for polygamous men, right? And so as we’re reading about William Clayton’s, Brigham Young’s and Whitney’s collusion to hide the financial records., we should remember that Emma and her son, Joseph the third, and probably all of her Children, there’s the letter where she writes to Joseph the third about it. Emma struggles under the massive debts that were laid on her. As Brigham gathered and sold all the church assets he could get his hands on just like he tried to do with the temple and when he couldn’t, it burned. Right? I hope you’ve watched that episode as well. And Emma went on to struggle with those debts as a widow for decades. While Brigham went on to become the wealthiest man between Chicago and the west coast, build mansion after audacious mansion, including the largest mansion in that entire area at that time. Emma was not able to finally pay off the last of the church debts until six years before her death. She was 69 years old when she finally paid the debts off. This one is a hard one to forgive when you see it happening in real time. Before you write, you get to read exactly what was happening and what it did to Emma and her family. And I am so tired of people being critical of Emma. I am so tired of it when you consider what has happened, So while, while I do feel all of this, I want to recognize that Emma lived the rest of her life with grace, peace, love, and no resentment. So I think even though this is hard to take, we should all strive to do the same to recognize her strength and her goodness and her resilience in the face of all of this. So another thing I want to point out on this topic of the Maid of Iowa incredibly, both of these deeds that I showed you the leases of the Maid of Iowa that were signed by Joseph Smith and one of them signed by Emma Smith, both of those were written by William Clayton. So he absolutely knew about them even when he was coming up with his July 15th, 1843 journal entry. And so which as I said, in my opinion, what is almost certainly made up after the fact, but I’ll leave it to everyone else to come up with their own, you know, to decide how that narrative works the best for them. That’s the best explanation I can find. We always talk about models, historians talk about models. So here I go on a little sidetrack. This is the model that I think is best supported by the evidence, that there was this cabal of polygamists in NAuVOO who were shaping this narrative, despite Joseph Smith. Joseph Smith was not a polygamist. The polygamists wanted to pursue this religion that we have all of this evidence of, Brigham Young and Hebrew Kimball and William Clayton pursuing in England, bringing back with them. We can get into earlier things like the Cochranites to see if that’s where it started or not. I’m not saying anything about that at this point. I’m just saying this is the model that I think best explains the documentation, all of the records, all of the sources and all of the evidence. I think that these journal entries of William Clayton’s were, he came up with them later, after the fact because he was trying to accomplish something that was motivated by all of this financial situation. I think that’s the best model and I’m putting it out there and other people can try to bat it down. I think that’s great, just like I’m doing in all of this, and will keep moving the knowledge forward to get close, getting closer to, closer to the truth. What we can know, I know that Richard Bushman has been quoted as saying that the standard narrative of the church is not true. I am going to say definitively that the standard polygamy narrative is not true. At the very least, it needs to be investigated much more closely and rewritten to at least match the evidence much better than it does at this point. For people who do want to continue to say the standard narrative is valid. Well, we have to add things like the mate of Iowa as um to the pile of evidence that shows that William Clayton’s journal is not valid, right? You have to continually believe William Clayton’s narrative with nothing to back it u,p over the actual evidence. He claims that he wrote this deed for the maid of Iowa and over 60 city lots to Emma that it doesn’t exist. These other deeds do exist, right? So, that continually happens again and again and again in this story. So how many times. how much evidence do we ignore in order to continue to claim that William Clayton’s journal is the definitive record. At what point do we start to actually look at the evidence and consider how it stacks up? I would like people to genuinely, that, genuinely think about it. So, ok, now that we’ve hopefully gotten a little bit better understanding of the sources that we rely on to tell us what deeds mean and looked at a case in point of how reliable they are and what story they tell, we can start getting into the deeds. Now, this, this is the specific deed that Don and Bill use to talk about Joseph’s polygamy, right? This is the deed to Emma and her Children on Revelation Day. A tricky thing about deeds that you will find is that there are numerous versions of deeds and that’s what I want to talk about. Now, if you go to this additional versions tab, you can see that there are different versions that you can look at for the deeds. So I want to talk about what the different versions of deeds are because I think that’s also important part of this discussion. So first of all, let’s just try to get a, an overview of what the Nauvoo deeds are. So let me go ahead to the next page. This is a map of Nauvoo that is on the Joseph Smith papers that someone drew and it’s really useful. You can see, I’ve blown it up here a little bit. You can see how Nauvoo was divided into blocks. This is what the deeds are referring to. So each of these blocks is four acres and contains 41 acre lots. So you can see here they’re numbered. Each block is numbered and on each block, the lots are 1,2,3,4, there are four blocks on each lot. Does that make sense? So when we’re reading through the deeds, it’s useful to know what it is they mean and what it is that they’re talking about. So this is from the community of Christ website about historic Nauvoo. “Once the water from the river bluffs was diverted, the city plan for NAuVOO was four acre blocks with 41 acre lots per block. Each family could buy an acre, have a horse and outbuildings and have room for chickens, a cow, a milk cow, a garden and fruit trees, crops were to be grown on farms on the prairie east of town.” So that’s what it says. Now, that’s funny that it starts with once the water was drained from the bluffs, that’s part of why I read it because this is a good thing to know. There is research now that been going on for a while that shows that Nauvoo actually wasn’t a swamp that needed to be drained as we have been told for so long. So I haven’t looked into that closely enough. I know that it’s some historical geologists that have been working on it. I would love to talk to them at some point because this is huge. This is a huge change to the narrative about Nauvoo, right? Apparently, there were a few small areas that were swampy and drained, but they were just very small, limited areas. It was very, very far from the entire city being a swamp that needed to drained. And so it will be interesting to see how that research goes and how it affects the narrative about NAuVOO. And I, I can’t help but be amused at the irony of such a huge and foundational part of the NAuVOO narrative needing to be changed. I’m really hoping that is just the beginning that there are other Nauvoo narratives that will need to be changed in the not too distant future. Maybe I’m optimistic, but that’s definitely what I’m hoping for. If that one can change, if we can change that one swamp of Nauvoo, let’s change this other swampy narrative of Nauvoo. So now that you understand, hopefully what the deeds are referring to, let’s look into how deeds worked, how they were written. At first, they had to have, they had to write up the original deed, the original copy like those I showed you so far in the episode, everything we’ve looked at so far was an original copy, the deeds for the maid of Iowa, the deeds to Emma, those had to be first written up usually by the recorder and then they had to be signed and witnessed, right? So there were several signatures on them. That’s the original deed. Those are the most rare because those were usually kept by the people who had them, right? So, unless they happen to be passed down by the family, we don’t have a lot of original deeds. It’s wonderful that we have as many as we do. Then after that, it could be taken and recorded in the in the official government registry of deeds. So there was a registry of deeds in Nauvoo, Nauvoo had its own recorder and registry of deeds where a lot of deeds were entered. And then there was also the Hancock County Registry of Deeds, which was in Carthage. So you could either take it to the recorder in Nauvoo and they would write an exact copy of the deed into the big registry book, right? Or you could take it to Carthage and they would do the exact same thing in the big registry book for the entire county. Sometimes they would register them in both places, that seems to be more rare, but that would also sometimes happen. So we have original deeds, deeds registered in the Nauvoo registry and registered in the Hancock County registry in Carthage. And it’s important to know this because it helps us avoid a lot of confusion. Also, in Nauvoo we have one other resource. Let’s see. I think I wanted to share some examples of each of these types of deeds. So yes, this was the original deed I showed you that was written to Emma and it’s an original deed. You can see the signatures right there, right? And then this is another original deed and um another original deed, I guess I recorded all three of these that I already showed you. Oh, and I have a couple of other examples of original deeds. This is Joseph Smith’s deed to Sarah Ann Whitney that was September 6th 1842. It I’m glad I’m remembering to share these because it took me for, to try to find these. I actually found quite a few original deeds on the Joseph Smith papers. I’m glad they have them. This was a deed to Mercy fielding Thompson also signed by Joseph Smith, the April 28th, 1842. And then this is the deed to the Partridge siblings, to all of the Partridge siblings again signed by Joseph Smith. And you can see um they would often use these forms. This seems to be the most common, they would print out forms that would be filled out. And then occasionally, when deeds were very complex, they would have to write them out by hand. Like this deed from Joseph Smith and Emma Smith from Joseph and Emma to Joseph Smith as trustee in trust October 5th 1841. These deeds get confusing. We’re going to go on to explain what they are and what they mean, right? So you can get a little better sense of them. But it seems to me that only when a deed like didn’t fit the form, would they write out an original deed? Now, this one is very hard to read. I have the links for all of these, so you can look them up on the Joseph Smith papers, but you can just barely make out part of Joseph Smith’s signature and what looks like it might be Emma’s signature below it. That’s the part of the paper that seems to be worn away. And so then, and the next thing I was talking about is the nauvoo registry of deeds, right? This is the large book where they would, they would copy down the exact deed in the Nauvoo registry. And I wanted to read a little bit about the introduction from this. “On March 5th 1842 the Nauvoo City council appointed Joseph Smith registrar for the city of Nauvoo authorizing him to record and certify official deeds for land transactions. Joseph Joseph Smith appointed William Clayton as recorder for the Nauvoo city for the Nauvoo registrar.” And by mid April 1842 Clayton began recording deeds in this record book. So you can see that it’s, it’s kind of fun because it’s William Clayton’s journal. William Clayton wrote the deed and William Clayton recorded the deeds in this novel book. We’ll get into that a little bit more. “James Whitehead was doing general clerical work for the church beginning April 1842 and was appointed a private secretary to Joseph Smith on the 11th of June 1842. His handwriting also appears in this record book though it is often difficult to distinguish which handwriting is Whitehead’s and which is Clayton’s along with other records. This record book was kept in Joseph’s Nauvoo office and transported to Utah territory where it was kept in the church historians office.” So I think it’s actually great that we have this because it shows us a lot of the deeds that were going on. I mean, it’s, it’s great that we have these records when we don’t have the individual deeds. I want to see if I am able to show you, I don’t know if I have it here yet. It might come later. Yeah, I guess, I guess I’ll have it later. This has sustained a lot of water damage. It’s very hard to read, but you can still read things if you zoom in up close on it. So we’ll probably look at something. And so then I didn’t have a picture of the Hancock County Registry of deeds because only the individual deeds that apply to Joseph Smith are included in the Joseph Smith papers. And so I’m just showing you that they still have. It’s kind of fun in Hancock County. The courthouse is still in the exact same spot that it was in Joseph’s day. It’s still in Carthage, like you go to the county clerk and register your land or your deeds or your transactions. So it still works the same way. And I just wanted to include both. So you are have in mind we have the original deeds, the Nauvoo City Registry of Deeds in the Hancock County Registry of Deeds, right? And then we also in just in Nauvoo we have, oh, I guess that this is an example from the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. This is that same deed I showed you the original of from Joseph Smith and Emma Smith to Joseph as trustee and trust. This is the same exact deed recorded in the Hancock County registry. And so you can see that it’s just, they’re generally in better shape because they’re just in these big government books that have been kept in government records. And then just in NAuVOO, we have these trustees land books, we have trustees, land book A and B. These are a little more confusing. They don’t record the deeds. They just are there, Joseph Smith as the trustee and trust. They just have like lists of what was happening with Joseph Smith as trustee and trust. So there’s land book A and trustees land book. And I wanted to quickly read this part of both of these just to explain as well. So you can again understand that it’s William Clayton, so “in spring and summer 1839 Joseph Smith and other church leaders purchased over 600 acres of land in and around Commerce, Hancock County, Illinois for the Saints. Some of these purchases were made by the first presidency and others were made by land agents. By that fall, Church leaders had plotted out the new town of Nauvoo on the land they had purchase, church property was consolidated first under the first presidency to hold the church. This practice was revised in February 1841 after the church was incorporated in Nauvoo and the office of trustee in trust for the church was created. Joseph Smith held these lands as trustee in trust on behalf of the church.” It’s, I know this sounds like I we I said this, this is getting deep into the weeds of deeds, but it’s really important to understand the situation and what the deeds are, what they’re about so that we can understand what assumptions we can and cannot make about them. So then Trustees Land Book B, “in September 1839 Joseph Smith’s scribes created Trustee land book A to record Joseph Smith’s financial transactions as trustee and trust and to create multiple indices of Nauvoo City lots that had been sold or transferred. This record book was used by several of Joseph Smith’s scribes through mid 1843. In the meantime, in February 1842 Joseph Smith hired William Clayton, an experienced and professional bookkeeper, who had emigrated from England in the fall of 1840. By April 1842. Clayton apparently determined to create a new record book documenting Joseph Smith’s land transactions as trustee in trust for the church that expanded on and replaced trustees land book A.” So there had been land book A which had been kept by several different clerks. But when William Clayton came on board, he kind of scrapped that, you know, some people kept a recording, but he created for himself Land book B, Trustees, Land book B. And so part of the reason again that I wanted to say that is so that you can see William Clayton wrote the deeds, William Clayton recorded whichever deeds he recorded in the Nauvoo B book that those generally, from what I can see when they were recorded in the government books, they weren’t signed again. It looks like it’s often, not all, sometimes it looks like they’re signed, but sometimes it looks like they’re just copied. So I’m not sure which is which. But in any case, you can see that William Clayton wrote the deed, then he recorded the deed, and then he also created his own trustees land book of deeds. So all of it comes from William Clayton. He’s the source for pretty much everything that, that we have about the deeds. I just think that’s interesting and maybe important to know. And so, oh, I guess I was going to show you the nouvoo registry of deeds so you can see what I was talking about. You can see how worn these are. They’re very difficult to see if you, I can see it on my screen when I scroll in this close. So I’m hoping you’re able to see that there is writing here and kind of make it out. You can see this signature and seal down here, E Robinson and its seal, the, the seal that they wrote it. So anyway, this is the Nauvoo Book of Deeds and you can read it, but you might have to get on the Joseph Smith papers yourself to read it. This is deed number one down here, I believe is the one to the Partridge Children, might say number 20. I’d have to look and you can just see where it started to say this indenture made and entered into the tent. So anyway, that’s, that is the nauvoo registry of deeds. So you can kind of get an idea of what it is that you have to look at to really get in and understand these. So OK, hopefully, that gives you a better understanding of the sources of the deeds. And I know it seems cumbersome, but it actually really does matter as we are as we go forward. So now that we’ve done that, there’s one more source that I want to show you that actually is pretty important and it is this, the property transactions in Nauvoo Hancock County, Illinois and surrounding communities. This is volume six of volume seven. This is a seven volume set, 5000 pages that was put together by a team led by Susan Easton Black, Harvey Black Brandon Blues. I can’t see it for sure. Anyway, they did their best to assemble every single land deed that they could find in Nauvoo. I think it’s from 1839 through 1859 and they wanted it to be comprehensive and have every single land deed. But they found that they could only find, maybe half of them or, you know, that still still exist. And so this is a really important resource as well because this is where we can get information about deeds that occurred after Joseph’s death that aren’t included in the Joseph Smith papers. And that becomes increasingly important as we’re trying to understand and what really was happening with these deeds to Emma. There’s more than just one deed that involves Emma, but the deed to Emma in particular that people are making claims about, right? So this is another source that I think is really useful. And I’ll have it linked below if you try to access it on the church history library, it says you have to go downtown to the churches library to be able to see it. But luckily family search has the whole thing available online. So if you log into family search, you can access this. And it’s arranged alphabetically and so volume six is the one, it’s the essence. So it has everything with Joseph Smith. Hyrum Smith, Emma Smith. So that’s why I included that book. That’s the one I’ve spent the most time in. OK. So that is the grand overview of lot of Nauvoo land deeds and how they work, how they were done and how to access them. So there is still one more large and essential foundational piece that we need to understand. And that is Joseph Smith’s finances. So a great resource that I, that I relied on quite a bit for this part. Is this article written in the BYU law review called “Joseph Smith and the legal process in the wake of the steamboat NAuVOO was written by Joseph I Bentley and also Dallin H Oaks. And it’s actually a really great paper. I think we have more information on it, like, again, read it and research it. Right. But it was very helpful to me to try to start to sort out what this legal mess was and this financial, what the situation is. I think that this is essential reading to try to make any claims about Joseph Smith finances or what things may mean because it’s just, it’s way too easy to look at a topic in a vacuum when you only get like, like all we know about is polygamy. So we’re going to look at Joseph Smith’s finances only in the, with only polygamy in mind and think that it has only to do with polygamy. And that’s the only thing we need to know about to be able to make assumptions and, and make claims based on them. Right? I think that that’s a mistake. I think we need a much broader, understand standing in order to be able to draw conclusions based on things that we don’t yet understand. It’s just not a sufficient approach. So we’re going to go over some of the things that this paper talks about. And then from other research that I’ve done as well, this book, I’ll quote a little bit from this. This is a useful book. It’s Nauvoo Kingdom On The Mississippi by Robert Bruce Flanders. And I’ll quote from this a little bit going forward. It is also really helpful. Again, it was written, I think in the seventies. And, and so I, I’ll look it up as we as we go. So, you know, again, you have to take some of it with a grain of salt. The good thing about this is, I believe it was written before Mark Hoffman. So we avoid that problem. But then again, we have, the Joseph Smith papers now, so we have more access than we used to. And also from what I understand, Robert Bruce Flanders, I believe this is he was RLDS. Someone can correct me if I’m getting this wrong. But this is my understanding is that he was RLDS. This was one of the first, things written by an RLDs author that said that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. So it was quite scandalous to the RLDS. It was written before, Richard Howard’s paper. And so Robert Bruce Flanders my understanding is that he is one of these progressive RLDS historians who wasn’t necessarily trying to defend Joseph Smith. If you, if you haven’t yet watched my, even the RL DS Church admits that Joseph is a polygamous episode, go watch that to understand some of the motivations behind it. So he falls as I understand it, he falls into that category. So I think he’s a good resource, I think it’s fair to assume that Dallin H Oaks is probably pretty biased. But what I like is how he looks at the legal documents and the legal arguments and we can research those for ourselves and that helps remove some of the bias. But I think Robert Flanders’s bias likely goes in the other direction. So, ok, a couple of things that we do that we should set out, first of all in, in that led to a major depression. So everybody was in extremely dire straits during this time. And Mormons were even worse off than the rest of the people in Illinois. They had lost everything multiple times, right? Being kicked out of Ohio, being kicked out of Missouri. The estimated losses are between 1 million and $2 million. You can it, I didn’t include it, but it’s just a heartbreaking petition I believe a petition to Congress or to the government that was written by Sidney Rigdon and Elias Higby. They penned that to, yeah, it’s a petition to Congress stating the losses that the saints had encountered. And it’s really, it’s really sad, the losses were profound, shall we say? And so I, that’s 1 million to $2 million of losses in their time, not in our time. That wouldn’t be very much now. But back in their time, it was huge. And so to aid the saints in their pilgrimage, I’ve already talked about the, the steamboat made of Iowa. This is a different steamboat called the steamboat, NAuVOO, right, to aid the saints in their pilgrimage from Missouri to Nauvoo. In 1840 a church member named Peter Haas purchased a steam boat from the United States government that was being sold by a young federal employee named Robert E Lee. I think that’s fun. It was Robert E Lee before he became Robert E Lee, he had just finished an assignment that he needed the steamboat for he was being called back. So we had to sell all of the supplies. The steamboat was one of them. So you can see they did need a steamboat. They, they bought this one first and then they bought the Native Iowa later for the same purpose. They needed a way to transport the converts to Nauvoo. And so a man named Peter Haas purchased it and then it was co-signed on by two other men, the Miller brothers and Hyrum Smith and Joseph Smith. They basically were, were cosigners, right? They were just like, yes, we’ll support, the terms of the sale required that. And so it’s actually a very sad story. I won’t get into all the details. You can read that paper or you can read this book. But soon after it was purchased, they hired drivers, operators, drivers, the steamboat drivers. I don’t know what you call them, who came highly recommended and who presented themselves as highly skilled. But apparently those were based on lies. They were not skilled, competent drivers, is my understanding and they crashed the steamboat on maybe on the very first load that it was carrying supplies, not people yet. And it caused major damage, the chimney broke off and sunk and it was, it was just a mess after this crash. And please keep in mind that the world was different at this time, right? There was no insurance. There was no insurance on the boat or insurance for business owners who were taking out a loan there. The drivers weren’t insured, this happened and, and there was no help for it. It was a really unfortunate situation. So here you have Joseph Smith and all of the Saints. Who had just lost all of this property repeatedly, so much property lost in Missouri, Joseph had to go into debt more to purchase the land in Hancock County, right? And in Commerce that became nauvoo and then he went in, he didn’t even, this wasn’t even his own debt. This was Peter Haas that had bought the steamboat and Joseph signed as a cosigner and then it crashes like these are, this is really, really a hard time. It’s very sad. So now, despite having no help from the government to recoup any of their losses from Missouri, they were, these already deeply impoverished saints were now in debt to the federal government in this terrible financial climate. And so, and, and they had lost any means to try to pay it off. Their, their steamboat, the chimney had sunk. It was kind of worthless now and then we’ll go on to talk about it. But it goes forward to explain that Peter Haas and the other two Cosigners, the Miller Brothers were all insolvent. So it all fell on Joseph and Hyrum even though it wasn’t their debt. Right. And so we’ll go forward to read what happened. So when they defaulted, when Joseph and Hyrum defaulted on the note, well, all of them defaulted, they failed to make the payment to the debt. Eventually, a US district attorney, there I’m skipping forward a little bit. But a US district attorney named Justin Butterfield was sent to collect or to prosecute, to collect the debt or prosecute. So Joseph and the others, the others that had signed it were required to appear in court in Missouri, June 11th, 1842, which as we know would have been a death sentence if Joseph had gone to Missouri. So when they failed to appear, a large default judgment was entered against them, which became a lien on all of their real estate or financial holdings. And so now they’re in this terrible situation where the government has a lien on all of their financial holdings. And so in the meantime, in an effort to separate out Joseph’s own finances from those of the church in the February conference, Joseph on February 8th, 1841, I should have said the year, was elected trustee in trust, which is a legal position that was charging him to oversee the church’s property. So it wasn’t his property, it was the church’s property and he was the one that was in charge of it. And it’s not like he had sole control of it, right? Every deed that was ever signed, it had to be had to be witnessed and agreed on by somebody else. And you know, it’s not like it was his property to do whatever he wanted with. He was the one responsible for the church property and it sounds like he answered to a lot of people about that. And so, and this is when in this period, when it was switching from Joseph Smith as just his own self to Joseph Smith as trustee as trust. That’s when we see a lot of these deeds start happening. Like for example, this deed that’s from Emma Smith and Joseph Smith to Joseph Smith as trustee and trust. This will come up a little bit later. But we start to see a lot of deeds being written to Joseph Smith as trustee and trust from many different members of the church. And so let me go forward here. This is from the history of the church volume four chapter 24. So this is a meeting that the 12 had at Brigham Young’s house, August 31st 1841 ” for the purpose of taking into consideration the situation of the church to attend to the business of the church, assist the trustee trust in his arduous duties.” So they made several resolutions and I want to just read a few of them, “resolved unanimously that we deeply feel for our beloved prophet Joseph Smith and his father’s family, on account of the great losses they have sustained in property by the unparalleled persecutions in Missouri, as well as the other many persecutions they have sustained since the rise of the church which has brought them to their present destitute situation.” You can remember they were living in that tiny little house, ” therefore voted” and living in that tiny little house and taking care of so many people that were coming in, taking care of the sick in nauvoo, taking care of all of the new people coming in. So they were struggling. “Therefore voted unanimously that we for ourselves and the church we represent approve the proceedings of Joseph Smith in making over certain properties to his wife, Children and friends for their support.” So that is an important thing to understand as we go forward to look at a couple of deeds that Joseph and Emma wrote to their Children, right? Or either Joseph is trustee in trust or Joseph is Emma. This one was Joseph and Emma deed to their Children. Julia Joseph the third Frederick and Alexander. two deeds during this time period. What or maybe it’s just one. This is the 21st of December 1841. And you can see again their signatures written there and they are deeding a couple of lots here and remember these deeds, they’ll come up again. But then there’s this other one that, and you can see that both of these are the original deed. You can see the signatures on it right there. And so this is another one that’s a deed to Julia and her siblings that was from Joseph Smith and Emma Smith, you can see their signatures right there. So again, two signed deeds, deeding property to the Children and you can see the resolution that helps make sense of what this is, right? The 12 gave them basically permission to make sure their family was taken care of. So I don’t know exactly what it meant to deed property to Children at this time. But it’s something we could figure out, but the dates are also important to recognize that those that this was December 1841, December 31st, 1841, December 21st, 1841. And that one apparently was re copied March 17th, 1842. So that’s, that’s what I was saying that that deed will come up again. So it gets a little bit confusing. But so, and then we will see at the next resolution that the 12 said, and this is from that same meeting, they said, “resolved that on account of the peculiar situation of the church hitherto, it has been expedient and necessary that the deeds, bonds and properties of the church should be and have been taken and holden by committees of the church and private individuals. But that we now have a trustee and trust viz President Joseph Smith appointed and according to the laws of the land, therefore voted unanimously that advised the trustee and trust to gather up all deeds bonds and properties belonging to the church and which are now held either by committees or individuals.” So you can see that the property of the church was just held by a lot of different people. They talked about how it was held by the first presidency or other. They call them land agents, but it’s just church members who were having to get, have a way to have this property all be owned before they had a trustee and trust. But it’s really the church’s property, right? So different individuals owned it “and take the same in his own name as trustee and trust for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints. As soon as such arrangements can be made consistently with his various and multiplied cares and business and that we individually and collect will use all diligence to render him every assistance possible to accomplish this desirable object.” So that is here, here is a deed, that’s this example. Maybe I’ve already showed you this one, but this is a deed from Hyrum Smith and Mary Fielding Smith. That was right after this period, August 24th, 1843. And you can see the terms of this deed, it says, “the love and good will they bear the church and also for the sum of $1”. So there are many, many deeds written to, and you can see where I’ve blown that up from, many deeds written to Joseph Smith as trustee in the trust as trustee and trust that are for $1 often with good wishes, something like this. Right. That’s a really common thing. And it was good for me to be able to understand what those are about they are in this time period when they have established this position of trustee and trust and they’re trying to get all of the church property to be held by the trustee and trust. And so it’s not that they’re deeding their own property as property that is in their name. That is actually church property. The second deed you can see is written the fifth of October 1841 is actually right after the, the following conference after the 12 had met in that October conference, there was a lot of talk, this was kind of, this was really pushed. They were saying we need all of the property into the trustee and trust. More efforts were taken to separate out the church’s property and that was really the focus of that conference. That’s an important thing to keep in mind as we’re going to look at some of John Bennett’s claims about these things. That’s part of why we’re setting this up. And so I’m going to quote again from the Oaks Bennett paper. It says one of the most important deeds executed during this period was a deed from Joseph and Emma Smith in their individual capacities to Joseph Smith as trustee and trust for the church. The deed was dated October 5th, 1841 the last day of the church’s semi annual general conference at which numerous church property transactions were discussed and the responsibility of Joseph Smith to take title to church property as trustee and trust was reemphasized. So it’s good to get that context behind this deed because this is a very large deed, transferring a lot of property that was held by Joseph and Emma as individuals that was actually church property. So that deeding it to the church on the final day of that conference that was focused on getting this all done. So I think that’s an important thing to understand. Ok, so we’ll go forward, “the deed was notarized that same day in the presence of two witnesses and the original deed and it covered 239 nauvoo city lots.” So it’s approximately 300 acres that you’ll understand where I’m going. So you note that was written on October 5th, 1841 and it was notarized that day. It was witnessed that day. So the deed that deed shouldn’t come into question because it was signed, signed, sealed delivered and notarized like it needed to be, “in accordance with principle of law, this deed was effective on the date of its valid execution and delivery.” I’m still quoting from the paper,”but in order to give added protection against the possible interest of third parties, it was desirable that it be recorded. This was done at the office of the County Recorder in Carthage on the 18th of April 1842.” So the deed was originally October 5th, and remember they didn’t have to be entered in to be valid, but they would be entered in to provide additional protection, right? So that they were like if, if you lost your deed, you could go to the record and, and show that it was there. And so this deed is the largest one I’ve come across to almost 300 acres. And it also, as I showed you has a price of $1 and it’s so that’s why it’s useful to understand what this is all about. So now let’s go to the broader picture in Illinois, and the nation now that we’ve gotten into what was going on with the church at this point because of the widespread depression and defaults that combined in the wake of 1837. that’s what continued in the wake of the 1837 crash. Congress passed the 1841 Bankruptcy Act. So it was 1841 that this was passed. It was the first time the US government had been made any allowance for personal bankruptcy. In 1800 they had passed the first bankruptcy they ever passed. But I believe that was just for business. So this was the in 1841 was really the the nation’s First Bankruptcy Act. And in April 1842, let me add this to the stage, bankruptcy lawyers put a notice in the very first issue of the new nauvoo newspaper called the Wasp about the Bankruptcy Act saying that attorneys would be in nauvoo April 14th from all and from in April 14th and from all available. This is when the Mormons Joseph Smith and the other saints first learned about the new Bankruptcy Act. Remember that like Congress could do something but they didn’t have TV. So it would just have to show up in a newspaper or a letter is how you would find out about it. So you can hopefully read that the attorneys that are going to come and, on April 14th actually is the day that Joseph Smith met with, I believe it was Warren. I’ll get his name. I think it’s a Warren, but I’ll have to find it for sure. And he learned about bankruptcy. Now, here you’ll recall already that they had lost 1 to $2 million in property. That’s the equivalent to over 20 to $40 million today with no help or remuneration from the government. And they had taken on a lot of new debt to purchase the land in, in Illinois for the Saints to gather. And on top of all of that, they were now in debt to the government because of the steamboat that had just crashed and along with various other debts sending back to the building of the Kirtland Temple. So yes, they met with Calvin a Warren April 14th to learn about the new bankruptcy law which is when Joseph Smith decided to start the process. So in the bankruptcy act, it required you to give public notice. So the in the July 1st edition of the sangamo journal, you can see it’s July 1st, we have two pages worth of bankruptcy notices is actually more than this. There are some on the previous page. So this four page newspaper, two full pages are dedicated almost entirely to bankruptcy notices plus some that are on the second page. So when I said that this was a bad financial time and nauvoo was hit hard, you can see what I mean. And right here, this highlighted one you can see is Joseph Smith. It’s right below his brother Hyrum Smith and it’s Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy notice in that edition of the Sangamo journal. Interesting, as I was scrolling through it, I found several others. Let me see if I can find the list. I saw these are the ones I just happened to see. I don’t know that it’s comprehensive, but I saw Samuel Smith Sydney Rigden, Reynolds, Cahoon, Vincent Knight, Elias Higby John W Taylor and several others. Those are just the ones that I found that were on the same page kind of near Joseph’s. And so another part of the Bankruptcy Act required you to make a list of all of your assets and all of your liabilities. So right here is Joseph’s schedule of creditors. This is all of the money that he owed it, added up to $73,066.38 back in their time period. And then he has his list of property which adds up to approximately $20,000. I didn’t do the math myself. I’m just taking Oaks and Bennett’s word for it. I’m assuming they’re trustworthy. And so you’re, you’re welcome to do the math yourself if you want. But, but it’s fun to see this entire like to see what Joseph Smith was having to do with all of his property to declare bankruptcy. And you can also get a good sense of where he stood financially. One interesting thing. These were written not by William Clayton, which kind of surprised me, but by a man named, I think it’s Stanislaus La um Laie if I’m saying that right? And so these were retained in Emma’s possession and one was held by the community of Christ and one was sold by Lewis Bidamon after her death. And so that’s how we have access to those. And, and it’s interesting to see that this official work, a lot of it wasn’t done by William Clayton. So once these lawyers brought news of the bankruptcy law to nauvoo, dozens of members of the church filed for bankruptcy. So I want to paint a little picture just so you can understand about Joseph Smith in particular, give you a little more understanding of this bankruptcy law. It was a problematic and short lived law for many reasons, under it, bankruptcy was almost universally obtained by anyone who applied. There apparently were very few exceptions. I only know of one in what I’ve looked at. So US attorneys were actually officially discouraged from opposing bankruptcy applications. They were told they would only receive one small perdiem fee for their time spent in court. So they were, they were like really disincentivized from investigating anything or contesting any bankruptcy applications. And here’s an example in January 1843 there were 1,433 applications then pending in Illinois Bankruptcy Court Court. So just in Illinois, in that one month, there were 1433 applications pending in bankruptcy court, none had been refused and only eight had even been contested by creditors. And so none of them had been contested by us attorneys, and just because it had been contested by creditors didn’t, doesn’t mean it didn’t pass, it was like bankruptcy for everybody, right? The system was abused so commonly that the law was repealed within two years. Let me just give you two examples of the abuses. I’m sure there’s much more. These are just the two that I read about. So Calvin A Warren, the lawyer who advertised the new bankruptcy laws to the Mormons and who advised Joseph Smith and the others through the process and Mark Alrich, an Illinois State representative, both of whom were alleged to be in the mob when Joseph and Hyrum were murdered, they both applied for bankruptcy each separately, thus forfeiting their property, but then intentionally reacquiring it at a fraction of the price at the bankruptcy sale. Thus, strategically abusing the Bankruptcy Act to vastly improve their personal fortune. So both of these men who I think it probably talks about because they are well known and connected and were both part of the mob, did this. This seems to be a strategy that a lot of people maybe were pursuing, but for sure these guys did so it was not uncommon to do this. This is how easy it was to declare bankruptcy under this bankruptcy law. And so I’m going to again, quote, “despite official reluctance to challenge bankruptcy applications and the ease of obtaining discharge during this period, Joseph Smith’s case was singled out for special attention and opposition.” And of course, we again have John C. Bennett to thank for that, “in the issue following Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy notice. The very next edition of the Sangamo journal included Bennett’s third of six letters”, I think it actually has his second and his third letter. And as I look through that, that edition of the Sangamo journal, the almost the entire thing is about the Mormons. It was just they were really going after them at this point. But in, in John Bennett’s third letter, he accused Joe of putting his property out of his hands before applying for the benefit of the bankruptcy law. He says, Joe makes his family rich, including his infant Children, is how it was summarized in the preface to it. And so Bennett based his accusations on Joseph and Emma’s deeds to their Children, and that deed I showed you from Joseph and Emma to Joseph as trustee and trust, claiming all of these were done after deciding to pursue bankruptcy in order to try to protect assets, then backdated to the 1841 dates of when those deeds were signed, sealed, witnessed and delivered. And so I won’t go into all of the specifics of all of the legal issues. I just find this to be again heartbreaking because it’s Emma who ended up having to bear the brunt of what John Bennett did, but just to sum it up, I’ll say that none of Bennett’s claims hold water at all. Bentley and Oaks go through them really well in that paper. And also Bruce Flanders, Robert Bruce Flanders talks about it extensively in this book. And the claims are ridiculous in so many ways, he didn’t know the law. He nobody was claiming he just wanted to smear Joseph Smith’s name. So this is quoting from this Robert Flanders book. It says, “it is true that on April 18th, 1842 the day Smith was in Carthage to declare insolvency, the deed to which Bennett referred the that large deed from Joseph and Emma to Joseph as trustee trust was entered in the county deed book. The coincidence of the bankruptcy with the recording of the deed is not extraordinary and there seems to be nothing to substantiate Bennett’s charge. The October 5th, 1841 date was acknowledged on the deed by Ebenezer Robinson as Justice of the Peace. It was the last day of the semi annual general conference that had concerned itself with the Hotchkiss debt.” That was the debt they had taken on to buy all of the land and in Nauvoo that they had purchased for the gathering of saints and the land problems of the church in general. So that’s what that whole conference had focused on. The 12 had been urging Smith to get the church properties deeded to the trustee and trust. And it is reasonable to assume that the transfer in question was made at that time. When Smith undertook bankruptcy, he doubtless saw the necessity of having the deed recorded in the county registry. So Bennett is saying that Joseph owned all of this property and was trying to put it into the church before declaring bankruptcy just strategically so it wouldn’t be taken away, as if he was enriching himself. If we look at Joseph Smith’s situation, he was in so much debt and he owned nothing and he was purchasing this property so that the Saints could come and gather, right? That’s why he went into the debt. He cosigned on the steamboat. That was someone else’s investment because he knew that they needed a steamboat to bring the, what’s the word? I’m looking for the immigrants, the converts. That’s what I’m looking for. He, you know, went on to buy another steamboat because they needed one so bad. It’s just so tragic what John Bennett did and what he accused Joseph Smith of and for anyone else wanting to make those same accusations, please look into this history. Look into the financial records. Look into what is actually happening to see how Joseph lived, how everything he did was about trying to help the Saints and trying to build this city a place for them to gather. It’s hard to see where and how he is enriching himself off of this. Brigham Young on the other hand, that’s a different story. We’ll get to that later. And so anyway, I wanted to go into that because so you can understand what the situation is. The financial situation is, with Joseph Smith. The real tragedy here is that either because Bennett sent it to him intentionally or because he came across it on his own, Butterfield read Bennett’s accusations against Joseph Smith in the Sangamo Journal and since Joseph was in debt to the US government as a cosigner for the steamboat nauvoo, all of the other signers, as I said, other than Joseph and Hyrum had already declared bankruptcy, been declared insolvent. He wrote, requesting special permission to oppose Joseph’s bankruptcy petition, since that went against the standard instructions. So I think it’s worth showing this letter that Justin Butterfield wrote to his supervisor Charles B. Penrose. And I’m going to go ahead and read it, sir. Let’s see. I think I wrote it. So you can read along with me, “sir at the last June term of the Circuit court, a judgment was rendered in favor of the United States against Joseph Smith. Hyrum Smith, Peter Haas and Henry and George Miller upon a note given by them on the first of September 1840 for $4866.38 and interest. The defendants in this suit are Mormons residing in Nauvoo in this state the defendant Joseph Smith is the prophet and leader of the sect. And unless the judge can be collected of him and his brother Hyrum, it will be lost, as the other defendants are all insolvent. Joseph Smith and Hyrum Smith are both now applicants for the Bankrupt Act. And the day for their final discharge is on the first day of October. Next, as you will perceive by their public notices on the last page of the Sangamo Journal of the 15th of July 1842 which is enclosed.” When we go to the next page, you can keep reading along. “It appears that the Mormons have had difficulties among themselves and one of their principal leaders, John C. Bennett is publishing a series of letters, in his third letter which is contained on the second page of the enclosed paper, he charges Joseph Smith with the most gross fraud in disposing of cloaking and secreting property to a large amount for the benefit of himself and his family in order to obtain the benefit of the bankrupt act. You will perceive in general J Bennett’s communications, he describes the fraudulent conveyances and gives such specifications of fraud as can hardly admit of any doubt. I should deem it my duty in this case to oppose the Smiths. But your circular of the ninth of May last upon the subject of opposing such applicants, makes me desirous that you should judge of the expediency of making opposition before I put the government to any costs.” So you can see right there. He’s saying, I know that you that wrote instructions that we should not oppose any of these. But I want to get special permission in this case to oppose Joseph Smith’s bankruptcy. I guess Joseph’s and Hyrum’s. And it’s so sad. It’s based on nothing but what John Bennett wrote, he hadn’t yet looked into the details, so I won’t go into the details. But as I already said, Bennett’s accusations were completely unfounded and it looks to me that once Butterfield better understood the situation, he approved Hyrum’s bankruptcy and he worked to resolve Joseph’s. It’s very, it’s sad that he got involved because everyone else’s bankruptcies were being approved and many of them were so dishonest, and Joseph actually was more valid than like pretty much anybody’s, right. He was not being dishonest. They had lost 1 to $2 million of property had, had a boat to sink is the reason that this all got started, right? Like how and then he was buying the city to try to gather the saints. It’s just really, really sad. And so they, they reached agreements and accepted terms to settle Joseph Smith of bankruptcy. But in a tragic snail mail version of phone tag, the lead letters seemed to be missed or passed by one another, dragging out the process. Butterfield had written, tried and trying to get permission to accept the terms that Joseph had offered. And this combined with the actions of from what I can see specifically William Clayton and Brigham Young. So anyway, this missed opportunity to declare bankruptcy, combined with the actions of William Clayton and Brigham Young, resulted in Emma being saddled with these massive church debts. These are the debts that Joseph was trying to declare bankruptcy on. And if there was ever a reason for bankruptcy, it was Joseph Smith’s situation. It really is so sad and like I said, she was almost 70 before she paid them off. So all of this fell on to Emma to this widow. I it’s, it’s almost an unbelievably tragic story. What happened because of all of this. So that is Joseph’s financial situation leading up to the time of his death and at the time of his death. And, because of the missed letters because of Bennett and then Butterfield getting involved, Joseph’s bankruptcy never went through. And once he died, it was too late. And then the debts were all still there. And then Brigham and Clayton, you know, took the assets and left Emma with the debts. So the most important part of this situation, the reason that I wanted to go into it and cover it even though it’s a bit cumbersome is the realization that Joseph Smith was actively trying to obtain bankruptcy and was being opposed on false allegations of fraud and dishonesty. But in this process, all of his finances and holdings, both personal and as trustee and trusty trust were literally under investigation from 1842 on by, “one of the greatest lawyers of his time”, that was according to an Illinois law review, writing about Justin Butterfield who as it happens, beat out Abraham Lincoln for a top government job just after this time period. The idea that Joseph just held all of the property and did whatever he wanted with it, including giving it to his wife on a whim under threat of divorce or to provide for her because she was mad about polygamy or giving it to other supposed wives is simply not correct. It’s just extremely ignorant. So I know we spent so much time going into this, but I hope you can understand why it meant. You have to understand what Joseph Smith was dealing with was actually dealing with. It wasn’t an angry wife. That was not what Joseph was dealing with. What he was dealing with were these massive problems and in the midst not, it wasn’t even just the legal problems. Remember he was constantly being pulled into court under false allegations or false lawsuits. It was just terrible and tragic, but this was his financial situation. And so Justin Butterfield was in Nuavoo investigating Joseph Smith’s finances. He, he wasn’t there until his death, but he was there off and on pretty much until his death. So we have a little bit more to talk about, about Justin Butterfield. He did initially read Bennett’s accusations when he read them. He, he initially believed them because he didn’t have any other information. And sadly because he opposed the bankruptcy, Joseph could have contested so many of these fraudulent bankruptcies. Joseph’s was actually legit. It’s just so sad that it was opposed. But as he spent time with Joseph Smith, I assume, digging into his finances and learning more about his situation, his perspective seems to have shifted pretty dramatically. In fact, he agreed to defend Joseph Smith in the extradition case when he was being ordered to appear in court in Missouri. And so it’s so interesting because at first Butterfield went to Missouri Court and expected have to show up when he didn’t. The judgment was passed against him that created the lien on all of his property. But now he’s defending that he shouldn’t have to go to Missouri that he shouldn’t be brought in on extradition charges. And again, it’s because of Bennett’s unfounded claims that he ordered the shootings of Governor Boggs with zero evidence. So that’s why Joseph was being told he needed to appear in Missouri this time. Right? And there had actually been strong suspicion on another suspect before Bennett’s claims, put all of the suspicion on Joseph Smith. Bennett was such a nightmare and everyone, just, not everyone, people now just want to believe John Bennett, but look into his things even in this third edition of the Sangamo Journal If you read through it, even there, they are saying, we know some people are saying, Bennett is trustworthy, other people are saying Bennett’s a nightmare, this is why you shouldn’t believe anything he says. Not Mormons, just people that you know, Bennett was not trustworthy and he was found out time and time again, he was impressive at the beginning, but his lies always caught up to him and he was terrible. So I want to tell a really funny story about when Butterfield was defending Joseph Smith. So it was in an Ohio court in Springfield that was deciding whether Joseph needed to be sent to Missouri. And that’s what the the decision was. And so the judge of the trial was Nathaniel Pope and there was an unusually large number of women in the gallery. I don’t know if it’s because the Mormon women were there or if there was another reason, but Butterfield opened his remarks announcing may it please your honor? I appear before the Pope in the presence of angels to defend the prophet of the Lord. And so that got written up widely as you can imagine. And it was pretty fun. Luckily he won that case. He was a very good lawyer and he had a very good argument. And so going forward Butterfield, as I said, made multiple visits to Nuavoo and spent time with Joseph, looking into all of these issues. In fact, this is fun. You many of you should recognize his name from one of the best known journal entries in our community. The infamously altered October 5th entry and Joseph’s journal, right? You’ll remember this one. The one that was so changed, it says Thursday, October 5th morning, rode out with Esquire Butterfield. That’s our very own Justin Butterfield who was there looking into Joseph Smith’s finances, right? And this is the same one when it says, you’ll all know this one “evening at home, walked up and down the street with scribe and gave instructions to try those who were preaching, teaching the doctrine of plurality of wives on this Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof, no man shall have but one wife.” That’s what we have from Joseph’s original journal that was later changed by Willard Richards and others to say that Joseph approved of polygamy and that he was the only one that had the power. I’m including some of these things for people who are maybe new to this discussion with this episode. So this is an important journal entry for even more reasons because it shows that Joseph was being investigated. All of his finances. People are making claims about the deeds without recognizing any of this. And I think that it’s important to know. So that is everything that we are going to cover today. I know this was a long episode and we didn’t even get to the specific deeds yet. But like I said, there is so much foundation that people need to understand about deeds and finances before they start making blind claims that really can’t be defended if we know anything about the situation. That’s why I thought it was worth going into. So again, please remember Joseph was in bankruptcy court. I don’t know what it was called at that point, but he was under investigation being scrutinized for his financial dealings by one of the nation’s best attorneys at the time that all of these deeds in question that people claim prove Joseph’s polygamy, were written. Having a better understanding of the complexity of, of the various motives and workings of the land deeds in general makes it extremely difficult to claim that Joseph had the freedom to just deed land whenever and wherever he chose to, to keep his wife or his wives happy. It just doesn’t work. So thank you for sticking in with this long episode deep in the weeds of deeds. Next time, we will get to those very interesting, exciting deeds that I want really want to talk about. So I hope you will come back for that episode. Thank you again for sticking with me and I will see you soon.
