104: Dirty Deeds Pt. 2 (Corrected Version)

If you ever thought land deeds could be used to prove William Clayton’s journal is legit, and that Joseph was a polygamist, just watch this.

***Apologies for the minor errors and major technical glitches in the previous upload of this video. They have been corrected in this version of Episode 104.***

*** Please see this blog post for some minor corrections and clarifications to this episode regarding Emma’s and Hyrum’s land deed. ***

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Links:
Episode 102: Deep in the Weeds of the Deeds

Emma’s Deed
Hyrum’s Deed

Trustees Book of Land Deeds B Maps:
Link 1, Link 2

William Clayton Lawsuit:
Link 1, Link 2

Clayton doing deals “on behalf” of Joseph Smith:
Link 1, Link 2

Double registered Deed:
Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

Emma Registering deeds?

Deeds Emma supposedly registered July 8, 1844:
Link 1, Link 2

Other Deeds Registered July 8, 1844:
Link 1, Link 2, Link 3

Oct 5, 1843 “draft”

Transcript:

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case against Joseph’s polygamy. I am so excited for this episode to finally be bringing it to you. It has been months of work and investigation. There is so much information. I don’t want to waste any time with preliminaries. I just want to get to it. I will just say this has taken more hours than I care to count. If anybody does feel like they are able to donate to this podcast, it is immensely helpful. I appreciate it very much. Thank you for being here as we take this very deep dive into the very murky waters of the Deeds J and A. I am very well aware that that is not my usual intro music, but once I learned about that song, it was too good to pass up and it really does set the tone for what we have to get into here. So I want to say, I hope that you have already watched part one because I think it does a really good job of laying the foundation that we need to understand deeds going forward. So we talked a lot about the sources that we rely, that people rely on for the deeds. We talked the complexity of the deeds and we also talked about several of the problems with William Clayton’s journal and how it is talked about today. So I really strongly recommend that you go back and listen to episode 102, that was part one and then come back to this one. So really quickly, the main highlight that I hope that people take away from that one was that Joseph was in massive debt in Nauvoo. And he was under financial investigation by the US government from 1842 until his death. The important thing there isn’t what he was doing with his money because, well, we got into that. It was the fact that he was being investigated. So he wasn’t free to just do whatever he wanted to with his property, right? So you’ll remember anyway, go ahead and watch that episode to understand what we’re talking about. Joseph Smith attempted to declare bankruptcy in the new first bankruptcy law that allowed for personal bankruptcy in the United States. And despite so many people declaring bankruptcy at that time and despite there being so much dishonesty and nobody’s bankruptcy being rejected or even investigated, Joseph Smith is one of the only, well, he’s the only case I know of whose bankruptcy was challenged. It wasn’t ultimately denied because they would have been able to work it out before he died, but he died while it was still being challenged. And so he was not able to declare bankruptcy during his life, which caused all kinds of hardship for his widow. So that’s a really tragic episode again, thanks to William. I mean, not William Clayton, he’s our other guy. But thank you to John Bennett because of his lies that caused a lot of those problems. So anyway, please watch part one. But now we’re going to go ahead and play one more time the clips that started this all and the clips that I’ll be responding to. So let me get to the first one

[03:18] Don Bradley: in Clayton’s journal under this exact date. He says he talks about the revelation that Joseph dictates. He says that it’s read to Emma that Emma does not believe it. Joseph and Emma have an argument about this and that. 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 his half interest in the steamboat that made of Iowa. Ok. So, um this revelation is saying, Joseph, you know, don’t get rid of your property, don’t put your property out of your hands uh, 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 with the things 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, uh, his, his property, right?

[04:56] Michelle: Ok. Well, go ahead and stop that one there. And now let’s play this next one

[05:03] Bill Reel: if 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 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. 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,

[06:07] 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

[06:17] Michelle: So there we have it. Those are some of the things we’re going to address again. I really hope that you’ve watched part one. We went into them in depth. But a couple of super quick reminders the entire story of how we have. Section 132 relies 100% on William Clayton, right? His journal entry and then his later letter and affidavit. So I’m going to go ahead and share the slide again. I loved that picture, made me very happy. Let’s go ahead here again, is yellow portion is what Bill Real just read in the clip that we played. So we have this source and then we have William Clayton’s later 1871 letter and 1874 affidavit 30 years after Joseph’s death when the Utah church was deeply entrenched in the first round of the polygamy wars against the RLDS church. He is the single source where we get the story that Joseph dictated Section 132 to Clayton at Hyrum’s prompting so that Hiram could convince Emma and that later that day, Joseph was troubled about Emma and told Clayton to write a deed, giving Emma all of the unencumbered lots. That’s exactly what the evidence is for any of this. So here is the deed that is used as verification for this claim. It’s claimed to be the deed where Joseph did, in fact transfer all of the unencumbered lots to Emma in what some historians claim was a mutual agreement to make sure she was provided for. So I have to just say that this is based on complete assumptions with no evidence. In fact, it contradicts the as we will see going forward and um, with and with just as little evidence, other historians or people looking into church history claim that this looks like a separation agreement because of polygamy because as I’ve said so many times before, every man whose wife threatens him with divorce immediately hands over all of his property, plus all of the property of the church that he’s in charge of and all of the property of the city that he’s in charge of. Right. And of course, there would be plenty of time to take, um to on this one day to write this the revelation and this huge deed, get the revelation while school was in session and the clerks were busy all at the same space, read it to Emma while she was busy working surrounded by people in her tiny house. Show it all around. Nauvoo. How Kingsbury make a copy for Bishop Whitney, flawlessly copied in 30 to 45 minutes. Someone give that a try copy section 132 and beautiful calligraphy flawlessly in 30 to 45 minutes. Still hold all of the meetings recorded on the dock at that day and figure out how to solve marital disputes. Oh, and fill out the entire completed deed all and when no problems with that at all, please watch episode 84 if you haven’t already. But setting all of that aside, let’s just look at the deed, this version of the deed, the July 12th, 1843 deed to Emma and her Children that Don Bradley and Bill real and many others claim proves that this is all valid. It’s the one what the version that they always show is actually this version, which is the Hancock County deed registry, meaning it isn’t the original deed. It is the, it is the copied version written into the large deed registry when somebody took it to Carthage to register it with the county as we talked about in part one. And so, um, we’re gonna go forward and talk a lot about this. I think you will find it very interesting. So it is hard to know where to start with this one because there are so many things to look at. But the first thing that I want to talk point out is actually awesome. We have the original deed. We don’t have a lot of original deeds. So it’s a big deal when we have an original deed and having this deed is actually critically important. It is the key to helping us get to the bottom of this entire thing as you will see more clearly as we go forward. So I have gone over this and to some extent in other episodes. But let’s take a minute to look a little bit more closely at this deed. So if first of all, you can see that it is the hand writing of William Clayton. So that’s a good thing to take note of, right? It’s William Clayton’s journal and it’s William Clayton who wrote the deed. That’s a good first thing to know. And also it is written to Emma Smith and her Children just as Clayton’s journal says. So two points so far for William Clayton, right? We’re off to a good start. But then right away, we have a pretty big problem. If you take time to analyze the deed, you will see that it includes 68 city lots, which according to my calculations could be accurately described as over 60 lots. And so right away, we can see a big problem in the confused entries of Clayton’s manufactured journal. So here it is again, he claims that on July 12th, 1843 he wrote a deed for all of the unencumbered lots to Emma and then it’s down on July 15th that he wrote a deed to Emma for over 60 city lots. I hope you’re seeing some problems here. Right. It’s which, which one is this? It seems to fit better in the description of the 15th, but it was written on the 12th. And so that should be all unencumbered. Lots. Not just over 60 lots. Not to mention all of the problem we talked about in part one that when did they have the dis the discussion and when did they make the arrangement? There’s no deed for the mate of Iowa, all of those other things we covered. So right away the deeds which are used with so much ignorance and conflation to try to support Clayton’s narrative instead seem to expose how false his narrative is. It’s going to get more clear as we go forward. And then there’s another problem that is not ever discussed. It just seems to be completely ignored and lost over. And that’s that this deed is not just giving Emma those lots. The deed claims that those lots were purchased for $10,000. So this deed for 68 lots, she paid $10,000 for them. According to this deed. Less than two years before this, Emma and Joseph together had written a deed to Joseph as trustee in trust for, I think it was 239 lots, which included almost every lot that was deeded back to Emma on the second deed with a few very interesting exceptions that I’m not going to go into, but they are very interesting. So, this deed for 239 lots, Emma and Joseph privately deeded to Joseph as the trustee in trust of the church for a dollar. And yet when, when he deeded back the 68 lots, he charged her $10,000 which is the equivalent of $415,000 today. This was not a gift or some sort of appeasement. It was a very expensive deed. Again, I think we should ask what this means. If we take the standard interpretation of Clayton’s story that Joseph deeded all of the empty lots in Nauvoo in a separation agreement or as others claim to satisfy her, so no other wives could get property or to assume or, or to assure her that she would be provided for despite Joseph’s polygamy, why was there such a large sum of money attached? I really want people to think of that. Like, how do you explain that if Joseph told Clayton to deed Emma all of the unencumbered lots? Why did he charge $10,000? Why? Like that’s something that has to be thought about. Um, if Emma wanted security, why would she want to be so cash poor and land rich? What was, what was she going to do with that land? Right? And people claim that we should just ignore the price on the deed that it’s meaningless, that she didn’t pay anything for it. And we don’t need to worry about it, but you still have to explain why. Then the lot was written for $10,000. We have many examples as I talked about in part, in part, one of lots of deeds being written for $1. It happened quite a bit. It was possible to give a lot to write a deed that didn’t include a sum of money. So this is something that has to be addressed, it has to be paid attention to. We can’t just ignore it and um and act like it doesn’t, doesn’t matter. So people who want to claim that William Clayton’s journal is legitimate and this really is just about polygamy, explain the $10,000. And I’m gonna pause here because I think this is a really crucial point. The reality is that none of us know who Joseph and Emma were. None of us knew them. Everything we think we know about them comes to us through these historical documents. We do have handed down stories which are valuable. But as we all know, those can be exaggerated or falsified to fit a narrative. So the movie more important, the more reliable sources are these source documents and physical evidence. Many narratives have been thrown out because of physical evidence and source documents like the idea of um of Emma pushing Eliza down the stairs, right But thankfully, Brian Hall figured out no, that couldn’t have happened. So we can, we can throw out that bad narrative, the source documents and the physical evidence should be prioritized over the over the narratives which can be falsified, right? And so these documents are the main things, we have to try to actually figure out who, who Joseph and Emma were and to design our models about their lives and relationships and to write our narratives that become the stories we tell about them. And so these source documents are all we have, we need to take them very seriously. We shouldn’t just ignore the things we don’t like. We have to deal with them and do our best to explain them with our models. And that is exactly what those of us arguing on this side are trying to do with is what we’ve been working really hard to do. We are waiting for the other side to catch up. So I, I will also say that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. People read a book or two by various historians and then consider themselves educated on the topic. After all, most people don’t even read the books and a lot of people just hear what people who read the books say happened, right. But they don’t understand that historians far too often have written narratives that sound factual. They make it sound like this is what happened, what exactly what happened. But they are based on very questionable sources. And at times they completely ignore other more reliable sources. People read their books and then think they know all they need to know about Joseph and Emma Smith. And as a result, many people go through extreme faith transition, which isn’t always necessarily bad. But for many people, they lose their willingness or ability to believe in almost anything. The very idea of faith can be completely literate. And that is very sad. We do have a responsibility to do better. And for all of us reading those narratives, we have the responsibility to not just take the narrative as factual truth, but to look at the sources, we need to take on that responsibility. Otherwise, we’re just making historians um our prophets, right? And just saying, oh, whatever they say must be true instead of taking it, taking the responsibility for ourselves, just like I tell people to do with our, with prophets in the LDS church. And so this being said, however, the multiple faulty views we were presented by the LDS, church leaders for decades, certainly didn’t do anything to help. And I had to say multiple faulty views because the narratives have shifted over time as we all know. Right? And so it’s just unfortunate because those false narratives perfectly set people up to fall hard when they read a new model, which may have been another false narrative. And so it’s, it’s really unfortunate that we had the church teach us things that weren’t necessarily true. And then when people read something else, whether it’s necessarily true or not, all they have to compare it to is the false narrative of the church. And so they can fall pretty hard. But I will say the anti Joseph books and papers, things like Grant Palmer and the ce S letter and others I think are even more guilty and far worse than just the historical narratives that we’ve been that than what the historians have done. They present a collection of just the worst gossip, the most hateful people could come up with as if it is true and as if it presents the comprehensive picture of this man again, completely ignoring what they don’t like and running with anything salacious or negative as if it doesn’t need to be questioned or investigated at all. So that it’s been a really interesting experience to um get into the, the sources for all of these claims. And I have concerns with a lot of them. I think we all need to do a lot better and be more responsible in our research before we assume we know what we think we know a little knowledge is a dangerous thing. So I do realize that there are many very highly respected professional historians and I am not one of them. I’m not a professional historian. I do hope I’m gay some amount of respect, but I’m definitely not degreed or professional, but and while so much of their work is just fantastic and extremely helpful as I have gone through, I have found portions of it, especially on this topic. And, um, that have concerned me as I’ve looked at this, the sources that they rely on and I’ve seen the sources that they omit, I’ve been very surprised by that. I think we need to do better. Multiple historians claim to have read the prices, books, but I don’t see them include the prices sources in their narratives or cite them in their books and in their papers, they will cite progressive RLDS or community of Christ historians. One example I talked about in the fourth episode on the temple, but they completely ignore the massive research the prices have done for multiple decades. If historians either in the church or out want to settle this, then actually refute the don’t just keep claiming the prices, books have been debunked, actually debunk them go through them and show why their evidence and sources are not valid. But um so I’m all of that to say that we can’t just ignore the evidence in the documents or ignore parts of the documents that we don’t like. For example, this $10,000 on this deed. There are so many other examples I could share, but it’s just one of the many things that will go over in this episode and and there is of responsibility to deal with what the documents actually say so. Ok, big sidetrack. Now back to the lot to Emma. I mean, the deed to Emma for all of the unencumbered lots. So we also need to consider that this was 1843. There were still thousands of people moving into Nauvoo constantly. But despite searching thoroughly, I have not found one transaction of Emma selling a single one of these lots to any. There are many deeds from Emma after Joseph’s death, which we will go into. She actually sold a lot of lots for a lot of land. Just never any um, land on this deed either during or after Joseph’s life. So what is going on here? How could Emma own all of these lots yet? Never sell one. How could that provide her any sort of benefit? So let me read a little bit more about Nauvoo as well about on the question of her just having these deeds and holding them all of the unencumbered lots. Um I’m quoting from the um BYU studies. How large was the population of Nauvoo? Data indicates that the population of Nauvoo grew from 100 to in 1839 to about 4000 in 1842 and rose to about 12,000 in 1844 the flats were soon covered. Oh, this is from the community of Christ explore Nauvoo site. The flats were soon covered with 1200 log cabins, 300 to 500 timber frame homes and 200 to 300 brick houses. Nauvoo would grow to over 11,000 at its height in 1844 2nd in size only to Chicago in 18 forties, Illinois, as I believe it was the fastest growing city in America. Right. So how does it make sense that Emma would own and hold every unencumbered lot in Nauvoo and never sell one. If this was supposed to be a financial benefit to her, how would she recoup the $10,000 she had paid for the land without ever selling any? And again, if this was just a just a free deed to mollify her, why does it include the $10,000 price tag? And even still if she didn’t sell any of these lots, how would they benefit her or provide security to her and why and why would they not be needed by all of the people moving in? These are genuine questions and I have a lot more of them as we go forward. So someone might be thinking that the way to make sense of this deed is that Joseph was just somehow fin finagling land and money to try to avoid debtors and deal with the investigation prompted by his attempted bankruptcy and Bennett’s accusations. And while I don’t think that’s the answer, I do think it is far more a far more likely explanation for this deed than that Joseph was appeasing Emma, the explanation, this explanation that it’s that he’s finagling money, at least takes into consideration the evidence and situation. But if you were inclined to say that that this is what Joseph was doing, he was finagling money and doing some kind of hustling to avoid debtors, please recognize and acknowledge that it doesn’t align with William Clayton’s journal and the polygamy narrative. So if you make that argument, you are conceding the fact that Clayton’s journal is inaccurate about this deed, this deed that he wrote that he told us about. And at the very least, his journal should be considered highly suspect on the entire topic and so on a topic of appeasing Emma, can we also just take a moment to acknowledge that from everything we know about Emma, financial gain was absolutely not her top priority. I don’t even know if it was in her list of top priorities like so many other matriarchs, especially the scripture examples we’ve talked about. She repeatedly very willingly sacrificed wealth and comfort because of her faith, including leaving the wealth and comfort of her parents’ home to move into the crowded tiny little Smith family home with her in laws when she was newly married, then facing repeated literal homelessness throughout her life all the while without complaint or loss of faith with everything we know about her. It is quite a claim to try to paint her as this greedy, selfish wife wanting to make sure she had all of the land so that none, none of the other supposed wives would have any and to claim that she could be bought off by her own cheating husband as the polygamy narrative paints him. And for those who want to say he wasn’t cheating, he was practicing polygamy from her perspective, he was cheating, no questions asked. Right or anything else he would do. How could she be bought off by property if this was really the story that is not Emma’s character from anything we know about her. According to Brigham, young, Emma would have been much better off financially if she had agreed to marry him. Right. There wouldn’t have been a, he said there wouldn’t be a single thing he would have refused to do for her if she had only been willing to be a righteous wom woman, which according to Brigham meant falling in line with the new order of things, but Emma couldn’t be bought off by Brigham or anybody else and she wouldn’t be, have been bought off by Joseph either if he were truly doing what he, what he is accused of by both the church and his worst detractors. I think it is very likely and very understandable that she didn’t want to be saddled with the mountains of debt that were left to her. But I hope people will think twice about assuming again, with no evidence other than Clayton’s suspect and still not yet released journal that she was threatening Joseph with divorce and only willing to be satisfied by being deeded property. That is not who Emma was. And so we have a lot more to get into. But I will just hint that the more I looked into this, the question that started coming to the forefront has been, did Emma even know about this deed? Did she have any idea that all of these properties had been deeded to her? I know that might sound crazy right now, but it’s my best explanation at this point and I will show you why I’m asking this question. So I have spent countless hours in all the books of deeds, though, all the books that I covered in part one just trying to figure out as much as I possibly could about it. That’s why I laid it all out for you. And then I’ve been trying to make sense of the specifics. I would need to spend countless more hours tracking each of these lots in, um, included in not only Emma’s, um, July 12th, 1843 deed, but many other deeds to figure out what is going on in, really try to get to the bottom of it, but I have to admit financial documents are not my favorite pursuit nor my strong suit. And I’m really hoping somebody who does have a good sense for finances and business and real estate and legal legal issues. Someone with that kind of brain will want to pick up this research and try to figure it out more than I have. Um But in the research that I did do, I found some extremely interesting things. So let me show you this. I found this deed listed in Susan Easton Black’s collection that’s dated January 23rd, 1844 that has Joseph as the grantor le leasing a lot to Ebenezer Robinson, that if the June 12th 1843 is valid, he had already deeded to Emma. I don’t know how many more there might be than this, but this one already raises some questions, right? Joseph is leasing the property that he supposedly to Emma. So the Joseph Smith papers, in my opinion, very thoughtlessly explains this away and blows it off with the idea of cover that I talked about again in part one that Lindsay Hanson Park referred to that a married woman’s right to own property wasn’t officially started until 1861. But that is not a sufficient explanation at all. If Joseph intended to just keep all of the property that he was deeding to Emma, and it was very well understood that a deed to a married woman was useless. And me then why would they even fill out the deed? Why would Emma be satisfied by knowing that she was given a meaningless deed? Right? And where is any evidence that either of them knew this from the case? That from what I have read the case that led to the 1861 married women’s property Act. Um, that is where this was challenged and decided in law. The assumption for most people seems to have been that married women could own property and that they could have contracts and deeds in their own name. That’s, and they seem to have been generally upheld. Um, there were deeds to many women married or single throughout this time and we’ll get into that more in part three about the many deeds to women. But in any case, a deed to a woman was a common thing. And so they believed that they were valid until it was challenged in court in the case that led to the official law making sure that that couldn’t happen again. But what was even more troubling was what I found, found out when I started really digging into the into the deeds after Joseph’s death from Susan Easton Black’s compilation of nau deeds. I learned that starting in June 1846 there are many deeds where Emma is selling land to others. On most of these deeds, she alone is the grantor or the seller. A few are from her as guardian of her Children. And starting in 1848 there are several from her and Louis V who? New husband, which, which makes sense since they were married late December 1847. What I found fascinating is that the lots that she sells in these deeds do not line up at all with the lot she supposedly owns based on Clayton’s deed. There is simply no correlation and the fact that all of these other lots are available to sell seems to me to indicate that the deed to Emma and her Children, that Clayton claims to have included all of the unencumbered lots actually didn’t. There are many other lots that are available that she has access to and that she sells. So I tried to figure out the best way to show you this. So this slide includes all of the blocks on Emma’s deed. Emma’s July 12th, 1843 deed. You’ll remember that each block can includes 41 acre lots and I didn’t write the lots out on this because I just wanted to do the shortcut. So I will include the lots when they’re necessary. But no, she doesn’t necessarily have all of the lots on each of these blocks. But if you want to look at this, so you can see here, this is the first deed I found that was written in June 1846. This is an interesting one because she practically gave it to mercy Thompson who you will recall call is Mary Fielding Smith’s sister. So she’s Robert Thompson’s widow who many years later claimed to have been married to Hiram Smith. So anyway, you can see block 149 is not included on Emma’s deed. We’ll go on. Here’s the next one writ. Um, the deed granted written in August of 1847 which can include block 1, 17, 1, 19 1 25 and 140 none of which are included on Emma’s deed. Next we have the one match up, the one correlation we have, this is block 147. Lot number one, lot number three. And Emma’s D actually does include that. So it’s also not that there’s nothing on it. It’s just that there’s this one match and nothing else. We’ll go on to the next one. This includes blocks 101103106 and 108. None of which are included in Emma’s deed. It’s almost strategically perfectly aligned to not match up with her deed. And then we have this next one again, block 109, which might be a match up. I started to think. But this deed that Emma is selling is for lots one and four. And the deed to Emma only include includes lots two and three. You can’t make this up. It’s crazy. This also includes blocks 100 block number 117, 1 21 24 5 and 140. And I think we have one more yet. This, this last deed that I found has block number two, number 579 1012 and block number three. So you can see that it is almost perfectly out of alignment except for the one overlap. And so anyway, that’s, that’s enough for now. Those are the ones that I was able to find and I tried to be as comprehensive as I could. So hopefully that makes it pretty clear that whatever was going on with this deed of Emmas, it wasn’t giving her land that she could use for her security going forward in case something happened to Joseph or in case he gave land to his other wives or in case, um, she was divorced. Right. So that makes us ask hopefully what is going on here? How does any of this make sense that none of them lined up with all of the lots that she sold? So I again want to ask, where is any evidence that Emma or any of her Children actually owned these lots? Or at least that she knew that she had been deeded these lots and that that arrangement had been made, that Clayton says that she tearfully cried together with Joseph. I guess that came the day after depending on if this is the July 12th deed or the deed for over 60 lots, right? Because it fits both descriptions. So anyway, we’re just barely getting started. I haven’t even gotten to the good things yet. It keeps getting more and more troubling as we keep like looking. So the Joseph Smith papers calls this original deed to Emma a draft, which is really weird because why would a deed have a draft? There’s only one example, one other example of a deed that’s called the draft that I found, even though I did find a few other deeds that weren’t, well, I’m giving, I’m, I’m giving something away, but I did find a few deeds that either were not finished. I found one that wasn’t finished and a few that weren’t signed also, none of them were recorded anywhere because, well, we’ll get to that deeds are not valid unless they’re signed. But, um, calling this a draft would imply that there’s a finalized copy somewhere, right? If this was the rough draft, where’s the final draft? But no finalized version exists. Um At least none that we have any access to. And it would be the only case of Clayton making a draft for a deed that he then goes on to redo his work and make a final copy. We don’t have a single example of that. And the deed that we have looks exactly, let me see if I can find it again. Looks exactly like a finalized copy. So I guess this is back to the um list of deeds. I’ll have to see if I can find there. It is. Yep, it looks exactly like a finalized copy. If you look at it, it looks just like the original deeds. And so it would be like, like how would he write out this entire deed and then start over again? And if he didn’t do it on the same day, it would have to be dated the day that he did it because we do have an example of him redoing a deed and he had to date it the day that he did it the second time, right? That how it worked. And so it would, this, this is, would be really, really weird that he made a second deed of this dated the same day and that you, you know, like, like how would that work? And also can I point out if someone wants to claim that there’s a finalized copy somewhere? It would be inexplicably weird to preserve a draft but not the final copy. Can someone make sense of that? For me? I think at this point, it’s pretty safe to assume that there very likely was never any other draft of this deed. This is it the only reason that we would have to think there would be is because the Joseph Smith papers chose to call this a draft. And so I would think that, you know, so they should have the obligation to prove to us why this is just a draft, why they call it that? So what’s going on? Why do they call it a draft? Well, I think we can see one of the reasons they call it a draft by looking at the second page. So what I’ve highlighted right there, do you notice anything about this deed compared to all of the others that we’ve looked at this deed is not signed, there is no signature, no witness. No seal, nothing to make it um legitimate. Not only was it not signed, it was not even finished. If we zoom in. You can see that the original Inc stops on the second to last line after 160 after a lot, 160. And then what looks like graphite or pencil starts on the bottom line saying together with all et cetera and then just stops. Right. So it’s like it was, it was started but not finished. And someone came back to it with a different writing utensil to finish it and then decided to just to just give it up. So I cannot stress enough what a big deal this is in the many, many original deeds I have looked up. Um I have looked at, I have yet to find what? Well, I have found, I said one other example of a deed that wasn’t finished and it wasn’t recorded anywhere, right? So this is the other example I found, this is a February 10th, 1844. Remember that date we’re gonna get to that date. This is a deed written on that day by William Clayton and at least like Emma’s, he started to write it that um is from Joseph Smith giving his uncle John Smith, all of his Lee County Iowa property. So all of his property in Iowa for a dollar and I couldn’t find any record of this deed being completed or registered anywhere which is exactly what you would expect from an unfinished deed that it wouldn’t be considered valid and would not be recorded. So, maybe someone could do the work to see if that property, if there’s a way to track if that property was ever owned by John Smith, but it’s not recorded anywhere. So, I don’t know how else you would find that out. So, um, more interesting to me is that this deed that was not finished, doesn’t say draft on the Joseph Smith papers. And, and so why not? Right? Maybe because it wasn’t ever recorded anywhere. So we don’t need to pretend or imagine that there was ever a finished version of it. That’s at least that’s my guess. Um Although this explanation doesn’t hold up great either as we’ll see going forward. Um, for, for those who are already jumping ahead of me and remembering about Hiram’s deed was never recorded anywhere, even though it was finished, we’re, we’re gonna get to that. So, what I have certainly never seen other than in the case of Emma’s one unfinished deed is any other unfinished deed that was neither finished nor signed, being recorded and everywhere being considered valid and was, and being entered into both cities and county records as Emma’s was. So, let’s see what else we have to show you this. Oh, ok. So this is where, um, William Clayton entered Emma’s deed into the Nauvoo deed registry book, right? You’ll remember that from part one. It’s deed number 185 in the Nauvoo Registry of deeds. And when I found this, it was, I found this before I had done nearly as much study as I had done. When I recorded part one. I hoped that maybe this would solve the problem. Maybe this would be the finished version and would include Joseph Smith’s signature and, and we could know that this was a valid deed. So, um that’s what I was really hoping for. And, and that maybe I could see Joseph Smith’s signature was before I had found other deeds. But no, I had to be disappointed because there, there it is, it’s finished in this version. And this is what it says, even though it was never finished in the original, in this version, it goes on to say um in testimony, whereof the said Joseph Smith party of the first part. Hath Hereunto set his hand and seal the day of the year above written Joseph Smith and then the seal as sole trustee and trust for the church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints signed, sealed and delivered in the presence of William Clayton. And William goes on to sign it. So I thought, oh, maybe it’s signed, maybe that’s Joseph’s signature. But guess what? Nope, that’s not Joseph’s signature. This deed was not signed at all. That is William Clayton’s writing. William Clayton who was also he, he served under Joseph as the city recorder, he wrote the deed and he entered his own unfinished deed into his registry without it ever being finished or signed. So, if anyone wants to doubt here, I will show you. These are several examples of Joseph Smith’s signature that I gathered from the many deeds I found for part one and a few that I’ve found since then. So as long as these are valid and not forged, which, you know, everything’s up for grabs now, but you can see Joseph Smith’s signature repeatedly and Emma Smith’s signature a couple of times. So we have a lot of examples of Joseph’s signature. So now let’s compare that to the signature. Oh, yep, write that down there, I get it away. So now let’s compare that down in the corner to the signature that I think was written by William Clayton. So the best way to do that is to go ahead and look at every other time Joseph Smith is written in this deed that was recorded in Nauvoo, right? The bottom one is supposed to be Joseph Smith’s signature. All of the others are several other times that Joseph Smith was written in this deed. There were other times as well, but those referred to Joseph Smith Junior, who by that, they mean Joseph Smith the third, they mean Joseph Smith Sons. These are just the ones referring to the actual Joseph Smith Junior, the prophet Joseph Smith, right? So this was absolutely not signed by Joseph Smith in the Nauvoo record. This is an extremely big deal. I, I think we can fairly say this deed was never signed and deeds are only valid and in effect when they are signed, if they are not signed, they, they’re meaningless. That is the very point of contracts they need to be signed, be effective. So let me show you one example of this. Even when people were ill, illiterate, they had to make their mark on their deeds. These are three indentured servitude papers. I was able to find for illiterate people who were sold to be indentured. And you can see that on every single one of them, they had to make their mark. So even if people were illiterate, they had to make their mark which served as their signature in order for a contract or a deed to be valid. So contracts and deeds need to be signed in order to be executed and there is simply no getting around this. So again, if somebody has an explanation, I am willing to hear it but deeds need to be signed. So the fact that this deed was never signed and in fact, never even finished should r these huge red flags. It should call into question many things about William Clayton and his trustworthiness in many regards, both in his journal. Absolutely, but also in his deeds. And so as I said, let me hear what the explanations are. I’m very open to them. In fact, I love them because then we can learn more. Maybe there’s something I’m missing or something. I don’t know yet. So, if someone knows something, I don’t know. Awesome. Let’s keep learning. So, um, ok, I think an interesting thing to know is that this is one of the very few deeds, this deed to Emma. It’s one of the very few deeds that was recorded in every possible way that we have the original and the Nauvoo um registry and the Carthage Registry that was recorded in all of those. And also it’s all over the Trustees Book of Land Deeds, which you’ll remember is another private project by William Clayton, right? He created the Trustees Land Book B, which was his very own when he didn’t want to use book A anymore that others used. And you can see, I just grabbed a couple of pages. This is three pages where it’s says Emma Smith and others. And you can see, I don’t know it doesn’t come through very well in the slide, but the date is kind of crossed out and fudged over. It says July 12th 43. And here are just line after line on page after page of those lots on her deed, her supposed deed being recorded in William Clayton’s very own um book. So, so it it’s this deed is, in fact, is in indeed better documented than any other deed. But every piece of the documentation is is William Clayton. I guess we’ll have to see about the Carthage one. We’re going to come to that later. So, so far, I think that this looks pretty damning, but we’re not even close to finished yet. We have another huge thing to discuss. And as I said, said before, there were so many issues here. It was almost impossible to know how, how to even talk about them. But this one has been, this is a massive one. So I hope that you have been able to stay with me so far and you’re still here because this thing I think blows the whole other the all, all of it out of the water. So here it is. Some of you already know this is Hiram’s deed, this deed to Hiram. Can you see the date it’s written to Hiram de Hiram Smith the 12th of July 1843 the exact same day that the deed was written to Emma that William Clayton talked about in his journal. Right? And I, again, I really have to sincerely thank Bill Real for, for coming up with this line of reasoning because if it hadn’t been for him proposing deeds as evidence of Joseph’s polygamy, I wouldn’t have gone digging and I wouldn’t have found this. And if I had somehow come across that, I might not have recognized the significance of it. And so I’ve talked about this a bit and some of you probably have some familiarity with it, but we need to seriously dig into it to figure out why it’s such a big deal. So, first of all, remember William Clayton’s journal as I talked about, right? That on July 12th, 1843 Emma was much troubled and presumably because the relationship was so in trouble. Um, Joseph told Clayton to deed Emma all of the other uncovered lots, which explains Emma’s deed, right? Her never finished, never signed deed. So what Clayton completely fails to mention in this suspect journal entry is that he wrote out another deed the exact same day to Hiram and let’s look at this deed. So it has some very interesting details. I wasn’t careful enough in another discussion I had where I said that they were completely identical. So I want to clarify that here since I’ve had time to look into it a lot more since then, what is identical about them is they are written on the exact same date for the exact same price, $10,000 and with almost the exact same lots. So here’s where I need to clarify the difference between them, unlike Emma’s deed, Hiram with a paragraph describing a tract of land that hadn’t yet been divided into lots. There are several other deeds with sim similar wording, including the deed from Emma and Joseph that to their Children that they recorded March 1840 March in 1842 we’ll hopefully get to that. But after that paragraph of that. Um, not yet separated out land. It is identical to Emma’s other than emitting 15 lots that are included in Emma’s. But other than that, it includes the exact same lots. So this exact day, July 12th, 1843 Revelation Day, right, in addition to everything else, Clayton claims happened that day, he also wrote out this identical deed to Hyrum with pretty much the exact same lots he claimed Joseph told him to deed to Emma. This does not make sense. But what it absolutely should do is call all of Clayton’s claims about this period into question. We should at the very least be able to agree that he is absolutely not telling the full story and that his claims about the deed to Emma are not legitimate. If we accept Clayton’s claim that the deed to Emma is about polygamy, then how do we explain the deed to Hiram? Was he also threatening to divorce Joseph? And how do we explain the deeds being written for the exact same property? And how do we explain Clayton talking about like giving us the reason for the deed to Emma but completely ignoring, neglecting the deed to Hiram and not saying anything about it. I really hope people will take this deed and the questions it raises very seriously. Uh I would say isn’t the most likely answer that Clayton was up to something and that at least this portion of his journal, this this little separate journal he kept during this Nauvoo period is a later creation where he was trying to paint the narrative that he thought would be most useful. Ok. But there’s still more to look at. Despite the huge similarities between these two deeds, there is one big difference. And that is that unlike Emma’s Hira’s Hiram’s deed was actually finished, you can see that down at the bottom it was completed and it was sealed. So it actually seemed to me that this should be considered the more legitimate deed, right? Emma’s wasn’t even finished. Hiram’s was finished and sealed, but it still wasn’t signed. So it still seems suspect however, you know, it should be considered more legitimate since it finished and sealed. But what is even more suspicious of this finished but unsigned deed deed. If we look on the second page, you can see I’ve zoomed in on the second page of it and you can see all the times at this, uh, at, um, on the second page when it says Hiram it’s crossed out with Emma written in. Can you see those couple of occasions where that happens? What in the world is going on? Right. It seems to be that same graphite that was used to continue Emma’s unfinished deed. So it looks to me like Clayton started to go back to finish Emma’s deed, but then, ah, forget it and just use the back of Hiram’s instead maybe where he, when he registered in the city. After all, he was his own recorder. So it only had to be good enough for him. That’s what this looks like to me again. I am open to other ideas. All I think is we need to take this, this evidence and treat it seriously. We need to actually know what it is and look at it and consider in our models. So if anyone has a better explanation than the one I’ve come up with, please share it with me. But for now, here’s the situation. Well, not even for now, here is the situation. Clayton never finished writing Emma’s deed, but he did record it in the Nauvoo City Registry of Deeds and he included it all over the trustee’s book of Book of Land Deeds and he finished Hiram’s deed, but it was not recorded anywhere. So remember that Clayton, he was the recorder, these were his record books, books and I haven’t seen any, any evidence that anyone had oversight over him. He was in charge of all of this alone. He, this was his project. And so not only did all of this happen that Emma’s deed was recorded in Nauvoo and in the trustee’s land book, somebody actually took it to Carthage to make sure it was recorded in the Hancock County Registry of Deeds. The main version that everybody pulls up when they look at it. And at the same time, Hiram’s deed, which in fact was finished was never recorded anywhere. Clayton didn’t record it in the novo registry of deeds. He didn’t include it in the trustee’s book of Land deeds and he never took it to Carthage to have it registered. So, in fact, from everything I have seen, it seems to me that a high deed was pretty much hidden away. It wasn’t written anywhere in church history, which is honestly just par for the course for erasing Hiram from church history and it doesn’t show up anywhere in records or narratives. The Joseph Smith papers doesn’t talk about it anywhere, doesn’t link to it anywhere has gives us no information about it. Susan Easton Black didn’t even have access to it when, when her team compiled all the Nauvoo deeds that they could find. I just realized this morning that they did have access to some other unsigned and unrecorded deeds. So I need to look into those more. They weren’t recorded anywhere. So they did have a few unsigned deeds just not Hiram. And while the deed to Emma is included all over, like I said in all of the introductions and the narratives and the footnotes of the Joseph Smith paper, the deed to Hiram is disappeared. It’s not included anywhere. So I’m thrilled beyond what I can tell you that they did at least include it in the Joseph Smith papers so that I could happen upon it. And I will say by complete guidance from the Lord, I, I can’t believe I found this. In fact, I want to share a funny story I posted about this. I was, I think this has been really hard. These episodes, they have been really difficult. And um and I was driving after dropping my kids off and just begging the Lord, please, please please help me be able to do this and be able to help me to find what I need. And all of a sudden the answer came so quickly and so clearly and made me burst out laughing. I just, the Lord just said, what do you think I’ve been doing? Which was so true. Like I have been led to so many things all along, I guess I just wanted it to be even more help, but I have been very aware about how much help I have. Um I think all of us doing this work have been receiving a lot of people talk about how much help they get when they’re doing family history work. Well, I guess there’s a lot of help to be had for people who want to engage in this historical work as well. So anyway, that’s um I’m glad that they included, included it in um the Joseph Smith papers. But this was interesting when I called Whitney Horning about this and she started to look into it. She realized that the Joseph Smith Papers doesn’t include a file, file number for it in the church history library catalog, which they usually do. They usually tell you where it’s located so you can go find it. It just says quote. 00, this is what Whitney wrote to me rather, it simply says Joseph Smith collections, church history library, which is not helpful. So, in her words, she had to just go on an expedition to find it, which miraculously she did, but it doesn’t come up in any searches. I tried. So I’m amazed that she was able to find it at all and I’ll show you where she did. She found it in a file labeled Joseph Smith Deeds that contains also the original draft to Emma. I probably get a draft because that’s what they call it. But the original version to Emma and Hiram, it’s a big, huge, it’s a big file. 82 pages that includes several deeds. Almost all of these. I, I wanted to scroll a little more slowly. So you could see. Well, this first deed is fascinating. This is the 1829 deed from Isaac Hale to Joseph Smith. And it includes some other deeds which are mostly included in church history. They’re not forgotten like the original to Emma. But as I’m going through them, you can see that they are all signed, right? Deeds need to be signed to be valid. So clear down on page 65 is the original deed. I think the first one is Emma’s unfinished deed. Oh, no, the first one, this is the deed to Hiram, the only place that’s included in the church history library in this blank folder without a specific t file telling us what’s in it. And then right after is the original deed to Emma, the unfinished one. And those are the only versions we have carefully preserved, tucked away, not included anywhere else where you would ever find them. I thought that was all absolutely fascinating. So, ok, let’s go on and look at a little bit more. Um, this deed, the other July 12th, 1843 deed matters immensely because we cannot continue to claim, we understand the July 12th, 1843 deed to Emma and her Children and claim that it verifies Clayton’s journal and vice versa when we ignore the deed to Hyrum written by Clayton the exact same day. So after thinking a lot about this and trying to figure out what in the world was going on and seeing that Hiram’s deed was finished, but Emma’s wasn’t. I had a thought that seemed plausible. I wondered if Hiram’s deed may have actually been legitimate. I remembered that on July 16th, 1843 just four days after this deed was written, Joseph delivered a sermon where he said Hyrum was now the prophet and that the people should look to him at least according to the records that we have. So maybe this deed that was recorded four days before this sermon was made in preparation for Hiram to take over the affairs of the city. I actually got pretty excited about this theory. I thought it was a good one, but as I thought more about it and looked into it, I didn’t see any evidence to support it. I would think that if this is what Joseph was doing, Hiram would most likely have been made the trustee in trust, or at least an assistant trustee in trust. But that didn’t happen. I also couldn’t find any records of any increase of deeds um, to, or from Hiram and I couldn’t find Hiram ever. Um, you selling any church deeds, right? Writing any, anything as the trusty and trust, I couldn’t find anything about Hiram using or selling any of these lots more than I could of Emma. In fact, there are way fewer deeds from Hiram because he died when Joseph did and most of the deeds that I found from Emma were for after they had died. Also, as I dug more, that was when I realized how essential it is that deeds are signed and thus how suspicious and problematic it is that this deed too was never signed. So, although it was an intriguing idea and it kind of hurt me to let go of it, I couldn’t support it. So, believe me, I understand what it feels like to be disappointed in your theories falling through. It’s, um, you know, it’s something we all have to deal with. I’ve actually had to do it several times in the deeds episodes. It’s just not good to get emotionally attached to bad theories and keep pushing bad theories. And I wish we could all just recognize this and acknowledge it. One of the big problems that people have with the church is that they feel like the church lied to them and hid things and that the church kept claiming things were true when the evidence showed that things were not true, right? A lot of Post Mormons, it, one of their issues with the church is that they feel like the church pushes false narratives. And yet it’s really interesting to see the same po post Mormons not learning from the mistakes of the church. Right? If, if you, you learn more and you see more and you realize that your past narrative isn’t true, the best policy is to say, oh, I used to think that was true because it made sense on all based on all of the evidence I have seen, but now I’ve seen more evidence. So I now know that there’s a different narrative I should, I should hold to. That’s the way to get through this and it happens to all of us. We all have to do it. It’s OK. The thing that’s not OK is continuing to push a bad narrative just because you’re emotionally attached to it or just because it serves the bigger ideology you need to hang on to. It’s very ironic and hypocritical to accuse the church of doing that, but then to continue to do it yourself. So I hope that people can realize that. Ok, so we have two very suspicious deeds both written by William Clayton, supposedly on the same day, one never finished and neither one ever signed. And honestly, no evidence anywhere that Joseph Emma or Hyrum knew anything about them. But William Clayton works one of them into his journal to serve his narrative. And fortunately he doesn’t make his story line up very well. Claiming the deed was written on the 12th. But the careful conversation where they worked out the agreement to happen the next day followed by another deed, another deed with over 60 lots. On the 15th, the problems in this are so apparent that the best historians could do is to suddenly try to merge them all together. We talked about that in part one and hope nobody looks too closely which apparently most people have been content not to do. But on top of that Hiram’s deed blows this entire thing out of the water. So again, let me know your ideas. What am I missing? I don’t know if Joseph told Clayton to write either of these deeds. I, I don’t know that for sure. But even if he did my guess is that he didn’t. But even if he did, I believe this proves that Clayton was at the very least a massive prevaricator, prevaricator who intentionally crafted at least some entries of his Nuvo era journal, which he wrote after the fact to try to paint a certain narrative. And I said that it might be possible that Joseph told him to write these deeds as we go forward. I, I think I’ve changed my mind on that. As I, since I, since I did this part of the presentation, I don’t think that that’s a very likely possibility at all as we’ll see going forward. So I do hope at the very least we can agree that it is crucial to be able to see these journals, these William Clayton journals. It is mind boggling that after 100 80 years, assuming they were written when Clayton claimed they were, the church has still never released them. It is also mind boggling that people who question the veracity of these still to be released. Journals are are called conspiracy theorists, right? They won’t let us see the information we’re saying we don’t trust the information, let us see the information. And so we’re conspiracy theorists. That’s insane, right? And we’re mocked, I mean for saying that it’s essential that we’d be able to see the journals before people have firm conclusions. The irony is again stunning that the Post Mormons and anti Mormons, the ones again, always accusing the church of lying and hiding things are not joining us in saying we need access to these journals, right? The church is currently not releasing the journals. So in other words, hiding things. Why aren’t, why aren’t the Post Mormons on our side calling for these journals to be to be released? It’s right up their alley. Wouldn’t this be a huge issue to take up? The church is still hiding things is what they could say. I cannot understand why you’re not jumping on the bandwagon of recognizing what a huge deal it is that these journals aren’t released. The church told us they were going to release them in 2017. What’s that been? How many years ago? They’re still not released? And the most recent word that I’ve seen on it during the Joseph Smith papers um is that we shouldn’t hold our breath. So every single thing that Post Mormons want to say the church lied about would mean there was a conspiracy, right? There were people in the church who they claim knew different information but didn’t tell the truth about it, right? Isn’t that exactly what’s happening right now? So how does it make any sense at all to call those of us looking into this conspiracy theorists? Why aren’t you more interested in this huge topic where it is still happening? I want to say, please join us in calling for the church to please release the William Clayton Diaries. And if they don’t please be more understanding of why they shouldn’t just be believed and taken as a um authoritative when we can’t even see them. OK. Diatribe over getting back to the topic. There are still two more big issues that we need to discuss first is the issue of unencumbered lots. So let’s go back again to William Clinton’s journal where he says that Joseph told him to deed all of the unencumbered lots to Emma. And people using this deed seem to just automatically assume without doing any homework on it that this deed is, in fact, for all of the unencumbered lots. So I, I’ll play these clips for you again.

[1:03:20] Bill Reel: 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. As you can easily see Emma Smith got all of the un unencumbered lots.

[1:03:37] Don Bradley: Joseph instructs Clayton to deed most of his lots that he owns his real estate in the city of Nauvoo to Emma and ha his half interest in the steamboat, the made of Iowa in this deed, Joseph deeds, Emma exactly the things that Clayton’s journal for that day says he instructed Clayton to deed to Emma.

[1:04:02] Michelle: Another valuable lesson for us all. I get it. It’s a long deed. It tells the story they want and expect to be told. So they don’t think to look deeper. It really does make sense, right? Why would you ask basic questions? Like what is an unencumbered lot or why would Joseph specify only these for this deed? If you weren’t looking at these sources, like, critically not testing them. That’s why I think it’s really good to have people on all sides of the issue involved in the discussions because we all help each other see more. I think that’s absolutely necessary. So I have to confess this one word threw me for a giant loop after I thought I had already prepared most of this episode, I realized I had been so assuming like so many others seem to do that this, that unencumbered lot just basically meant all of the available lots, right? All of the lots that had hadn’t already been purchased. So basically all the lots that Joseph had the ability to deed to anybody. That’s what I thought that this meant based on everything they say in all of these episodes, Bill Real RFM. Don Bradley seemed to be under the same misimpression. They are interpreting this to mean all available lots, all the lots that can be deeded. So here’s just one more example from RFM.

[1:05:20] RFM: If you’re in it, this cannot be a secret to her that Joseph Smith is deeding lots to his plural wives. And I can see, not only does she want to make sure that she is taken care of in the event of a divorce over this issue. But I can see her also trying to circumvent Joseph Smith from giving any more lots away to plural wives by having all the rest of the unencumbered lots given to her.

[1:05:46] Michelle: So with, uh, with this understanding which these guys seem to have had this understanding that the unencumbered lots meant all of the lots in Nauvoo. We should expect that Emma’s deed is for pretty much is pretty much for every available lot in Nauvoo. But if we look into the sources, that is very, very far from what we find. So a couple of ways to try to quickly show you this first, we can compare the list of lots and Josephs and Emma’s 18 October 5th, 1841 deed. That should be right here to the um list that’s in the July tw 12th, 1843 deed. This gets confusing, right? This is that deed I talked about that Joseph and Emma as individuals wrote to Joseph as trustee in trust, giving him 239 lots for the price of $1 right? And this is that same deed recorded in Carthage on April 18th, 1842. So 239 lots just on this one deed, there were many additional lots as well because of the rest of the land that Joseph had purchased or been deeded for $1 plus love and goodwill from the various members holding property for the church. But even ignoring all of those deeds based just on this one deed based on this narrative, we would expect to at least see Joseph return to Emma the property she had, she had consented to deed to the church just two years earlier. Right. Are you with me, Joseph? And Emma deeded this property to Joseph as trustee and trust Joseph deeded back the, um, deed to Emma to mollify her? Shouldn’t we expect him to at least give whatever lots here hadn’t been sold? That’s not the case. So I confess I haven’t gone through and tracked each of these 239 individual lots to see exactly which lots were deeded to somebody else which were sold. Um Which ones were still in Joseph Smith’s name. If anybody wants to do that work, please do and let me know what you discover. I’m just a little too burned out at this point, but I did find a shortcut which communicated a lot of the same information in a very helpful way. So let me go ahead and show you this. This is from our buddy William Clayton’s Trustees Land book B, right? The one that he made to do himself. And in it, he drew several maps where he just kind of puts in a graphic form whose land is whose right? So you can see if, if you can see here down in this corner, this is um deed to Emma Smith 24 acres, right? That’s not the one that I wanted to show you right now right now what I want to show you are these 20, let’s see if I can share this tab. Instead I’m zooming in on this page that is, um, the Gallant purchase. Right? And it’s kind of tricky to see it. But hopefully you can see here what I’m trying to point to. He’s initialed, he’s written who owns various, um, who owns these various lots. And so what I find interesting is the lots that he does list as being given to Emma. Remember he’s already included all of them in the, um book that I showed you those pages and pages. Nothing listed to Hyrum. Remember that? But it’s also interesting to see how many are not written to Emma. So in this list of lots, just on this one page, I believe there’s something like 24 lots that he’s written that belong to Emma Smith. But there’s, there are over 20 that don’t that are empty that don’t have anybody on them. And it’s even more apparent on this page. This is another section of Nauvoo from another purchase. Um Let me see if I can slide that over and if I can zoom in on this, you can see that Emma Smith has written on several of these, right? But many more of them are left blank and empty all of these on the top. So that’s just a quick, easy way to show you that that deed absolutely did not include all of the available lots. So that leads us back to asking yet again, what does it mean that it’s all of the unencumbered lots if it doesn’t mean all of the available lots. So, and I, like I said, that wasn’t comprehensive but it was a pretty good demonstration of what was really going on there. So, um, so again, the claim, like RF MS claim that, um, this, this makes sense because Emma wanted to make sure that Joseph couldn’t give lots to any other wives. That’s clearly not the case. There were many of other, other lots available. Emma’s deed was actually only for nine full blocks which had four lots each plus 32 additional lots. And when you saw how many lots there were, how many blocks there were, you could see that it wasn’t even close to all of the available lots. But as I said, this analysis was all based on the mistaken notion that unencumbered lots meant all available lots. And luckily I said something about it to my husband before recording this episode and he be a finance guy with experience in real estate told me that I was interpreting that word wrong. He explained that unencumbered, an unencumbered lot is actually a lot that doesn’t, that is owned free and clear, that doesn’t have a mortgage or a lien against it. Right. So someone can give it to somebody else and no one else can come back and say no, actually we own that or, or we have a stock in that. Right. That’s what it means to be an unencumbered lot. And so, huh, this threw me for a loop because this is part of why this episode has taken me almost a week longer than I wanted it to. I had to go back to the drawing board on a lot of this, but I did look it up and found that my husband was exa in fact. Exactly. Right. In the 1828 Webster’s dictionary tells us that one of the definitions of his of encumbered is loaded with debt. But there’s an even more interesting way to find this out. You’ll remember that I talked about the steamboat Nauvoo in episode one. Right. And that’s the one that Joseph signed just as a cosigner, but that immediately crashed. And that led to him being put under investigation by, um, well, it led to all of these problems with Butterfield coming out and him being blocked in his, um, attempt to declare bankruptcy. So they actually had sold the n the steamboat Nauvoo to the streets who never paid for it. And so Joseph and the others sued to try to collect, but the streets countersued because of the crash. So it’s a lot to explain. That’s just what you need to know, to understand this one document. It’s not worth going into more than that, but this is from their countersuit. And it’s a really good example of using the word encumbered, spelled, encumbered encumbrance and unencumbered, spelled with either an E or an I. There’s a lot of variation in the spelling. So you can see I’ve underlined and I’ll just tell you really quickly on the first page. They said that represented said steamboat to be free from all encumbrances and to be in good credit and repute. Then down at the bottom said steamboat was encumbered to a large amount to wit the sum of $4000 for damages. Then the second page said boats were encumbered in a certain other large sum of money to wit, in the sum of $150 as it goes on from there. But I just wanted you to really understand that we can define the word unencumbered lot specifically, it has a specific definition that we should recognize and care about. And so, um, it goes on further from, oh, that this goes on there, but it, this getting into this word of encumbered opened another huge can of worms. So first, it sent me back to the drawing board to see what this meant and why William Clayton included it in his journal entry. Or if anyone still believes that William Clayton’s journal is trustworthy, then why Joseph Smith said it to him? Why did he specify unencumbered lots? What is this about? There is so much to go into here and I’m not gonna go into most of it, but I’ll just tell you a couple of things to, um, to explain why this is a big issue. First of all I want to sum it up by saying that Joseph Smith owned a grand total of zero unencumbered lots in Nauvoo. He had exactly zero. Joseph didn’t own a single unencumbered lot in Nauvoo or anywhere else as we covered in part one, he was deep in debt. He was in massive debt and seeking relief through bankruptcy. So you’ll recall, this is his list, his schedule of creditors that he was required to write up as part of his attempt to declare bankruptcy. And so I, and then in addition to that, um, he also because, um, Butterfield challenged his bankruptcy and Joseph didn’t show up to the trial because it was in Missouri and he would have been killed. The US government, um, issued a lien against all of Joseph Smith’s property. Everything Joseph owned had a lien on it. So he didn’t have a single unencumbered lot. There are two ways that lots can be encumbered, either with a mortgage or with a lean. Joseph Smith had both. He had both on every single piece of property. So I wanted to try to figure this out like what is going on here, why this word? So I searched the entire Joseph Smith papers for every instance of any version of the word encumbered or unencumbered or encumbrance with either an E or an I and I found a few interesting things. So first of all, this is less important, but it’s kind of fun. I found found nine deeds that included the word encumbrances or some version of it. But interestingly not one of them was written by William Clayton and none of them were written for Joseph Smith. So the very first deed in the nau registry of deeds, along with deeds number six and eight, all from Hyrum and Mary Smith and written by Daniel H Wells, all in April 1840 include this exact language that they have good, right, full power and lawful authority to sell and convey the same and that the above described premises are, are clear and free of all encumbrances. So that was the standard language on though at least those three of Daniel Wells deeds, there are also four deeds to, there are four other deeds, two written for Ethan Kimball and two for Benjamin and Anna Jones, all written by Ebenezer Robinson in May of 1842 that contain this language that the above described premises are free, are clear and free of all encumbrances. So they all say that part of it, there’s only other one very badly done and badly spelled Diy D that Ethan Smith, one of those two above wrote for himself where he said that the premises are free and clear of encumbrances, whatever. And he misspelled many things in that. And then one more deed written by the awful Robert Foster in June of 43. So there are no other deeds anywhere that use that word, which is interesting because the vast majority of deeds were written by William Clayton and he never used that word so clearly, Daniel H Wells and Ebenezer Robinson knew to include that language on their deeds. But William Clayton never did. And so he never even included the word encumbered or unencumbered on the July 12th deed to Emma and her Children, which is specific supposed to be for all of the unencumbered. Lots of which recall there were zero. But if there was ever a time to specify that lots were unencumbered on a deed, you would think it would be that one. So there’s something funny going on there. Right? I think so. I had already searched the Joseph Smith papers and didn’t find any example of William Clayton using or writing any variation of the word encumbered. But out of curiosity, I searched his journal as well and found that in the entire journal we have that’s, that’s been released. We only have two cases of him using the word encumbered or unencumbered. This one time regarding the deed, Joseph supposedly wrote to, had him write to Emma and one other time, two months later in the timeline in September 15th, 1843 and I am more glad that I can tell you that I went down this rabbit hole because you will not believe what I found. So let’s go ahead and look at that journal. It’s right here. I’m just going to read this portion evening President Joseph met me and I returned with him to O Spencer’s to borrow $1400 to clear his farm from an incumbrance laying on it. Which fact Esquire Skinner has ascertained on searching the records. Ok. For anyone reading that entire entry, we’ll get to the stuff about Joseph’s New Law and Lydia in later episodes. It’s going to be a lot of fun. You’re going to like it. Stay tuned, but we’re not going into that right now. So this part of this journal entry led me down an entirely new rabbit hole of endless complexity where I learned more, completely insane game changing facts. One particular mic drop that you are going to want to hear. So first, I’ll just point out that very careful records were kept of money being loaned or borrowed or paid, like even for small amounts of four or $6 I could, I could find, you know, they kept very careful records. I couldn’t find any record anywhere of Joseph Barry, borrowing $1400 from Orson Spencer. That’s what it is, Orson Spencer. This would be the equivalent of $50,000 today, but I couldn’t find a single note bill, proof of the loan promise of repayment. Nothing. What I did find when I started to try to find out who Esq Esquire skinner was and why or how he would discover there was an incumbrance on Joseph’s farm completely blew my mind. So among other things. Onias C Skinner was the special prosecutor against Joseph Smith in Carthage when he was killed a year later. So, are you catching that? He was the special prosecutor? But more than that, he was one of the lawyers representing William Clayton in his lawsuit against Joseph Smith filed July 1843. Yes, you heard that right? William Clayton was suing Joseph Smith. His lawsuit was begun. Either it was filed either July 25th or July 31st or both or documents from both of those days in 1843. In case anyone needs to help help with the timeline. This was just a few weeks after Revelation Day where Clayton was supposedly the scribe that wrote down the the revelation, right? And the two suspicious unfinished and unsigned deeds. So I don’t remember seeing anything about this included anywhere in saints or the gospel topics, essays. This blew me away completely. You can see right here the list of people that is included in at all in um Creighton’s lawsuit and it includes Joseph. So you can read all about it and I will of course, include the link below. There is a ton of documentation for this lawsuit. Tons and tons of it. It’s not in question at all. So here’s just one of many examples. This is part of the proceedings in this lawsuit, right? So this, here’s the part I’ve underlined the separate answer of Joseph Smith, one of the defendants to the bill of William Clayton complainant, the said Joseph Smith now comes for comes and for answer to the bill of the said William Clayton. It goes on from there till Joseph asks to. He explains and asks to be led off from the bill, right? This is incredible. William Clayton was suing Joseph Smith and the documentation for that is is abundant. Anyone? I welcome you to look into it again, please tell me what this means. The Joseph Smith papers explanation about it, had me asking a lot of questions. So this is, these are just two of the things that were in that explanation that really um ra made me raise eyebrows first footnote 10. And when you read this, you’ll see that that where the footnote is. Footnote 10 cites entries from dates in William Clayton’s journal that we don’t have. These aren’t part of whatever was recorded by Andrew E hat and escaped from the BYU office. So the the the two examples are October 10th and October 12th of 1843. So it’s great to know that the Joseph Smith papers, historians are reading these journals. But to my understanding, the purpose of footnotes is to allow the reader to see the sources for themselves, right? So that we can see where they’re getting their information, we can’t see these. So why are they being footnoted when they, when they haven’t been released? That seems like a problem. But then going on it claims Clayton named Joseph Smith as a defendant in the bill, even though Clayton was apparently acting on Joseph Smith’s behalf. What? So again with that word, apparently that basically means we’re going to say this even though we don’t have any good sources to support it. That that’s how it seems to me, we’re going to say that Joseph was basically using William Clayton to sue himself. Right? I asked my husband again, you know, he has a pretty good business brain. I asked him if he could think of any case where it would be beneficial to intentionally have someone sue you who was acting on your behalf, right? I want you on my behalf to sue me. He couldn’t come up with any scenario off the top of his head and I’m I’m sure there are a lot of other people out there who have more experience. Um I, I would love to understand why Joseph Smith was having William Clayton sue him. How was that beneficial to Joseph Smith? I’m all ears. Honestly, I am maybe, I mean, through all of this, there could be things I’m missing. So please bring them to my awareness so that we can keep talking about this. But for now, can we all acknowledge that it is a huge deal that William Clayton was suing Joseph Smith? And if it’s not like a big deal to the narrative, then why isn’t it? Why isn’t this information included anywhere? Why aren’t we told this when we’re being told all the polygamy narrative and what good. But they were right. So going back to this journal entry of Clayton’s, he claims that Esquire Skinner had basically just discovered the incumbrance and Joseph was borrowing money to resolve it on September 15th, 1843. But Clayton’s lawsuit against Joseph was about this very thing. The incumbrance on Joseph’s farm and he started it in July of 1843. What’s more? So, what’s that about? And while I could find no record of Jo Joseph borrowing money from Orson Spencer, what I did did find was this note written and signed by William Clayton on behalf of himself and Joseph Smith, even the Joseph Smith papers admits that that and that this does not look like Joseph Smith’s handwriting signature. And if you read in the Joseph Smith papers, they make it quite obvious that William Clayton was doing this on behalf of Joseph Smith. And so this was during the middle of the lawsuit this that this um note promising to pay the other man, Clayton is suing along with Joseph Smith, $1400 1415 dollars, almost the exact same sum Clayton claimed that Joseph Smith borrowed from Orson Spencer a month earlier. What’s going on here, right? William Clayton is suing the Rhodes family and Joseph Smith and at the same time borrowing money from them. And then at the same time claiming in his journal that Joseph borrowed money from Orson Spencer for this very purpose. So I, I like, I’m at a loss and I wanna say if anyone has a single doubt that Clayton would be perfectly willing to do business on behalf of Joseph Smith even signing his name. There are so many examples. Let me share just this one example right here. So this is interesting. Remember that name Chauncey Robbins Robinson. It’s going Robinson, it’s going to come up again. But this is a promissory note or a mortgage from Joseph Smith to chauncey Robinson for $4000. Let me just read the historical introduction. You could read along with me if you would like to. At the time of this transaction, Jo Smith was at James Taylor’s home in Henderson County, Illinois trying to avoid arrest and extradition to Missouri going forward as one of Joseph Smith’s closest scribes, Clayton assumed many of Joseph Smith’s financial and clerical responsibilities and he seems to have managed the entire October 22nd transaction with Robinson explicitly identifying himself as Joseph Smith’s agent and signing on Joseph Smith behalf. So there we have it right there, right? He did it right here on a deal with Cha chauncey Robinson and that name is going to come up again. So just like um Willard Richards took it upon himself to write Joseph Smith’s journal pretending he was doing it in Joseph Smith’s from Joseph Smith’s own per perspective, right? Writing as if he was Joseph Smith. William Clayton seems to be perfectly willing to do the same thing on for, for Joseph Smith with all of his financial deals and just a couple of quick things about chauncey Robinson that I was able to find. Um he was a mem, he was never a member of the church, but interestingly, he was a member of both the Hancock County and the Nauvoo Masonic Lodges. That’s a big deal. And he seems to have done quite a bit of business with William Clayton and some others, a lot with William Clayton. So he would definitely be an interesting figure to research more about if anyone is wanting a project. Let’s see what we can find out about chauncey Robinson. But this is only one instance of William Clayton acting on his own, supposedly on behalf of Joseph Smith, it’s actually not terribly unique. I’ve seen other examples. So this lawsuit is a huge deal. Please recognize that it completely changes the narrative that we have all just accepted. The picture that William Clayton paints in his journal, that he was basically Joseph’s bestie, his closest confidant, right? I haven’t yet looked into exactly what sources we have other than Clayton’s journal to support the idea of this super close relationship between Clayton and Joseph. Um I do know that James Whitehead testified that Clayton had been caught in some dishonest. Uh Yeah, you think maybe and had been basically demoted from being entrusted with Joseph’s personal records or inside work to more outside work. So we do have that record. So, um if, if I, I would like to know if there are other records that tell us that Joseph and Clayton were extremely close, other than William Clayton’s journal. I think that’s an interesting question. I don’t yet have the answer for it, but how people want to explain this, it is essential to know that the verified historical documents clearly show that William Clayton was, in fact suing Joseph Smith late summer through early fall of 1843 using a lawyer who was clearly one of Joseph’s very determined enemies. OK. So just again, to reemphasize the complexity here, if anyone wants to understate this or say it’s not a big deal or we should be able to understand it. Let me just share one of the central documents from that lawsuit um against Joseph and regarding Joseph’s farm. So this is Joseph’s bond to the family who sold him the land, the family that, that Clayton was suing along with Joseph Smith. And this is the backside of that document. It’s on its side link sideways right now, right? Where among many other things, Joseph, apparently, I’m going to say apparently here because I don’t know that this is a good claim, Joseph apparently deeded or assigned his own farm to William Clayton, not once but twice. So I won’t even try to explain all of this right now. I just want everyone to get a little idea of the level of complexity. What sorting all of this out would mean e even trying to figure out what writing came first and what was written on top of it is huge and complicated and actually really important. So that’s, that’s what we know. These are the documents showing us that William Clayton was suing Joseph Smith regarding Joseph Smith’s own farm and the encumbrance on it. Ok. So I know that this level of complexity can be a major turn off. Believe me, I get it, it turned me off for a long time. So even though you may not understand any of this, that’s not important, the only important thing is to not assume that it doesn’t matter, right? These things are all extremely relevant to the claims being made about Joseph Smith’s deeds without actually understanding anything about his finances and the deeds themselves. And second, assuming that William Clayton’s journal should be accepted without question. And even though it was, it hasn’t been released, we know all we need to know about it and should just trust it implicitly. That is false. When we hear people who haven’t approached the any of this information with any degree of curiosity and haven’t read these documents and haven’t studied out Joseph’s incredibly tangled financial and legal situation, let alone try to understand any of it when we hear them, use one version of one deed that someone told them about and match it up with one entry in Clayton’s journal and present it as undeniable evidence of Joseph’s polygamy claiming that anyone who doesn’t agree is just a conspiracy theorist. We know their side desperately needs to follow President Hinckley’s counsel and raise the bar. That’s what we are asking you to do. There need to, there needs to be a better, a better um level of disc on these issues. So yet again, William Clayton’s journal tells one story. While the actual evidence in this case, the financial and court records tell a very different one. The court records are the only way we know about the lawsuit. Clayton’s journal certainly doesn’t say anything about it. At least not any of the portions that we have access to. According to Clayton’s journal, he was, as I said, Joseph’s bestie, he was Joseph’s main confidant on everything, including their mutual womanizing, right? And Joseph’s marriage troubles with Emma. And so much more, according to the court records, Clayton was actively suing Joseph using the exact same lawyer who less than a year later would go on to be the prosecuting attorney against Joseph on the ridiculously trumped up charge of treason, which ensured Joseph could not be released on bail, which led directly to his and high murders in Carthage. And then just a little while after that, served as the defense attorney for the men accused of the murder. This is all on skinner. Oh and before that he had been Governor Ford’s aide de camp during the huge problems in Nauvoo when Joseph realized that Ford was, was also an enemy skinner was basically his executive assistant. But we are supposed to believe that Clayton was Joseph’s best friend, even though he engaged this clear enemy of Joseph Smith to represent him in a lawsuit against Joseph Smith. We’re supposed to believe that he did that because Joseph Smith wanted him to, I have to admit I don’t get it. So again, I’m, I’m open to hearing explanations at this point. It does not look good. So there are so many more documents I have tried to understand I would love to go into, but this is already way too much. I assume that many of your heads are spinning just as mine has been for the past several weeks. I’m certain there are more documents that I haven’t even found or read yet. And after going over so many financial records, I’ve realized that I have to do another entirely separate episode on the huge financial mess after Joseph’s death. And in particular what these guys did to Emma, there is, there is more than just what we discussed in part one, but there is one more thing that we really need to talk about. Another extremely important day one that is starting to look as important to all of this as July 12th, 1843 which is Revelation Day. This critical date is July 8th, 1844 1 year after Revelation Day, a week and a half after Joseph and Hyrum were murdered. So this is another massively complex topic. But um to introduce it, let’s go back to the version of Emma’s unfinished deed that we started with. The one that is always used when people make this claim about that. It’s about Joseph’s polygamy and that it verifies Clayton’s journal, right? This is actually, as I said before, the third version of this deed, the one recorded in the Hancock County deed registry in Carthage. So look at this quoting from the um Joseph Smith papers. Um Source note, this version was copied the eighth of July 1844 in Hancock County, Illinois deeds record, unidentified writing. Hancock County recorder’s office, Carthage, Illinois. What is it? What is extremely important here is the date it was recorded. Remember Joseph and Hyrum were murdered, June 27th, 1844 Joseph was already dead. This deed was recorded in Carthage a full year after Joseph supposedly told, supposedly told C Clayton to write it and Clayton wrote but didn’t finish it. So despite the fact that Joseph had appeared at the courthouse in Carthage multiple times during his last year of life, he had never thought to record this all important deed that he had supposedly had Clayton, right? For Emma to provide for her in case of anything happening or to mollify her or whatever it was. But now less than two weeks after his death, it suddenly needs to be recorded. Someone clearly not Joseph Smith went to Carthage to register this deed with the county to make sure it was, I guess Tripoli official because remember it had already been recorded in the Nauvoo registry and all over the trustee’s book of land deeds. So this made me extremely curious and suspicious. Remember that in the wake of Josephson Hiram’s murder, there was all, there was fear of all out war from what I understand. The pe people in Carthage were being told that the Nion was going to attack and many fled their homes at least temporarily. And that the same time the saints were still terrified of being exterminated. Even many months later, John Taylor told the members of the church not to go to Carthage, not even to attend or testify at the trial at Joseph Smith’s murder trial because they were told it was far too dangerous and they wouldn’t be safe there yet. Just a week and a half after Joseph and Hyrum were murdered in the midst of all this chaos. Somebody went to Carthage to register this suspicious deed. What is going on? I worked on this for days trying to figure it out who registered this deed. I wondered if looking at the records we do have about that day as in fact, as they are might hopefully help. Um at least a little bit so, but really they just introduce a lot of new questions. So first, we can look at what William Clayton has to say. So we’ll start with his July 7th um journal entry. I was late at counsel, the brethren had agreed not to appoint a trustee in trust until the 12 came home and that I should act in the place of the trustee to receive property et cetera until one was appointed. It’s interesting how he claims this happened without him, that they decided not to appoint a trustee in trust and to have to have him be the acting trustee in trust without him even there. So anyway, it’s interesting, right? So um the next entry says at the temple all day, curious again, according to Clayton, this is the day construction started up again on the temple. So that could be possible. But Clayton didn’t do that kind of work on the temple. He only did office work from what I understand. So was he at the temple or was he maybe at Carthage? Well, I don’t know, I don’t know, I just know somebody went to Carthage that day. We’ll continue on with this entry. Emma came up. She also objected to the conclusion of the council last evening and says there must be a trustee appointed this week on account of the situation and business. Ok. So according to Clayton’s journal, they were already working hard, work, hard on issues of property and William Clayton was the interim trustee in trust until the 12 arrived. Bri Brigham wouldn’t get there until a month later, August 6th. So a trustee in trust would be necessary to take over management of all of the church property that Joseph had held and managed as trustee and trust before his death, I guess. But also you would think that the minist the administrator of the um estate could also do that too. So that’s something I need to look at what more into, but it would have been irrelevant for property in Emma’s name, right? Property deeded to Emma or to her Children privately wouldn’t have been sub, wouldn’t have had anything to do with the trusty and trust. So if this, if the deed to Emma were legitimate and Emma knew about it, she could be quite calm and peaceful knowing that she owned all the unencumbered lots in Nauvoo. So it would seem she wouldn’t have much to worry about after all. That was the very point of the deed, right? I would think she would be relieved that they had actually put it into place and that she was in fact taken care of, but that is definitely not what we see. Also, according to Clayton’s journal journal, Emma is worried about a trustee and trust budding in being put in place and wanted to make sure it was someone she trusted. Clayton says he was the interim trustee in trust. So that should have been perfect. Clayton’s Nauvoo journal paints the picture that both Joseph and Emma trusted him implicitly even having him present and involved in their tearful struggles in their marriage. Ok. Women think about that. Would you want your husband’s buddy and secretary there when you are crying and trying to work through with such incredible difficulties in your marriage? II, I don’t get it. And for a woman as poised, careful and elegant as Emma, at least according to everybody other than William Clayton and Brigham Young, is she going to do that in front of William Clayton? Oh, so remember according to William Clayton and nobody else, Emma was throwing fits all around town, demanding and stomping on watches from girls screaming at Joseph and carriage rides through town until Joseph had to basically slap her to get her to shut up. Right. That is William Clayton’s version of this remarkable woman who every other person throughout her life describes in a very, very different way. So Clayton’s journal for these dates don’t tell us who went to Carthage, but we know that somebody did. So I hope that maybe Willard Richards journal or daybook might shed some light on it. Here’s his entry for July 8th 1843 Emma told Phelps she had had a letter from New York for 6000 for $6000 in old debts. Another crossed out word saw thing ought to be done. So we have at least one other report of Emma being in town on that day and being very worried about the financial situation and working with multiple people to try to get things taken care of. So I have to ask again, why was Emma so worried about the debts and a trustee in trust if she knew she owned all the unencumbered lots in Nauvoo in her own name again, she would have been relieved and thankful that she and, um, Joseph had made that agreement Clayton recorded and that she had the property in her own name, right? So this makes it even harder to claim she traveled to Carthage. But it’s crazy to assume this. Anyway, travel for women was already much more difficult than for men for many reasons. Just two that I can mention off the top of my head are skirts and bathrooms, right? And this isn’t even considering that Emma was newly widowed and pregnant. Plus she had her Children and her household to take care of including Joseph’s ailing mother, right? Who was also grieving. So I just don’t think that you can make that claim however, believe it or not. That is exactly the claim that the Joseph Smith papers makes it claims that it was Emma who took the deeds to Carthage. So we’ll come back to this slide in a minute. Um, Clayton’s journal makes a statement that leads to this assumption that it was most likely Emma who recorded it. And, um, an assumption which as you saw the Joseph Smith papers takes whole hog outright claiming that it was Emma. So I’ll read a few of Clayton’s entries leading up to that July 8th date, the day that the, that the deed was recorded in Carthage. Here it is um, first entry. This, the, this July 2nd is the first entry mentioning anything about Joseph’s finances. It says went to see Emma. She’s is in trouble because Mother Smith is making disturbances about the property in Joseph’s hands. Mother Smith wants Samuel to move into Nauvoo and take the patriarch’s office and says the church ought to support him. Just a reminder here that Samuel was dead. Less than a month later, many suspected poison, including his family from the white powder medication, Josea Stout who was not a doctor, but who was willing to kill people was administering to him before his death. This is the same Jos Stout who just a year and a half later threatened to murder William Clayton a threat which didn’t seem to object to, but which both he and Clayton took seriously enough for Brigham to tell Clayton to flee, flee and go to Utah within just a few hours. So that’s all, that’s all interesting. Right. Going on with the journal. There is considerable danger if the family begin to dispute about the property that Joseph’s creditors will come forward and use up all the property there is if they will keep still, there is property enough to pay the debts and plenty left for other, for other uses. So that’s another very interesting claim. How does he know that? How does he know that there’s enough and to spare right of Joseph’s property? And how could it be true if there is enough property to pay all of the debts and the family? Then what’s the problem? Right. Why does he want the family to keep still when someone tells you to keep still about property concerns? Um, is it very likely that they have your own best interest at heart? Ok. Continuing on. I had much talk with Emma on the subject. They’re going on to Wednesday the third AM at the Temple. Temple office. Emma sent for me and Cutler and Khoon. We had conversation with Esquire Wood on the situation of Joseph’s affairs. Emma has counseled Esquire Wood on the subject. Um, Cutler and Khoon important names will get to those on the, um, episode about Emma to see why they were included here, right? Um, pm at the Temple office and after went to dig up the records, water had got into the place where they, where they were and where they, and, and they were damaged. That was interesting. Jeremy Hoop told us a bit about that and I had to wonder if this might include the Nauvoo registry which did incur water damage. So then Thursday the fourth, I went to Emma’s and assisted Esquire Wood to examine Joseph’s affairs. The situation looks gloomy. The property is chiefly in the name of the trust. Oh, this makes me so bad. The situation looks gloomy. The property is chiefly in the name of the trustee and trust while the obligations are considered personal. Ok. What in the world? Clayton should know the exact situation already since he’s the one who did it. All right. He wrote all of the deeds, he enacted all a ton of the business in Joseph’s name, claiming to be doing it on Joseph’s behalf, right? He was the one who not only had access to all of the documents and papers, he’s the one who wrote most of them. He was the one keeping the trustee’s book of land deeds and keeping the Nuvo deed registry. Like, like this is all up to him, right? He has full information. He didn’t need to get any information from Esquire Woods. And what information could he get from Esquire Woods? Since from the entry I read in the last, in part one, we know that Esquire Woods didn’t have access to any of the information. And what happened to Clayton’s assurances that just a few days earlier that if the Smiths would all just keep still, there would be enough and despair right now. Suddenly that’s not the case at all. And if the situation looked gloomy, Clayton could have very easily remedy it by, um, he, he could very easily remedy it by making sure Emma wasn’t saddled with personal debts while the church, meaning whoever managed to take over, took off with all the assets, which as it turns out is exactly what Clayton helped. Brigham Young do remember how Brigham Young tried to sell all of the assets on his own. Not only the maid of Iowa as we discussed in part one, but also other things like, oh, I don’t know, maybe the temple, right, like that’s exactly what they were doing. They were leaving all of the debts on Emma while taking all of the assets for themselves. So I have to ask, is Clayton really just recording what happened or is he writing this after the fact to, to create the narrative? He once told poor Emma, it looks like it just had to be that she got saddled with all the debts while we as the church took all the assets too bad. There just wasn’t anything we could do about that, right? Pay off some of the debts with some of the assets be human. Uh Anyway, let’s continue on woods advised Emma to have all the deeds recorded at Carthage. This is the critical, the critical entry. He advised Emma to have all of the deeds recorded at Carthage for he says our recorder’s office is not legal, this will cause trouble and much dissatisfaction. So that right there is how we claim to know it was Emma who went to Carthage four days later. Impossible as that would actually seem to be. And so what does Clayton mean by all the deeds is another question right to record all the deeds according to Clayton’s own journal. Emma didn’t have access to the financial documents. Um Again, that entry I read in part one where she tried to get a, to get access to the documents and papers. So her lawyer would, could go through them and she was denied. William Clay and Brigham Young preferred not to give her access because they preferred to keep them private quiet just to themselves so they could do whatever they wanted. So how could Emma take all of the deeds which had been written and recorded by William Clayton and were in Clayton’s possession and have them recorded in Carthage. It’s interesting that Clayton says that this will cause trouble and dissatisfaction. According to Clayton’s journal, Woods says that all of Clayton’s personal records that he was responsible for keeping all of his pet projects. Um All of his like, basically these were his babies, right? He spent every hour of every day doing these records and deeds. And now, um, according to him, Woods is saying they would not be legally recognized that must have caused him a lot of trouble and if it’s true, so now let’s go back to what the Joseph Smith papers says about this, right? It says that um, not only did Emma record this one deed, but she recorded seven other deeds at Carthage as well, including three deeds, conveying property to Joseph Smith as trustee for the church and three deeds from Joseph Smith conveying property to her or their own Children. This goes on to say among the deeds Emma Smith took to be recorded at Carthage. So you can see that it is saying that it was Emma Smith who took these deeds to Carthage. So again, this like learning this reading that, that um Clayton said that Esquire Woods said that really threw me for a loop. Maybe the draft of Emma’s deed really was just a first draft which Clayton bizarrely kept and preserved. And somehow Emma had the finished version which she took to Nauvoo and I gus left there or misplaced afterward despite the fact that she very carefully preserved all of the other papers that she had and that a deed of this magnitude in the midst of these kinds of property disputes and financial struggles would be a wee bit important to hold, to hold on to and keep track of. I mean, sure, we know Clayton had recorded it in the Nauvoo registry showing that he had clearly had possession of it at least then while there is no evidence that Emma ever did. And we know that Clayton had possession of pretty much all of Joseph Smith’s papers other than his translation of the Bible and some other papers he had in his home desk, which desk, Clayton had forcibly removed out of Emma’s home, not long after these journal entries furious that she had removed and, um, hidden the papers that were in it again according to his journal, if that’s trustworthy. So, yeah. So, yeah, maybe it was Emma that did this, right? How could we possibly figure it out? Well, according to the Joseph Smith papers, Emma took seven deeds to be recorded in Carthage that day, which we call it Carthage Day. I don’t even know what to call it. July 8th, 1844. I have to say, I wish I had found this part of the Joseph Smith papers this entry um, before I did all of this work because I had been discovering these deeds one by one on my own hunting for them and freaking out each time I found them wondering what was going on. This first one I found that is the deed that made me realize that Emma’s deed was not the only deed recorded July 8th, 1844. This is a huge deal. This is the same huge deed for 237 8 to Joseph and Emma’s Children that I talked about in part one and it was recorded July 8th 1844 in Carthage. Here’s what’s so confusing. This same deed had been recorded in Carthage two years earlier on April 9th, 1842. It’s the deed that John C Bennett took such issue with and made the accusations against Joseph Smith. So this deed we actually have the original of it is the exact same deed that was recorded on July 8th, 1844 except with two small differences. And we don’t have, if I didn’t already say we don’t have the original of the deed that was dated here. Let me go back and show you this really fast. This deed that was recorded on July 8th is dated the 31st of September 1841. The one that had been recorded two years earlier is dated March 17th, 1842. So that’s the first difference between them, right? We have the original of this deed. We don’t have the original of uh December 31st 1841 deed. That’s the exact same deed. The other difference is on the back page. You can see right there the last time it, it lists Frederick GW Smith’s name. It instead says Frederick GW Williams. Frederick GW Smith had been named for Frederick G Williams, but clearly his last name was obviously Smith. So it’s, it should have said that the Joseph Smith acknowledged the Joseph Smith papers acknowledges that these two deeds are the same. But then speculates that the new deed quote likely indicates that the 31st of December deed was voided and that the 17th of March deed was prepared to correct an error in the previous deed. But they don’t even attempt to explain why the December 31st version, the one they claim was voided was then recorded in Carthage on July 8th, 18 44/2 years after the other deed, which we you have and which includes both Joseph and Emma’s signatures had already been recorded. So this, this giant deed makes Emma’s deed look like small potatoes. There. It is so much bigger. Um, it means that Emma’s Children should own about 237 acres. In addition to her 68 acres, she shouldn’t have anything to worry about. So, what is going on? I did seriously consider the possibility that Emma sent someone to Carthage to record them for her. Even though the Joseph Smith papers claims that she took them to Carthage herself. My first guess guess was maybe Samuel. But according to Lucy, he started getting sick after his brothers were killed and he was already very sick at this point, likely being poisoned and died just a few weeks later. So maybe Esquire, would the lawyer that Clayton writes about Emma hiring to help her? And that Clayton views with so much distrust. I could sincerely see that being a very viable possibility that Woods did indeed say that the Nauvoo records were not legally binding and that Emma would have wanted the deeds registered in Carthage and so would send Esquire Woods to do it. But as I thought about it and looked into it more again, I came to the pretty solid conclusion that that was just not possible first as we have come in. Part one. Emma didn’t have access to Clayton’s and to Clayton’s papers, to Joseph’s papers, which meant Clayton’s papers, right, which I assume would include at least the vast majority of the deeds which were most often written and then recorded by William Clayton and kept with the church records and which according to Clayton’s own journal, he and Brigham refused to allow Emma or her lawyer access to. So how would Emma or Woods have all of these deeds to take to Carthage? That’s I think an important question, but there’s a better one. It was when I looked up all of the other deeds, the Joseph Smith papers claims Emma recorded that day that I started to feel quite certain that Emma was not involved in recording these deeds in Carthage on July 8th, 1844. By this time, even according to Clayton’s journal, things were tense between Emma and most of the brethren who were taking over. I don’t believe there is any chance that if Emma did happen to have the deeds and send them to be registered in Carthage, even just those seven deeds that she would then hand them over to Clayton to be kept with the church to be kept with the records of the church. She certainly didn’t hand over the rest of the pa the records and papers that she had, even though they so adamantly demanded them, including Joseph Smith’s translation of the Bible. And yet when I looked up each of these deeds. I found that that is exactly where all of them that are still extant were with the records of the church, meaning at this point in possession of William Clayton, not Emma Smith. So fortunately when the Joseph Smith papers um claims that Emma took the deeds to Carthage, it tells us what deeds it claims that she took. So we can read exactly the list among the deeds Emma Smith took to be recorded in Carthage are two deeds from John and Melinda Robinson, Robinson Barnett, transferring property to Joseph Smith and his minor sons. One deed from Daniel H and Eliza Robinson wells to Joseph Smith for the temple lot. Three deeds from Joseph Smith conveying property to Emma or their minor Children and a deed for a lot in Nauvoo donated to the church by Orson and Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde. So digging into these, opened up an entirely new ocean of craziness and massive funny business. Honestly, after working so hard on all of this, my brain is too exhausted to try to make any more sense of it. But I’ll share what I have found and I’ll share the questions that I have come up with so far and I’ll let other people who are less exhausted by all of this, take a crack at it. Hopefully, people who are more adept at dealing with financial and legal documents. But first of all, it’s hard to make any sense of why these would be the deeds that Emma would choose to record. Four of which had absolutely nothing to do with her or her Children. But we’re transferring property to the church or to Joseph Smith as the head of the church. But as I said, what is even harder to understand is how she would have had possession of these deeds, especially the four that didn’t have anything to do with her or her Children. And most of which were written by Clayton and several of which had been recorded by Clayton in the NAU registry, meaning they were or at least had been in his possession. But the hardest thing to understand is how if Emma had registered any of these deeds in Carthage, the church would then have possession of them since Emma would absolutely not have given them to Clayton or to the 12. So I think the two deeds that demonstrate all of these things the best are the and the two that I want to dig into are also two that we miraculously have originals for. And so they are the deed for the temple lot from David H and Eliza Robinson Wells and the seemingly random deed from Orson and Marinda, Nancy Johnson Hyde for one lot to Joseph Smith as trustee and trust one of the many one dollar deeds on the pre printed forms. So again, why would Emma include those? So we’ll start with the Orson and Marinda Hyde deed. This is the Hancock County version where you that you can see was recorded July 8th 1844 in Carthage. And here is the original from the source note which I’ll go ahead and share with you. It says the source note on the Joseph Smith papers project at about this. It says handwriting of William Clayton witnessed by William Clayton recorded in Nauvoo. It doesn’t tell that, but that’s what it means. 10th of February 1843 William Clayton on behalf of Joseph Smith, um and Chauncey Robinson eighth of July 1844 the name I said to remember above right. Chauncey Robinson, he was the um Carthage City recorder who recorded several of these deeds. The document contains a continuing, the document contains a docket and notations by William Clayton who served as scribe to Joseph Smith from 1842 to 1844 and as a nut temple recorder from 1842 to 1846. Below the docket are notations by Clayton identifying when the deed was recorded in Nauvoo Illinois. And notations by Chauncey Robison who served as Hancock County Illinois recorder from 1839 to 1847 identifying when the deed was recorded in a Hancock County deed book, an additional notation by John S Fulmer. He was a Nauvoo polygamist who was appointed trustee in trust by the 12 after Joseph’s death and he went straight to Salt Lake City. He records the transfers of the property to Hyrum. Kimball sometimes be sometime between 1846 and 1848. After Kimball purchased the property, he was apparently given this earlier deed, this dog and other papers in the possession of Kimball, the Kimball Kimball descendants were donated to the church history department. Ok. That was a lot to read. Maybe I lost you all the re the purpose for reading. All of that is to show that we know how the church got this document, right? We know that Emma never had it. Emma never had this deed that is spelled out very clearly. If it was too confusing, go ahead and pause and reread that. So you’ll understand exactly what it’s saying. From the historical introduction. It says William Clayton appears to have spent considerable time issuing, receiving and recording deeds on behalf of Joseph Smith as trustee and trust on the 10th of February 1843. That’s a date we’ve that has come up already. One of the many deeds Clayton handled that day was this donation from the Hyde on the 10th of February. The hys apparently brought this in initial deed to Clayton to be recorded in nau’s registry of deeds. And at the same time indicated their desire to donate the property to the church. After Clayton completed the printed form, the Hyde signed it with Clayton Witnessing and Ebenezer Robinson then certified it. Clayton then recorded it in the registry of deeds for Joseph Smith. And certified on the deed that he had done. So that same day, Clayton also deeded a separate property to Marinda on behalf of Joseph Smith as trustee and trust in July 1844. Shortly after Joseph’s death, the deed to the donated property was recorded in a Hancock County Illinois deed book. Ok. There is a lot here, but we’re going to stay focused on just the question at hand. What does this deed have to do with Emma? How would she have even known about it, let alone had possession of it? And why would she have wanted this particular deed registered at Carthage William Clayton. On the other hand, was all over this deed. He wrote it, recorded it and even wrote a deed in return to Marinda that same day, quote on behalf of behalf of Joseph. And yes, for anyone wondering and jumping ahead to what will cover in part three, that deed by Clayton without Joseph Smith even present is one of the very deeds people use to claim Joseph was deeding property to his supposed wives that will be coming in part three. So what’s going on here? There’s something going on, but I don’t think it’s what we say it is and to make matters even more fun. Let’s look at the receipt preserved with the document in the church archive. Documents that were in Emma Smith’s possession were not stored in the church archive. They did not come across the plains with the Saints, right? The Joseph Smith papers list who owns them or if they are in the church possession. Now, how they were obtained? This one was just in church possession all the time. So this is that little note that tells when everything was recorded, right? And you can see that on the eighth of July, someone paid their $1 fee. And it says, I chauncey Robinson recorder of the said county do hereby certify that the annex deed and cert certificate to Joseph Smith’s trustee and trust from Orson Hyde and wife were filed, were this day filed and duly recorded. Um So a quick reminder about chauncey Robinson. He was the man I said to remember who despite not being a member of the church was a member of the Nauvoo Masonic Lodge and who with William Clayton. And he was the man who William Clayton enacted business with on behalf of Joseph Smith. And in fact, they had quite a bit of dealing. I have found no evidence, however, that MS had any interaction with him. So again, I will ask who most likely recorded this deed in Carthage right. Now, let’s look at the next deed that we’re going to dig into. This is the one from Daniel and Eliza Wells for um the temple lot that was recorded in Carthage also July 8th 1844. And again, we have the original of this deed to change things up a bit this original deed actually wasn’t written by William Clayton. So let’s again, look at the source note from the Joseph Smith papers on the eighth of February 1843 William Clayton, acting as Joseph Smith’s clerk, certified the deed on or after the eighth of July 1844 the day it was recorded in Carthage. The deed was docketed by Clayton by Clayton who served as scribe to Joseph Smith from 1842 to 1844 and as Nabu Temple recorder from 1842 to 1846 the document was also docketed by, by Thomas Bullock who served as Joseph Smith scribe from 1843 to 1844 and as clerk to the church historian and recorder from 1845 to 1865. By 1973 the document had been included in the Joseph Smith collection at the church historical department. Now Church history Library, the documents, the documents early docket and its inclusion in the Joseph Smith collection by 1973 indicate continuous institutional custody. So there you have it, there is really no question about this deed. Emma never had it. It has been in the custody of the church since it was recorded by Clayton in be on behalf of Joseph Smith and Chauncey Robinson. And so that’s there. It is again, right from the historical introduction, I’ll read that. Now, the certification on the reverse side of the deed explains that William Clayton recorded a copy of it in the NAUE Registry of Deeds Book. A on or shortly after eighth of February 1843 and on um on eighth of July 1844 Hancock County Recorder Chauncey Robison certified the original copy of the copy of the deed and then copied it into Hancock County deed book. And that same day, the original copy of the deed from which the two other copies were made is featured here there. It is. How in the world can we claim that it was Emma who took these deeds to Carthage? I, I just, I don’t understand it at all how the historians on the Joseph Smith papers project claim that maybe it’s something like um the right hand doesn’t know what the left hand is doing and they haven’t gotten into it and it’s something that they just need to correct. Well, then I hope they will correct it because it actually is a pretty big deal when trying to resolve this narrative. So I know that there is a lot more to these deeds than what I am currently digging out. The main thing I am hoping to accomplish in this portion of this presentation is to make it clear that Emma Smith was clearly not the one who took or even sent all of these deeds to Carthage to have them recorded on July 8th 1844. I don’t know how that anybody can claim otherwise. And that’s not all there’s more in the midst of all of this research. I was able to find a few additional items that were registered in Carthage recorded in Carthage July 8th 1844 that aren’t even included in what they say Emma took first. Is this extremely important deed written to Joseph Smith July 7th, 1843 5 days before Revelation Day, which has direct bearing on which lots. Clayton included as the unencumbered lots in the deed. He wrote that same day to Emma and her Children and the deed he wrote to Hyrum the same day. There’s too much to explain here and I’m sure we are all too burned out to go into it, but just know that you absolutely cannot adequately understand which lots Clayton included in the deed he wrote to Emma and to Hiram without looking into this deed, Clayton’s journal doesn’t say anything about this extremely relevant deed. At least not the portion that we have access to. Again, it would be great if they would release the journals. And so now let’s look at, um, this, oh, this is the, um, Joseph Smith’s journal, right? Really Willard Richards record for this day. And, um, I highlight that this is the page I highlighted in part one to show how suspect these records are. But this is that same July 7th when this deed was supposedly recorded, which is extremely important. This journal entry gives us plenty of information about this day, mainly about legal documents and about affidavits being written, but it doesn’t say anything about this extremely important deed or any other deed, anyone who’s interested can pause and read it if they want to. And we also don’t have the original of this deed, but it was witnessed by William Clayton. So he definitely knew about it and possibly had it. I mean, it’s, you know, he’s the one that signed as the witness and I think it is fair to assume that it may just have been in his handwriting, the original and it had absolutely nothing to do with Emma and it was recorded this day in Carthage. But in addition to that, there is this crazy record that’s related to the deed I just showed you. Look at this, the sideways part that I’ve blown up on the bottom. Um is the July 7th deed to Smith Tuttle and John Gillett and Horace Hot, July Hotchkiss, July 7th the same day as that last deed I just showed you and it says that it’s from Joseph Smith, Emma Smith, Hiram Smith, Mary Smith, Sidney Rigdon and Phoebe Rigdon. So this is just insane. It’s the same day as the bond we just discussed and it’s written the record it’s written on top of is the August 12th, 1839 bond from Horace Hot to Joseph Hiram in Sydney for 100 $10,000 for the land they as the first presidency of the church purchased in what would become Nauvoo. So, um, I was going to read to you what it says, but I won’t worry about it. Just know that it claims to be signed by all of those people, the husband and wife teams that I talked about. And again, there’s no original. It does include a, it doesn’t even include a date that it was recorded sideways on top of the other. But at this point, based on all of the surrounding information, we might be able to make a reasonably decent guess of when that was written into the book at Carthage maybe July 8th, 1844. But there’s even more. This one is immensely interesting because it reintroduces our good old friend William Law. If you need a refresher, please review the episodes on the Novo expositor. Yes, that William Yacht Law and yes, I still have my fourth part on the Novo expositor coming. That will talk about the similarities between the expositor and um 132 and blow the rest of it out of the water. It’s just not, not a very strong case. So this also was registered this exact same day July 8th, 1844. It was a mortgage from William Law to a member of the church named He Henry Buck Walter. As with several of the other deeds recorded this day, I haven’t dug in to understand the significance of this. I just know that it was first written July 11th 1843 the day before Revelation Day, it was recorded by William Clayton in the NOVO registry. July 25th, 1843 and it was taken to be registered in Carthage July 8th, 1844 along with all of these other documents and just like recorded in the novel registry also recorded in Carthage immediately after is what is apparently called an assignment from Buck Walter assigning his claim to the land to Joseph Smith. So remember Joseph is dead and somebody is registering these documents, having them recorded in um Carthage. So these are just the ones I happened to be able to find. Spending hours perusing the Joseph Smith project, the papers looking for them. I have no idea how many others there might be. I called the Hancock County clerk’s office asking about these records and asking if anyone could possibly look at them for me. But they said I would need to come to Carthage and look at them myself. And I actually found someone who lives there and he went and looked at them, but he hasn’t been able to get the information and get it back to me in time for this episode. So I’m really hoping that at some point, I may be able to get out there to look at these things. So again, if anyone cares to donate, I would love to go to Carthage to look at these records. But at this point, I have to admit I simply throw up the white flag and say I give up, I would love to be able to tell you what each piece of this means exactly what was happening, exactly what they were up to and why they were doing what they were doing. But after working on all of this for so long, continually finding new rabbit holes to go down, my brain is beyond exhausted and I needed to record this episode at some point to be able to give share what I have so far. I also have other topics that I need to get back to. So I’m just giving you what I have and if there’s anybody else who feels like taking it from here. Awesome. Please let me know what you find. So to be clear, I am not presuming to tell you exactly what William Clayton’s master plan might have been. I have no idea. I just know that he was absolutely up to something I will share a thought that may or may not prove useful. Just a hunch that I think is worth looking into. So, um in late 1840 early 1841 the church leaders including Joseph Smith learned about the concept and necessity of having a trustee in trust, a person elected to legal and legally assigned to hold property for the church rather than Joseph Smith or others just owning property in their own name. The Joseph Smith papers explains that having a trustee in trust was actually required in order to incorporate the church. So this right here is the record um from the Hancock County Registry in Carthage of Joseph Smith being elected trustee in trust. And we also, it also seems very clear that while they understood the need for a trustee in trust, they didn’t know that the trustee and trust was only allowed to hold a very limited amount of property. So right here, you can see it’s explained two different ways and two different sources. The um the church history topics on the church website say neither Joseph other or other church leaders nor the legal council appeared to have understood that also according to the law, churches in Illinois could not own more than five acres of land. So that’s what the um church website says. But I actually think that the Joseph Smith papers is more accurate and they say according to Illinois law, any religious or could be incorporated and elect trustees to hold up to five acres of property for meeting houses and 40 acres for outdoor camp meeting grounds. Joseph Smith was elected trustee and trust for the church in January 1841. And thereafter transferred considerable property that he had personally held for the church to himself as trustee in excess, in great excess of the 45 acre limit established by the state. So I do agree with both sources that it does look to me like they um learned about this problem until after Joseph’s death, that the trusty and trust could only have a maximum of 45 acres. I’m thinking this could definitely have come into play in the financial mess after Joseph’s death. And I think that that could possibly be at least part of the motivation to forge all of these documents and try to make it appear that Joseph held less property as trustee and trust since anything over 45 acres might be in danger. So there is so much more that I am dying to go into, but this is more than enough for one episode. So I am going to do that in a future time, another episode on the financial mess after Joseph’s death and what these guys did to Emma, it is just horrible and there will be more mic drops in this one. So to sum up, as I have repeatedly said, I do not want to give the impression that I understand the deeds or that you do after watching this, that you, that any of us fully understand the deeds. There are so many deeds and so much comp complexity that while this episode is hopefully a big step forward in helping us all understand the deeds and finances better. There is a lot more work to do. And the main point I am hoping to communicate in this episode is that nobody really understands the deed, uh the deeds, I feel quite confident in saying that after watching this, you now understand Joseph’s deeds far better than any of the people I have heard using them to make claims about Joseph’s polygamy. I am hoping has become clear that not only can the Nauvoo deeds not be used as evidence, smoking gun or otherwise to prove who Joseph’s wives were and that he deeded land to deeded land to them, which we will get into in part three, which will respond more specifically to Bill Riel’s claims about the land deeds and um about his statistical analysis. But beyond that, I am really hoping it is now clear that the simple picture that has been painted for us, that William Clayton’s journals prove that Emma’s deed was about Joseph’s polygamy. And that Emma’s deed in return proves that William Clayton’s journals are valid is simply not true quite the opposite. As I said before. A little knowledge really is a dangerous thing. A perfect comparison is how long we all simply knew that Joseph taught polygamy because of section 132 and a small section of this book, teachings of the prophet Joseph Smith compiled by Joseph Fielding Smith page 324 and 325 which some of us overachievers actually read and which cites directly to the documentary history of the church volume six page 46 which a few double overachievers may also have read to confirm that what they were reading in this book was act was indeed accurate. Um and it’s, it’s the now famous October 5th journal entry, which is the one place where we have Joseph Smith teaching polygamy where he says, um gave instruction to try those persons who were preaching, teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. For according to the law, I hold the keys of this power in the last days. For there is never but one on earth at a time on whom the power and its keys are conferred. And I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time unless the Lord directs otherwise. Right there it is we but it wasn’t until we had the Joseph Smith papers that we could read what the journal actually said and it actually said, walked up and down the street with scribe and gave instructions to try those who were preaching, teaching or practicing the doctrine of plurality of wives. On this law, Joseph forbids it and the practice thereof, no man shall have but one wife. Now that we have access to the Joseph Smith papers, we can see what the original journal actually said. And more than that, we can see when and how they changed it and changed it from saying one thing to saying exactly the opposite before we knew this, we all knew for sure that Joseph Smith was a polygamist, right? We also learned that the original section 101 in both of Joseph Smith’s versions of the doctrine and covenants denied an adamantly opposed plural marriage. And that in August 1852 Brigham Young pulled the revelation that became Section 132 out of his desk. And that 40 two years later, section 101 was removed and section 132 was added to the doctrine and covenants erasing all traces of Joseph’s actual teachings. There are too many other examples to include here, but with all of those things, the little bit of knowledge we had meant we knew for sure, we knew everything we needed to know, right? It wasn’t until we could see these things that we were able to understand how insufficient information had been and thus how faulty our conclusions had been. Again and again, when we’ve been able to look more closely, we have found that what we had been told was the very best evidence for Joseph’s polygamy quickly became the exact opposite. It was the very best evidence for what the polygamy conspirators actually did in their desperate effort to falsely paint Joseph as a polygamist and take over and rewrite church history in order to create the false narrative. I hope that this research and presentation will make what has become apparent with Joseph’s forged journal entry. And the forged polygamy revelation also become apparent with William Clayton’s forged nuvo journal and the forged deeds to, to Emma and Hiram where it was thought that that Clayton’s journal entry and the deeds to Emma and her Children proved Joseph’s polygamy. I hope everyone can. Now see that Emma’s deed and Hiram’s deed and all of the rest of it should at the very least call into very serious question, the integrity and validity of William Clayton’s nau journal. So again, I freely admit, I cannot say for certain what all of this means, why all of these unsigned deeds were written and then either hidden or recorded what exactly Clayton’s strategy was what he was hoping to accomplish. I have my thoughts but but I can’t put together a coherent explanation yet and everyone can have their own thoughts. But the fact that I can’t tell you exactly what he was doing is not a reason to dismiss all of this evidence or the very serious problems it poses to the standard polygamy narrative. I really hope that nobody challenges this information simply by saying, well, why would Clayton do that and, and insisting that this information is only credible if I can tell you exactly what they were doing and why as if you can only understand that something is not right. If you have already answered all of the questions about everything involved in it, that’s just not how it works. So in closing, I’ll just demonstrate this with a popular meme if I order this beautiful wedding cake for my daughter’s wedding, but instead the baker delivers this, I don’t need to be able to tell you exactly how many eggs are in the cake or how many cups of sugar or flour. I don’t need to tell you the entire recipe or be able to tell you every single thing the baker did wrong and why they did it in order to know that the cake you are giving me is not the cake you promised. And in order to say I am not accepting that cake, the same holds true. Here, I’m being told it’s one thing. And when I get in, I am seeing something very different. And here’s another example, if you come to my store and try to pass off these bills as legitimate, I don’t need to be able to tell you exactly who the counterfeiter is, where they set up their operation, what ink and paper they use or anything else. In order to say, nope, I’m not accepting those bills. I can see for myself that they are not what they claim to be. The same exact thing goes here. I don’t need to be able to answer every single possible question in order to know that the Joseph Smith polygamy narrative does not work. The evidence presented is not what it claims to be instead consistently. Every single time when I dig in, I find this, I don’t need to answer every single possible question about motive strategy, et cetera. In order to say, Nope, I’m not accepting your narrative. It is not what you say it is. I’m not accepting Brigham’s and Clayton’s dirty deeds. And I don’t think you should either. I think all of us should go back to the sources and try again, hopefully accepting the help that so many of us are freely offering. I hope that that’s what the historians will do and anyone pushing the Joseph Smith narrative. So again, although I started out feeling like this topic was a bit of a waste of time and only necessary to respond to what I saw as rather silly claims. I am now extremely glad that it was presented and that I was forced to dig in like this. It has been incredibly difficult, but I think it has been extremely worthwhile. So thank you so much for sticking this difficult one out as we’ve got deep into the weeds of the dirty deeds and I will see you next time.