117: William Henry Harrison Sagers - More Historical Malpractice - 132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

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LINKS for this episode:

Joseph Smith brings charges against Harrison Sagers

Sarah Miller realizes Joseph never condoned Chauncey Higbee’s polygamy

Wilford Woodruff – Joseph condemns adultery, polygamy, etc. “in toto”

Draft version of Woodruff account above with revisions

Final version of Woodruff account above

Chargers against Sagers by his wife Lucinda

Gary Bergera’s unsupported assertions (see p. 88)

Brian Hales lists Sagers as someone taught polygamy by Joseph Smith

Chapters:

0:00 Introduction
3:45 Sagers charged w/ using Joseph’s name to justify adultery
7:00 Sagers tried to seduce his wife’s younger sister
12:15 Sarah Miller affidavit – Chauncey used Joseph’s name
25:35 Some thoughts on church courts
32:10 Grover and Johnson – polygamous high priests
36:20 Aaron Johnson’s many wives
38:30 Thomas Grover’s fraudulent affidavit
48:20 Joseph condemns adultery and any such thing
1:06:40 Lucinda Sagers charges her husband with polygamy
1:20:55 Harrison Sagers’s many wives
1:29:00 Did Joseph authorize Sagers’s polygamy?
1:37:00 Unsupported assertions from historians
1:48:35 Another historian’s unsupported claims
1:54:15 The sandy foundation of “settled” history

Transcript:

[00:00:00] Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy where we explore the scriptural theological and historical case for plural marriage. I’m so glad you’re here. I want to welcome all of the new subscribers. It’s been crazy watching how this channel has been growing. I usually recommend that people watch these episodes from the beginning, but it’s got gotten to be quite a pile up now. So there are a couple that I will list in the descriptions that I would recommend watching to get somewhat up to speed. Of course, feel free to watch any search, any topics that you find interesting. This is one that can just be a stand alone that you can watch because I think it’s a useful interesting topic that brings up some really good questions and then of course, go back and watch any others that you that you are interested in. I want to thank all those who have subscribed to this channel. As I said, the growth has been phenomenal. I also, again, I have to thank those who donate to make this channel possible. We’ve been trying to grow, we’ve been doing some other projects and adventures and financial support helps immensely. I do want to request if there’s anybody that can help us, please consider doing so. It it actually is extremely helpful and important to help us to keep going and I really appreciate it a lot. So please consider if you could do that. And with that being said, thank you for joining us as we take this deep dive into the murky waters of Mormon Polygamy, William Henry Harrison Sagers. This is an interesting one. So I have to tell you why I’m doing this episode. Many of you may know that I have been very sick for a very long time. I cannot figure out what in the world is going on. I’m really good at natural healing and taking care of myself. I’m rarely sick for more than a day, but this has really got me. You can hear it still. I still have the sore throat and my voice is still iffy. So I thought, II, I knew I couldn’t do any of the big, heavier, longer topics. My voice wouldn’t hold out that long, but I thought maybe I could do this little bit shorter one that I’ve had in my file for quite a while. But of course, as I dug in, it turned into more and more and more so now I’m really excited to share it with you because this is an important story and um I’m just praying my voice will hold out and we’ll be able to get through this because I want you to get this information. And then hopefully I’ll start start getting better at some point. And I am actually a lot better than I was. I had a couple of weeks where I couldn’t even whisper, so I’m doing much, much better and then I can get into some of the other topics that I’ve had ready to go. So this, I, I don’t have a picture of William Henry Harrison Sagers, but this is his gravestone, which we have and this is who we are going to be talking about. In this episode. He joined the church in Pennsylvania in 1833 and he married Lucinda Madison December 22nd, 1834 in Missouri. He was 19 and she was either 15 or 16. I don’t have her exact birthday. And it’s really interesting because he, it seems to be a pattern for him to marry teenagers. Um, they had a baby the following year and I couldn’t find much information about her, of course, but I did find some information about him. He served a few missions. He was called on a few missions that he appar he apparently didn’t serve. He was ordained an elder and a 70. Neither of those had any involvement with Joseph Smith. It was other people who called him and set him apart into those callings. And um it looks like Harrison and Lucinda Lucy were part of the expulsion from Missouri and ended up in Nauvoo in 1840 it’s in Navoo where things got quite interesting. So, this is what I kind of remember how I got, how I got introduced to, um Harrison Sagers. I, I just, I always am researching a million things and falling down a million rabbit holes and this was one that really caught my attention. So I’ve had it, um, in a file and I decided to finally just get it back out because I think it’s really interesting and I’m very glad I did because there’s a lot more to get into after I do this episode. So this is the really the first really interesting piece. This is a written by Joseph Smith and Joseph Smith’s own hand and I have to say finding the documents. I found the letters to Emma, things like this makes me sort of question the um standard narrative. We have that Joseph hardly ever wrote anything in his own hand. I maybe that’s true, but also maybe it’s true that we just don’t have much of what he wrote in his own hand because other people preferred to do his writing for him. So they could tell their version. I don’t know. I’m really glad we have this. It says Navoo City November 21st, 1843. Brother Marks. So that’s William Marks the president of the High Council dear, sir. I hereby prefer the following charges against elder Harrison sakers. Namely first for trying to seduce a young girl living at his house by the name of Phoebe Madison. Second for using my name in a blasphemous manner by saying that I tolerated such things in which thing he is guilty of lying, et cetera, et cetera. Joseph Smith. So, ok, that is fascinating. Right. Joseph Smith’s own hand, bringing charges against this man for um spiritual wifey, polygamy, attempted seduction, whatever we want to call it.

[00:05:32] So please play a couple of, please pay close attention to a couple of things. First, the date November 21st, 1843. So according to the standard polygamy narrative, this was after Joseph had already married, practically all of the wives he would ever marry. It was four months after he had dictated the secret polygamy revelation to Hiram and William Clayton. And it was three months after Hiram supposedly read that that revelation to the High Council where he and Marx were teaching together, the same William Marks that Joseph just wrote this letter to the same William Marks who never accepted polygamy. And so I won’t just to let you know a little bit of what this is sandwiched in the middle. I won’t even go into all of the many things that both Joseph and Hyrum were doing to try to fight these spiritual wifey practices. At the same time, their sermons, publications, their other actions and charges they were bringing against people. Just they were doing a lot of this kind of thing trying to fight this polygamy that kept rearing its ugly head. So let’s break this, this letter down a little bit first. It says Harrison Sagers as others have done before him, including John Bennett, Chauncey and Francis Higby, just to name a few. Plus the many others will find about that. That would we would find out about going forward, right? Including many of the 12. It says that Harrison Sadder, like all of these other men were falsely using Joseph Smith’s name to try to s a young girl who was living with him and his wife, her name was Phoebe Madison. So at this point, Harrison was 28 his wife, Lucy was 24 and his wife’s little sister Phoebe, who this is about, this is his wife’s little sister that he is attempting to seduce and to get try, he’s trying to get her to buy into polygamy. Phoebe was either 16 or 17 again, I don’t have her exact birthday. So that is the story of what’s going on here. Harrison Sagers is married to his wife who’s now 24 and her 16 year old sister is living with them. So he is trying to put the moves on her, trying to convince her of the same narrative of spiritual wifey polygamy that Joseph Smith approves it. That’s the situation. Um Apparently Lucinda and Phoebe weren’t having it. I really like these girls. And so it looks to me like they went to Joseph Smith, or at least they reported it to someone who reported it to Joseph Smith. In any case, he immediately wrote up and filed those formal charges against elder Sagers against Harrison Sagers. And also note how Joseph Smith, I think this is fascinating that he went through the properly constituted authority, right? He didn’t just take action himself. He wrote to William Marks, the president of the High Council whose job it was to oversee these kinds of charges and cases. And the fact that Joseph immediately wrote up the charges and brought a public case seems to me like a really big deal. I would really like to hear people who claim that Joseph was a polygamist explain why in the world if he got wind of an attempt gone wrong, he would blow it up publicly like this. If this were his principle, that was getting a little out of hand, you would think he would go quietly to all of the parties, right? He would tell the girls he’s so sorry that this awful thing happened and that he was absolutely taking care of it. Then he would tell the guy to knock it off because he was causing trouble, right? And, and then he would do what he needed to do to work it out quietly, basically trying to keep the entire things under wraps in order to minimize it as much as possible. But that is not what Joseph Smith did, did he brought as much attention to it as he possibly could publicly accusing him of polygamy? How does that make sense? If, if he was trying to keep it secret? Was he really just that dumb? Right. And so we’re, we’re going to go on. We have, I’ll have a lot to say about this as we go forward. But I want to compare this to another similar case, namely that of John Bennett, right? With John Bennett, people who oppose Joseph Smith who think he was a bad guy who are anti Joseph Smith. Like to claim that he and Bennett were actually doing the same thing. Just be, it was a little too clumsy, was a little too loud about it and was getting caught. And II I just always like so Bennett in his secret attempted seductions was more clumsy than say Hiram Smith reading the revelation to the entire high council and showing it to everybody all around town. Ok. Ok. That’s what we’re supposed to believe. Um Anyway, I just don’t know how that makes sense. And I’m always wondering how are you supposed to bring anyone into polygamy without risking it going south? Right? To bring someone into it, you have to tell them about it and they could reject it and go talk about it everywhere. So it’s hard for me to see how Joseph Smith and Hyrum were getting away with it everywhere. Joseph in particular. But, but um John Bennett keeps getting caught or William seers gets caught. Right. And so in any case with John Bennett, I have the same question I have about Sagres, which was

[00:10:48] why Joseph and Hyrum themselves would blow it up. It was Joseph and Hiram themselves with John Bennett that launched the huge thorough investigation into Bennett’s act actions. They themselves were the ones who brought so much exposure to it who were trying to root out the entire thing and bring as much attention to it as possible. So please, someone explained to me why a man who was doing the exact same things would conduct and then publish this kind of investigation about something he was trying very hard to keep secret. I I don’t understand that at all. I also don’t understand. Someone still has to explain to me whether John Bennett was a polygamy insider or whether he, whether he was a polygamy outsider, right? We claim he knows who Jos he knew who Joseph Smith’s lives were. And yet he never had any insight from Joseph Smith into Joseph’s sacred celestial spiritual wifey because Trump Bennett was doing the bad kind of spiritual wife as opposed to Joseph Smith’s good kind of spiritual wifey. So anyway, let’s keep going on. So I, I think it’s important though to also point out that not only did Joseph and Hyrum investigate this and launch this huge investigation and bring all of this publicity to it. It was also Joseph’s constant preaching against polygamy and spiritual wifey that exposed Bennett and the Higby in the first place. So let me share this document. Sarah Miller was a young widow who was a member of the choir and she wrote this in an affidavit in May. On May 24th, 1842 I’ll read part of what her affidavit says. She said some two or three weeks since in consequence of brother Joseph Smith’s teaching to the singers. So how many times did Joseph Smith talk about this? That we don’t even have record of, we don’t have any records of Joseph’s preaching to the choir. He was literally preaching to the choir right about this topic that he needed them to understand. So he was preaching to the singers. And therefore, Sarah said, I began to be alarmed concerning myself and certain teachings which I had received from Chauncey L Higby and question him Higby about his teaching for I was pretty well persuaded from Joseph’s public teaching that Chauncey had been telling falsehoods. But Chauncey said that Joseph now taught as he did through necessity on account of the prejudices of the people and his own family, particularly as they had not become believers in the doctrine. OK. There is so much to that little part right there. I just want everyone to think about it. A ton. That is exactly what we’re still saying. Please note Chauncey isn’t saying anything about it’s illegal. It has to be kept secret because Joseph could get into trouble by the law. No, it, it had nothing to do with it. He’s coming up and that was, that was an excuse made decades later by Joseph F Smith. That has no basis in reality at all. Joseph is publicly preaching against it. Chauncey Higby is saying the exact same thing that people who accused Joseph of polygamy are saying now his wife, he had to keep it secret. The people hadn’t yet accepted it. So we had to do one thing and say another thing. That is what Chauncey Higby said to convince Sarah Miller, can we please stop saying the same thing today? So anyway, he, he, she goes on to say, I then became satisfied that all of chauncey’s teaching had been false and that he had never been authorized by anyone in authority to make any such communications to me. He go, she goes on to describe his manner of teachings and conduct. And she says, I told him I did not believe it and had heard no such thing from Joseph nor from the stand, but that it was wicked to commit adultery. That’s the only thing she’d heard from Joseph and from the state. And I just, she finishes up to say chauncey um continued until I was inclined to believe for he called God to witness of the truth and was so solemn and confident I yielded to his temptation, having received the strongest assurance from him that Joseph approved it and would uphold me in it. It is just fascinating to me because this is exactly what Brigham Young and all of the others do. They just swear with so much certainty that Joseph taught it that Joseph approved it, that Joseph started it and Joseph did it, that we all just believe it just like Sarah Miller did. It’s amazing and it’s exactly the same thing. So because of this preaching, he confessed to Joseph Smith, what had happened? She confessed on her own because of his preaching, because of what he had said to the choir. And not only was did he say it to the choir and he was speaking against this all the time in so many records everywhere that we do have and obviously others that we don’t have. If he just hadn’t said anything, none of these women would have come forward. So

[00:15:45] you can’t, it doesn’t make sense to claim that he was doing it when he was preaching against it all of the time. That’s not what he would do. He would have it. It would have made life so much harder for him because he created, if he was a polygamist, he created all of his own problems by always preaching against it and always exposing it. It just doesn’t make sense. And let’s go on to just one other example. We have several. But um this is another one that was printed in the times and season seasons again, Joseph had to, again, constantly say this is what’s happening. So this is when they were doing the exposes against John Bennett. This was in July of 42. There was an um hiram’s affidavit was printed in August 42. They were just fighting this all of the time. Here’s part of what Joseph Smith wrote when Joseph found out that John C Bennett has had abandoned his wife and family before coming to NAVOO. He forbid him from courting in navoo. So he had been dating a girl and getting ready to propose marriage and Joseph put a stop to that. So then John C Bennett, now I’m quoting, went to some of the females in the city who knew nothing of him. But as an honorable man and began, began to teach them that promiscuous intercourse between the sexes was a doctrine believed in by the latter day saints and that there was no harm in it. Uh In addition, he tried to persuade them that myself and others. This is Joseph speaking that myself and others of the authorities of the church, not only sanctioned but practiced the same wicked acts. This is, this part is so important. Jeremy Hoop is the one that told me about this source. And when asked why I publicly preached so much against it said that it was because of the prejudice of the public. So again, the women are saying to John Bennett and the Higgs and others. If Joseph does this, why does he preach so much against it? This is another witness of how fervently and frequently and consistently, Joseph Smith was preaching against anything of the kind, anything other than the old established moral and virtues, right? Traditional marriage as God gave it. And as Joseph gave it repeatedly in his own revelations between one man and one woman. So John Bennett, when he’s trying to seduce the women, the women would ask him why Joseph preached so much against it. And he had to come up with the same excuse because of the prejudice of the public. Again, had nothing to do with the law, had nothing to do with the police, right? And that it would cause trouble in my own house. Again, it was the public and it was Emma he was well aware of the consequences of such willful and base falsehoods if they should come to my knowledge and consequently endeavored to persuade his dupes to keep it a matter of secrecy, persuading them that there would be no harm in it if they should not make it known. So again, we have Joseph Smith by his own testy moaning by other people’s testimonies. Constantly getting in the way of the polygamist because of his preaching. They constantly had to try to explain away everything that Joseph said just as everyone is still having to do. Now, I find the parallel to be astonishing it just doesn’t make sense if Joseph were doing this polygamy, celestial, plural marriage, spiritual wifey, he considered it all the same thing and constantly lumped it all in together by any name he could give it. But if he were doing this secretly behind the scenes, he would have been as quiet about it as possible in public. He wouldn’t have constantly been writing letters, giving sermons, bringing court cases where he announced repeatedly that no matter who tells you he approved of this, even if they are prophets, seers revelator apostles or anybody else, they are lying. He said it so many times as clearly as he could. And yet we still believe these same silly, sorry, dumb excuses that John Bennett and Chauncey and Francis Higby were making Brigham Young and the others went on to make the same excuses and we’re, we’re still believing the exact same things. It’s really crazy. And so Harrison Sagers is just another case in point. There is no documentation they have found anywhere showing that was that Joseph was in any way feeling threatened by Lucy Sr or Harrison Sr or word getting out. You can’t find anything. The first thing you can find about this is Joseph’s own charges that he wrote up in his own hand and delivered to William Marks to make sure this was publicly dealt with. And uh we’ll go on, you’ll see how public, how public he wanted it to be. And so that’s, that’s exactly the, the case seems clear. Joseph learned that Seers had been trying to seduce his young sister-in-law using Joseph’s name in the process. And like he always did, when these things reached him, he immediately decided to deal with it out in the open and put a stop to it. So I talked before about the people who hate Joseph Smith and claim that Bennett and Joseph were doing the same thing. So now let’s talk about the people who love Joseph Smith and claim that John Bennett was doing bad polygamy and Joseph was doing good polygamy, right? That um celestial plural marriage, even though Joseph never called it anything like that, Joseph did everything in his power to use all of the language that he had available to him to lump it all together and condemn all of it, fornication, adultery, seduction, immorality.

[00:21:02] Everything this side also can’t adequately explain why Joseph repeatedly denounced all possible forms of polygamy and why his own first counselor in his own first presidency and the the mayor of the city who had his support would not have been given permission to do the good kind of polygamy if Joseph was doing it and was apparently trying to get all all of the willing participants to do it as well, right? If we look at the later aids, all of the people claiming that Joseph was trying to get them on board was teaching him about it and trying to get them to take extra rides. Well, you obviously had a very willing participant in John Bennett. So why did he not qualify if he was the first counselor in the first presidency? And the mayor of the city? Somebody needs to explain that as well. So both sides of accusers, those who hate Joseph and those who claim to love Joseph agree. This is one thing they agree on. Joseph was not honest and was not sincere. He wasn’t at all just trying to bring these charges because he wanted to defend traditional marriage and morality and what he saw as God’s establishment of marriage that he always supported. No, it can’t possibly have been that, that Joseph was just standing firm in his testimony of one man and one woman and trying to root this out as he constantly said he was trying to do, can’t possibly have been that right? He always had these ulterior motives. Anyone who is accusing Joseph Smith polygamy is saying that he was being duplicitous and I just don’t think that the evidence bears that out at all. You, you have to do a better job with the documentation to make this stand up. So let’s get back to this trial. The um Harrison Sr trial, the trial was brought before the High Council a few days later on November 25th, 1843. And um according to some of the sources there, it seems that it was an open trial. It wasn’t just the High Council and it actually very well attended. It was a quite the spectacle Joseph was there and he himself asked all of the 12 to be there. He didn’t usually attend high council meetings. But I assume because this was his case that he was bringing regarding a claim that he cared very deeply about that he was working very hard to put down. I it seems he made it a priority. And the fact that he brought the 12 makes it seem that he really, really wanted them all to hear what he had to say. So these are the High Council minutes for November 25th. I have no idea. These High Council minutes are not on the Joseph Smith papers. I have a couple of pages going through this trial that we’re going to look at and I don’t know why they’re not on the Joseph Smith papers project. And it’s really frustrating it. It was hard for me to find them. And I have to say, I desperately wish they had had an actual court recorder. This would have been the most fascinating case to be able to read. But instead we just have these really, really pathetic notes. So I’ll show you what we have on this slide is, it just tells us the date November 25th. These are the High Council Minutes. It says council met according to um adjournment in the upper room of Joseph Smith’s Store prayer. By Brother Hutchinson, um W Marks and CC Rich Presiding Council all present. So that tells us who’s there and what’s going on. And then, uh there were two cases heard before this case with Joseph Smith and Harrison Sr and then the scribe. I think it was, um, let’s see. Um Jose Stout, yes, I knew I didn’t like this guy and I’m so sad that he was described because he was a terrible, terrible scribe or a clerk or whatever it was for these, for these minutes, all he did was write Joseph’s letter verbatim into the minute. So now we have the letter and we have, um, Hosea Stout’s version of the letter and they’re just the same thing. So that’s what this page says. But we do get a little bit of notes, at least from Jos Stout. Um, he, he go, he goes on to say, um, let’s see, the defendant pled not guilty. One were appointed to speak on, on a side. Viz Grover and Johnson. So that’s what they would do. They would draw numbers, I think is how it’s described. The doctrine of covenants will look at it in a minute and one would advocate for the defendant and one would advocate against the defendant and it was Grover and Johnson. So I’ll finish reading the record, um, right now and then I definitely want to come back to this point because I think it’s very interesting. So it goes on to say the charge was not sustained, but it appeared that he had taught false doctrine, which was corrected by President Joseph Smith. And the defendant was continued in the church council adjourned. And so that’s Jos Stout clerk, the really bad clerk. Hey, there is a lot to get into here. So first I just, this is a little bit of an aside and I know I’m probably stepping in it. I just couldn’t resist. I have to say, I don’t understand church courts. I know we’re giving them in the doctor of covenants, but at this point, I’m not a huge fan. So someone has to help me understand why these are good or the best way to do it. Or if, if maybe there could be a better way, I just, I know I’m going out on a limb, limb, but I don’t think you can just assign people to argue aside and they, you know,

[00:26:03] who knows how much they know about the case or how much they care about the case or which side they’re actually on. Right. And they, and they just did it by drawing numbers, like numbers out of a hat or something. And if you got an odd number or an even number, and I wonder if that’s the way still that it’s done, that’s still how it’s described in section 102. So I’m curious, maybe someone can let me know if that’s still how it’s done. I find it interesting. But I, I just, I happen to think that people ought to be able to choose their own advocates. Right? Someone that really understands them and understands their case or at the very least advocate for themselves. And so I also, of course, find the distinct lack of feminine presence and feminine voices to be obviously problematic. Right. Especially as you see, how many of these cases go, they seem to be, they seem to lean toward the male decisions, which I find unfortunate but very predictable when it’s a fully male council. Right. So it’s, it’s interesting. I also, I don’t know if this is traditional. It seems not to be because like this Harrison Sager’s case was open to the public. So this seems to be a new development that, um, councils aren’t allowed to be public, even if the defendant would want it public. I think that’s unfortunate as well. I think that if someone wants their council to be public, it ought to be public. And so, and I also think that the defendant ought to be able to be there to hear the deliberation. I don’t understand much of how this works. So anyway, it’s really interesting. But I do wanna like, let you know that they were doing this according to their own operating manual, Joseph seems to have followed his own rules really well. And so let’s look at section 102 because I think it matters to look at how these councils were held, how they were supposed to be held and how they were in fact held. So doctor Covenants 102 is where we get the instructions about the High Council operates. The first High Council was organized in 1834 and the minutes were seen as quote, a form of a constitution of the High Council and they were later canonized as scripture and they’re still in our doctrine and covenants in section 102. So verse two says, the High Council was appointed by revelation for the purpose of settling important difficulties which might arise in the church which could not be settled by the bishop or the bishop’s council to the satisfaction of the parties. So the bishop was the judge in Israel, but the High Council was to be the higher judge for more difficult cases that seems pretty clear. And then it goes on to give much more information to describing the correct proceedings, including as I described how the counselors draw numbers to see if they’re odd or even to see which side they argue. And then verse 19 says after the evidences are heard, the counselors accuser and accused have spoken the president, meaning the president of the High Council because that’s what it’s talking about. The president of the High Council, which would have been William marks at the time the president of the High Council shall give a decision according to the understanding which he shall have of the case and call upon the 12 councilors. Meaning again the 12 high priests that make up the high council. That’s not talking about the 12 apostles who are described as traveling high priests or high priests about broad or traveling councilors. This is talking about the 12 high priests on the high council. He will call upon the 12 councilors to sanction the same by their vote. So that’s really interesting. Right? Was the president of the High Council, William Marks who was responsible to make the decision to declare if someone could stay in the church or not. And then it was the High Council that would vote to sustain that. That that’s how this operates. So, so many people when they get into things like the William Saggers case try to claim with again, like I’ve seen no evidence for it. They claim that this was nothing but a kangaroo court that Joseph was the one really calling the shots. He was determining what would happen. And, and it was I just up, up, up for show, show me any evidence because we have a lot of evidence that shows exactly the opposite. We have Joseph writing the charges to William Marks, which is, is exactly where they should have gone. Then we have such as they are, we have the minutes of the High Council meeting that show that it operated exactly how it was supposed to. And then the decision was made and we must presume it was made by the High Council just as it was supposed to be made by the High Council. So I don’t know how people can claim that this is something different. Again, it’s just they have this in their mind. It looks, this is how it looks to me that this is in their mind. So they bring it to the evidence and they don’t really look at the evidence because they already know what happened. And so they don’t let the pesky little thing like the actual historical record get in the way of what they think happened, right? I think that we need to do better and not only does it not go along with the historical record, it also

[00:30:40] does not make sense at all according to this narrative. Remember again, this was three months after Hiram Smith read the polygamy revelation in front of this exact council who are all now just playing along with Joseph. Let we’re gonna go forward and you’ll hear what Joseph said. They would have seen that he was just completely lying through his teeth. I’ll talk about that a little bit more going on. But this idea that this was a kangaroo court claims that the entire High Council was just going along with what Joseph wanted, including those who by the polygamists own testimonies didn’t receive the revelation, which whatever that meant those who opposed the polygamy revelation, right? So we have everybody present that includes William Marks the president of the High Council. He was just being a puppet for Joseph even though he completely opposed polygamy. How does that make any sense? And also um we have Leonard soy that was just going along with it and just fine doing exactly Joseph fittings in regard to polygamy listening to him lie and, and just doing. How does that make any sense at all? It doesn’t, there’s one story that does make complete sense. It seems to be what is very obvious. Joseph Smith learned what Sagers was saying and doing, he brought charges through the proper channels, he attended the trial and just like everybody else, he had to deal with the outcome even though it didn’t go his way. And as I said, we’re gonna get more into it in a minute into what he said. But out of curiosity, I was just curious about this trial. We don’t have very good minutes as I pointed out. So I wanted to learn a little bit more. So I went ahead and looked at the two high priests who were assigned to argue the case. It’s Grover and Johnson. And so that’s Thomas Grover and Aaron Johnson. We’re not told who argued which side. But I don’t think it really would have mattered because both were up to their eyeballs in navoo polygamy. So, um let’s see, Aaron Johnson and Thomas Grover were actually both early navoo polygamists. They were both in the rather robust group who waited until just after Joseph died to start taking plural wives in 1844. So just months after Joseph died, they started marrying multiple wives. All of these marriages that occurred in Navoo immediately after Joseph’s death made me wonder just exactly who had the power to authorize them since God had appointed unto Joseph to hold this power in the last days. Let’s get this up there. I think that this is a really another really important question that I’ve been thinking about. Section 1 32 7 tells us that Joe, it was that God had appointed unto Joseph to hold the power in the last days. And there is never but one on the earth at a time on whom this power and the keys of this priesthood are conferred. OK? That’s a big deal, right? There’s only one person who can hold the keys of this power like there’s one special permission giver of polygamy, right on the earth. And if you don’t have his permission, your polygamy is the bad spiritual wifey, not the good celestial marriage. That’s the defining factor according to this story. So this is what it made me wonder considering this scripture during the succession crisis. Brigham claimed his argument was that the 12 as a body held all of the keys, right? We haven’t gotten into the story yet of the claims of Joseph Ro rolling the burthen off of off of his own shoulders onto them. We’ll get into that at some point in a little while and it’ll be a little while, but in any case, who is the one? The 12 hold the keys all together as a body. And Brigham Young, even at this point in, um, 1844 when these wives started to be, take, be, be, um, when the, all these plural wives started to be married by the high councils, high councilman and the apostles and others who had authority. Brigham hadn’t even fully rested the power of the church yet. And he certainly didn’t hold the keys himself. He said they held them as a body, right? And so who would have been the one who held these keys? Brigham Young wasn’t um let’s see, he wasn’t set apart as the president of the church until December 27th of 1847. So someone again needs to make sense of that for me. Please explain to me who was the key holder who had power to give polygamy during 1844 1845 1846 and 1847. When all of these Nauvoo marriages were happening, who had the authority to do that? I I really want someone to, to explain that to me and make it make sense with any scriptures, even the fraudulent section 132. So as always, it’s hard to tell a good lie and I’m going to just continue to argue it’s even harder to write a good fake revelation. So that’s, that’s a really good question that people need to answer for me. In any case, if Joseph and Hyrum were polygamous and Hyrum did indeed read section 101 32 to the High Council and Joseph was teaching everybody that they needed to take additional wives for exultation. Why did all of these men wait until after Joseph and Hyrum were dead to get started? That’s another really interesting question. Right. I mean, who were they really hiding their polygamy from? Were they really hiding it from

[00:36:02] the government authorities? The, the constables of even though we’ve shown that that is completely logical and wasn’t said anywhere in any of these excuses of why it had to be kept secret, is that who they were keeping it secret from or were they hiding it from Joseph and Hyrum? That’s what I think is the far, far more obvious case. So let’s first look at Aaron Johnson, shall we? Um, good brother Johnson. I’ll go ahead and share this is his family history record. You can see him right there in the corner and I’m going to scroll down to where we can see his marriage information. So there you can see his first wife, Polly, who he married in 1827 and they had their family. Right. Then here we go, starting in 1844. Just a few minutes after Joseph’s death. He marries his first plural wife. Sarah in Nauvoo. She was, he was 38. She was 20 then good brother Johnson went on to marry another young bride Jane. The next year, the year after that, the now 40 year old Johnson married 14 year old Mary Johnson. She had a baby the following year and went on to have 11 total Children with him. Oh, and then he had a brief reprieve to cross the plains. Then in 1852 the now 46 year old married 17 year old Rachel and barely 15 year old Harriet. And he took another six wives over the next five years. Most of them teenagers, including three girls he married on the same day. So let me see where I can find them. Yep. Here they are right down here. It’s, it’s so many to get through. So Sarah was 20 Julia again 14 and Cecilia 15, he married those three all on the same day when he was either 50 or 51. In all, he married 12 women and although it appears several of them, he didn’t keep long either they didn’t stay with him or he didn’t keep them. He either kicked them out or they left. But in all over his long career as a Mormon polygamist, he married 12 women and he had 55 Children. And so how many of those Children he cared for or provided for in any way is a different question. I didn’t get, I didn’t take time to dig into all of this, but usually it reveals a lot of heartbreak when you do take time to get into it. I just don’t think it’s a good system. So, ok, now let’s go ahead and look at Thomas Grover. This is the other high councilman. So you can see Aaron Johnson was arguing one side. Thomas Grover was arguing the other side. And so Thomas Grover was also an early novo polygamist. You’ll see he wasn’t quite as much of a novo polygamist as he wished he had been. But um, but this, this is a fun one to get to many of you will remember my first conversation with Jeremy Hoop when I was still trying to get all of this figured out. And it was during that conversation that he brought up his third great grandfather, Thomas Grover who Jeremy himself exposed as a liar. And so I haven’t yet done my episode on the 1869 affidavits, but Thomas Grover has a couple of really fun ones that will take a sneak peek at here. And um, let’s see. Oh, let me, yeah, let me go ahead and show these first. So I think these are Thomas Rower’s affidavits right here. Yep. This first one is his affidavit about Hiram reading the revelation to the High Council. This one’s fun. He adds the fun fact that Hiram said that any of them who didn’t receive it would be damned again. That’s fun that they were all, you know, just left that, that they all just kept playing along, excommunicating who Joseph wanted, excommunicated, even though they all knew he was lying. Right. It’s so, so funny and ridiculous. Oh. And they all waited until he was dead to start taking their plural wives. Those who were in on polygamy. Right. And those who opposed it just played along with it anyway, according to this story anyway, and then he filled out another affidavit the same day also June 6th, 1869. And in this one, this is a fun one. This is what Jeremy Hoop pointed out to me that he found and it’s just, it’s a riot. A lot of these affidavits are really fun, but some are just priceless. And so, II I do, I promise we will get in more into both of these in future episodes. But I want to look at this affidavit first. You’ll see there’s no date and it’s funny, some of the affidavits once in a while, they’ll just say in spring of 1844 or in May of 1844. This one is one of those which is not uncommon that very clearly was intended to have a date. They just didn’t what the date should be yet. They knew it was, they wanted to say a um that it was in August of 1843 but it’s very apparent that the goal is to go and rework these backwards to try to find plausible dates that they could fill in. So it just makes it out because it’s a good thing. They were all signed and notarized, right that you sign and notarize things generally to prevent the kind of funny business that all of these affidavits are just rife with. So, but here’s the best part he claims in August 43 the same month that he supposedly read that, um, he supposedly read the revelation to the High Council Hiram sealed or married. That’s the weird word.

[00:41:21] And you’ll become very familiar with when we go into all of these affidavits sealed or married him to two women, Caroline Whiting and Caroline E Hubbard. So let’s look at that, shall we? So again, we have some date that it hasn’t yet been decided on in August of 1843 that Hiram Smith married, performed a polygamous marriage for Thomas Grover where he married to Caroline Caroline Whiting and Caroline Hubbard. So now is where we are going to share Thomas Grover’s own um um his family history sheet and just, you know, I know that there sometimes can be problems with the church family history, um family history site, but I have double checked on all of these. So we have the documentation for all of. So let’s scroll down just like we did with Aaron Johnson. Let’s scroll down to look at Thomas Grover’s wives specifically. We’ll start with his car vs Right. So, here’s his first Caroline Caroline Whiting his first wife, who he married in 1828. Do you see that pretty important date right there. Please pay attention to that. He married Caroline Whiting in 1828. So his claim that Hiram married him to Caroline Whiting in August of 1843 is problematic already. Especially when you look at the day of, um, Caroline’s birth and death. She died. Let’s see. Oh, I, I guess it’s not showing up for me. In any case, you can see it right here. She died in 1840. So he married her in 1828. She died in 1840. I, you can find her death here. Let me, let me read. I’ll just read part of what was on, find a grave. You can find a lot of documentation. This is what it says on. Find a grave. Caroline married Thomas Grover in 1828 in Wyndham County Vermont. They were the parents of seven daughters. So I guess, yeah, there are, there are seven daughters, seven daughters, Jane Emmeline Mary Elizabeth Adeline, Caroline, Eliza Ann and Emma Caroline. Um Let’s see. It says Thomas and Caroline suffered many of the trials of the early Mormon Saints in Kirtland, Missouri and NAVOO. Many people were inflicted with malaria and other diseases from mosquitoes that thrived in the swamps of Navoo. Carolyn had remnant bilious fever for several months and several physicians tried but could not help her. She was expecting 1/7 child and in her wean state delivered a baby girl in October 1840 she died. So there’s her baby girl, right. This all matches up. She died a week later. The baby only survived three days longer. After 12 years of marriage, Thomas was left with six little girls, the oldest 10 and the youngest three. So this is Thomas Grover, his first wife Caroline. He married in 1828. She died in 1840. Could Hiram have married them in 18 43. There’s the first one. Now, let’s look at the second Caroline. Yep. Here she is Caroline. Um Nickerson Nickerson is her maiden name. Her married name is Caroline Hubbard. She was actually a widow as well. And look at this marriage date the 20th of February 1841 right? So again, he claims Hyram married them in 1843 but we have the documentation right here that they were married in 18 41. And we do have, let me see if I can find the marriage certificate yet. Here it is right here. This is a fun document. I tried to blow it up so you could see what I’m looking at because these things are just so delightful to see right in front of your face. So here is the Nauvoo um the the record of the nuer, it says man’s name, woman’s name when married and by whom married. And so you can see, I’ve underlined in red. We have Thomas Grover Caroline Hubbard, February 20th, 1841 married by William Smith. There. It is in black and white. We have the actual record of their marriage that goes right along with what we saw on the family history site on the family search site so we can verify it and back it up that that is indeed the case. So we have verifiable proof that Thomas Grover, like so many others signed fraudulent affidavits trying falsely to paint Joseph and Hyrum as supporters of polygamy. And so this is crazy, right? I hope that you guys find this as amazing as I do when people say you have to believe the affidavits. N No, you have to look at the affidavits and see what they actually say and do a little bit of investigation into them because we have this clear pattern that shows up again and again and again. So Thomas Grover claimed that he was more of a novi polygamist than he actually was. These were both legitimate monogamous wives. But then again, here you can see Elizabeth Wilson. He goes on to marry her in 1844 just after Joseph passes away. Also, Hannah Tupper, he marries in 1844. Let’s see, what else I had? Um Lusa Solo Tupper, he marries, oh, I bet that those I see. I didn’t look into these very much. I’m super curious if those are sisters and he married her just a few years later, went on to marry Mary Anne Potts, Emma Walker. Elizabeth Walker. And on and on,

[00:46:47] it goes the same thing. These were both big time hardcore polygamists that were arguing the case back and forth regarding, um Harrison Sager. I just find that to be fascinating. One good thing I will say about Thomas Grover. It seemed that he kept his brides at a little bit more respectable of age. Most of them were in the 18 to 20 range, which I appreciate. Although, you know, he was married that when he was quite a bit older than that, but in all, he married eight women and had 52 Children according to the records that I was able to find. So I don’t know how this may have affected Sager’s case. I, you know, I don’t know what the argumentation would have been again. Like, would we not just kill to have those records to be able to read this actual trial? It would have been fascinating with Joseph Smith sitting there so many people present trying um this case of claims of Joseph’s um spiritual wifey, right? It is just fascinating. So I, I, like I said, I, I can’t imagine they would have made the most vigorous arguments against spiritual wifey since they obviously already share, also shared these perspectives. And I do find it fascinating that just seven months after this meeting, Joseph and Hyrum would be dead and within just a few months after that, both of these men plus several others would start taking on plural wives. So it looks to me like when the cats away, the mice will play. So now that we’ve gone through those details that I think are interesting and probably important, we can get to the real heart of this episode, the speech that Joseph Smith gave at the end of this meeting. So again, the highest council minutes don’t record his um don’t record much about this meeting. They don’t even tell us that Joseph was there, but we have multiple other sources that tell us that Joseph was there. Um We have it in his journal, I believe for this day yet. This is his journal, November 25th, 1843 evening, the High Council sat in the case of Harrison Sagers for seduction, no action, but the president was present present and the 12. So that, that gives us one of the records. Again, Joseph’s journal is always tricky because it was Willard Richards that kept it and who knows when it was written, right? So, but it is a source that shows us he was there, but there are so many others. But this is what I found to be the most important piece of this meeting that we have. This is Wilfred Woodruff’s journal where he recorded the speech that Joseph made at the end of this trial after the decision was made to keep Harrison Sagers in church. So I’m going to go ahead and read it. He said I was called Well, this is so this is in Wilford Woodruff’s voice, right? I was called in the evening to a council with the 12. When I arrived at Joseph Smith’s store. I found the High Council sitting on a case of Harrison sacre for some, for some improper conduct or other towards some female. At the close President Joseph Smith made an address upon the subject which was highly interesting and its tendency was to do away with every evil and practice virtue and holiness before the Lord that the church had not received any license from him to commit adultery fornication or any such thing, pay attention to that. He’s lumping them together. Nobody in the church, the church as a whole, the church individuals, nobody in the church has license from Joseph Smith to commit adultery fornication or any such thing. Harrison Sagers is being tried for spiritual wifey. Joseph is lumping it all together with adultery and fornication, which interestingly is also what the book of Mormon does, right? And so um he goes on to say, but to the contrary, if any man committed adultery, he could not receive the celestial kingdom of God, even if he was saved in any kingdom, it could not be the celestial kingdom. He said he thought many examples that had been manifest. John C Bennett and others was sufficient to show the fallacy of such a course of conduct. He condemned the principle in Toto K, he condemned the principle in Toto. We’ll come back to that again and warned those present against going into those evils for. They would surely bring a curse upon their heads. I want to focus on this. He condemned the principle in total. What does that mean? Right. What is the principle we’re talking about? Well, first of all, in total, the definition of that is totally and completely, he can damned the principle totally and completely. So when the apologists are saying that he’s speaking half truths here, that he’s issuing carefully worded denials. Exactly what principle is he talking about here that he is rejecting totally and completely. None of the polygamists ever refer to John Bennett or Harrison Sager spiritual wifey as a principal, right? They constantly say that he was, they were doing a corruption of what Joseph was doing, but they constantly refer to the good polygamy as a principle. It’s even referred to as a principle in section 132 right? And so what like you have to again deal with this and acknowledge it.

[00:52:05] What principle is he talking about that and that he is spelling out here lumping it all together with adultery and fornication and any such other thing that he is rejecting all of that together, lumping it all together, rejecting the entire principle totally and completely. You have to deal with that. And again, remember this was three months, this was over three months after Hiram has supposedly read the revelation to the High Council. So again, they all knew about it, including those who rejected it, mainly William Marks and Leonard Soy Cells was the other one that they claim didn’t receive it, but he had already resigned. And in the episode that I have coming up, I will make, I think a very strong case for, for the real reason that Austin Cells resigned from the High Council. It had nothing to do with polygamy. And I think plenty of evidence for that. But we’re claiming everyone claims that William Marks was a man of integrity, right? And yet he didn’t have enough integrity to stand up against this. He could listen to Joseph Smith say these things when he knew that these were like outright lies and just go along with it and be fine with that. How does that make any sense? How, how especially with his feelings toward Emma and how he wanted to help her and take care of her and the integrity that he had? We are talking about marriage, right? And the ultimate levels of hypocrisy here. If Joseph truly was practicing one thing and saying another, what he was saying would be inexcusable. Someone explained to me how and why William Marks would just sit silently and go along with it and be fine with that. It doesn’t make any sense at all. What does make sense is exactly what we’ve said, right? Is that Joseph heard this about Harrison Sager brought forth charges, tried to have it prosecuted, went and again said exactly what he wanted everybody to hear even making sure all of the 12 were there. So there could be no mistake. This is what it is, this never happens. There’s no approval for that. That makes complete sense. This other side doesn’t make sense at all also. Yeah, we have William Marks choosing lovers of polygamy to argue both sides of the case, right? I could see like it makes sense that William Marks didn’t know what was happening. Joseph didn’t know what was happening. I know people act like that’s ridiculous. But I’m a mom. I have a lot of kids. There are times I don’t know what my kids are plotting, right? Until I find the mess afterward. Is there any mom that that doesn’t happen to on at least a somewhat regular basis? Right? It’s not like, you know, everything that’s going on that people are trying to keep secret from you. So this really does make by far the most sense and someone’s gonna have to explain to me how any other scenario makes sense other than exactly what it looks like and what the evidence points to it being, which was that Joseph Smith was sincere in what he was saying and what he was doing just a couple more things I want to quickly mention about this. I don’t want to beat a dead horse, but there are so many points to make here. I’m hoping that people will have a lot of other thoughts that I haven’t even brought up. But again, if this is a carefully worded, if this is a carefully worded denial, where are the loopholes? Where are the carefully crafted outs? Right? How can you condemn the principle in total and leave? How is that a carefully worded denial? I want to know that we also need to again acknowledge that Hiram Smith had already been sharing this all around. This wasn’t secret anymore. He’d read it to the entire council. We have all of these later affidavits saying that he had showed it to all kinds of people. Mercy, kept it for five days herself, showing it to all kinds of people. So this was hardly being kept secret according to that narrative, I’m arguing that that never happened that Hiram did that not. And and 11 question that I have yet to have answered is what exactly was the document that Hiram read to the High Council that he was showing all around town? Because according to the to the polygamists own stories, there was just the one copy that William Clayton made and Joseph let um Whitney have Kingsbury make a secret copy that nobody knew about. And Whitney Bishop Whitney kept it secret from everybody so nobody knew about it. And Emma burned the original So what exactly did Hyrum have? Someone needs to answer that question? What did he go across the street to get to read to the High Council? What did he show around uh around town? And how can you argue that it needed to be kept secret to the point that Joseph was doing all of this duplicitous action? When at the same time, Hiram is reading it to everyone and we have all of these later affidavits saying that Joseph was you get to everyone and trying them to all take, trying to get all of the people to take plural wives. Oh, except for his first counselor in his own first presidency, right. Oh

[00:56:58] And also, except that none of them started marrying wives until after Joseph and Hyrum were dead. It just goes on and on and on. There is no evidence to support this side of it. There just isn’t, but the evidence all lines up perfectly if we look at it for what it really was. And then the other question that we need to answer now is why would Joseph completely blow this up? Why would he bring so much attention to it, bring so much press to it? Have it tried out in the open? That’s another question that really needs to be dealt with and then with the language that he used that this just, this isn’t looking good for those who want to claim that Joseph was a polygamist. There’s too much here. Then we’re not even going into all of the things like he has no Children. There’s no um documentation, there are no letters or notes or anything like that. And there are for all of these other novo polygamists, right? We have so much evidence including Children and, and there and you can’t say that it was because the police or that because it was against the law. Like there’s just no evidence for any of that. It just, it, it doesn’t work. You can’t keep making the same worn out claims we have to reinvestigate this, we have to do better. So, ok, now, here’s another really fun part that I want to get into is seeing how the historians massaged. Joseph’s very clear speech that he gave into a version that could be workable for the church history, right? That’s what we’re going to look at now because, oh, this is always just, you know, just an interesting path to go down. So as always, we first have the draft history. Well, here, I’ll show you again. These are um Wilfred Woodruff’s original notes in his journal right here. We have it recorded Wilfred Woodruff actually wasn’t an early adopter of polygamy. It took quite a few years after Joseph died. And so if this looks to me to be a contemporaneous um record of what Joseph said, and it seems to honestly and um record what Joseph said, but now we go forward and as always we have the draft history, those who have been following this topic, understand these different versions, right? We have the draft history and you can see the changes being made, but the changes were all worked into the finalized copy. So I’m just going to work off of the finalized copy to compare it to the original sources. So you can see um see what happened. I of course, will have all of the links below for anyone who wants to spend more time looking at these more specifically. But this is kind of fun. The um this finalized version was actually printed in the Deseret News. Let’s see, it was April 1st 1857 and when they printed it, when they finally had it ready, that’s when these um histories were being created, right in Utah, that’s when it was done and they printed it in the newspaper. So I’m going to let you look at the newspaper version because it’s a little bit easier to read. It did make me chuckle that I thought maybe it was appropriate that it was April 1st that it was published. It’s April Fool’s Day because that seems to possibly be appropriate. So they um the Joseph Smith history is actually on the next page. So flip it over and I’ll start reading where that little arrow is. But first, I want to people to have it fresh in their mind what was recorded in Wilfred Woodruff’s original speech because there are some very specific and careful changes that really matter. And just if anyone wants to pause this and read through both of these, feel free, I’m gonna put them side by side and read through it. So this right here on, um, the right is like you’re right, the one in the white is the, um, transcript from Wilford Woodruff. And the one on the left with the red underlining is from the newspaper. And if anyone wants to pause and read through this, feel free to do it, I’ll go ahead and read it as well and I’ll point out the important differences, but this is a really big deal and it’s so interesting to see this happen over and over and over again. This really is the modus operandi. This is exactly what they would do, make these very careful, subtle little changes just to finagle a little bit of wiggle room in there so that they could claim that Joseph was saying the opposite of what he was saying and doing the opposite of what he was doing. It’s really, it’s just amazing to see this time and time again. So first of all, remember that they changed everything to put it in Joseph’s voice to pretend that it was Joseph’s own words, which it never was. And I think that’s very dishonest, but I’m just reminding us of that because the original was written. Well, they took both Joseph’s journal that also wasn’t written in his words and combined it with Wilfred Woodruff’s record, which was in that was in Wilford Woodruff’s own voice, but they put it in Joseph’s voice. So we’re going to go ahead and read it where it starts with the arrow. In the evening, the High Council sat in on the, sat on the case of Harrison Sacre charged with seduction and having stated that I had taught it was right charge not sustained. I was present with several of the 12 and gave an address tending to do away with every evil and exhorting them to practice virtue and holiness before the Lord. So first of all, that’s an interesting change because it separates it. It makes it so that the address wasn’t necessarily directly referring to the Harrison Sr case, which it absolutely was. So it’s like, oh,

[01:02:17] there was the Harrison Sacre case and then Joseph gave a nice address, right? It goes on to say told them that the church had not received any permission from me. Now look at this to commit fornication, adultery or any corrupt action. So again, it’s just completely separated, it has nothing to do and he separates these into this own little category. All of a sudden he’s talking about fornication, adultery or any corrupt action. When the original it’s all tied together. This is responding directly to the Harrison Sager case and it says adultery fornication or any such thing, right? He’s lumping them all together. He’s saying this spiritual wiery business, which he went on to say another time. It includes adultery, fornication or any such thing. But they carefully make it so that there’s some degrees of separation. He’s just giving this nice sermon. And of course, Joseph wasn’t supportive of fornication or adultery or any corrupt action, right? It, it makes it completely irrelevant to what it was actually dealing with and then it goes on pretty accurate. But my, but my, every word in action has been to the contrary, if a man commit adultery, he cannot receive the celestial kingdom of God. But it’s not acknowledging that spiritual wifey and polygamy in Joseph’s words. And in Joseph’s mind and in teaching was adultery. That’s what he’s talking about, even if he is saved in any kingdom, it cannot be the celestial kingdom. I did think that the many examples that have been made manifest such as John Senna and others were sufficient to show the fallacy of such a course of conduct. This part just killed me. I condemned such actions in Toto again. So he’s like, I’m just talking about adultery here with nothing to do with what what we’re dealing with. And I condemn adultery and any corrupt action of of complete com of, of course, I completely condemned that in the original he’s going on with what he’s saying and it says he condemned the principle in Toto. He condemned the entire idea of spiritual wifey in total, right? But here, they just carefully separated out. So he’s not really talking about that. He’s just talking about adultery here. And of course, he condemns that and warned the people present against committing such evils for it will surely bring a curse upon the, upon any person who commits such deeds. Oh, it’s unbelievable. It’s so subtle and careful and it shows the care that was taken to make, to undermine everything that Joseph said on this topic. It’s just the polygamist historians hard at work as usual. And so again, this is why people use this argument that say that Joseph was just using doublespeak. He was, he was doing carefully worded denials. He was, he was denying it so that people would hear that, but leaving himself enough wiggle room. First of all, that is lying, right? That is lying. The, that’s what um Lucifer did in the Garden of Eden, right? He told half truths, right? He told true things with the intent to deceive when my kids do that. It’s lying. If I do that, I’m lying. Can we just call it what it is? II I mean, the people that want to defend Joseph Smith by saying carefully worded denials. It’s nonsense. It’s ludicrous. He either was lying or he was telling the truth. There’s none of this wiggle room and most of the wiggle room was built in layer later by the polygamists who we know were lying. That is not what the original record says, but that’s what the polygamists claim that it said. And that’s what they wrote into the to be passed down to all of us until we have the benefit of being able to see these records for ourselves. This is just one more case to add to the huge and growing pile of clear fraud for the purpose of painting Joseph as a polygamist by changing his own words. It’s getting to where most of us can’t even keep up with this anymore because we are finding so many of these again and again and again. But ok, it goes on from there. So you might hope that Harrison Sr would reform right after this close call after everything that happened, being called out by none less than Joseph Smith for his corrupt actions that maybe he would like at least pretend to cut it out for a while, but that wouldn’t be our and seers. And so we’re going to go on to see what happens next. So the next document we have is from Lucy herself, Lucinda Sagers this time, she herself brings charges against him. I don’t, I don’t blame her for not being satisfied with the outcome of the previous trial. That would be pretty frustrating to see how he was let off, right. So I’ll go ahead and read Lucinda’s um charge that she sent in to the presidency and the 12 in as much as you as you have declared officially that you will deal with all persons who teach or have taught the abominable doctrine of spiritual wives. This is to notify you that Harrison Sagers is guilty of said sin. Which thing can be proven by credible witnesses? And if he is not chastised by the church, um the law of the land will be enforced against him. H Sagers left his family in December last since which time he has not provided for them in any way, whatever the case of the innocent demand action immediately.

[01:07:38] And you are the ones to take the matter in hand, Lucinda Sager. So this is really interesting. So she wrote this in April of 1844. You remember that trial? The last trial where Joseph Smith was um brought charges that was November 25th of 1843. And it says that he moved out in December. So he left her just after that last trial, right? And she’s now bringing charges herself. I don’t blame her for not being happy with the decision of the last of the last trial. I wouldn’t have agreed with it either. And again, you cannot say that it was Joseph Smith doing a kangaroo court because it was William Marks that made that decision. And William Marks didn’t go along with Joseph Smith’s spiritual wife. Re because I think he hadn’t even heard about it yet because Hyrum never read it in the High Council. The only thing that makes sense, but in any case, you can see that this, this also went to William Marks again because it’s the High Council who, who had to deal with things like this. So this is the back of this same note you can see on the front of it is Lucinda’s writing and on the back of it is actually William Marks writing and this is what he wrote. He said, brother Harrison Sager. So he forwarded it to Harrison Sager. He got it from Lucinda wrote a note and delivered to Harrison Sr showing in the charges that said brother Harrison Sr dear sir. As this complaint has been handed over to the High Council by the first presidency to act upon you are requested to appear before said council on Saturday the 13th the 13th instant at my house at two o’clock PM to answer to the within charges. Nauvoo City April 10th 1844 William Marks. So that’s when Marks forwarded it and we now can go to the next High Council meeting that was on April 13th, 1844. So here again are the very bad jos stout minutes of the meeting, but it does at least at least um tell us who was there. So this is what this first page of the note says. Um it was at President Mark’s house present were William Mars Charles Coulson Rich, presiding counselors present Samuel Bent, James Allred Lewis Dunbar, Dunbar, Wilson Alpheus Cutler, David Fuller George W Harris Jesse Divine Hunter, they have his name wrong on. Um, they on, on the record, that’s what his real name was. He was, um, just like it says pro TEM, he wasn’t actually a member of the high council. It seems he was in training Aaron Johnson, Newell, Knight, William Huntington, Leonard soy, Henry G Sherwood. So that was who was there at this meeting and this was at William Mark’s house. So this wasn’t a big public meeting like the previous one had been, this was just the private meeting with the High Council. And again, um, Jos Stout or whoever gives us these notes, he just wrote the complaint verbatim the notes, he wrote Lucinda’s note and William Mark’s note in the record instead of writing what was actually said, which would have been so much more interesting, although there are some interesting things coming that are not going to get into this episode. I’ll, I’ll hint at them in a minute, but I would love to have a more fulsome account of both of these meetings, but he does at least let us know this. He wrote defendant pled not guilty again, right? Two were appointed to speak on his side. So instead of just one on each side, his last and this time it was two decided that as the first part of the charge had been brought before the council before on the 25th of November. So they’re saying he was again accused of teaching spiritual wifey, but that had already been dealt with. So we can’t put him in double jeopardy. I think that that’s, you know, I wouldn’t agree with that part of the decision. And, um, and it said since it was dealt with before and he tried on it, the council had no right to deal with him on that item. And the second part was not sustained and therefore that he should remain in the church. So that’s a hard one as well. But again, you can’t say that this was Joseph. You can’t say that this was Joseph’s kangaroo court. First of all, as I already said, I don’t like this form of government. This outcome seems even worse to me, but Joseph wasn’t even at this High Council, this was William Marks and his High Council. They were the ones making this, these decisions. Joseph had nothing to do with this and he wasn’t there to pull, to pull any strings. Um We can um in the November 25th High Council meeting, the one that was the big one in the Jose and Joseph Smith store, we have multiple sources telling us that he was there as well as that. It was his own charges, right? This one is Justin William Marks Home. It lists exactly who was there and not even that we have Joseph Smith’s own journal for this day. April 13th is actually a very extensive four page journal entry that tells us what he was doing. Let’s see, he spent um most of the day in municipal court with the f trying to deal with the Fosters in court. And then he um was receiving a river boat boat full of converts from England. So he had a pretty full day and he was not at this meeting. So since Joseph wasn’t in the High Council this day, you need to come up with another explanation for why he Harrison Sacre was let off so easily this time. Now,

[01:12:59] I did briefly mention that there’s more information about these um this Harrison Sager’s case. That is very interesting that will be coming forward. So I’m just not going to get into them here because there’s a lot more work that needs to be done. But there is some exciting stuff happening that could again, completely change the general understanding about nu- polygamy. So I will for sure, keep you updated. But we have some sources and some documents that I am really excited to, to dig into and find out what we can from them. So, but moving on from these trials. So Harrison Sr Sacre was brought up on charges twice once from Joseph Smith, once from Lucinda, both times was led off by the High Council. You have, if you’re going to say that it was Joseph Smith, that was responsible for that, you have to provide some evidence for that. You can’t just make the assumption and make the claim without anything to back it up when the evidence shows that the opposite is true. So that’s the situation where we are. So, after these two trials, I think it’s pretty hard to blame Lucinda for being pretty mad and it looks like she and her entire family left the church, whatever family that she had that came into the church, they all left because there’s no record of them after this except for this, before they disappeared. Lucinda printed this notice in the Nauvoo Expositor, right? So this is from the recreation of the novel Expositor and this is just listed all by itself. She just put a notice in the novel Expositor saying one cent reward. And it’s so funny because in this day and age, these kinds of notices would be done by men about their wives, right? They would say a reward for my wife and don’t, don’t charge anything because I won’t pay for it, right? So Lucinda is doing this about her husband, which I think is a riot. This she this girl’s got gumption. It’s something else. So she is mad, you know, but I love it. It says where is my husband? The right? Reverend Wh Harrison Segers Esquire has left my bed and board without case or without cause or provocation. This is to notify the public not to harbor or trust him on my accounts as I will pay no debts of his contracting. Maura Annon Lucinda Sager, June 7th 1844 that I, like I said is a riot because that was in reverse. It was men that would do that about their, their wives, right? So this was in the famous novel Expositor. You’ll remember that that’s the newspaper that William Law and others got together for the purpose of bringing the mob trying to get Joseph Smith killed. But please pay attention to this. It has absolutely nothing to do with Joseph Smith, right. This is Lucinda taking out an ad about her estranged husband who she has good reason to be furious at. So I, I will say I, and from the evidence, I can find, I have not been able to find any, any evidence of any kind of a close connection at all between Joseph Smith and Harrison Sagers. I’ve searched all of Joseph’s journals such as they are. I’ve looked at his notes, his speeches, his records. I’ve even tried to tried my best to look over their missions and their travel, travel itineraries to see if there could have been any overlap. I can’t see anywhere that they had any sort of personal relationship. As I already said, Joseph didn’t have anything to do with any of Harrison’s um sustaining or callings or setting apart. He wasn’t involved in any of that. The only connection I can find between the two of them. That’s anything personal at all is Joseph Smith bringing charges against him. Right. So, in some ways it seems that he might have been closer to Lucinda and F Phoebe than he was to Harrison. So I think that that’s, that’s an interesting thing to point out because bizarrely this notice from the Novo expositor was picked up and carried in other newspapers, some much larger newspapers. So, first of all, the Warsaw signal picked it up. Right. And they add a lot of false editorializing. It’s, it’s not, it copies what Lucinda wrote, but look at what it says about it. A Saints Reward. We copy from the Novo expositor. The following advert advertisement, it will be recollected, it will be recollected. So I’ll, I’ll get into that. It will be recollected that the right reverend gentleman spoken of is one of Joe’s bosom companions and confidential counselors. No less a personage than he who was sometimes since detected in passing counterfeit money in the Holy City after having brightened it with an application of celeritas. I looked that up and it looks like it’s just some kind of a powder something or other. But anyway, what’s so interesting here? It says it will be recollected. So I searched the entire Warsaw signal to see what Thomas Sharp or anyone else had ever said about Harrison, Sr and Joseph Smith. And there is nothing all there is is that article printed in March of 1844 about that November 25th trial that Joseph Smith was involved in, right? That, that was somebody that claimed to have been there dishonestly representing it, at least according to the documentation. So you can find that. But that doesn’t say anything about this close bosom companionship between Harrison Sager and Joseph Smith. There’s absolutely no evidence for it

[01:18:23] and they provide no evidence for it and they can’t find it anywhere. It’s just if you can get any dirt to shovel. Right. It’s good enough. We’re just gonna, just gonna create any dirt and bad connections that we can, who cares about if there’s any evidence? So I found that to be really interesting, interesting that it just that, that how, how is it recollected? It will be recollected. The Warsaw signal had said nothing about it and I didn’t see anything about it anywhere else, but this also got picked up by the New York Herald if you can believe it. And it’s just a similar version of the same thing that was in the Warsaw signal. It says a runaway saying, and it makes it even a little more convoluted because it looks like it’s all Lucinda, we copy from the Defunct at present, Novo Expositor the following advert advertisement and they didn’t copy it from the novel Expositor. They copied it from the Warsaw signal, obviously, as you’ll see the right reverend gentleman spoken of. And again, this is all directly from the, the Warsaw signal is one of Joseph Smith’s bosom companions and confidential counselors. No less a personage than he who was sometimes since detected in passing counterfeit money in the Holy City after having brightened it with an application of celeritas and then it goes on to list um Lucinda Seger’s um announcement. So you can see how these things spread and what happens, right? And the thing that I just find like, II I just incomprehensible is how historians or others take these versions from the New York Herald and the Warsaw signal and assume that they are telling the truth. So they create this close association between Harrison Sr and Joseph Smith and claim that Joseph Smith was protecting Harrison Sr when there’s absolutely nothing to show that the best you can do is these very shallow hollow dishonest claims in these salacious newspapers, right? Ok. So this is already longer than I planned it to be. And I’ve had to do it in different segments because my voice just can’t handle it. But there are just two more things that I want to look at in this fascinating case before we wrap this episode up. So first, I want to consider Sager’s ongoing behavior after this trial and especially after Joseph’s death and coming to Utah, that’s an interesting part of this story. And second, I think it’s really important to look at how the historians treat this very interesting case. So those are the final two pieces that we are going to look at in this investigation. So while Sagers does seem to have been stymied in his early attempts at spiritual wifey and polygamy or celestial plural marriage, depending on which way you’re going to explain this away. Um His frustrations didn’t seem to last too long. He wasn’t quite as early of an adopter as several of the other members of the several members of the high council and others who were taking wives just a few months after Joseph and Hiram’s death. But starting in 1846 he seemed eager to make up for lost time. So let’s go ahead and now add Harrison Sager’s family history record to the screen so I can show you what I’m talking about. So we’ll scroll down here and there’s his first wife, Lucy, they had one child and then, you know, they, they became a strange. So after that, in 1846 January of 1846 he married two girls four days apart. So he married Susan who was 17 and then he married Olive, who was actually closer to his own age. But as we go forward, I think that you’ll see that there might have been, he might have had ulterior motives for marrying Olive. Then he apparently he seems to have taken a break to cross the plains. Oh, I guess he married Harriet before that they left Harriet out. I think she was barely 15. That was in 1847 before he came to Utah. I can’t, can’t miss her. But once he got to Utah he picked right back up when, on the same day he married the two teenage little sisters of his one older wife, Olive Wheaton. That’s just charming. Right. He goes on two years later when he was 38 he married another teenager Francis and he just kept going from there marrying Marian when he was 43. And then he rounded it off by marrying the 26 year old wife of another man who already had four Children with him. But apparently that plural marriage was dissolved. So she instead married Harrison. She was 26 and he was 63 in all. He had nine wives and 33 Children. However, this is really interesting. Only one of his wives. Well, I guess two of his wives didn’t leave him. So, Ruth, the teenage sister with whom he had 11 Children. I know it says 15, I can show you really fast. That’s a mistake. Ruth died in 1870 one and her 11 Children that are correctly listed are all born before 1871. And then it has these mistaken ones listed after she was dead. So someone just made a mistake with that. That’s why it’s important to always check. But Ruth is the one wife who didn’t, who didn’t either he didn’t kick out or she didn’t leave. It’s the one that they actually stayed together until she died. However, I don’t know if it’s saying that much because she died when she was 39. Right in 1871. Right. And he was apparently alone for the next seven years because all of his other wives left,

[01:23:58] either had already left or left during, I think they had already left before Ruth died. And he was alone until 1878. And so really, he lived in pretty much monogamy or singlehood for most of his life. It’s really interesting how this happens and all in all of Seger’s wives that left left him. At least one seemed to have availed herself of Brigham’s trading up doctrine in 1856. I think it was Harriet yet she and the six, her six Children she had had with Sagers were instead sealed to Brigham Young. So it’s kind of fun to see that doctrine in action, right? The the Brigham Young’s trading up idea. So remember this as we look at this, just complete mess of marriages, right? How just how is this not just wife swapping? Like if you look at so many of these wives that are on these lists, several of them also have husband after husband, after husband, after husband because they’re just leaving and coming and going willy nilly. It’s, it’s 132 claims to be the new and ever like lasting covenant of marriage, right? What the polygamists polygamists call celestial plural marriage and what the church still calls eternal marriage, but it still is applied to section 132. The power was supposed to be given to elevate marriage by making it everlasting by making it last even beyond the grave. But instead, it’s so obvious when you look through these histories that the exact opposite happens. It is this nonsense, this abomination of polygamy. It had the opposite effect. It makes a complete mockery of marriage. It turns it into just this convenient free love thing that’s happening. It’s similar to what happened with Warren Jeffs, right? Where women are just taken and given and men are kicked out and the and who knows whose parents like there’s like no bonds and connections between individuals, no human connection because it’s all in service of this awful abominable doctrine. I swear the adversary must just be laughing as he watches this happen in the name of eternal marriage. It’s so tragic and it’s so sad. So I think reading these two little snippets will at least give us a taste. So this is from a short autobiography written by William Wallace Smith. Sagers. He’s the oldest living child of the eighth wife Marian. And um he says my mother, Marian Browning Smith was born April 19th, 1837 at Stewart in Scotland. She received the gospel in the early fifties. That’s the 18 fifties when Orson Pratt and Eli B. Kelson were, were Mormon missionaries in that land. She emigrated to the United States and then to Tawila in 1852. At the age of 15 years, she taught that she taught her Children to fear God. And that Joseph Smith was a true prophet of the Lord Jesus Christ until the day of her death. August 31st, 1879. What I’m gonna read a little bit more about just what I love about these people is that their testimony of the truthfulness of the restoration couldn’t be destroyed even by all of this evil and abomination and suffering. It just always reminds me of no unhallowed hand can stop this work from progressing. And I think we’re seeing that still playing out today. The truthfulness of the book of Mormon. The truthfulness of what Joseph Smith restored can’t be stopped by even these terrible falsehoods that came into it. And I love that so many of these faithful people were able to keep a hold of that, that core of truth. Despite all of this, it’s, it’s quite professional to me. So he goes on to say when I was about 16, my mother married James I Steel. So remember he’s the oldest living child she had, I think six Children with Harrison Sakers had already left that. They’d, they’d already, he’d already kicked her out or she’d already left to where she was raising her Children alone until this son was 16. And she married James Steele. He says, um I worked on the farm and was getting out wood to make charcoal for the smelters at Stockton and railroad ties until my mother died. August 31st 1879 I was 19 years old, my brothers, sisters and I started and went it ourselves. So again, this 19 year old who’d already been, had how many marriages dissolved? At the very beginning, he talks of his autobiography. He mentions his father who he really didn’t know at all. Right. And then his um mother is alone. He’s having to do this hard physical labor from early or from his early youth, just like polygamous still do, right? And then his mother died and he was responsible for providing for and raising all of those siblings because the fathers didn’t take any responsibility for them. Apparently, it’s just tragic. And then I just want to read this one other bit. This is from a book called the Sagers Clan. It’s a history written of William Henry Harrison Sagers. So this is from page 2428 and all of these sources are available on family search. You can find all of these Harrison Sagers probably has a large posterity. So she’s already gone through all of the Children of him that they know of all of the posterity. Then she adds this in the end, he probably has a large posterity. Some in the country about whom we know nothing and they likewise know nothing about him. In addition to those mentioned above in this chapter, he had other Children Samuel by his first wife, Lucinda Madison, Dinah or Dinah, by his wife Lucy Wheaton Eliza by wife Francis Adams Royal Joseph o’neil and Sarah by his wife Harriet Barney Young. So those were the ones that were sealed and became the Children of Brigham Young,

[01:30:01] whatever that meant Sarah by wife Ruth Adelia Wheaton, perhaps several in Idaho by his wife Martha, while residing in the Soda Springs area and the four in Blackfoot by wife Elizabeth Ada, Ida Eugene and Alfred Sagers. So those are the ones that they at least know of the Children he had that nobody knows anything about because he didn’t have anything to do with them, right? I sincerely hope that this book will find its way into the hands of some of the descendants of all of these Children. It is also my hope that they and you will come to know Harrison better, will look beyond his faults and weaknesses and will recognize him for his better attributes and worthy achievements. So that’s fascinating. Even his biographer, his descendant who’s trying to write a glowing biography, had to at least acknowledge those parts of his life, right? This is just a terrible tragic story. This man, what he was doing this falsehood that he chose to pursue. Maybe he could have had a really happy life with Lucy if he hadn’t gone this direction and you can see the complete upheaval, it brought not only into his life but into the lives of all of these women and all of these Children. But this is a man who claimed to have learned this principle directly from the prophet Joseph Smith. That’s why he claimed and that’s what many people continue to claim. I don’t, I think that everyone who believes that Joseph was a polygamist claims that William Sr, that Harrison sr got it from him. So that’s right. Despite him being brought up on charges of spiritual wifey twice, one time by Joseph himself, he clearly went on to have a long illustrious career as a Mormon polygamist in full fellowship. And his name is evoked as a witness who Joseph Smith personally taught polygamy to. So this is, this is leading us on to the final part of this um exploration that we’re going to consider how the complicated case of Harrison Sagers plays into the current polygamy narrative and how it is handled by historians specifically, among all of these things. I would like to ask Brian Hill since this is his term or any other historians, whether Harrison Sagers was a polygamy insider. That’s, that’s Brian’s term. He says there were polygamy insiders who were taught this by Joseph. So Brian was Harrison Sagers a polygamy insider or was he not? That’s he’s, he’s in this fuzzy middle ground between John Bennett. The story is exactly the same as John Bennett, except he was never disciplined and he was kept in full fellowship. And then you yourself, Brian use his name as someone who Joseph taught polygamy to. So that’s what we’re going to look at. So first Harrison was living in Utah alive and well, when all of these affidavits were being sought and for some reason, he never filled one out, either he wasn’t asked to or he just chose not to. I don’t know, we whatever the case, we don’t have an affidavit from Harrison Sabers, which is interesting, but he is mentioned in at least one other affidavit. So this is the affidavit of Nathan Tanner. This is an interesting one, right? So I’ll just go ahead and read this, Nathan Tanner say that in the spring of 1844. So again, it’s left very open ended. We’re not given even a month, let alone a date in the spring of 1844 at Montrose Lee County Iowa. He heard President Joseph Smith while in conversation with himself, Harris and Sagers Blank Daniels, apparently they were going to fill in that name later and others also, that’s nice and open ended. Anyone else who wants to say this happened? He heard him in front of all of those people teach the doctrine of celestial marriage or plurality of wives. And subsequently, he heard the prophet teach the dog doctrine from the stand in navoo in a manner that he perfectly understood. Not only that the prophet believed it, but that it was in force at the time. So again, show us this sermon, right? He’s just saying, I caught the doublespeak and remember this is when the people didn’t have free access to the minutes of these sermons as we have now. So we won’t go into them with, into the many other problems of this affidavit. I’ll just be, I’ll just say this one thing. I have not been able to find a single day in spring, 1844 or anywhere around spring all the way up to February and into June. That this could have happened when Joseph Smith could have been in Montrose Iowa teaching spiritual wifey, teaching plural marriage, right? I acknowledge I might have missed something. So if there is a more experienced or more adept historian, that can show me what I’m missing, I am all years. I would love to be shown what I am missing. But so far in what I could search through, I searched through Joseph Smith’s journals as well as the church history and Joseph Smith history. And I looked through any sermons, I could find any events happening, any records I could find, I could not find a single day when Joseph could have been where Nathan Tanner said he was. And also there is not a single mention of Nathan Tanner anywhere in either record. And only two mentions of the only two mentions of Harrison Sagers that are all personal are the ones having the ones we already pointed out that had to do with where he was being prosecuted

[01:35:29] for claiming that Joseph taught him spiritual wifey. So there’s nothing to back this up in the historical record. Nothing at all. And we’ve already shown how problematic so many of these affidavits are and yet, despite all of the numerous lies, we can point to through, through so many of these affidavits and what appeared to be readily apparent lies in this one. We are supposed to just take this affidavit at face value and believe it is telling the truth, especially when you consider again, remember this was super secret, Joseph had to lie in front of his own people in front of his own high council, right? Who already were already in on it, that he couldn’t have any records anywhere, even though all of the polygamist after him left records everywhere, right? It had to be so secret that it couldn’t be talked about. Although Hiram was reading it to the High Council and showing it all around town. And apparently Joseph Smith also was just in large groups willy nilly with who even knows how many people that were there because it was many others. In addition to just those that he named that Joseph was teaching about spiritual wifey to people who had no connection to him, who had no special calling in the church, who had no reason to be taught this high secret holy doctrine. Oh, though that, that even his first counselor and his own first presidency didn’t qualify to be told about, although he’s telling all of these other people, right? It just goes on and on. Can you see why I have so many issues with this? But apparently the answer is yes, we are supposed to just accept this affidavit at face value, no questions asked. So I’m going to show just a couple of articles and again, I, I’m just sharing these, um, I don’t ever want to pick on historians. I’m trying to do better about that. So this is not in any way. I just want to refute what they’re saying because I disagree with it and I’m hoping that some of them will come and talk to me so we can keep these conversations going. But this is from a 2003 article written by Gary Reguera on illicit intercourse, plural marriage and the Navoo State High Council 1841 to 1844. So he goes on and he go, he says word eventually. So he talks about Sakers in this article, which is why I’m looking it up and I cannot possibly no, if I have covered every article that was ever mean that ever mentioned her. Um Harrison Sr I’m certain that I’m not, I just want to give you a good um snippet of how Harrison Sr is treated by historians. And these are some of the most credible sources that do talk about him. So this is Gary Braa word eventually spread that Sagers and his sister-in-law shared a sexual relationship. So what, how, where do we know that words spread and where do we know that we, that they shared a sexual relationship? You’ll recall from the actual, um, complaint. It just said that he attempted to seduce her. It didn’t say anywhere that he succeeded that actually goes against what the historical record actually says because Joseph Smith made it very clear that, um, Harrison attempted to seduce her. There’s no word that he actually did. There’s no evidence for that and that’s not even what Lucinda or anybody else said. And so then it goes on to say, and that Sagers justified his actions by appealing to the prophet’s example, when Smith learned of the stories, he charged Sakers before the High Council, but before the High Council joined by members of the 12 with quote trying to seduce a young girl living at his house by the name of Phoebe Madison. Again, he was trying to do it for him to jump off and say that they shared a sexual relationship is a huge departure from what the sources say. He, he goes on quoting Joseph Smith and using my name in a blasphemous manner by saying that I tolerated such things in which he is guilty of lying, et cetera, et cetera. Continuing on with BGA Sagers pleaded not guilty and the council concluded that he had been taught false doctrine. OK? That’s another huge departure from what the sources actually say. So I’m gonna show you the record in the High Council. It doesn’t say that he had been taught false doctrine, it says that he taught false doctrine, right? And so like this is crazy that historians do this and that, that they either do it intentionally or miss it, that it there. I, I don’t know how to explain this and I don’t know how they get away with it. It’s crazy. So I’m really glad to be able to see it now because this is twisting what the actual sources say it goes on to say which the prophet corrected. So he’s claiming that Harrison had been taught false doctrine, but the prophet corrected it. No, Harrison had taught false doctrine and the prophets stood up and spoke against everything and condemned the entire principle in, in its totality that’s very different than how he paints it. And I just do not understand how the historians do this. I don’t want to be hard on them as I said, but it’s really frustrating to see this. It’s actually quite incredible to see how many things they get just completely wrong. I don’t know if it’s that they’re just bringing their bias to it. So not aware of what they’re doing. And maybe someone will point out where I’ve done something similar.

[01:40:31] That’s, I think it, I think we should be pointing it out for each other because I don’t think it’s a good way to handle the sources and I don’t think it’s an honest way to do history. So he goes on from that to say, um, let’s see, the, the council concluded that he had been taught false doctrine wrong, which the prophet corrected. Then this part is even better. No doubt explaining that plural unions not sealed by the proper authority were adulterous. Ok. What again, there is no citation for that whatsoever. So all of a sudden he is telling us, no doubt, this is how the prophet corrected the false doctrine that Sagers had been mistaken on. And there’s a reason that he’s doing this because we have to save Sagers because we have to claim that even though he got it wrong here, and Joseph had to correct him just a few months later, Joseph taught him the right way, right? It’s insane. And so that’s how they, that’s how they pay this to try to pretend that that makes sense. It doesn’t make sense at all. It, it, it, it just doesn’t work. And to say that Joseph Smith, first of all, he blew this whole thing up so he could paint a false front. But then he got up in front of the High council and said it’s because he did it without the right authority. And that’s where the adultery is also that completely disregards everything that Wilfred Woodruff recorded, right? This is just crazy everywhere and he does go on to record Wilfred Woodruff. So he knows what he said. He’s just trying to make this, say what he thinks it needs to say, I guess so. Over the next several months, Smith continued to educate seers and others more fully on the doctoral doctrine of celestial marriage or plurality of wives. Oh my gosh. Do you see what he’s doing? And the Nathan Tanner affidavit that I just showed you showed you is his citation for that because that’s how he justifies saying that is this Nathan Tanner affidavit that Nathan Tanner says that he overheard the prophet t telling it in front of this group, right? So Gary Reguera is massaging this just like the other historians do to try to make sense of it. Let me just pull this off for a minute to try to say over the next few months, he kept giving him the correct teaching. There are so many problems with this from top to bottom, right? Like if Joseph Smith was going to go on and give him the better teaching, he wouldn’t have blown this whole thing up at the High Council. He wouldn’t have brought these charges. He wouldn’t have said what he said in the High Council. It’s, it’s crazy to me how we try to make this make sense just so that we can call Sagers a polygamy insider then, oh my gosh, he keeps going. Lucinda did not share her husband’s vision of the celestial family and did not participate in such instruction. OK. So he’s saying that over the next few months from this case, in November, according to Lucinda’s own complaint and the records we have Harrison left her in December right after that initial case, he left. So we have that Joseph is supporting him, abandoning his wife, right? And I guess like pursuing other marriages. So he abandoned Lucinda. He obviously wasn’t with Phoebe the little sister. Right? Who? By the, oh, I’ll get into that a little bit more as well. But he’s claiming that Smith that Joseph Smith is like just giving him continuing instruction into this doctrine of plural marriage. It is ludicrous i it, I I do not understand, I do not understand this at all. So he goes on to say relations between the Sagres is um rapidly deteriorated. The two apparently separated in mid April 1844 again. Ok. What they didn’t separate in April, they separate. He left in December. She made that very clear. She files a complaint in April. That’s what happened. It’s so clear, Lucinda formally brought charges against him before the first presidency and the 12th. So this how this is all represented. He says that he basically says that Phoebe was his wife, they had a sexual relationship. He you’ll, you’ll hear later that he was implying that Phoebe was his wife. And then he makes all of these claims that do not go with the historical documents. They do not go with the historical record, but it enables people to claim that Sagers was a polygamy insider. That’s, that’s why they are doing this, I guess I can’t make sense of it. So luckily he walks part of this back in an article a few years later, this from a 2005 article that was entitled Identifying The Earliest Mormon Polygamous. And I’ll just read from footnote number four. Although I have elsewhere speculated that he was, I think he also married polygamous during Smith’s lifetime. I now believe that he should be excluded. Sagers was linked sexually to his sister-in-law Phoebe Madison in late 1843. That’s not true. She wasn’t linked sexually. Harrison was accused of trying to seduce her. Uh, but she married civilly shortly before he was tried for adultery and forgiven. Well, so, so he found the marriage records where Phoebe actually married somebody else. He goes on to say while Joseph Smith subsequently explained plural marriage to Sagers and others,

[01:46:02] there is no evidence that Sagers contracted an officially sanctioned plural marriage prior to Smith’s death. So that was what he was saying. He was saying that Sagers was a polygamy insider who with Smith’s good with Smith’s blessing, married his sister-in-law Phoebe. But Smith had to make a public exa Joseph Smith had to make a public example of him, right? Like what, what, how, what I, ok, I’m baffled, I’m baffled. So I do appreciate him stepping back from his prior claim that Sagers was a full-fledged polygamy insider and that Phoebe was his approved spiritual wife. But I am still baffled why he made the initial claim. And even with the walk back on Sagers being a Joseph approved polygamous during Joseph’s life, the evidence that Joseph taught him polygamy rests only on that one very problematic affidavit which by the way makes no mention of the High Council case. It doesn’t give us this full picture, right? They were just creating these affidavits in the vacuum trying to come up with some way to say that Joseph was a polygamist. They didn’t have the full historical record in front of them when they were doing it. And again, it pro provides no date and I could find no possible dates that it could have happened. So how can we genuinely believe that Joseph Smith taught Harrison Sager’s polygamy and in the process sanctioned him leaving his wife which by by the way, brought more negative press to Joseph Smith because of her publication that she or her, her ad that she ran in the Expositor, which was picked up by other news papers, right? That didn’t go well for Joseph. But Joseph was totally cool with Sagers leaving um Lucinda and also he brought up this public case, right? And made it made it this big public thing just because he was, I don’t even know like why would he do that to Harrison Sagers? But then continue and teach him polygamy just a few months after that and all of these details that that um Reguera is getting wrong. Don’t give me a lot of confidence in his handling of this story. All of this to just to make this claim that Joseph was running a kangaroo court that he was actually in charge of, even though the person who was actually in charge of it, William Marks wasn’t on board with his polygamy. None of this, none of this works at all. It’s just crazy. It’s just crazy to claim that Joseph would do all of this. But then later after be like, hey Harrison, now I know you got in trouble and you were doing it wrong, but you were kind of close. So now let me give you the real version and let me approve some real polygamy for you. Oh my gosh. So OK, we’ll go to another source. This is George D Smith and he makes very similar claims in his 2011 book Nuvo Polygamy, but they called it Celestial Marriage, right? That’s this book. So he writes, sorry, my voice is gonna make it. He writes in November 1843 Harrison Sagers was accused of quote trying to seduce Phoebe Madison. Then he married her. What? Then he married her again. No citation given for that. Where is there any evidence that he married her? I have to understand where this claim is coming from because he provides no, no source for it at all. And so let’s see, I think, yeah, I have it so you can read along. Then he married her. There it is. Ok. Ok. George, you’ve got to explain to me where you’re getting this. Then he goes on to say if this had been young love, it may not have appeared to be out of the ordinary, but there was nothing ordinary about this affair between a 28 year old and his wife’s 23 year old sister. Ok. Again, he gets that detail completely wrong. She wasn’t 23 years old. She was 16 years old, either 16 or 17. So he gets the date wrong. And then in the footnote number 50 he admits that he has nothing to support his claims. He says, Joseph Smith denied he had taught Harrison polygamy. But Harrison’s wife, Lucinda said he had been guilty of spiritual wives since December 1843. Again, that’s wrong because the trial was held in November of 1843 and Harrison left in December of 1843. They get all of these dates wrong. I don’t understand it. Um A Phoebe Madison married Henry Perma on November 19th, 1843. So this is the marriage record that Gary Brega is fighting saying, oh, it looks like Phoebe didn’t marry Harrison because she married this other guy. But George says, but whether this was our Phoebe Madison is unclear. So, but what is clear is that he has no evidence at all whatsoever to say that Phoebe married Harrison, there is nothing to support that zero, nothing at all. And yet he just makes that claim. But then goes on to say that he has nothing to support it. Then he also says um that we have Lucinda’s ancestral file shows their marriage. Um and and 1846 ceiling, there is no comparable record for Phoebe. So he admits I have no record. I have nothing to support my claim that Harrison married Phoebe. But I’m just going to say it because I, I don’t know because it goes along with his narrative. I don’t know what he do, why he says it. He continues the charge against Sakers was made public by none other than Joseph

[01:51:24] Smith who reported it to the High Council meeting above Smith’s red brick store. Smith announced that Harrison had been quote, trying to seduce a young girl living at his house by the name of Phoebe Madison and using my name in a blasphemous manner by saying that I tolerated such things in which he is guilty of lying, et cetera, et cetera. The council acquitted Sagers on the questionable logic of having been. Again. It’s claiming that Sagers had been taught Faltz doctrine, which was corrected by President Joseph Smith. Five months later, Lucinda Madison appeared before the hy first presidency and 12 again, that’s not true. She did not appear before the first presidency and the 12, she addressed her complaint to the first presidency of the 12 there. And again, there’s no citation to claim that she appeared before them. And then he continues to accuse her husband of adultery again. Not true. She wasn’t accusing him of adultery. She was accusing him of teaching spiritual wifey. And this time she was accusing him of abandoning his family of spousal and child abandonment. That was her accusation, teaching spiritual wifey and abandoning his family. Were her two accusations. Huh? Let’s see. And he continues saying that she was threatening to take the matter to the civil courts if she found no satisfaction from her church, then he quotes her letter and then he says the first presidency referred the matter back to the High Council which on April 13th, 1844 decided that as the first part of the charge had been brought before the council before and Sacre right on it, the council had no right to deal with him on that item and that the second part was not sustained and therefore he should remain in the church. And then this part I have to put up on the screen to show you because it’s just amazing. It says thus, it appears that Sagers was conti was concurrently married to both Lucinda and Phoebe with Joseph Smith’s approval. What, how does it appear that way? What possibly gives that appearance in any way? And the tacit endorsement of the High Council? Ok. Again, Joseph wasn’t even there at this second meeting and had nothing to do with it. It was William Marks jurisdiction. He was the one who made the decisions that the council voted to approve. Uh like these assumptions. These claims are, are crazy. Plus as I hinted before, there are papers that have been completely ignored in this case, that are likely to be a very big deal. So those will be coming. II I need to acknowledge that there are some things that are going to be very important involving this case, but I’m not ready to speak about them yet. So forgive me for doing that. But I hope that you are getting your anticipation that because it’s worthwhile. So this though is the kind of thing that the standard narrative does that it relies on that everyone that tells us that this history is long since settled. This is what they are relying on this kind of scholarship if we can even call it that I it’s just not good. So he goes on to add in 1869 Nathan Tanner. So again, this Nathan Tanner affidavit in 1869 Nathan Tanner affirmed that in the spring of 1844 at Montrose Lee County Iowa. He heard President Joseph Smith while in conversation with the blank, he cuts himself out Harrison, Sagers blank Daniels and others teach the doctrine of celestial marriage of uh or plurality of wives. So he quotes the sources but how he uses them. I just can’t iii I don’t know. It’s, it’s crazy to me. I don’t understand. So there’s one more source we’re going to look at, forgive this kind of sloppy slide. I just wanted to show you what it’s from and then I pulled out these couple of parts. So this is from Brian Hill’s short article on polygamy and the martyrdom. He writes quote from the first plural marriages in NAV from the first plural marriage in NAVOO in April 1841 until June 1844 29 men besides Joseph Smith were sealed to 51 plural wives. Now understand these are the ones that he says are valid that he approves of. He’s not including John Bennett or Chauncey Higby in this, he’s saying that they were sealed. So these were all sealed by Joseph or Hyrum or someone with their authority. I guess he’s considered the considering these all to be legitimate plural wives. And he actually in his lists as number 18, he lists William Henry Harrison Sagers. He it’s funny that he puts William Henry Sagers. His name was actually he went by Harrison and he lists his wedding date as a as December of 1843 claiming that’s when he married Phoebe. So I think he must be going based on this George D Smith or Gary Briga. See how it like just gets messy because they don’t have to like historians don’t have to deal with the actual documentation. If they can just say another historian said this thing, then they can quote it. So, so Brian Hales lists Harris and Sagers as a legitimate plural husband given authority by Joseph Smith in December of 1843. That’s before Nathan Tanner even claims that they were taught it by Joseph Smith. That’s when Joseph was bringing the charges to the High Council. So again, like you’re just saying that Joseph was totally lying that in, when in this entire thing, it was a court, Joseph was controlling it and this was all just for show in ways that don’t make any sense at all. So again, there’s no support for this.

[01:57:04] The only citation he gives is George D Smith’s book. And uh it doesn’t work like it doesn’t work at all. You’ve seen the documentation. Then Brian uses Nathan Tanner’s affidavit to again, support that um that Harrison sr was a polygamy insider while completely ignoring Joseph’s charges and Lucinda’s Joseph’s charges and the entire court that he brought to the High Council and Lucinda’s charges. This is his only mention of Harrison Sr on his entire website and his entire book is is to claim him as a legitimate nu- polygamist and to claim him to be someone that Joseph taught polygamy to. This is the quote Tanner noted in this of 1844 at Montrose Lee County Iowa. He heard President Joseph Smith while in conversation with himself, Harrison, Sagers Blake Daniels and others teach the doctrine of celestial marriage or plurality of wives. So this Brian calls himself a transparency, but he only includes the little snippets that push the narrative, he wants pushed and he leaves everything else completely out of the picture. I, I wouldn’t consider that very transparent. I would consider that very biased and very one sided. So that is what we have. We’ve reached the end of our presentation on William Henry Harrison sr and I think it’s a valuable um story, a valuable example of how this polygamy narrative gets passed on to us. And I have to say a a after doing all of this, oh, I shoot, I had to, I couldn’t cover it. I just need to mention there’s another paper coming out soon, but it hasn’t been released yet. So I couldn’t refer to it in this episode, but it also talks about Harrison Seers and it kills me to not be able to talk about it yet because in some ways, it’s even worse than these in my opinion. So I’ll get into it as soon as I am able to. But I have yet to see anyone use this story in a way that I would say is historically accurate or historically responsible. So I’m, I’m willing to engage with people on this, but we’ve got to do better. This is just one story from our giant and growing collection of just goofy polygamy stories that show how the standard narrative simply doesn’t work. There are dozens of others that we could choose from hopefully I’ll bring more and more of them to you. But every time that I am told that the question about Joseph Smith’s polygamy is settled that the history is settled. This is the kind of stuff that comes to mind. It’s the story of William Henry Harrison Seger and seeing how they handle the actual sources, how one side if we believe that Joseph was genuine and sincere and actually saying the truth, it completely makes sense. And for anyone who wants to just argue this historically, don’t write me off saying I just want to have Joseph honest. That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not saying I believe Joseph. And therefore I’m saying, look at the documentation. The only way it makes sense is if you consider that Joseph was actually telling the truth that he was bringing genuine court cases. Otherwise you’ve got something like this, you’ve got something like this. This is how the the history is settled. You are falling off of your tightrope with this historical narrative. I’ll just show this last one. I’m sorry. The historical narrative is the house sliding down the mountain. It’s not working, it doesn’t stand up, it needs to be revisited. So I hope that more and more these messages can get out, these messages can be shared so that people can start waking up, so we can reconsider all of this. We can truly revisit Mormon polygamy and do it in a much more responsible and honest way. Thank you so much and I will see you soon.

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

117: William Henry Harrison Sagers – More Historical Malpractice

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132 Problems: Revisiting Mormon Polygamy

117: William Henry Harrison Sagers – More Historical Malpractice

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