Bill Reel claims that he has proven mathematically that deeds from Joseph Smith to women are undeniable evidence of his polygamy. He also believes that deeds reveal two previously unknown wives, Jane Gully and Mary Ann Bosley. While these are interesting ideas, they are very easily debunkable. Join me for this investigation (which includes clips of my discussion with Statistics Professor, Dr. John Kidd) so you will understand exactly why this argument should be discarded by anyone who wants to maintain credibility in these conversations.
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Links:
Ep. 102: Deep in the Weeds of the Deeds
Ep. 104: Dirty Deeds — Deeds Pt. 2
85: Proving William Clayton’s Journals are NOT Contemporaneous w/ Jeremy Hoop
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
2:40 Bill Reel: Deeds are the smoking gun for Joseph’s polygamy
7:00 Has anyone claimed that deeds are evidence of polygamy?
16:00 James Whitehead testimony v. William Clayton
27:45 Bill’s flawed statistical hypothesis
50:15 Was it rare for women to own property?
1:04:30 Deeds to women from Brigham & Heber & Wm Clayton
1:10:40 Join us next time for Part Two
Transcript:
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I am so excited to finally be able to bring you this episode that has been many, many months in the works and is finally here. This is my third part and I hope my final part ever on Nuland Eats. This is my direct response to Bill real and um his hypothesis or theory or as he would say, proof that Nuland prove Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I really hope that Bill’s audience and RF MS audience and anybody who is curious about Joseph Smith’s polygamy and is skeptical of our claims and specifically anybody who thinks that this land deeds argument has credibility or whoever wants to use this this argument. I really genuinely hope that you will tune into this episode because there’s information here that you very much need in order to preserve your cred. I hope that at the end of this episode, you will see why I claim in no uncertain terms that land deeds absolutely are not any kind of evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And if you tune in to get the information, I think that you will agree and you will save yourself some embarrassment, hopefully from continuing to make that claim. So and of course, I always welcome conversation and feedback. I’m really excited because Bill um has agreed to talk to get together and talk. I don’t know if we’ll do it on our channel, on my, on my channel, on his channel, on someone else’s channel. But I’m really excited to engage with Bill personally. Um After he sees this information or before, whenever he wants to Bill any time, let me know. I’m happy to talk. And um with that being said, I also as always, really want to sincerely thank anybody who is able to donate to this channel. It helps us so much and I want to invite and welcome more donations. It is very helpful and also please feel free to share, share this episode in particular with anyone who is certain that the history is settled, the science is settled. We know everything we need to know about Joseph Smith polygamy. I think that the information I, I have done so much research on this and I really hope that that you all find it valuable because I think it’s important to add to the conversation. So thank you so much for joining me as we take this deep dive into the Murky waters of Mormon Polygamy and Nuland Des. Since this is the third part I’ve done on land deeds, I thought that I should um summarize or just give a quick recap of the first two parts, but they were so intensive that I decided I don’t want to do that. I just want to dive right into this topic for people who are specifically interested in Bill Reals claims. So I would recommend anyone who wants to gain a broader understanding of the deeds which I think is necessary if you want to make any claims about them. I highly recommend listening to those two topics if you’re more just interested in finding out if, um, if land deeds can be used as direct evi evidence for Joseph’s polygamy, you can just join into this conversation and we’ll, we’ll go ahead. So I want to be really careful to make sure to not in any way. Um Strawman Bill Reels claims, I want to steal Steel man his arguments because I don’t, I don’t think it’s effective when people strawman my arguments at all. I don’t feel like they did a good job. So I’m going to let Bill in his own words, explain his claim. And then I’ll go ahead and try to, um, try to fill in anything that I wasn’t able to include in this clip.
[03:33] Bill Reel: There’s only so many pieces of land that were given to women by themselves and I, I don’t remember the number I should have gone back and counted them, but I’m gonna guess it’s somewhere in the range of about 15 or so in 1842 1843 and the beginning of 1844 where a woman without anyone else listed on the land deed, in terms of adults gets a piece of land to herself. And what I also noticed was at least 75% of them. I think it was higher than that, but at least 75% of them were plural wives of Joseph Smith. And so the moment you make that connection, you begin to sense, what’s that something is going on here?
[04:14] Michelle: Ok. So that’s um the, the foundation of Bill’s claim. This is where it started. I will point out at this point when he recorded this one, he had only, he was only aware of 15 land deeds. He went on to expand that later. I think 234 land deeds will get to it. But so the claim he’s making is that plots of land purchased by certain women are evidence that that Joseph was a polygamist as long as it’s, it’s plots of land purchased by certain women from Joseph Smith. I want to point out just right from the beginning. There are so many things to point out in this episode. He ignores the purchase price listed clearly on the deed and claims that we should just ignore that that it’s not legitimate and and not valid. He was really just giving them and listing a purchase price. And then he also claims that we should just ignore what whether it was Joseph Smith as trustee and trust listed on the deed or whether it was Joseph and Emma listed on the deed, which it was both of them, on several of them, there are many other points of evidence that he doesn’t seem to pay attention to. But he basically says that if Joseph Smith, if there’s a deed from him to a woman and she is, um, a claim to be a wife, then that is evidence of his polygamy. So, um I’m, I’m going to first introduce the sources that I’m going to be using for this episode because we’re gonna show a lot of deeds and there are a lot of deeds. So, what I relied on is this compilation of from Susan Easton Black that I’ve talked about before she did a seven part, a seven volume um series of Navoo Land Deeds. It’s thousands and thousands of pages includes every land deed from 1839 to 1859 the entire time that the N LDS presence would have been there in Navoo. And so this is really useful. So you’ll see what the format looks like of them. It’s not the actual deeds. It’s her combination of the deeds. I did double check every deed to make sure we had, well, just about every deed to make, to make sure that we had the um actual 11 that I verified was correct, except for a few details that I’ll point out that don’t, don’t um affect the what we’re going to be talking about in this um in this series. So that’s what I’m going to be showing you when I show you the deeds, I wanted to say to, to explain that at the beginning. And then also, so you will see highlighted in pink my search terms. Um When I show those deeds, unfortunately, because I just started collecting deeds. I, I did not go through these books comprehensively. They are truly like so many thousands of pages. So just as I was searching and looking things up for the other episodes I was doing, if I found something that applied to this episode, I would just grab it really quickly. So just ignore the little pink highlight and we’ll be fine. I just, I just wanted to explain that to you. So anyway, the next thing I want to point out, so Bill Real is making this case that he came upon when he discovered those 15 deeds to women that he since afterward learned was not at all comprehensive. He made this claim, right? And I do want to point out that um people who are much more knowledgeable about Joseph Smith’s polygamy don’t make this claim. The um actual experts don’t use land deeds. And I think that’s interesting. I think that there might be some um there might be some truth to the fact that they just haven’t thought about it or studied it out enough. But I also think that um some of them know that it’s just not a very good case to make all of this research I’ve done is all just new brand new research. So I think that maybe some of them are holding out the possibility, but I’m hoping that after this, they will, they will not hold out the possibility anymore. But let me just, um, give you one example. So Mark Tens Mayer is um, actually one of the very few actual experts in the question of whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist. In fact, Don Bradley and others rely on Mark Tens Meer for evidence and sources. They turned to him. Um, I know Don Bradley has said that he had um, 30 contemporaneous pieces of evidence. He said that on other programs and when I’ve asked for them, he said, oh, we need to get together with Mark and see what we have. So, so I do know that they, um, rely on Mark Tens Meyer. He really is the go to expert on this. And I just wanted to read this is from a conversation we had on Facebook. He said, I’ve always said that the land deeds to wives and to Emma and I pushed back on to Emma because he, he’s misspeak here. But he, but it is true that he’s always said that the land deeds to wives is questionable, circumstantial evidence. As with all circumstantial evidence, you have to look at other causes for the correlation and be careful about jumping to any conclusions. So I do want to point out that um that bill really is the first one to use land deeds in this way and to claim that they are not only evidence, but actually, um I think he calls it, see if I can add this. Yeah, actually the smoking gun, he really states his case strongly that um land deeds pretty much prove that Joseph Smith was a polygamist. They prove his polygamy. I do want to show that um Brian Hales even doesn’t use this argument. So the three most, um I guess compelling land deeds that are the, that are the most convincing to people with this argument are the three to teenagers, to teenage girls. So the first is um Helen Mar Kimball and you can see um Brian Hills in his list of evidences for Helen Mark Kimball. He doesn’t include land deeds and the next teenage girl is Flora and Woodworth. And he also has this long list of evidences for flora. And I, I’m really excited we’re going to be doing an episode on each of these supposed wives to go into all of the best evidence, even some that um, brain health doesn’t necessarily include and, and we’ll see how well it stands out. But I will just let you look over this list of evidences to see that it does not include land deeds and same with um, Sarah and Whitney these are the three teenage supposed wives who all do have land deeds from Joseph Smith. And this is a very long list of evidences for Sarah and Whitney. And it doesn’t include anything about land deeds. So you can see that Bill really is the first one to be making this claim and certainly to be making it with such certainty. And I think there are reasons that people who are every bit as determined to prove Joseph Smith’s polygamy. Um But maybe a little bit more knowledgeable about the topic, don’t use this claim. So, ok, in addition, I think it’s useful to point out that deeds were not used even by the original polygamists as evidence of Joseph’s polygamy. Nobody, none of the, um none of the even Helen Mar Kimball who had the most to say about Joseph’s polygamy and made the biggest claims will go into a few of them in a little while. She never mentioned anything about land deeds. In fact, nobody did. Nobody pointed to land deeds as evidence of Joseph Joseph’s polym me that that’s the people who actually had the deeds along with all of the records and who were working tirelessly to come up with any possible evidence of Joseph’s polygamy and naming anybody they possibly we could as his wives or as witnesses. Even those people didn’t see land deeds as worthwhile evidence to prove Joseph’s polygamy. So I know that Bill, I’m, I’m gonna Bill, I really do want to engage and I think we’re gonna have fun. So I hope we can do this in, um, in, in a friendly way. But I do have to point out bill spent, I know we spent a good week researching this. I’ll play his clip here.
[11:32] Bill Reel: I decided that we would go ahead and uh take on the challenge of trying to show that Joseph Smith was a polygamist and I have spent significant amount of time in the last week, uh probably somewhere in the range of about 50 to 55 hours or so, putting all of this together.
[11:49] Michelle: So, um I just want to point out like, I’m really glad that he did that research, but I think that um there’s a case to be made that maybe a week isn’t a sufficient amount of time to come up with a brand new line of evidence of Joseph’s polygamy that people who have spent much, substantially more time, sometimes lifetimes um did not have not come up with. So, so anyway, um I think that it is, it is quite a claim to, to say that this is a smoking gun of Joseph’s polygamy. And I think that maybe there’s room to have a little bit more humility in this claim and to be aware that sometimes you have to learn a little bit more before you make these big claims. So, nonetheless, um i it has been a little bit frustrating as I’ve said, before because nobody that has done work on polygamy up to this point has seen this as a valid claim. And as I’ve gone through it, I haven’t been terribly impressed with it. I I have not been impressed with the specifics of Bill’s hypothesis, but people seem to be believing it just because it was said just because it was presented. So I have dedicated a significant amount of time to go through the specifics of this claim. And more than that the specifics of the land deeds to really learn what we can about them and to show what they really might mean and what they a do not mean. I first do want to point out that while I’m not, I don’t find the um specifics of Bill’s claim to be compelling. I do really like this claim because it at least acknowledges fo the focus on deeds, at least acknowledges that especially in the 18 hundreds, husbands were responsible for providing for their wives and would have been expected to provide for their wives. And so that the entire underlying assumption of the deeds claim is that we should be able to find evidence that Joseph was providing for his wives, right? That’s why this deeds claim is compelling at all. And that’s what I think we should pay attention to. That’s the part of this claim that I think is the most important is the recognition that there should be evidence of Joseph providing for wives. It could, anything requests for money, financial trans actions, accounts for wives at Joseph Smith’s store letters back and forth, talking about finances or needs or any, anything of the kind, anything along those lines to substantiate any kind of financial transactions in these marriages or for the support of any of these women. And the fact that nothing at all like this exists that there is zero evidence for Joseph providing in any way for any wife other than Emma should be strong evidence for the arguments that I’m making, right? It’s something that should at least be acknowledged more than it has been, especially for people who want to make this claim. And can we at least also from the outset recognize that a land deed, even if we want to claim that we should ignore the purchase price and Joseph was just giving these away and write even if we want to and that we should ignore so many details on the on the which we’re going to go ahead and look at. Even if we want to say that these were Joseph providing for his wives, these these landings, can we at least acknowledge that a plot of land because that’s what the deed is really about, right? A plot of land that these women were purchasing plots of land that does not provide in any way of like having a plot of land in your name on paper does not give you food or clothing or even a house on that land or transportation or wood or warmth or any of the necessities of life are not provided by just owning a plot of land on paper on a deed. And so it’s, we still have a huge problem of showing that Joseph was in any way providing for any of these wives. And focusing on the land deed again, is an acknowledgment that people recognize that that’s a problem. And if they’re not explicitly recognizing it, I think I want to bring it to your attention. So you can see sort of the disconnect in making this claim while being ok with the fact that there is no evidence, there were no f financial transactions of any kind for Joseph providing for any of these supposed wives. So that’s, that’s an interesting thing. And in fact, not only is there not evidence for it, there is evidence against it. So I want to read a bit from James James Whitehead’s testimony in the Temple lot case that, that no other woman ever asked for or was provided by me for by um Joseph Smith. So James Whitehead was Joseph Smith’s private secretary for the last two years of his life, 1842 to 1844 the time period that he would have married nearly all of his wives, right? And um so let’s, let’s, I’m just go ahead, I’m gonna go ahead and read the questions and answers. Um He was asked if he had ever heard Joseph teach polygamy. He responded, I never heard him teach it, sir at all. Neither privately nor publicly. He never said a word to me about it at all. And I never heard it taught either pub privately or publicly before his death. I just want to point out that William Clayton would have been no closer to Joseph Smith than James Whitehead. They were both just clerks for Joseph Smith, right? And in fact, um according to James Whitehead’s testimony, William Clayton was either caught in or at least blamed for some dishonest dealings. And so he was demoted and worked less closely with Joseph Smith than James Whitehead did some of the others. So William Clayton, the reason for those who are kind of new to this, the reason William Clayton is so important is his diaries that I think we have made a very strong case to show that they are not contemporaneous. They were not written at the time. They are not on there. They are later productions, um motivated productions trying to prove that Joseph was a polygamist, especially some of the um irregularities with them. Some of the sections that are separate and out of written at anyway, I we’ve done some, some quite a bit of content on that. And so, and it’s also useful to recognize that the church has never released them. The strongest evidence for Joseph Smith’s polygamy are the William Clayton diaries and no one’s been allowed. Well, I guess I shouldn’t say that a few very apologetic church historians have been allowed to see them, but they’ve never been released to the public. They were promised in 2017, the church promised to release them. Here. We are in 2024 seven years later and no signs and the latest we’ve heard from historians is don’t hold your breath. So that’s important to recognize. And, and William Clayton again is also the one who made the claims about Section 132. He was the only witness there. Lots of uh the the higher polygamy narrative rides on the credibility of William Clayton. And according to James Whitehead, who we have no reason not to believe, um William Clayton was not a very credible or trustworthy source. So, and there’s also no reason at all. William Clayton didn’t have any high callings. He didn’t have any special position or any special closeness to Joseph Smith that could be this um explained in any way. And so it’s bizarre to believe that Jose Joseph Smith would not only be teaching him this sacred holy teaching, only for the most elect without giving him a, you know, equivalent calling to justify that he was worthy of hearing these special teachings. But that he also William Clayton would be the one person on earth that Joseph Smith would be entrusting with all of his deepest darkest, most intimate details of his relationship with Emma their arguments, their struggles, the all of the negative things he had to say about her. Joseph Smith, like, read everything. Lucy Mac Smith said and what Hiram Smith said, like there’s no evidence that Joseph ever said things about Emma Smith to anybody, especially negative things. And then suddenly there’s this one clerk who has been a used of dishonesty who’s Joseph’s one like close confidant who is telling him about all of his fights with Emma. Like it just, it just doesn’t make sense at all. What does make sense is that William Clayton was in England with um Brigham Young and Hebrew C. Kimball in 1839 to 1841 where we have in all three of their writings, their letters and their journals, strong evidence of spiritual wifey. What would become spiritual wifey of them engaging in the practices. It’s all there in England in their journals. These three guys who were really close, who came back to NAVOO and then became the core of, you know, it’s, it’s those three that we get most of our teaching. Most of our understanding about Joseph Smith’s polygamy from that makes a lot of sense. I hope you will agree. So let me go back to, um to the A I mean to the Temple Lot trial. So I will go on and I’ll, I’ll continue with Whitehead’s testimony. I was there in his office and I was there with him continually and I was, well acquainted with his family. I was well acquainted with sister Emma and I never saw anything or heard of any such thing being taught there in Navoo prior to the time of the death of the prophet. Well, how many wives did the prophet have? How many wives did Joseph have? Yes, sir. He had one. What was her name? Emma. Do you know of any other woman who claimed to be the wife of the prophet? No, sir. I don’t know of any other. Do you know of any other woman who claimed to be the wife of Joseph Smith there at Navoo? No, sir. I know, I don’t know them or, or anywhere else other than NAVOO. No, sir. You don’t know of any wives he had other than Emma at any time or place. No, sir. And I never heard of such a thing. Did you ever hear any of them? Anyone but Emma did any one of them ever come to you or to the prophet in your presence for money claiming to be the wife of the prophet? He asked him to repeat that question and he says never, they never did, never was any entry of that kind ever entered on the books by you. Was any claim or any money paid out by you or by him or an entry made of it having been paid to any woman claiming to be the wife of Joseph Smith. No, sir. You say no. Yes. Sir. You mean to no woman other than to Emma Smith. Yes, sir. Of course, accepting his wife, Emma. Of course, that is another thing. There was no other woman. No sir. That is all. So that is from the Temple Lot case. And I want to remind people, I wish more people knew that Joseph Smith’s polygamy has been tried in a court of law in America. That was, that’s what the Temple Lot case was, right? And the judge found against the polygamist, it was the R LDS versus the Temple Lot church. And the R LDS church was trying to um get the temple lot back from the Temple Lot church. And the LDS church joined in on behalf of the Temple Lot Church because the question became, who is the valid successor to Joseph Smith, which of these churches? And since that, that’s what the R LDS church was arguing. We are the valid successors to Joseph Smith though. So the LDS church entered, even though they had nothing to gain, they weren’t arguing for the temple lot. They just entered the case so that they could say no, they’re not the valid successors of Joseph Smith. And so this trial became about whether or not Joseph Smith was a polygamist because that was the big point of disagreement between these two churches. So it actually was tried in a court of law and the judge found in favor of the R LDS church. The judge did not find the polygamists to be credible witnesses and he made that statement. Um The, the um decision was later overturned based on basically squatter’s rights. The Temple Lot church found um a statute that said if you’ve had a piece of land long enough, then you get to keep it. So that’s why they got to retain the pro but the, the trial did measure whether or not Joseph was a polygamist at a time when most of the people, or at least many of the people that were claimed to be Joseph’s wives were still living. And when many of um Joseph’s associates were still living, this was tried in a court of law. And the judge found that the case for Joseph Smith’s polygamy was not credible. So for all of those people saying that we’re just ridiculous that everyone knows. No. And when they were saying this is just an R LDS claim, this was literally tried in a court of law. So I think we’re in pretty good company on this side to argue this. And I hope that people will consider looking into all of this information. There’s one more thing that I want to share just at the on the outset as we get to the to um the specifics of deals Bill’s claim. And this is this letter from Joseph Smith written in his own hand to Emma Smith just before his death, right? And well, I should say back on the um James Whitehead testimony and the Temple Lot case, the people who are so in favor of Joseph Smith polygamy always just ignore James Whitehead’s testimony about all of these problems, the problems with William Clayton and that Joseph had no other wives never talked about. Polym me. I haven’t had heard anybody deal with that. They just want to ignore it and pretend it’s not there. And I don’t think that’s good historical practice that needs to be dealt with because that’s pretty important evidence. And then this is another piece of evidence that is quite important. This shows clearly how seriously Joseph Smith took his responsibility to provide for his family, for his one wife and his Children. And so it’s really hard to claim that he had these other wives when you can see how conscientious and careful he was about providing for his wife, especially for all of the people that want to. Again, if, if you believe Joseph Smith was a polygamist, you have to believe that at this point, Emma had literally tried to kill him multiple times. They were at each other’s throat. Joseph had in the voice of the Lord threatened Emma with destruction, right? And yet this was the only letter Joseph wrote in his own hand from Carthage that was to Emma was it from before he went to Carthage? But at, at this last time, there are other letters that he, any other letters he wrote were official business to lawyers, to government um um government pe people in office trying to work out his situation with the law. This was the only personal letter that he wrote and you can see how much he cares about it. It says brother Lewis has some money of mine. Hebrew C. Kimball has $1000 in hand of mine. Listen, he’s saying, hey, I’m not there to take care of you. Here’s the money that you need to go get to take care of you and my Children. You may sell the Quincy property or any property that belongs to me. You can find and any you can find anything about. Again. If you haven’t watched my previous episodes, that deed to Emma that we claim means that she owned all of the unencumbered lots in Navoo doesn’t make sense in light of him saying if you can find any property that I own, you’re welcome to sell it for your support and Children and mother. And so, ah, ah, just gets me, do not despair if God ever opens the door that it is possible for me. I will see you again. I do not know where I shall go or what I shall do. Yeah, this is when he had crossed the river before he had come back to NAVOO to be taken to Carthage, which Emma did not ask him to do. If you haven’t watched that episode, please do. Sorry. There are so many there are just so many problems throughout this entire narrative. How people take it? I do not know where I shall go or what I shall do. But shall if possible endeavor to get to the city of Washington. May God Almighty, bless you and the Children and mother and all my friends, my heart bleeds no more at present. If you conclude to go to Kirtland, Cincinnati or any other place, I wish you would continue to inform me this evening. So again, this letter shows us a lot that makes the um polygamous narrative very problematic. This was a letter that was in Emma’s cu custody. So it was with the R LDS church. So the LDS church didn’t have it to either destroy or work into their narrative. The um early LDS church historians. So now we can get into the specifics of Bill’s claim. And again, I will let him explain it in his own words.
[27:57] Bill Reel: Now, here’s where we get to the smoking gun. So um I use 1842 to June 27th, 1844 because that’s the day the prophet’s martyred. He’s not going to give out any more deeds after that. I don’t expect to find polygamy in 1841 at least not prevalent in the deeds. Well, we can go through those today if you want. Uh I don’t expect to find polygamy after June 27th, 1844 dealing with Joseph Smith. Um So I stick with those years as parameters.
[28:27] Michelle: Ok. So I’m letting him outline the details of his claim. So first of all, he calls it a smoking gun and then he outlines his parameters that he’s only going to consider deeds when he expects to see polygamy. So right there uh for anyone who’s really um very knowledgeable about statistics that should already pose a problem. But let’s go on to the next part of his um of his explanation
[28:51] Bill Reel: in those years as parameters. It is very rare for a woman to get a deed of property.
[28:59] Michelle: Ok. So I wanted to play that little clip as well because Bill is making this claim and I don’t know what evidence he’s relying on to support this claim. It’s quite a claim to make that women that it’s very rare for a woman to have a deed in her name. And they do go on to talk about in the previous episode and I’ve addressed it in previous episodes on deeds that women that the married women’s property act in Illinois was passed in 1861. And that they interpret that to mean that women should not have been allowed to own property before that. I’ll talk about it a little more going forward. I have talked about it in that previous episode, but it’s actually a really problematic claim that shows a lot of not understanding the actual situation of what that was about. But for now, let me play the next part of his explanation just so I can be as sure as possible to give him a fair hearing
[29:54] Bill Reel: between January 1st 1842 and June 27th, 1844 there are 34 deeds given to females where no husband is on the deed. It’s this cool little anomaly where almost every deed in NAVOO is men. And we have this small chunk of deeds that are only to women or women in their siblings, uh or to women, but not with a husband on the deed. And so it’s a really cool way to take a glimpse at something that’s going on, that’s out of place, out of place because women aren’t allowed to own property. You see, in 1861 Illinois passed the married women’s property act which enabled women in, in the state of Illinois to own and manage their own real estate and keep their own earnings. No doubt patriarchy, no doubt sexism. But prior to 1861 no woman should be getting property on her own. And yet in Nauvoo, in the 18 forties, in 1841 there’s only a handful of them four or five in 1845 there’s only a handful of them four or five. But in 1842 1843 and 1844 there’s a decent chunk of them.
[31:07] Michelle: So there we have let Bill lay out um much of his case that we are going to look at and address, he then goes on to set up um a statistical equation which he claims proves that Joseph Smith was a polygamous. So let me let him explain that part in his own words as well.
[31:30] Bill Reel: So the population of NAVOO skyrockets to 12,000. Now, if we assume half the population is Mormon, that takes us down to 6000 and if we assume half the 6000 is female, then we have 3000 LDS females in uh NAVOO.
[31:50] Michelle: OK. So I’m, I was, I was trying to decide I went back and forth and back and forth wondering if I should respond to the specifics of these claims he’s making because they really aren’t the strongest arguments against um what he’s claiming. But I will point out really quickly how problematic just this analysis is that he’s um just uh um assigning a population of 12,000 based on statement from Joseph Smith. And then saying, OK, half of that’s probably Mormon and half of that is probably female. So that’s what I’ll use for my denominator to determine how many available females there could be for Joseph Smith to potentially take as wives. There actually has been academic work done on um the population of Nauvoo, it was the fastest growing city in Illinois, right? So to just assign in a population of 12,000 is already a huge oversimplification. And then to us as just to say, OK, I’m gonna guess that half are LDS and then I’m gonna guess that half of those are women. And one of the things that I initially said to him, which he does kind of acknowledge a little later is that, well, that means that you have infants that you’re including because you’re because you’re not allowing for any Children. And that wasn’t that, it wasn’t that, that was my argument any more than it’s my argument. Now, it’s just showing an example of the massive problems with the equation he’s trying to set up. So I’m just going to read a quote from one of these academic articles that was done on the population of Nauvoo. Here it is a synthesis of all non census data indicates that the population of Navoo grew from 100 in 1839 to about 4000 in 1842. So when he says the deeds are increasing over these years, that’s not surprising, right? In 1842 rose to about 12,000 in 1844 and stood at around 11,000 in 1845. So he completely ignores the massive complexity of these dramatic changes in population, right? The population would have been much lower in 1841 and in 1842 than it was in 1844 the average over this entire time period may possibly be around 8000. The closest I could figure from the um the analytics and the studies that I was able to find. So anyway, that’s already a huge problem. But as I said, it’s not, I know that Bill will just say, well, then you factored in. However you want, the math is still absurd. So I don’t want to rely on this. I just wanted to demonstrate one of the many, many problems with this massively oversimplified analysis and equation that he has said. But I’ll let him continue and explain the next part of his um equation, I guess.
[34:30] Bill Reel: So, Joseph has 34 alleged wives. In other words, if I’m giving out deeds of land, women are coming to me to buy land or for whatever other reason I’m giving land to women and saying there’s an exchange of money, but there really isn’t. Which, by the way, I think is what happens here.
[34:50] Michelle: So again, there, he’s acknowledging that he’s ignoring the evidence that’s actually on the deeds and only paying attention to the part that he wants to pay attention to. Right. We’ll let him continue.
[35:00] Bill Reel: If I am just randomly picking an LDS female to give land to, then it would be a 1.1% chance. In other words, if I had uh 3000 marbles in the jar. In fact, I even, I think I even talk about that here in a moment. Um But if I had 3000 marbles in the jar and they were white marbles and then I added 34 black marbles to that jar, shook it up, made it so that they are distributed randomly and evenly. And then I reached in the jar to grab one marble out and whether it’s a white marble, which there’s 3000 of or a black marble, which there’s 34 of the chances of it being a black marble is 1.1%. Ok. 1.1%. But now the more marbles I start taking out of the jar, the less likely it’s also going to be black marbles. So there are only 34 deeds between 1842 to 1844 that are being given to women with no husband on the deed. The more of these deeds that are taken up by these 34 alleged plural wives, the lower and lower that percentage of chance goes. The probability of half the deeds going to the 34 women rather than the rest of the population is not just slim. It is practically none.
[36:38] Michelle: Ok? So hopefully that is enough to give you a pretty good idea of, of the problem. The bill is setting up what, how he sees this analysis and how it should be done. He um uses the words, let’s see. Astronomical and absurd. I had started to do an absurd count but I was gonna anyway, I cut it out. I don’t even know how many times he says absurd, but it was quite a bit, I know that that was a bit confusing. But what bill is basically to summarize the key points he’s claiming, first of all, claiming, um like very authoritatively that deeds to women are ex are extremely rare, rare and actually should not exist. So they are really an anomaly which, you know, makes them more um suspicious, I guess. And then he’s implying that the only deeds to women are these 34 deeds from Joseph Smith during these last 2.5 years of his life. And then he claims that since 12 of these 34 deeds to women were to women who later claimed to be Joseph’s wives. That is therefore proof that Joseph was a polygamist and giving land to his wives, right? He as you heard him say, we should just ignore the price attached. There are so many things that I have to say about this. I demonstrated one of them. There are so many, but I thought it might be better to talk to an actual professor of statistics. Uh A phd, a statistics doctor doctorate who would hopefully have more clout than I would. And since that was Bill’s challenge issued right here,
[38:10] Bill Reel: if you guys wanna, you know, challenge this, by the way, I welcome it. You’re welcome to read my numbers. You’re welcome to point out the math. You’re welcome to take on this challenge. I would love it if a statistician or somebody else took this on. But I really do think when you see this all get laid out the polygamy deniers have a real problem in front of them. And it’s mathematically absurd to not deal with it.
[38:37] Michelle: Ok. There was one of the, there was one of the many absurd that we get treated to in this episode. But as I said, since he um you know, requested just a statistician, I was really happy to be able to send emails. I sent emails to every local university and um and had a few correspondences which I appreciated and I was so happy to be able to choose to work with Doctor John Kidd of UVU. He was in, he is such a busy guy with his extremely busy professor, um his schedule teaching as a professor at UVU and with his um family and he still took time away from all of that to be willing to watch both of Bill’s episodes. I, I didn’t send him information. I just sent him the episodes and asked if he would be willing to talk to me about Bill’s statistical analysis. If he would do an analysis of Bill’s statistical analysis. I actually had had wondered if he would um to like tackle the problem of looking at the NUVO landed statistically. And instead he just thought it’d be better to have a conversation about whether um trying to tackle the landed statistically was a good idea or was possible at all. So huge, shout out to Doctor John Kidd. We actually did that interview over six months ago. So first of all, he gave me all of that time and then he’s been so patient as I’ve had all of these other, um, topics coming up. And I’ve actually, I’ve done all three deeds episodes since that initial conversation that I had with doctor Kidd. And so, um, so I’ve learned a lot more since then, but I didn’t release just that full episode. I, I will release it as bonus content during this, sometime this week. So you’ll be able to tune in to that entire episode for anybody who’s interested. But I just wanted to play a few highlights here so that you guys could get the general gist of some of the things we talked about.
[40:35] John Kidd: Yeah. So assumptions have to happen and I’m perfectly fine with those, but we need to make valid assumptions to assume that, you know, and even if the assumption of 3000 women is perfectly valid, we have to consider what are the chances of those women receiving land needs? The assumption to say, oh, we’re picking marbles out of a jar. That relationship assumes that every single one had an equally likely chance. That’s not, that’s probably not valid at the time. I am certain that some that rec you know, some that were eligible to receive land deeds were probably more likely to due to various circumstances. These circumstances could include their family situation, their financial situations could include the land deeds or the land plots that were available, the locations, there are a lot of different things that could go into it. And so to say that everybody had an equally likely chance is very, there is a and I don’t say this to, I don’t use this in the term to be rude, but it’s a very naive assumption and very rarely are fully naive assumptions valid. So we, and honestly, that would be my main, my main reason to be skeptical of claims of this nature.
[42:03] Michelle: OK. So that was the first clip I want to play, I should have said before that. Um Since we’re, I’m not showing the full episode here, um Doctor Kidd made it very clear that he is not at all familiar with the question of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. This is not something he has ever thought about or to look, look into at all. So he’s just coming up with possibilities off the top of his head that would be concerning to him. And so it was really good to be able to get input from a very unbiased source who is simply looking at the statistical claims. Let me play the next clip.
[42:40] John Kidd: I guess my general thought is that a statistical analysis for this is probably an over simplification. We have to make a lot of assumptions. But once we try and we get down, even if we were to narrow it down to just those that we know for sure we were eligible for this criteria. Then to go in and, and try to assign an even possibility to all of them. I just don’t feel is a valid approach. I don’t think that that’s acceptable under any of these methods because things are complicated.
[43:14] Michelle: OK. So you can see how helpful it is to talk to an actual expert in this field. So I really appreciate it. Here’s the next clip. So, so I like what you’re saying. If we are applying it to this analysis that um Bill Real did like he, he’s, he did the marble analogy and then spent all of his time proving how statistically impossible it is to claim that Joseph wasn’t a polygamist once he created the jars and the marbles in a jar analogy. What you’re saying as I’m understanding it is where all of the effort should be is to decide whether that’s an accurate analogy, which we can assume that because of the vast complexity of the situation and all of the massive assumptions. And I would say just very false assumptions built into it, we can say no, that’s not a proper model. And so a lot more time needs to be spent to set up a proper model if we wanted to do anything statistically with this.
[44:15] John Kidd: Yeah. And I will say statisticians will never commit to anything 100%. That’s why constant joke. So I would say the probabilities that the assumed model are correct are very, very low.
[44:29] Michelle: And then let me just play this next clip, which is something so valuable that Professor Kidd taught me that I really appreciate it. This is a very useful, logical fallacy that I don’t think I’d heard of before.
[44:43] John Kidd: Uh So to break away from things that are needed, just another thought to consider. Uh There’s a phrase called the Texas sharpshooter, how there’s a specific name for it, but Texas Sharpshooter is the one that pops up most, the idea that forgive the slightly violent reference. But if I go out to a barn, my side of a barn and shoot it a bunch of times and then walk over and draw the target around it. I look really good, but that doesn’t mean that I actually hit the point. So
[45:15] Michelle: that’s a great analogy. I feel like that’s exactly what happened in this analysis. OK. I like that. I did really, really like learning about the Texas sharpshooter. I thought it was so um applicable. So I just want to play a little bit more to explain a little bit more about the Texas sharpshooter analogy.
[45:35] Logical Fallacy Guy: In this video, we’re going to be talking through our fifth logical fallacy, the Texas sharpshooter fallacy, you may know this under a few different names, cherry picking or sometimes the more academic name sandling bias, this bias occurs when, as an analyst, you have a theory about what’s happening, which is good and then only choose data to support that theory which is bad. The issue occurs when we look at the data that supports the hypothesis and ignore data which could disprove our hypothesis. This could include ignoring certain time periods or certain attributes of the data, which could lead us to a different conclusion.
[46:15] Michelle: OK. So you can see why I think that that was the perfect analysis of um Bill’s statistical attempt. John Doctor Kidd was very complimentary um for Bill attempting to use statistics. He said of course, he loves see people trying to think statistically instead of statistical equations, but um it does need to be done well. So it’s always good to attempt it because then we can learn to do it better and better, right? If we don’t try, we can never get that better at it. So at least good job trying, let me play just a few more clips from Doctor Kid.
[46:50] John Kidd: Um I think in general a statistical analysis or even just a probability calculation for this wouldn’t quite be sufficient. I don’t feel that it can grasp the complexity of the situation we’re looking at or give a fulfilling answer to the question that could would need to be formulated.
[47:13] Michelle: So I do also appreciate that that he’s, you know, so he, he’s willing to say there are questions that stat that can’t be answered statistically and he puts this claim that Bill is making in that category. So I do hope that people like Bill, I know that the mathematics for the equation you set up yet. Yes, you’re correct. If you want to say repeatedly that the mathematics are absurd. But where the real absurdity is, is in the equation is, is claiming that that equation is appropriate to come to any sort of truth about the question that you’re actually asking. So now let’s play the last clip from Doctor Kim.
[47:53] John Kidd: But for all of us, we can confirm our own biases or we can see aspects of things. If it’s on our mind, we’re gonna see it, we can find evidence of anything that we want to if we’re constantly looking for it. And it’s a lot easier when we’re doing that to ignore evidence against the things that we feel.
[48:14] Michelle: Absolutely. OK, which is why this method of bring your evidence and then have someone bring their evidence and pull each other’s evidence apart and see what evidence is left standing is so valuable, right? Like that’s exactly what the scientific method is supposed to be is to let everyone kind, let all the ideas and all the evidence battle it out. So that, that way we get a better chance of having good conclusions rather than just motivated reasoning and bias. So, OK, so, so the last question I have um I have had people tell me, oh, I wasn’t sure. But now that I’ve seen the, the land des and the statistics like now I really am convinced that Joseph was, was doing this, you know, was using the landed to give the wives. Do you think that um would you advise people that that’s a good assumption to make based on this presentation or would you advise against that? And maybe doing some more thinking,
[49:15] John Kidd: I would advise doing more thinking.
[49:18] Michelle: Ok, there we go. So another huge massive thank you to Professor Kidd for being so generous with his time and with his expertise, that was really a privilege to get to um engage with him about this statistical question. I could not appreciate him more. And I do think, you know, if you have kids that are interested in statistics, consider UVU because I was very impressed with Professor Kidd. So anyway, this, I, as I said before this conversation, as I’m looking at the um flowers I had in the background, this was clear back, I think in October that I talked to him. So I have learned so much more since then. And so um the analysis right there, I hope that we can use that to set aside the statistical question. And instead let’s get into the complexity of the D and try to find out what we can learn about them because I think the the best arguments are actually yet to come. So it really is hard to even know where to begin with this because there is so much. But we’ll go ahead and just dive in right here into the first claim that deeds to women were extremely rare and should not exist at all since the 1861 marriage property Act hadn’t been passed yet. I, I talked about this in episode 102. My first episode on deeds starting at about 7 37 minutes and 30 seconds. So I’ll link that a quick recap. I’ve already talked about it a little bit, but let me just quickly recap. Recap. It specifically says a married woman’s prop, own property shall not be subject to the disposal of control or interference of her husband against her wishes. This was not making it possible for women to own property. They already could. And this only, this only even affected married women, single women could own property, married women can own pro could own property. This law was created created specifically to protect wives from controlling husbands because of a ca case that came before the court in Illinois and people were surprised to see that the law was not yet sufficient to protect this woman and all of their sentiments were with her. So they passed a new law to say men can’t do this anymore because they didn’t like it. So it’s erroneous to claim that women even married women couldn’t own property or land or sign deeds or contracts be through before this law was passed. There were in fact, many deeds to women at this time. I I um throughout the country, I’ve seen I’ve not looked a lot, but I’ve seen enough to know that there were deeds to women. I don’t know if the huge amount of deeds to women in NAVOO was unusual. Maybe NAVOO was especially progressive in trying to take care of women. Maybe not. Maybe it was that common throughout the rest of the country. I just know that it was very common. So we’re going to look at several of these deeds and um I, I will just say that in my random searching, preparing for the other episodes, there was no kind of rhyme or reason. I came upon at least 40 deeds to women with no husband or siblings on the deed that were written in NAVOO between 1841 and 1847. The vast majority of them were in 1842 and 1843. The the years that bill is specifying none of these deeds had anything to do with marriage. They were not deeded to wives, none of these anything to do with polygamy. Certainly these and also I can, I’m not, I I want to make it very clear, this is not comprehensive. These are not like it’s not like these are all of the deeds to women. I feel pretty confident that there would be hundreds of them if anyone cared to go through these deed compilations, page by page and find all of the deeds to women. So I’m going to highlight a few. I just want to say I did think of you know, I, I’ve tried to like the point I tried to make in the previous two episodes and then I will continue to make here is we don’t understand the Nuland deeds, anything like well enough to make any kind of claims about them. We don’t understand why deeds were granted specifically to women. I, the couple of ideas that I thought of were that first of all, as I said before, maybe some sort of life insurance policy that after the violence in Missouri and being chased out um of many previous locations, maybe the men were trying to say that I don’t even want it to have to go to the court. If something happens to me, I don’t trust the court. I just want this in your name. That’s a possibility. It also is a possibility that it was being done somehow to protect land financially in case they were going to um declare bankruptcy or if there were any other kind of financial things going on some of these deeds. I, I did so much research and wanted to include it, but I can’t because there’s too much. There is a lot of funny business going on with these deeds. I will say I haven’t personally found fun. Funny business that involves Joseph Smith with these deeds. But I have with a lot of other people, I’ll show just one example of many um examples like it lead me to wonder. I’ve talked to someone else who, um, postulated the possibility that maybe there was some sort of money laundering going on or so, like there is some weird stuff happening with these, not with all of these deeds at all, but there are instances you can see where you’re like, that seems really funny and suspicious and weird. Right. And so anyway, so that’s not the case with all of the deeds. I just want to say the deeds are complicated. They are complex and to try to oversimplify them like this is not, is not wise, I think. And so I’m going to go ahead and add. So these are the deed compilations. I was telling you about that. You just have to ignore the pink highlight. Sorry about that. But I wanted to show some of the many examples of deeds to women. So I’ve included quite a few here. First of all, I um was doing some research on, well, I can’t remember what research I was doing, but I looked up Daniel H Wells because he wasn’t baptized as a member of the church, I think until 1846 he did later on become a Utah polygamist. But certainly at this time, he wasn’t even a Mormon, let alone a polygamist. And you can see how many deeds he wrote to women. So here are two to Sarah and padlock, one in 1842 and one in 1846. And then we’ll go forward, here’s one to Katherine Robinson in 1843 for $700 a substantial amount. One to Eleanor Simpson in 1843 1 to Sarah Pratt and her Children for $1000. That, that is a suspicious number that people bring up. That $1000 must mean polygamy. I, I’ll say this later again, but $1000 I think could possibly at times mean something and official, like, like it, it, it could be a stand in for something else. But I think we can show right here that it certainly can’t be a stand in for polygyny that someone wants to claim that Daniel H Wells was married to Sarah Pratt. And then we have another one to Elizabeth Hills in 1844. Um Going forward Daniel H Wells to Martha Olsen or Martha or in um 1844 to let us bent in 1844. And yes, let us is a woman. I did the research to find documents that included her name with feminine pronouns. Um And then there are more Mary Worthen in 1846. So these are a little bit later, but still I think, I think it’s important to expand the window to show that deeds to women were happening throughout this entire time because Bill claims that they, there were hardly and there were, there are none except the ones to Joseph. A few in 1841 a lot in 1842 and 1843 and some in 1844. And then hardly any after that, that’s just not true at all. And so, um, Lucinda display in 1847 um, Catherine C Woods in 1847 Jane Brown in 1847 Mabel Sharp in 1841. So this is back before another one to Mabel Sharp in 1841. And, um, then this was interesting. So now I’m just gonna throw some random ones there that I thought were telling this is I’m probably included about half of the deeds to women that I found some are just random, but some I think were important. So this one is a deed to Irene H Cowell who was the wife of Austin cells. Now, for those who don’t know, just off the top of their head, Austin cells is one who wrote, who is the member of the High Council who quit the High Council. And I will, when I do my episode on him, I will make the case of, I think it’s very clear why he actually quit the High Council. He became embittered and he included the affidavit in the um novo expositor that is used as some of the best evidence to claim that Hyrum read the um the revelation on the section 132 in front of the High Council. So are we claiming that Irene H Cowell was a polygamous wife because there’s a deed to her without him on the deed, right? And then we have 10, I included this one because it’s a woman to a woman. That’s the other thing I didn’t even include the many, many, many deeds that were written by women where women deeded property to other, to couples or to men or often to other women. I included a few of those. So you can see a, a woman to a woman in 1843. There’s another one to so um Sophia Smith in 1843 to Sophia Smith for $1400 in 1843. Um Suzanne. So, oh, I included these because again, William marks the president of the Nauvoo High Council who is one who was claimed to not have received the revelation, right? And so here’s a deed from William Marks and his wife to Susanna Eagle in 1843 and another one to Louisa Saner. And then we have William Marks to um Hannah Anni. Hannah Anni, I think is her name. And just so you know that where it says wife of JC Annis, those are Susan Easton blacks um s those aren’t on the original deeds and that will be become important because there are some mistakes on some of them that will show later. But this one was fun. John Bills and Elizabeth to Jane Law. So are we claiming that Jane Law was the plural wife of John Bills? Right? And then we have Edmund Brown to Lucinda Sagers this was before um Harrison had left. So she was still married to Harrison and we have a deed coming from Edwin L Brown. We know for a fact that Lucinda Sagers was nobody’s plural wife because she was so opposed to it when her husband started trying to practice it. And then here’s one from William Law. No, none other than the, the founder of the novel Expositor and the Prophet of the New religion, right? That was the break off William Law to Elizabeth Hall in 1845 Wilson Law, his brother to Dorothy ha do Dorothy Fox in um April of 1844. So this was before the expositor and all of that happened. Then we have one another, a random one to Martha Ann Hovey in 1843. And then um let’s see, oh, I included these just because I thought the name Elizabeth Taylor was fun to see that. There was a woman in a novel named Elizabeth Taylor and two deeds were written to her in 1843. And then um we have to Margaret Butterfield in 1843 to Emily Jacobs in 1842. Um 0 another one from a wo a woman to a woman, Elizabeth Ann Hills to Mary Pierce in 1843 another one to Mary Pierce from the Pratts in 1843. Um And, and these were interesting. So Polly Sherwood is one of the women that received ad from Joseph Smith received right. This one in 1841 is from Joseph and Emma to Polly Sherwood again for $1000. So we don’t know if that’s a literal price or a stand in for something else. But it’s good to see this Polly Sherwood deed for $1000 in 1841. That bill excludes just because it doesn’t fall within his timeline when he thinks the deed should be about polygamy. That um that um was it the the Texas sharpshooter? The sampling? Right? And then we have another one from Harry um Henry G Sherwood to Polly Sherwood, his wife. So he’s writing a deed from a husband to wife. It looks like on this one in August of 1845 I’m just showing you how complicated the deeds are, right? And then here we have, I’m showing these because they are from Joseph Smith as a member of the first presidency because this is before he became the trustee in trust. And so we have Joseph Sidney and Hiram on a deed to a Hera Young in um 1840 for $400 Joseph Sidney and Hiram an aide to Almira Oaks in 1840 as well. And then um another one from the first presidency to Maria Clark. I don’t know if it’s Maria or Mariah in that day, but this was also in 1840 another one to Sylvia P Lyons. So we have a deed from the entire first presidency to Sylvia P Lyons in 1840 she’s later claimed to be a wife. But so is this deed about polygamy or is it not? Right? Do we see the problems and the questions that need to be addressed? And I just wanted to show you this is just one example, this isn’t um like um emblematic of the rest of the deeds that have questionable things. There are a lot of questionable deeds with like William Clayton involved and a lot of weird stuff going on. But this is just one example of something weird happening. So Maria Lawrence died in 1847 and yet here is a deed to her in 1848 and another deed from her in 1849 both of them for $1000. So that’s really interesting. Right. I just want to make it very clear how truly complicated these deeds are and how much there might be funny business going on with a lot of them. I think most of them, there’s not funny business going on, but we have a lot of questions that we need to answer about deeds before we start making huge claims about them. And I hope with that broad sampling that I showed you, I have made it abundantly clear that deeds to women were absolutely not rare. They, they were not um unseemly, you know, against like every one of these deeds had to be notarized, right? They had to be notarized. And then they usually had to be entered into the um county records. Like most of these actually come from the, the navoo, I, I mean, from the Hancock County records at Carthage. So whoever the recorder was there was recording deeds to and from women. So, like these were official legal documents in women’s names. There shouldn’t be any question about whether deeds to women were unique, rare or problematic. They weren’t. I think that that assumption is being made because the only deeds that people have looked at are the ones that are on the Joseph Smith papers and the only ones that are included, there are obviously the ones that have to do with Joseph Smith. So we’re going to go on and look at many more very interesting deeds to women that I think are even more interesting than the ones we’ve already looked at. But first I just want to clarify a couple of things again. I really, I, I hope it is abundantly clear that deeds to women are not ra right? And even if they were, though I still would need help understanding this theory, I have. It’s so um poorly thought out, in my opinion, there’s so many questions to ask and I’ll ask more of them going forward. But right now remember that we are not supposed to pay attention whether deeds were just from Joseph Smith as trusty interest or from Joseph as the first presidency. I guess, or if they were from Joseph and Emma. So we’re just supposed to assume that like Emma, in her fits of selfishness and greed and rage and all of these anger would be, um, ok, signing over property to Joseph’s plural wives. Right. How does that make sense? I think that’s a question. We should pay attention to, again, the price on the properties we should pay attention to. I’m also wondering why Joseph is the only one whose deeds are assumed to be related to plural marriages. Maybe it’s because people just didn’t know that there were any other deeds with anybody else. I want to show you some additional deeds that I just found fascinating as I was digging them up and finding them. I hope that you will find them very in interesting as well and very instructive to this claim because they need to be taken into consideration. So here are some extremely important deeds. Here is a deed from Brigham Young to a woman alone on the deed named Susanna Brunel on the 14th of February 1842. 0, look, it was even Valentine’s Day. Clearly, she must be a wife and he’s just giving her a deal. We should just ignore the $500 bond that’s listed, which was an actual bond that she had. But actually, Brigham Young never married Susanna Brunel. They were, she was never one of his wives. Brigham Young, the very well known polygamist with many well documented wives, Susanna Brunell was never one of them. We have another deed from Brigham Young to Susan Anne Brunel, which is possibly the same person. I don’t know. But this one was March 9th, 1844 2 years later. So he wrote her two deeds or at least someone closely related with a very similar name. And again, nine of them, or if it’s the same person, there was nobody by anything like this name that was married to Brigham Young. We can go forward and see another deed. This one from Brigham Young and Mary Anne, his wife to Sarah Hillman, another woman alone on the deed the eighth of March 1844 all of these even fit within Bill’s um arbitrarily chosen window of where he expects to find polygamy. But neither of these deeds are about polygamy from a very well known polygamist who absolutely has well documented wives by this time in 1844 and she was not one of them. Then we go forward and look at this. We find a deed to Mary Ann Young, Brigham Young’s wife with her alone on the deed, John Park and Julia, his wife wrote a deed to Mary Ann Young the fourth of March 1843. Again within Bill’s window to Mary Ann Young without Brigham on the deed. So should we claim that Mary Anne was actually a plural wife of John Park along with Julia? Or can we admit that the deeds do not relate to polygamy. Right? Here’s another deed from Ethan Kimball to Mary Ann Young again with her alone on the deed the seventh of March 1843. Then we have another deed from Ethan Kimball to Mary Ann Young. This is a big 1 $900 on the 19th of December 1843. So there we have Mary Ann Young alone on deeds, three separate deeds that have nothing to do with polygamy, right? Are, are we claiming that she was polyandrous married to all of these other men as well? Then going forward here is a deed from Hebrew C. Kimball and Violet. His wife to Margaret Simpson, a woman alone on the deed the fourth of March 1844. Again within this window, she could be a wife because he had multiple wives at this point, but he never was married to a Margaret Simpson. And then there’s also Anne Simpson who also was never his wife. This was in 18 45 in May of 1845 Hebrew and the late Violet. I’m trying to remember to say Violet. Her name is Violet. Wrote a deed to Anne Simpson. And then we go forward and look at this. We have a deed to Janetta Richards, the wife of Willard Richards with her alone on the deed. This is from William Whiteman and William and Dolly Whiteman to Janetta Richards. In 1841. We have another deed that um in 1845 from NK Whitney to Janetta Richards again, Willard’s wife listed alone on the deed. Clearly not about polygamy. Then these are fascinating. This is William Clayton. William and Ruth Clayton. So he was a known polygamist to Elizabeth Coolidge the 27th of March 1844. He was deep into polygamy. This by this point never was married to an Elizabeth Coolidge. Not about polygamy. Then this is the one, this is the one that was actually super fascinating. This is William and Jane Law. William. None less than the founder of the Novo expositor and the the president of the new break off religion, the true um restoration religion that he was going to try to take over when he wanted to oust Joseph Smith and was plotting to, to plotting his death which he succeeded at. Right. This is a deed from William Law. If anyone wants to claim that William Law was a polygamist that will be brand new to Ruth Clayton, the legal wife of William of William Clayton. Right? That’s fascinating. This is on the 20th of March 1844. So again, it fits right in the window. And I think these that needs to be taken into consideration when making these claims. I will give Bill the benefit of the doubt of saying that he didn’t know about all of these deeds. He hadn’t done what I think is the due diligence I dug in and found all of these deeds in order to see if there was validity to this claim or if it needed to be reconsidered. I agree with Professor John Kidd. He didn’t even have any of this information. But I think that this theory needs to be strongly reconsidered and discarded. So we’re going to go ahead and go on because because Bill didn’t know about these days, I’m I’m hoping Bill you, you really do seem like you value critical thought, critical thinking, right? So I’m really hoping that you will look at this and um you know, I like acknowledge it. I’m curious to know if you agree with me that knowing about the rest of these deeds, which I mean, none of us know everything. It’s fine, right? It’s fine to come with the hypothesis. I’ve come up with many and then learned more and go and had to be disappointed that my hypothesis couldn’t stand and I couldn’t present it, right. So, so like I’m really hoping that you will deal with this information and hopefully acknowledge that that this claim isn’t valid and that deeds shouldn’t be used to try to validate or prove Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I’m getting messages often from people who have listened to these episodes from Bill Real specifically. But Bill Real and RFM who are telling me Joseph was, was deeding property to his plural wives and navoo, it’s obvious that he was a polygamist. I, I just don’t think that false premises and false claims are useful even if they are on the side that we want. So I’m hoping that you will help me to clear this up so that people won’t still be quoting those things which will make them lose credibility. So I’m going to pause here and say what you have seen so far is just a little over half of what I recorded in this one exhausting sitting to record this response to Bill. But I’ve got decided to go ahead and break it up into two sections because I know that it’s, it’s a lot of information and a lot of time. So I’m really hoping that people have gotten some good questions answered so far and that you will tune back in because in the next half of this episode is where we will get into the teenage wives and into Bill’s claims of having found two new wives. So there is a lot more information that, that I think that you will be very interested in seeing. So I’m gonna end this one here. Thank you so much for joining me and I really hope that you will tune in again next week to hear the rest of the response.
