120: Bill Reel’s Deeds Pt. 2, Deeds to Teenagers and Two New Wives!

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Watch Part 1 here:
Ep 119: Are Nauvoo Land Deeds Evidence of Joseph’s Polygamy? Response to Bill Reel Pt. 1

Ep. 102: Deep in the Weeds of the Deeds

Ep. 104: Dirty Deeds — Deeds Pt. 2

Transcript:

[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. This is the second half of my response to Bill Reels um hypothesis to his claims that that um Nuland deeds are evidence of Joseph Smith’s polygamy or even proof of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. In this episode. I will continue my response and specifically look into the very interesting claims of the three teenage girls that have that are supposedly Joseph Smith’s wives that is a troubling claim. I think you’re going to be fascinated by, by what I’ve turned up and what I will present and then also Bill’s claim of having found two new wives. I think that’s something that you’ll be very interested to hear about as well. So thank you so much for joining us as we take this deep dive into the now much less murky water of the relationship between Joseph Smith’s polygamy and Nuland Des. The first three deeds that Bill deals with are um the deed, the two deeds to Emma Smith and then the deed to Mary Fielding. So I’ve many things to say about these. So these deeds are used. These are obviously the legal wives of Joseph and Hyrum Smith. So I, I’m assuming that he’s using these deeds to, again justify paying deeds to marriages, right? To say that they are evidence of marriage. So I want to go through each of these. I’m going to start first with the deed to Emma Smith the 13th of June, 1842 to Emma Smith for $1000. Again, possibly a stand in some which I think in this case, very likely as this is the deed that made one of the deeds, the main deed that made me think, oh, you know what $1000 can just be a stand in for something else. And um, so let’s go ahead and look at what this deed could possibly be about. Um I, I, when I did my first response to Bill and RFM, they just like mocked me mercilessly for talking about polygamy lenses as if, as if like they’re not aware that that it has been proven scientifically now that we all have perception that we see through perception and perception shapes what we’re seeing, what you heard. Professor Kid speak about. That’s where I was talking to. And RFM actually claimed he’s not wearing any glasses. He has no perception that that’s a AAA an outrageous claim to make if you understand anything about how our brains work. But so anyway, I just wanted to point that out because of course, if you are wearing the polygamy lenses that everything is about polygamy, right? And you don’t have to ask any more questions. That’s why I think it’s useful to engage because if you are willing to do some investigation, you can very quickly see what this was most likely about. These. I’ve spoken about this in a previous episode. I’ll go over it here quickly. These are the Relief Society minutes for June 9th, 1842 Joseph Smith came and spoke to the Relief Society and said that he would give a lot of land to the society by deeding it to the treasurer that the society may build houses for the poor. So this was just a few days before this was June 9th. And on June 13th, here we have this deed to the president of the Relief Society. It wasn’t deeded specifically to the, um, treasurer. I think that might have been Vira Coles if I’m remembering correctly, I have it written somewhere, but it was instead deeded to Emma, but she was the president of the Relief Society. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that that’s what this was. And this is why I think that $1000 price tag, you know, I think that’s interesting like, oh, maybe that is a symbolic price tag at times at least because I think it was here because I think that, I mean, I would like to see someone make a stronger claim. There’s no other lot of land deeded to the Relief Society and this came directly after the promise to do so. And then Joseph seems to have fulfilled his promise. So I think we can check that one off the list as being about marriage or polygamy or, you know, we should at least what’s that deed about? And look for the evidence. There it is. I, I found that for my, one of my earlier presentations on deeds. So now we’ll go to the next, um, deed to Emma. This was the infamous July 12th, 1843 deed. The one that William Clayton writes about in his journal, that’s for all of the, all in all of the unencumbered lots because Emma is so upset about the revelation that like this all hangs on William Clayton, right on his credibility. And so let’s go ahead and look at this deep because I did look into it in depth in response to both. Um, Don Bradley used this often to claim claim the certainty of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. We’ve talked about, well, we haven’t actually gotten into this yet. I’m still waiting to get into that with Don. So I’m hoping we can do that soon. Those will be good conversations because I think it’s important to recognize we have the original deed that was just stuck in a file somewhere. And so thankfully include on the Joseph Smith Papers project where I was able to find it. And, um, and, and there it is, and you can see on this deed again, I’ve talked about it a lot in my previous episodes, this deed was never finished. It was not only was it not signed or sealed, it was never even finished. But what we do have, the other thing I was able to find is this nearly identical, very similar deed to Hyrum written the exact same day, the exact same amount and clu and including 52 of the exact same lots. This one includes some other additional pieces of land and there’s, there are a few differences in the lots, but this deed was written by William Clayton the day that he claimed the on that he wrote in his journal that he only wrote Emma’s deed and that he did it in response to Joseph telling him to give her all of the encumbered lots and everyone conflate all of those entries from that week to try to make a story about it that does not fit the evidence at all. So here we have this deed to Hiram that I think is extremely important and needs to be taken into consideration. And so I will say I, um, it’s been good. It’s been really good to engage. Like thank you again, Bill for bringing this up because like this has opened the door to a ton of investigation. A ton of research. I have dedicated more hours than I I would like to admit to this. Definitely more than one week, but it’s been worthwhile because I think a lot of good has come from it, like finding these deeds. And I will say with the deed to Emma, let me clarify really quickly. Marianne Clements, um, corresponded with me, which I’m thankful for and showed me that. Actually, I don’t know how I missed it. I didn’t look late enough that Emma did, um, deed away several of the lots included on this deed that she did sell those later on. Um, quite a while, a while after Joseph died. And I was really thankful to know that I still, I still have a lot of questions. I still don’t think it is evidence that Emma knew about this deed at the time because remember it was never finished, but William Clayton entered it into the Navoo Book of Deeds, his, his registry that he had sole control over and soul access to. And then he also registered it in Nauvoo. I mean, in um Carthage to the Hancock County registry just uh what was a week or a week and a half after Joseph’s death. July 8th is coming to mind if that’s what it is. But um but, and they, the Joseph Smith papers claims that it was Emma that did it, but I think that we clearly demonstrated it absolutely was not Emma, I think the best guess is Will William Clayton. And so anyway, so since it was recorded, it’s totally possible that as soon as this all went to trial and to court and all of the, you know, everybody had to get involved. There would be the evidence that those deeds, those lots should have been Emma. So she totally could have sold them. So anyway, there are more questions to answer on these um deeds. But I think at the very least, what we have done is exposed that William Clayton’s journal is a later motivated creation designed to try to prove Joseph’s mis polygyny, especially, especially the the irregularities with it. The pieces pulled out of it like I’ve said before, we, I can do more on that at some point, but this is really important to consider. So then we’ll go to um Bill’s third deed, which is the deed to Mary Fielding Smith, which she’s Hiram’s legal wife. So this, at this point, I have to pause and ask the question that I’ve really wanted to ask from the beginning and have asked several times. What exactly is the theory here? I, I really want, I don’t understand it at all. And, and I really, I my suspicion is that there isn’t actually a well thought out theory. It’s just kind of like, look, we can show that these relate, but I think that we need to do better than that. Like, what is the theory? How exactly do deeds relate to Joseph’s marriages? Are we claiming that um he had to basically bribe the women to marry him with land, right? Or bribe their families? Is that what we’re claiming. And if so, well, why are we not seeing deeds from other polygamous men to their right. Joseph would have been by far the most eligible bachelor because in polygamy, every man is a perpetual bachelor. And um he was the mayor of Nauvoo, the prophet of the Lord, the head of the church, right? Obviously, he would have been the best catch in Nauvoo. And yet are we claiming that he had to use land to bribe the women to marry him? Even though like according to Helen Mar Kimball’s claim, which we’re going to get to a little bit in a few minutes. Um Are we claiming that like even though he was promising them exultation for their entire family, he had to throw some land and to sweeten the deal. And if that was the case again, where are like, like if Brigham and Heber and William Clayton and others were just like following Joseph’s lead, they were just in Joseph’s inner cabal of polygamists doing only what they saw him do. Why isn’t this pattern of deeds for wives continuing with them? Especially when we know that we actually skyrocketed after Joseph’s death. Why aren’t we seeing way more deeds given to plural wives? Right? If we want to make that claim, I think that’s an interesting thing to think about also, wouldn’t we expect to see the deeds like right before or near the time of the wedding? Isn’t that when that bargain would have to be made. So we’ll look in a few minutes at the, no one’s even compared the dates of the supposed weddings or weddings or ceilings and the dates of the deeds. And I think that something worth looking at. So, so wouldn’t those relate in some consistent way that we could expect to see? And, and why did Joseph only have to buy some of his wives with deeds? Why not all of them? Right? And so anyway, there are a lot of questions I have with that. And I also if the deeds, if the deeds, if we’re claiming that they were somehow to provide for the wives, right, then again, why is there so much inconsistency? I I think I pointed this out because I’ve said this is one thing I said to Bill in our correspondence is like we have the same correlation does not equal causation, but with the deeds and Joseph Smith’s marriages, we don’t even have correlation, right? Like as I get into it in a little while, well, I think I’ve already stated it’s like 25% of, of, of the wives had deeds or 33% of the deeds were two wives. And it like it’s am it’s a far, far less than half closer to a quarter of even overlap of even correlation. So if you don’t even have correlation more than that, you at least need to provide some sort of causation. Explain to some degree what the theory actually is here. And so again, if the deeds are to provide for the wives, shouldn’t we expect to see some consistency in how the wives were provided for in the Old Testament? When in the law of Moses, it does make some um rules of how men who are foolish enough to take on a Sara, a second wife, right? Known to cause pain and despair, even it for, for both women and the men, even in the Old Testament, it says that you have to treat the wives equally, right? So how is it so inconsistent? And I also wondered why none of the wives talked about it. Like even Helen Mar Kimball and who wrote so much about Joseph Smith, why didn’t any of them talk about how Joseph gave them land deeds to help provide for them because he was such a caring, wonderful husband, right? Isn’t that a claim you would think that they would make if this had anything to do with it? So that I, I just, I have so, so many questions about this. And I, I think that if this, if this um theory is going to continue, which I’m, I’m hoping maybe it won’t. But if it is going to continue, please at least provide some specifics of exactly what the theory is exactly how these things go together because that’s an important question to ask. So I’m bringing it up because now we are bringing in Mary Fielding Smith Hiram’s legal wife. So these they had been married for something like 5.5 years already. They already had Children. So are we claiming again, how does this fit in was like clearly Joseph wasn’t bribing her to Mary Hiram. Right. Mary Fielding and Hiram were living together as legal husband and wife having Children together just as married couples do. So why would Joseph write a deed to Mary to provide for her? Why would that have to be done in these kind of back alley ways? Like how does this make any sense? I just want you to explain why the deed to Mary Fielding Smith is being tied in with this as somehow evidence that deeds have to do with polygamy. I really hope that someone will think about this and either come up with a theory or just discard it altogether. But what I propose since there is some overlap between the women who have deeds. Well, everyone who bought deeds in Nauvoo and people who claim to be involved or were involved later with polygamy. The overlap is that many of the Mormons in Navoo followed Brigham Young West, right? And when they followed Brigham Young West, that’s when we start to get the claims of polygamy out of Joseph’s polygamy. So of course, there is going to be some over. That’s exactly what you would expect to see. I would say that is the causal connection between them the group of Mormons buying deeds in NAVOO were committed Mormons that were buying land to come and help build up this Mormon community. And many of them went with Brigham Young and they were many of them were committed to building up the community there where claiming living polygamy and claiming polygamy became part of building up that community. I think that’s a much better theory. So I’ll be curious to see if you agree with me, but let me go ahead just because we have this deed to Mary Fielding and go ahead and put, so show this. So here is this top, this one on top is the deed from Joseph Smith to Mary Fielding Smith. And then right below it, we have a deed from Ruben W Allred and Lucy and his wife to Mary um Fielding Smith as well. So again, we have a problem because deeds to women, including this very woman were not rare. There are at least half a dozen deeds I have seen either to or from Mary Fielding Smith with alone on the deed. So I really do think that um we need to rethink this theory, maybe that’s already been clear, but we’ll go ahead and, and follow it through some more. So, Bill goes on to show us the deeds that he um says overlap with the supposed wives. Well, they do overlap with the supposed wives, right? He lists them all there. So this is what we’re going to address next and this gets a little bit tricky again because it’s hard to even find, um, a, a certain list of Joseph Smith’s wives. Right. Because there’s very little agreement. I think Todd Compton counts 33 if I’m correct. And Brian Hall counts 35 maybe they’ve changed that a little bit. I don’t know. Wikipedia lists 50 wives. Um, but I don’t know any one that counts Wikipedia’s list because they include everybody that Fon Brodie claimed and everybody that George D Smith claimed and they made some pretty wild claims. But, um, but, but Bill does seem to look to Wikipedia because you can see there right in the middle scar. Sarah Scott. He um is saying that she’s listed as a plural wife on Wikipedia. So he’s saying that Sarah Mulholland, um, there’s a deed to Sarah Mulholland and I, oh, I dug into that and I so wanted to include the story about Sarah Mulholland on this episode, but I had to cut it out. It’s fascinating. I have to cut it out and I will save it for the supposed polyandry wives when I get into those. It’s great fun. So, right here, this is the Wikipedia list of wives. And you can see though I’ve highlighted and read the ones that apparently that, that they also have a deed, right? I think there’s one that Bill doesn’t include that I did is that Martha mcbride Knight. I think that might be who it is. If I’m seeing it wrong, there’s someone else I’ll get to it. But yeah, it looks like it’s Martha mcbride Knight. That Bill must not have known that she’s considered a wife. So I went ahead and included her for him as well. And we’re gonna go ahead and look into these wives and compare the deeds to the wives and see what we come up with. Right. So we have 12 of 50 possible wives are included on deeds. And um yeah, is Martha mcbride Knight that Bill didn’t include. And so as I was just saying, that’s less than 25% of the supposed wives. So again, not great correlation. And among the 75% majority of supposed wives that don’t have deeds, you can see names such as Louisa Beaman, Agnes Coolbrith, Melissa Lott, um Eliza Snow, right? Some of the most important wives who made the most claim about being wives were not included and not all of those women did. Agnes Cobra certainly never claimed to be wife, nor did Louisa Beaman. But um they were, they, they were women who were not given deeds. So again, that would need to be explained why, why Eliza Snow did not have a deed. And then at the same time, according to Bill Joseph sold lots to 34 women without a husband on the deed and only 12 of those two supposed wives. So again, only around a third of Joseph’s deeds actually went to supposed wives. So we need to explain why the other two thirds of deeds to women were not to wives. That would need to be explained why, you know, like, how are they about marriage? If the majority of them, if two thirds of them have nothing to do with marriage? So, um, let’s see. And then after this bill goes forward to, uh, well, we go to the wives. I think that’s what we’re going to do next. Yes. After this, this is the Texas sharpshooter because Bill goes on afterward to talk about all of the other deeds that aren’t either to a wife or well, yeah, that aren’t to a wife. And he tries to draw any possible connection to polygamy going so far as to say like the deeds to Robert Foster’s wife to Sarah Foster. That, um, so Robert Foster was one of the novel Expositor Conspirators. And there are deeds to Sarah Foster. Maybe I’ll get into those in a minute and he goes on to claim that those were somehow to keep her quiet. Although, is that what I have next? Yeah, here are the deeds to Sarah Foster. The dates are the 10th of March 1843 and the second of December 1843. So the first one at least is long before the ex um, the, the Hyrum was supposed to have read the revelation in the High Council, right? And the second one was before the falling out and long before the expositor was started. So again, the the dates on these deeds matter, right? So, so this is where this extreme um Texas sharpshooting comes in because we’re just looking for any possibility. And then, yeah, with some of the others, you can go ahead, like I said, and draw parallels years later to polygamy, someone said something about um there was a deed to an all red. So clearly, that must be the Utah all red family, right? I mean, even though that family became prominent after in the, in the 19 twenties, after the split between the after the fundamentalists split off from the LDS church. So a lot of extreme claims bill doesn’t fully buy into that one. But I think that all of these claims are just are just pretty interesting. Oh, I guess I’m showing more deeds from having to do with Sarah and Robert Foster. I was gonna make this case. So yes, let me go on and to show this is really interesting. So this is um Robert and Sarah Foster also deeding land to a woman, which I thought was fascinating, right? And pretty much anyone you look up, you see them deeding land to women almost like as soon as I looked up, Sarah um Foster out of curiosity because of this claim, I found these deeds. There’s another deed to Mabel Sharp in 1841 and then another deed to Anna Barbara Bauer Master in 1843. So even within our and Robert Foster to Mary Anne Greenwell in 1843 so you can see many deeds from Robert Foster to women. There’s another one to Agnes Baum on the fourth of April 1844. So, unless we want to claim that Robert D Foster was also taking plural wives and deeding them property, hopefully you get the point. So, um, so I think that these, oh, and there’s even more and this, oh, this was interesting, here’s a deed from Robert Foster and his wife Sarah to Joseph in 1842. And another one in um another deed to Joseph Smith the 22nd of January 1844. So that was um like long after these other, I mean, this is crazy because they’re saying that these deeds that were given to Sarah Foster in 1843 it happened before this deed from Robert and Sarah to Joseph Smith in um January of 1844. So hopefully, you see how convoluted and messy this is, it doesn’t stack up to even be a viable hypothesis at this point. So let’s go on and look at some of these wives. So this is the supposed overlap. This is the list of supposed wives who have deeds. And I think it’s useful to get in you guys. I put, I’m, I’m hoping you’ll just quickly compare the marriage dates because I think that’s probably the most important thing to consider here is what’s the relationship between them and how are we trying to make sense of that? So, let me go ahead. I’m just gonna go into, I’m not gonna in this episode, go into the evidence for the wives and all of that. Although it would be great fun. I’m really excited to do that. I’m just gonna look quickly at a few things from Sylvia Lion, right? So you can see she has two different marriage dates, either either February 8th of 42 or February 8th of 43. And then her deeds bill doesn’t include all of these, but we should the deeds that are written to her without her husband on the deed, just her alone are written in two and 1840 then one in 1843. So let’s go ahead and look really quickly at Sylvia Lion. The reason we have two dates for her. Um Yeah, Sylvia Lion. So I’m looking at is because we have two separate affidavits that were written in Joseph F Smith’s two separate copies of affidavit books that he wrote with um John Jack, I think is his name. Something like that was the Notary Republic writing them for him. And you can see in both of these, it’s the same story Sylvia Lion. It says on this blank day of blank 1869 Sylvia came and filled out this affidavit, right? She never came. So there’s no date ever listed for when she came. And then the first in the first book, it says February 1842 in the second book, it says February 8th 1843. That’s why we have the two different dates because the two unsigned affidavits list different dates. And you can see that um these, these go on to that this was signed um married or sealed to President Joseph Smith by blink in the presence of blank and that’s where they end. There’s no claim and there’s no signature. So this is counted, this is still counted as evidence of um Sylvia Lion being married to Joseph Smith, which is why she’s on this list, right? So there, there is the evidence for Joseph Smith’s marriage to Sylvia Lion. You’ll recall that it’s her daughter that claimed we have a 1913 affidavit that um from Josephine Lyon claiming that her mother said on her deathbed that she was actually Joseph’s child. So she was the strongest candidate to be um Joseph’s Polyandry’s wife, right? Despite her lack of signed deeds, that’s the other strongest piece of evidence we have for her until the, the DNA was just done and showed that no, Josephine Lyon was not Joseph Smith’s child. She was the child, her father who happened to be Sylvia Lion’s husband. So, um and then we go on and here are the deeds that I just talked about the 1840 deeds and the 1840. Um 0 I guess I have a few other deeds. Here’s a deeded from Peregrine and Julianne Sessions to Sylvia Lion. Here’s the other deed from Joseph Smith to um Sylvia Lance. You can see that deeds to women are not good evidence of polygamy. So let’s go ahead and go back to this list. Mary Elizabeth Rollins and Patty Bartlett Sessions are pretty straight forward. I just think it’s interesting to compare the marriage dates and the de date. Again, we have multiple dates for Mary Elizabeth Rollins. It’ll be so fun to get into these episodes all from her. She um she never said she was uncertain. She just gave different stories at different times where she listed different marriage dates. So it was one of those. It was either in January, February or March of 1842 that she claimed to be married, but then she doesn’t have a deed until July of 1843. So again, and what’s the connection there? How do those relate? That’s interesting. Patty Bartlett Session claimed to be married. Well, I don’t know if she claimed herself off to look that up, March of 42 and then her deed didn’t come until what is that August of 43. So almost a year and a half later again. Uh How, how, how do these deeds relate? What’s the theory here? Why did the dates not matter? Right next. We’ll go ahead and look really quickly at Marinda Nancy Johnson Hyde. I believe is her name. And just to show that there are multiple deeds from her to her as well. There’s um, one from Ethan Kimball to Marinda Hyde in 1842 and then the one from Joseph Smith in 1843. So you can see that she also has her is listed on deeds herself just as so many other women are. And then we’ll go on to look at Martha mcbride Knight who bill actually failed to include as a wife, but I think needs to be included. She also has two separate deeds from Joseph Smith, one in 1841 that he didn’t include. And you can again see the dates of her marriage. It was supposedly summer of 42 and the deeds were in both, um in, in the fall of August of 41 or is that September, September of 41 and in February of 42. So both like, well before she was married to supposedly married to Joseph. So again, that’s a problem. Now, I’m going to say, oh, I guess I have a few more. There’s also a deed again from a woman to a woman, Charity Stoddard to Martha Knight, and also Martha Knight to Charity Stoddard. See, that’s another one of those interesting ones where I’m like, what is going on with these deeds? These were the exact same day, the, well, I guess one was on the night September, then it was deeded back the 10th of September for the same amount of money. Really interesting. They’re slightly different lots. So maybe they were just trading. But it is interesting to dig into the deeds, but those were deeds from women to women. So, we’ll go back to the list. I’m actually going to skip over for now. The teenage wives. Um, Sarah and Whitney Flora and Woodward and Helen Mark Kimball. We’ll get to those. So right now we’re going to look at and Eliza Partridge and this is a fun one. They’re lumped together because they are actually included together on the same deed that is to all of their siblings. This deed is to Eliza Emily Caroline, Lydia and Edward Partridge who are all of the Children in this family of the Partridge family, right? And yet for some reason, Emily and Eliza, this is counted as evidence that they were married to Joseph. This is good enough to count as a deed. I do want to point out that this is not uncommon to have parents purchase land for their Children. I’ll show you several of the other of these and I think that’s exactly what’s happening in all of the deeds to Children or to teens. I think their parents are buying the deeds, right? I, I do think that there’s um like it’s, it’s warranted to wonder what’s going on with. There are $1000 that could represent something else. Maybe $10,000 can as well. I don’t know what those mean, but this 10, and this one is also for $1000. That’s interesting. I’m saying that what right here is we’re looking at it. So, I don’t know. But this is obviously a deed to all of the partridge Children. How are we counting this one deed as marriage? Especially when deeds to Children are not rare. So I think I have some more here. So, yes, I’ve talked before about the many deeds to the Smith Children. So I won’t go into those here to the to um Smith um to Joseph and Emma Smith Children from either Joseph or Joseph and Emma. But here are some others that I thought was interesting. This first one is a deed to the Smith Children from William and Margaret Blackhurst for $225. And then this was a deed to the Smith Children from William and Ruth Clayton. And I want to say this was like a month and a half before the lawsuit when William Clayton actually sued Joseph Smith for his, his farm that I talked about in episode 104 dirty deeds. And so um but deeds to Joseph and Emma’s Children are far from the only, the only deeds to groups of Children. Here, we also have a deed to all of John Taylor’s Children. You can see from Joseph Smith. He purchased the deed again for $1000 for George Mary Anne Joseph and Leonora Taylor, all of his Children. And then there’s another deed that was purchased from Nel K Whitney for the, um, Lyman Children, Matilda Ruth, um, Lyman, who are all the Children of a mass of lineman. So that’s really interesting. I think I might have one more. Yeah, here’s another one or to the, to, or, um, or in Porter Rockwell’s Children. Right. So, again, purchase from Joseph Smith for Emily Caroline Oren and Sarah Jane Rockwell, and this one is for $100. So seeing some difference on those deeds makes me think that maybe the $1000 isn’t merely symbolic. I don’t know. But again, I do want to point out that these are just the ones I happened to find. If someone actually want wanted to go through these deeds books carefully, I, I am quite confident there would be many other deeds to groups of Children purchased by their parents is what it looks like to me, right? So if we want to claim that Emily and Eliza’s deeds are evidence of marriage, then we need to claim that about these other deeds to all groups of Children as well. There has to be some semblance of consistency if we want to make this about critical thought. So now I want to go ahead and talk about what many people see as the most troubling overlap between deeds and supposed wives. And that’s the deeds to the three teenage wives. We’re really going to get into that now and then I will go ahead and talk about Bill’s New, the two new wives that Bill um is hypothesizing to have found based on deeds. So I think these will be fascinating parts of this conversation because I think a lot of, for a lot of people, these are the most compelling parts. So before we get into that, I do want to restate my hope is that so far? Um we’ve, we’ve put some pretty big holes in this theory. I think, I think we’ve done more than enough to, to completely discredit this hypothesis, but just to recap a couple of the things, just seeing how many deeds there were written to women, how none of the deeds um line up in any sort of logical or meaningful way with wedding dates or with how, how they would fit in with marriage at all, how none of the deeds were ever used as evidence by any of the original polygamists or anyone else making that claim up until now, this is a relatively new claim, right? How there’s no correlation between deeds and wives, how cherry picked the sources have been, how insufficiently and badly set up the statistical analysis is, et cetera, et cetera on and on. I hope that we have done more than enough to show that deeds should uh the deeds do have nothing to do with polygamous marriages and that the entire theory and analysis was based on extremely incomplete and rather bad information. And so, so I hope that that is already clear, but I know that for a lot of people, this will be a real sticking point, right? Then how do you explain the deeds to the, the the girls? So that’s what we need to get going to next because people are particularly concerned about this. So I think we have some very good answer. So let me go ahead and add back the slide to the screen and you can see the three teenage wives there, Sarah and Whitney Flora and Woodworth and Helen Mar Kimball. So I am, I again, I can’t get into it here. I am so eager to do episodes on each of these wives and all of the evidence for each of them. So I’m not going to get into it here. Although I do want to bring up at least one question, right? Um Regarding these teenage wives and specifically Helen Mar Kimball. So Brigham Young and Hebrew C Kimball were lifelong friends for people who don’t already know that. In fact, you’ll see in a minute that Brigham’s daughter was named after his best friend, Heber’s wife, Violet, right? Heber took his lead from Brigham echoes Brigham in all of his ideas and doctrines throughout the journal of discourses. You can see that it doesn’t look to me like Hebrew comes up with a lot on his own. He just tells he just repeats Brigham’s doctrines and tells everyone they need to look to Brigham as their God and follow Brigham. Right. That’s what he does. He, um, so I want to ask this question if it was so important for Helen Mar Kimball to marry Joseph Smith as at 14, given as a sacrificial man by her father to find their families and to ensure their exaltation. And since that was apparently how their exaltation was ensured, and since Brigham was Joseph’s closest confidant and most loyal and trusted follower, I have to ask, why weren’t either of Brigham Young’s teenage daughters sealed to Joseph Smith to bind their families as well, right? We claim for those who um are opposed to Joseph Smith and claim that Joseph and Hebrew up with this deal, why didn’t Joseph also come up with this deal with freedom? Right? For those who um are, you know, faithful to the traditional narrative of the church who believe the traditional narrative? If you think that Joseph and Hebert needed this to Sarah Helen Mark Kimball goes to great length, explaining her story and why she was sealed to Joseph Smith at 14. So I have to, I have to ask why it didn’t also apply to Brigham Young. I think this is a real, really good question if, if this ceiling was necessary to bind and exalt their families, why wouldn’t Brigham have wanted to do that? And why wouldn’t Joseph have done that with his like number one polygamy buddy Elizabeth Young was the same age as Sarah Anne Whitney and Violet Young again named for Violet Kimball. His best friend’s wife was a year or two younger than Helen Mar Kimball. She turned 14 before the prophet’s death. So if there were any validity whatsoever to Helen Mark Kimball’s stories, and if it was true in any way that their families needed to be sealed together to ensure their exaltation, Brigham would certainly have wanted that for his family as well. He wanted, would have wanted to ensure exaltation and to be as close to the prophet as possible. Right? Remember again, the only place we get these stories about Helen being sealed to Joseph Smith at 14 are from her various reminiscences that she wrote in Utah in her fifties, her mid ff starting in 1881 almost 40 years after the event supposedly happened. Well, after a decade after both of her parents had died and after all of her siblings had died and after Brigham Young’s death as well, so she was the only one there to tell this story, right? She never signed an affidavit in the 1869 affidavits or any other time, she didn’t testify in the Temple lot trial. And even with all of Hebrews many, many sermons and much speaking and writing, he never said anything. At least nothing that I have seen and nothing that anyone has ever shown me. He never said anything about deciding to marry his 14 year old daughter to Joseph Smith in order to bind their families and ensure his family’s exultation that Heber talked a lot about polygamy and gave a lot of his reasons for it and his understanding in it. We also can read a lot about it clear back in his letters in England, his letters to Violet, right? Talking about the cause I have embraced in talking about polygamy and spiritual life. It had nothing to do with these doctrines that come up later in Helen Mark Kimball’s journal, maybe someone will find something that they think applies. I’d be really interested to see it. I certainly have never seen it. And so he also, if he were the one, I mean this, Helen Mark Kimball is the only one I know of that has a story like this, right? So if he or C Kimball were the one whose family was bound together with Joseph Smith to ensure their exalt, he certainly would have wanted to brag about that, right. That’s why I think Brigham would have wanted the same bragging rights. He would have brought it up and being able to tell people you need to be sealed and bound to my family because I’m bound to Joseph’s family. So that’s the way you can ensure your exultation. It just doesn’t come up anywhere in any of their doctrine. The principal was not taught and the family was not held up in that way it’s very strange. So I have to wonder if maybe the reason that Helen Mar Kimball is the only one that tells these stories in her later re reminiscences is because she was a woman who had been raised by a domineering father and lived for decades in a domineering system where the way to serve God and to build the kingdom and the way to gain relevance was to be connected to Joseph Smith And especially to be able to claim to be a plural wife of Joseph Smith. She was now an older woman struggling with depression who lacked purpose, meaning and connection in her life. And like so many other older women in this time, when the LDS church was desperate to prove its validity against the claims of the R LDS church leaders and missionaries who were coming and winning many converts, right? And it was during this time that um that Helen Mar Kimball was approached by the relief society leaders and asked to write her story, which of course should include her knowledge of Joseph Smith’s polygamy. So if anyone wants to argue against that, let me um play this clip from a fair conference with Lara Hales presenting every

[38:52] Laura Hales: few years starting in 1866 missionaries from the new church including David and Alexander Smith traveled to Utah bearing the message that Joseph Smith was a monogamist and that Brigham Young instituted plural marriage after their father’s death. These claims were so bothersome that Hiram Smith’s son, Apostle Joseph F. Smith collected affidavits from novel polygamists in the late 18 sixties, including 15 from the prophet’s plural wives. Affirming their first hand knowledge of his practice. The conflict climax when Joseph Smith the third printed his mother’s reported denial of his father’s plural marriages. Several months after her 1879 death, her words raised the ire of her former latter day Saint Novo neighbors and reinforced the strain between the two groups in this tense setting. Helen Mar Kimball Whitney found herself at a crossroads after years of wiping runny noses, darning socks and chasing after little ones, household duties no longer absorbed her days as was prone to happen. Depression, a familiar foe returned to Helen. Many of us undoubtedly can empathize with her sense of loss and confusion as she looked for a new purpose in her life. During this time, Helen requested a help healing blessing from the release society after the washing and anointing Eliza Snow. And Margaret Snoop visited with her about earlier times. Helen recollected sister smoot told me she thought it would be a great benefit to the younger sisters to hear my history. And she considered it my duty to tell them. She told me the same when I was at her house in Provo. And that night I made up my mind to commence my biography.

[40:53] Michelle: Ok? I know that was a rather long clip to play, but I wanted to show very clearly what Helen Mark Kimball’s stories grew out of what the situation was, right? And I just um I appreciate, I’ve always liked that presentation by um Laura Hills and I thought that it did a good job explaining how these stories came about. So I actually kind of love Helen Mark Kimball’s imagination and emotion and tragic impulses in creating story. There are many very creative, wonderful female fiction writers, right? And you can see the romanticism that comes into this story. It also came in an era when sacrifice was glorified and lauded. The most wonderful thing a woman could do is sacrifice for the principle, right? So I think that that’s a lot of the context that we can read into Helen Mar Kimball stories, which is, I think the best way to make sense of them that they are consistent with the time period that she wrote them in, but they’re not necessarily historically or doctrinally accurate, right? I think that that’s how we should look at those. But as I said, we’ll get much deeper into what exactly is relied on for the evidence of each of these wives in future episodes. I just wanted to show that little bit to kind of give a taste so that people don’t come to it with just the automatic assumption that Joseph Smith was, of course married to these wives. It’s all gonna be a lot of fun. But for now, here are the deeds, let’s go ahead and talk about these three deeds to these three teenage supposed wives. The first one, Helen, Mark Kimball. She actually has two deeds. One on June 7th, 1843 when the following year, June 7th, 1844 for $50 and 100 $80. So I won’t go into a lot of evidence, but she was married the next year to Horace Whitney and went on to have 11 Children with him. So that’s her story. And then we have Sarah and Whitney, we’ll look at her deed next. She was supposedly married to Joseph July 27th, 1842 and had the deed in September for $1000. So another interesting one, right? And um we’ve seen a lot of $1000 deeds to people’s Children. So we can ask a lot of questions about this one. She was actually married to Joseph C Kingsbury. Um The scribe of section 132 in April of 1843. That was later that marriage that we have. The evidence for right here was later explained away as a pretend marriage despite the fact that she actually lived with Joseph C Kingsbury until marrying Hebrew C Kimball in March of 1845. So what is that? Two years later, she lived with Joseph C Kingsbury for two full years in a pretend marriage and there are many other problems. Why does a teenage girl? I think she was 18? Why does she need a pretend marriage instead of just continuing to live with her parents, especially since according to the polygamous stories, which we will get into her parents actually took her to Joseph Smith to the one room he was staying on that was staying in, they accompanied her and would have had to be in the room with him because they couldn’t be seen while they did their business according to this, these stories. Right. So I don’t think they would have a problem letting Sarah Anne continue to live with them while she was married to Joseph. So, um there, there’s, there’s no reason to imagine the supposed marriage. She wasn’t pregnant. There were no, there’s no evidence of rumors and this is in a time when rumors were desperately being sought and being spread and published far and wide, right? Any rumor about Joseph Smith’s polygamy would have made it into the newspapers. And so if there had been rumors, we would know there, there were no rumors that we know of. So there’s no reason for a pretend marriage, then the next go on to is um Flora Ann Woodworth. Here is she was supposedly married in the spring of 1843. Her deed was in May of her deeds were in May of 1843 1 for $1000.01 for her family for $250. So that’s interesting. Right. Again, and we are going to talk about deeds to teenage girls. Don’t worry, we will get there. Um Remember though in the episode that I did on Flora and Woodworth, the disappearing evidence and chat GP T despite um Helen Mark Kimball’s claim that she married her non-member husband after Joseph’s death and always regretted it. That was in Helen Mark Kimball’s these later reminiscences in 2015, her marriage record to Charles Gove was found. So we know she married another man right after supposedly marrying Joseph Smith, that’s now been adjusted into the narrative to explain it a different way. Although we’ll never acknowledge that Helen Mark Kimball, you know that none of her claims seem to stand up very well. And of course, Flora Anne Woodworth herself never claimed to have been married to Joseph Smith. So I know that despite all of the evidence, we have covered so far to show that deeds are not in any way related to marriages, people will still want to hold on to this one argument with these three in particular claiming that there is no good reason, no other reason, possible reason for teenage girls to have deeds just like was discussed here.

[46:11] RFM: So let me ask the obvious question. Why is Joseph Smith giving property to a 16 year old?

[46:17] Bill Reel: Yeah. Why good. There’s the pause. None of us have a good answer for that. And by the way, when

[46:24] Michelle: you OK, so you can see that seems to be the problem, right? Why is Joseph Smith giving property to, to these teenagers. Right. Keep in mind again, not giving property. There are purchase price lists listed that we can look at. But let’s get in and try to answer that question. I think the best way to really drive home. The point is to show that just like deeds to women were not uncommon. Deeds to girls were not uncommon either, not just deeds to Children. Those deeds to women were extremely common. Deeds to Children to groups of Children are not uncommon. And the next biggest group is deeds, two girls. So let’s show a few examples. Here is a deed from George and Bets Betsy grant to the daughters of William Smith. Again, the daughters of William Smith was added in by Susan Easton Black and her team. That’s not originally on the deed, but you can see right here a deed for Mary Jane Smith and Caroline Louisa Smith purchased this in 1841 I would assume by William Smith for his daughters. The de the girls were seven and four. At the time I already showed you the deed to John Taylor’s Children that he bought for all of his Children. But he also bought separate deeds just for his daughters. So this top deed is to Leonora Taylor for $50 made in May of 1843. And the bottom one is another one to Leonora Tay Taylor in 1845 for $840 right Isn’t that interesting? And let’s see, I think Lenora was. I have it written down. She was three at the time of the first deed and five at the time of the second deed here is a deed for Mary Ann, the, her sister for $100 in 1845 and she was nine at the time. So let me show just a couple. Oh, and, and I’ll point out John Taylor bought the de the deed for all of his Children and then he bought these deeds for his daughters. He didn’t buy similar deeds for his sons. That’s important to note. And then um let’s see what other examples do I have. This is ok. So this is a deed from Maxwell Sharp for Eliza Golden Merriweather his daughter. I I started searching the term daughter just to see what would be included because um, Susan Easton Black included the relationship on some of them. Most of them won’t say daughter. So I again, feel quite confident that if anyone wants to serve through the deeds, you could find many more deeds for young girls and teenage girls. This last one I’ll include is Jacob Scott to his daughter in 1844. And so there are not equivalent deeds for sons that I was able to find. There were deeds to groups of Children and then deeds to daughters. I don’t want to say there aren’t any deeds to sons anywhere because I’m not making that claim again, I haven’t gone through them all. Just from what I have seen, I have seen a lot of deeds to groups of Children and I have seen enough deeds to daughters to strongly make the case and I haven’t seen deeds two sons. So it looks to me like it was not uncommon for parents to buy land, to buy lots of land specifically for their daughters, for their, all of their Children. But then in particular for their daughters. And so the assumption that land to girls is so rare, it must be something nefarious. It must mean that Joseph was. Well, people would say a pedophile, right? Or that he was interested in marrying them or had married them. It’s just born out of ignorance because there are other perfectly reasonable explanations that we need to come up with because this is happening on a somewhat common basis. This is not unique. This is, and it’s definitely not confined to o to only Joseph Smith. So I will offer the best explanation that I have come up with that. I thought of that I think has quite a bit of merit. I’m of course open to hearing other ideas, but I wanted to um propose my best idea because it’s the one that seems the most logical to me of why parents would buy land for daughters. This was a time when dowries were still very much um in the culture, both in America, but especially in England. Right. And so in the 18 hundreds, it was very well understood that girls were expected to bring a property to their marriages, particularly in England. Think of all of the Jane Austen novels. Right. I just, this is what they’re all about is about these poor girls that don’t have dowries. So can’t make a good match. Like I’m thinking of, um, sense and sensibility and Mary Anne loses Willoughby because he instead goes and marries the other girl who has 50,000 pounds, right? And Mary Anne doesn’t have a sizable dowry dry, had a long history in Europe. And so it also had a long history in America where it was brought from Europe, right? And um the tradition was still going strong at the time of Joseph Smith in America, but especially somewhere like NAVOO, which had such a huge influx from England, for example, John Taylor, who I just showed you his lot the deed he bought for his Children and then his special ones for his daughter. He was an immigrant from, from England. So I could see it becoming even more prevalent in NAVOO than it would have been in the rest of America. Dowries have continued on with um Hope Chest or cedar chests, right? I my growing up the girl that lived next door had a cedar chest. That’s where I heard of it. I’d never heard of one where she would a Hope Chest, you know, gather all of her things for when she got married. And I, and from some of the things I read that grew into showers, wedding showers, grew out of that tradition of dowries that like there was an expectation that your daughters, if they had a dowry, they could make a better match. That would make perfect sense of why parents would buy property for either their teenage girls or their younger girls. And I will say, well, let me read a couple of quotes and then I’ll come back to it. So, from some of the research over, um these are some quotes from some of the different articles. And um you know, in different sources, overall, dowries were a significant consideration for the marriage opportunities of a daughter and for the marriage choices of a young gentleman that was the culture that they were in. They continued, as I said, well into the 19 hundreds with those things. But the thing I wanted to say is that, oh, the the opposite did not exist. America has a long tradition of dowry. There is not an ex um a tradition of dower or bride price, which would be where the groom is expected to give property to either the bride or to the bride’s family, right? Where the groom has to have this attached to him. That would be, well, I mean, of course, you know, Jane Austen, the rich men were the most eligible bachelors, right? But there’s not an equivalent where you would have to have this property specifically purchased for a young boy to bring or for a man to bring to his wedding. There would not be a tradition where it would be expected for Joseph Smith to give land to his wives or to bring to buy them with, with land, whatever it might be. So I guess what I’m proposing is that understanding these deeds to teenage girls in the context of dowry makes complete sense and allows us to look at the full body of evidence and accept all of it where we don’t have to ignore who the deeds were from. If they were from Joseph or Emma, we don’t have to ignore all of these other deeds that were bought and sold. Not that had nothing to do with Emma. We don’t have to ignore the price that was written on them, right? And claim, oh, we should just ignore those, the price on those certain deeds, Joseph. Well, I mean, that’s not good historical work to just throw out whatever evidence we don’t like and say we should just ignore it, right. We also don’t have to ignore the cultural practices at the time. There was not a tradition of giving land to your wife. When you, when you married her, there was a tradition of girls, of property being brought, bought for girls to make them more desirable as spouses to help them make better matches. And I think that’s what’s going on here. I’ll read a quote from Elder Holland just because it relates to Dowries, which is what we’re talking about and he relates Dowries to endowment. An endowment is a gift, it contains the same root word as dowry, which is a special gift to start a new couple on their married life. Thus, an endowment in the temple is a gift to be received. When looking at dowries in the light of a special gift, it gives the concept a different meaning. Instead of being a monetary means of attracting a mate, it can be considered not only necessary for progress but sacred and an honor to receive such a gift. So even though he’s acknowledging that that’s what dowries were for. They were property that women or girls held to help them attract a mate. So I think that’s useful to consider, right? And again, if anybody is concerned about deeds to teenagers or to girls, let’s talk about it. But please take all of this information into context and come up with a better theory and show some reason that the things I’m showing don’t apply or the or a reason that these deeds should still be claimed to be evidence uh that Joseph was married to them. So the last thing we need to look at, I know we’ve been going for quite a while, but there’s a lot to cover and I’m even leaving a ton of it out, but we have to talk about Bill’s discovery of two new wives, right? Based on his theory, Bill is excited to have found evidence to claim two new wives for Joseph Smith. J go. I think that was his first big discovery. And now he’s added Mary Anne Bosley again. I’ll let Bill explain.

[56:02] Bill Reel: Here’s what else we find. We also find two deeds and I don’t count these if you want to throw these out, polygamy deniers, if you want to throw these two out, you’re welcome to the math. Doesn’t get that much better for you. It’s still an absurd probability. There are two deeds, one to Mary Anne Bosley and one to a Jane gully. And in this instance, John C Bennett, uh in his uh book History of the Saints, he names a group of Joseph Smith, plural plural wives. This is back in 1842 or 1843. He named some of Joseph Smith’s plural wives and the historians have deciphered all of them minus two. And the two that they have not been able to come up with was uh the last two there, which was uh A Mrs G and a Miss B and because of the land deeds I’m proposing that we actually now know who these two are and it’s gully, by the way, the number of A,

[57:09] Michelle: ok. So you’ll, you can see the, um, the, now claim that Bill has and I know it is exciting to find a new wife of Joseph Smith. It’s kind of the treasure hunt. And so I’m just going to have to show the reasons that I don’t agree with this new discovery. Why I think it’s not, um, accurate. Well, of course, I don’t think we can find a new wife for Joseph Smith because I believe Joseph Smith had one wife. And I think the evidence strongly shows that as I’m trying to lay out in this episode, just addressing one piece of the evidence, the landed, right? But so he goes on to admit that the Mrs G which would be Jane go, he has the wrong number of asterisks. But he says, um that Bennett may have thought goalie was spelled with an E instead of with just a Yglley, which is very plausible. Spellings were not um formalized back then as they are. Now, things were spelled in many different ways. So I’m not going to get on him for making that assumption. I think I, I am going to get on everybody for continuing to think that um John C Bennett should be considered a valid source for this information, right? Where I mean, he has been exposed to have made so many just extreme claims, just ludicrous claims. He is a known liar, even those who really, um even people who absolutely believe that Joseph was a polygamous and want to use John Bennett’s claims. Even they have to acknowledge that it’s, it’s really tricky to know where to draw the line of what they want to believe and what they don’t believe because he made so many false claims. So I think that it’s problematic to give, to give John Bennett this much credit, especially with these super cryptic claims where he’s just putting Mrs G Miss, you know, like, like like come on, you know, and I will say I know that these things seem to be validated later on, but I will show going forward that we know that Brigham Young and the historical team in the early church were using John Bennett’s sources to compile their history. The happiness letter is just one evidence of that. The only source for that is from John Bennett and yet it was included in the church’s history. So we know that they were using these sources. So it’s not that surprising that some of them would match up, right? So let’s go ahead and talk about these deeds um as with so many others, but maybe even more particularly with these, it is important to pay attention to the dates. So here is John C Bennett’s book. So you’ll recall John C. Bennett was chased out of NAU or left Nauvoo in disgrace. I believe it was in May of 1842. He went on to write his articles in July of the same year. They started to be published in the um Sammo journal and the Warsaw Signal starting in July of 1842. And then he expanded them into his book, The History Of The Saints, which he managed to manage to publish that same year in 1842. So both Mrs G and Miss B, along with all of those others would have had to have been married to Joseph Smith by 1842 or I would say early 1842 at the very latest. And we know that like even for people who want to claim that John C Bennett was being allowed into Joseph’s secrets earlier than that, we know that Joseph started investigating him and started reporting on him and started exposing him well, before he was kicked out of NAVOO, right? They gave him second chances. So to believe that he was still in the know about any of these supposed marriages is hard to claim. So I would say like early 1842 would be the very latest date, they could possibly have been married. So the first thing I’ll show you is that both of these deeds to the Mrs Mrs G and Miss B were both in 1844. So a full two years plus possibly after not only these marriages would have had to have taken place, but also after John Bennett was chased out of NAVOO, so he couldn’t have had any information about it, right? So that’s the first problem with this claim, but it gets a lot better from there. So let me introduce you a little bit to Jane Gulley. Jane and her husband Samuel were married in 1833. So I know that people think that, um, because of polyandry, it doesn’t matter if a woman already had a husband, but it’s gonna be really fun to get into the polyandry episode. I would just say it should matter. No woman ever claimed to be polyandrous married those, the polyandrous marriage marriages come about only because historians later on went back and did the dates based on these claims and put together and said she couldn’t have been married to Joseph. She was already married to someone else. Oh, the solution must be that Joseph was marrying other men’s wives. That’s how, that’s how it comes about, I guess. Well, anyway, we’ll talk about it more as we go forward. But Jane Gully was married and had been married for 10 years before she and her husband came to NAVOO, which most likely did not happen until 1843. And I will show you why. So their Children at that time were 86 and three. So this family of five moved into NAVOO in 1843. So I’ll show you the very first record of them that we of them being in NAVOO is this journal entry on July 7th, 1843 that talks about Samuel Goy helping copy affidavits in the office that evening, right? And then interestingly, four days earlier, this is what Joseph or Joseph Smith’s journal, you know what that all you all know what that means, right? What the journal says four days earlier, it claims that um by recommendation of Joseph a special conference and selected elders to go into the different countries and preach the gospel and disabuse the public mind with regard to the rest the arrest of or capture. Right? So Joseph is sending a special delegation to go forward. The interesting thing is so look at this closely, right? There’s no mention of any elders including Samuel Goley. But when we get the draft version, which you all know what that means, right? The draft version that was created in the fifties in Utah. All of a sudden it adds elder’s name. So you can see this is the draft that they did before they did the finalized history. And there in that highlighted portion, you can see the elders listed, which includes Samuel Gully. So that would be the earliest date would be, what was it July 4th? Is that the date of the journal July 3rd? But it wasn’t added until Utah, right? Until his name was added and it was included in the finalized draft history. But I I want to show you why this is problematic and I have to tell you, I am extremely proud of this source because it took me days and days and days to find. But here we have the license, the licenses that were issued to the elders, right. This is the elders book of licenses that were issued. Samuel Goley received an elder’s license. October 24th, 1843 and elders license would have been required to go on this mission that Joseph Smith was having people go on. They had to have an elder’s license issued first. At least that’s my understanding of what I always. So again, I’m always open to be being corrected if someone has better information. But I will say the first official records we have of Samuel go being in Nauvoo. Is this entry in the, in the um July 1843 journal? Then I think he was backdated into this July 3rd mission, which I think there’s evidence to say he didn’t go on. Not that it is a make or break. It just is always interesting to see how, how history was done and how it doesn’t always stand up. The, the changes that were made to the history in Utah don’t always stand up to the other records that we have because he most likely could not have gone on that mission without an elder’s license. And so um let me go on to show another record we have of Samuel that was, was in, this was in August. So you can see the records of him being in NAVOO start in July 1843 and come pretty consistently. So in August of 18 43 we have the first record of him paying tithing, which I think is also a strong evidence that he wasn’t there before this time because this is the first time he paid tithing. And we also have just one record of Jane Gully in navoo. It was her um donation to the temple lot which hundreds of hun and hundreds of relief society sisters donated to the temple. And she was her, her 50 cent that she made on April 14th, 1845 was recorded in the book of the Law of the Lord. So those are some pretty consistent records not starting until July 1843 of Samuel and Jane Goley being in Nauvoo again in case it’s not obvious the reason this is so important. Let me back up here. A couple of slides is that John Bennett’s book was written in 1842. So if Jane Goley is the infamous Mrs G, that means that John Bennett predicted her being married to Joseph Smith a full year before she had even arrived in Nauvoo, which I think is pretty astounding like like maybe John Bennett was the actual prophet here. So anyway, I hope that that is enough to show that. Um I just think like this is the stuff that I think should be done when we’re trying to make a claim we should look in. If we’re claiming a new wife, let’s at least do the research to find out anything we can about her, but it gets better. So here is I’m going back through all of these records. Here is the um original recorded deed. It’s not the original deed. It’s the deed recorded, I believe in the car that in the book in Carthage, the Hancock County Book of Deeds. And this deed is between Joseph Smith as sole trustee and trust for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and Jane Gully. And it’s for $1000. Again, that’s interesting, $1000 right? This is another case that I think it might be a stand in for something and you can see that it’s lot number two in block number 141 right? So this is, this is, these are pretty important details. The 20th of May 1844 $1000 for block number two and lot number 141. The reason this is so important is because it helps us these details how with a source that I think very clearly explains this deed. So here we have a letter from Lyman White to Joseph Smith and you can see it was written eight the 18th of May 1844. So again, just two days before this deed was written, we have this letter and um, yeah, I I mean, I am proud of myself for finding all of these things, but I think that if you’re the one claiming that this is Joseph Smith’s wife and you should have done the work to find these things. So this is two days before Lyman Bright White writes to Joseph Smith and says, brother Joseph Smith, you will please to give Samuel Gully a deed of lot, which is credited to me on your book. So here we have this letter with Lyman asking Joseph to give his lot to Samuel Goley. And the next and then two days later, we have this deed. Ok. Are you catching on? So in case anyone wants to claim that this is coincidence or that it’s not the same deed? Let me go ahead and show you William Clayton’s trustees book of Land Deeds, right? And you can see right here on um, it’s the exact details you can see May 20th 1844 for a dollars, the exact details on the deed. And we have this lot lot number two in um block number, 100 41 crossed out from where it said George Miller and Lyman White and instead written in to Jane Gully. So I think we have a perfect explanation of this deed to Jane Gully and why it was written. And so yet there it is, there are the details of it again and it has absolutely nothing to do with polygamy. It was written way too late. There’s no evidence anywhere that Joseph Smith had and that, that Jane Go had ever even met Joseph Smith. Nava was big by the time they got there, right? And so, um, So anyway, I think that that should hopefully lay to rest. Not only the claim that this deed that again, that the deeds have anything to do with marriage, but any claim that the, that the Mrs G would be Jane Gulley based on this deed. I think that we have adequately explained this deed. So now we’ll go ahead and look at the case for Marianne Bosley and I think you will see that it’s not much better. So let’s go ahead and look at the deed to her again. It was, it was two years too late, right? To apply to John Bennett’s initial cryptic initials when he novo in disgrace. But here is the deed and you can see it’s from Joseph and Emma, which is interesting, right? This isn’t even from Joseph as the trustee in trust for $500 for the north half of the lot, number of lot number two and block number 101. I know it says the north half of the north half. But according will show it’s just the north half of that lot. So this is for half of the lot. Interestingly on the same day, there is another deed to Marianne and her brother George C Bosley. Now um in, in Susan Easton Black’s compilation, she lists husband, but we’ll show here that that’s an error. She adds those in and this one was just mistaken. So this is the same day on January 26th, 1844. And again, this is for lot number three and block number 101. So the same block, but it’s for a full um lot for the both of them together. And I’ll go ahead and show you just to avoid the mistake or any confusion. This is Edward Bosley’s family search page. There’s Edward and his wife Anne Kelly and you will see down here as we scroll down, Mary Anne Bosley right there. And George Bosley are um Kelly and Edmund Bosley’s only unmarried Children. So William, the one that’s right in between them had passed away in 1842. This deed is in 1844 Marianne is not yet married and George is not yet married and the rest of their Children are. So I think that makes sense why there is a deed to these two Children from their parents again, as we have already showed that this is a tradition. So again, that should be taken into consideration if we want to look at the deed to Marianne Bosley, that happens to be from Joseph and Emma Smith two years too late for her to be Miss B. We should also look at the deed to her and her brother on the same day, also from Joseph and Emma Smith. And interestingly on the same day, there is a third deed that is to George W Bosley, which is different than George C Bosley on the previous one George W Bosley and Almira Bosley. And it was the same day and this is for the other half of the lot that was deeded to Mary Anne Bosley. And I, I was not a, I tried really hard, maybe I missed something but I was not able to find anywhere who George W Bosley and Amira Bosley. A Myra Bosley are who they belong to the um deed itself makes it very clear that they are Children. If you look on the next part, it says it is, it is here. I expressly understood that Solomon K Lawrence of the city of Quincy and County of Adams in the state aforesaid to have the use of the aforesaid lot until the said George W and Myra Bosley become of full age. So they were obviously Children, but um I don’t know whose Children they were, but it seems obvious that they were related the same name, the other half of the deed adjacent to the other deed that’s bought the same day for George and, and Georgia and Almira. And then Almira. And interestingly, this is another case, right, of um of parents buying a deed for all of their Children or at least all of their unmarried Children and then a separate additional deed for their daughter as we have already talked about, which I think has most likely to do with dowry. And um Mary Anne was not necessarily young at this point. So maybe they were trying to give her an upper hand to find a spouse. But so this is what I think is interesting. So, oh, here are the deeds. Um, so you can see the one to Mary Anne is for $500. The one to George and Marianne is $2000 and then here is the 1 to um, 0, here’s another deed to I I, this is what I threw in for good measure. This is from Luia Scoville and Samuel Rolf to Marianne Bosley. So that’s interesting as well, right? Another deed to this woman with no husband on her deed. And so I think that when we look at these deeds in um in in William Clayton’s Trustees Book of Land Deeds, it gives us some useful insights into deeds purchased for Children by their parents, right? Because you can see here is the lot block. I mean, here’s block 101 that it says that that, that it was included on the deed. But you can see it’s just Ed Bosley listed on the lot that should be for Mary Anne and for the other Children. And then it just says Bosley on the other lot. I think that that tells us something about who was most likely purchasing these lots for their Children, right? As we see with these other lots to Children or two girls specifically, just as we see in just as is the case with Marianne Bosley and her father, Edmund Bosley, right. He um um William Clayton corrected his error where he recorded it elsewhere. And you can see that here in um this other listing that he has. Marianne Bosley is listed for half the, the north half of the lot and George and O Myra on the south half of the lot just as we see in the deeds. And then, and um Edmund Bosley is crossed out and instead, it’s listed as Mary Anne Bosley, George and Almira Bosley and then Mary Anne and George C Bosley. So you can see clearly again what’s happening with those lots. They were purchased by their father for these Children. So I think it’s a pretty clear case to show that these lot purchases, these deeds have absolutely nothing to do with Joseph Smith’s polygamy. I, I think we have made the case abundantly clear. I of course, as always welcome comments, responses. Um I’ll, I’ll talk to anyone about this. I welcome anyone to come and talk to me about this bill. I really hope that you will engage on this either. You’re welcome to come on my podcast. I really hope that you will because I would love to talk about this and just see what you think about it and, and where we could go from here because I think that our engagement together has helped move the knowledge base forward. I really am glad that you made these claims even though I don’t agree with them. And, and I didn’t think they had much merit. They made me do a lot of work and a lot has, has come up from that I’ve been able to bring forward a lot of things that I wouldn’t have otherwise done and I have to give you credit for that. Thank you. I hope that we can continue this engagement because if you are like me, the goal is to find truth, right, to discover truth. And that’s, that’s the value in engaging together. So I hope that you will come on, I’m not going to spend time. Bill does go on at the end. As I said, to make all of these um try to make all of these connections to polygamy. I, I think we have done a perfectly adequate job of hopefully showing why I don’t think this is a valid hypothesis and the rest of the claims just aren’t, aren’t valid enough to respond to. I don’t think, I think that Bill would probably agree with that at this point. So anyway, thank you for joining us. I really do hope that Bill’s listeners have engaged with this with um all of this information and let’s continue to have these conversations because I think they are extremely valuable. So, thank you so much and I will see you next time.