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Whitney Documents Episodes: (Links to all documents in episode descriptions)
Part 3 – The Blessing
Part 2 – The Letter
Part 1 – The Revelation
Journal of Mormon Polygamy Announcement
Transcript
[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I hope that everybody has already seen the announcement that I released on Friday morning. Cheryl Bruno and I are both so excited about this new adventure, the Academic Journal of Mormon Polygamy, which we are both working like crazy to launch, and which is going to be an incredible tool and vehicle to elevate. These conversations and keep this topic going and bring more and more attention to it. I, I hope that you are all anticipating that and as excited about it as we are. And in keeping with that, Cheryl and I, since we just spent the weekend together, um, at JWHA discussing the Whitney documents, the episodes that I have recently done. Episode, um, part one, I think, is episode 129. And then the last two weeks were parts 2 and part 3, and we had a lot of conversations, um, at JWHA with several other historians discussing the Whitney documents. So Cheryl agreed to come on and just kind of bat these ideas back and forth and share some preliminary ideas about them. Please don’t look at this in any way as a debate or as trying to best one another. In fact, I really appreciate how. Support of Cheryl has been when she thinks I’m making good arguments. She also for sure lets me know when she thinks I’m not making good arguments, and I appreciate it so much. It’s, it’s sometimes tough, but this is exactly what we need to for all of us to get sharpened and to be able to do better and better as we, um, engage in the discourse on these topics. So a huge thank you to Cheryl for coming on and discussing the Whitney documents. Cheryl and I just barely recorded our announcement about the Journal of Mormon Polygamy. So please look for that announcement because we are terribly excited about it. And it’s really going to be the cutting edge, the receptacle of the best, um, research and scholarship that is being done on polygamy at this time. So, so look out for that. But also, Cheryl and I have been having So many conversations. We’re on the phone quite a bit. Um, sometimes intense conversations. I know that both of us can get triggered by, uh, things that the other one has said. But what I think is so valuable is that both Cheryl and I have stuck with it. We’ve stuck in there through the difficult conversations, through the difficult misunderstandings or differences in perspective. And as a result, we’ve really gained tremendous respect for one another. And I would say we’ve become really, really good friends. I, I genuinely love Cheryl. And so as I was doing, oh, thank you. As I was doing, I, but genuinely, she is, I just, I just adore Cheryl. I’m so glad that she is willing to engage in this way and that she’s in my life. It’s wonderful. And, um, as we have been doing this work, we thought it would be useful to kind of let you see some of our engagement. And so since I have recently done this work on the Whitney documents, Cheryl has been willing to engage with them, and she said, let’s just come and talk about them. So did I introduce that all right,
[03:17] Cheryl Bruno: Cheryl? Yes, absolutely. I am so excited about Michelle’s last 3, Podcast where she has talked about or um given 12 and 3 of the Whitney, Whitney documents and I kinda wanna come on here and uh push back maybe a little bit and just um tell why I think this is such an important work. Um, I have said many times that as a historian it’s hard for me to come on a podcast and just um Talk about a document without researching it for many, many weeks and making sure I know exactly what, you know, and I’ve done all my background research and I really admire Michelle for making us part of her investigations. She’s willing to um put up her thoughts about each document, each thing as, as they come to her and let us kind of see the process which is really valuable. And so with the Whit Whitney documents I I think she’s still kind of in the middle of her investigation, but still letting us be a part of how that is going and I love that it’s been so much fun. It’s very um difficult for me, but I’m, I’m enjoying our conversation, so hopefully we can uh provide you a little peek behind the scenes of the kinds of things that we do when we talk together on the phone. And I wanted to, OK,
[04:40] Michelle: I was saying that Cheryl saying in part. Is that she’s really putting herself on the line right now in a way that is not as comfortable for her, because historians generally do all their research, write up a paper, have plenty of time to think about it, nail it down, and to kind of join in the ongoing conversation. Like I always say, Tell me if I’m missing something. Tell me if I’m wrong, right? So, so I really appreciate Cheryl’s willingness to step into this other space of discussing things that we are currently exploring and investigating.
[05:12] Cheryl Bruno: Right. And what, right now, I’ll have to tell you, I don’t know what to think about the Whitney documents. Um, because Michelle has brought up many things that we have not discussed as historians, uh, we tend to think the Whitney documents are a very solid case for Joseph Smith’s polygamy, and we don’t realize that some of the, um, some of the documents are, um, haven’t been investigated very, very closely. And that is what Michelle has done in her past 3 episodes. So I would hope that some of the historians would go on and if they, everybody, everybody who hasn’t seen them, why don’t you, if, if this uh podcast interests you, um, go on those previous 3 and she’ll delve deeper into the documents, but this one is just gonna go over the 3 main documents and then maybe just a A little bit more information that wasn’t brought out in the 1st 3. So
[06:07] Michelle: this is generally an overview of the 3 main Whitney documents that I covered the revelation, the, um, the letter and the blessing. That’s parts 12, and 3 of the Whitney documents. I’ll link them in the description below. So go ahead and start with this one. And if you’re interested in the Whitney documents, dive in a little more and let’s have this. This is exactly the conversations that we’re wanting to start because I I’m not claiming to have all truth, but I’m thrilled that people can recognize there are questions we haven’t answered.
[06:35] Cheryl Bruno: So thank you again Michelle and I have this conversational style where we just interrupt each other all the time. So you might have to get used to that or we, you know, we kind of, uh, jump in whenever we want. But, um, one of the things that I have to give a little caveat, um, before you listen to num I do the call volume. Volumes 1 and
[06:54] Michelle: 2 I just say part one, part two, part
[06:56] Cheryl Bruno: one and part two, because Michelle started out part one and part two by presenting the two different um narratives, um, and I was very triggered by that because I didn’t feel that she had represented my narrative very well. But the interesting thing I found from that was that um Really more the Mormon historians and church writers and um who else um
[07:29] Michelle: peoples, ex-Mormons and
[07:30] Cheryl Bruno: anti-Mormons we all have sort of a different narrative. We don’t, none of us have the same narrative as I pushed on some people. I asked them, well, what was, what if you could talk about Joseph Smith’s polygamy in just like a paragraph, what would you say? And some of them would say. Said, well, we feel that it was something that God commanded him to live, but that he did it sort of poorly and others said other things and I believe myself that Joseph Smith um was commanded by God, but he felt very strongly that he was commanded by God, but also wanted to knock down social conventions, which was happening in the time and so I have sort of a little bit different narrative and so I don’t I think you can, you’ll notice in her third she didn’t, she didn’t try to focus on our narrative because we all have a different way of looking at Joseph Smith’s polygamy, which is fascinating. But so I think that narrowing down on what a document looks like and what it tells us might be a little bit more productive than to try to fit these things into a narrative. Many times they don’t fit into any specific polygamy. Narrative.
[08:42] Michelle: That was actually also a valuable, um, um, experience for me, although very painful because in these episodes, I did try, like I was thinking, OK, I want to make these so historians can engage with them without, um, having, you know, massive problems. And right from the beginning of both of them, I totally stepped in it unintentionally. So it was good to recognize, like, like Cheryl was actually quite upset with both of them. And it was good for me. Both of us, I think it helped us both recognize, oh, these can’t be quantified into two sides. There are, there are, like you were saying, there are so many different narratives. So that’s a valuable thing right there to understand. There aren’t two sides that we are arguing, and I hadn’t fully recognized that, right? And then so I think a lot of us, anyway, that’s why this engagement is so necessary because we keep opening up greater understanding for both of us on both sides.
[09:36] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, cause I hadn’t realized it either. I thought like everybody on my side thinks exactly the way I do come to find out, no, they really don’t. So, but let’s look at the first document which you covered, and that was a Whitney revelation, a revelation given to Noel K. Whitney, giving him the wording to perform the marriage ceremony between his daughter and Joseph Smith. So, This is the document that we have and um this was the date on this is 27th of July 1842. And what I didn’t realize about this one that Michelle brought out was that we do not have a um a contemporary copy of this revelation. As you notice right here, it’s a type script and this type script was given to Joseph F. Smith in 2012. By um a descendant. And so Orson Whitney um gave this to Joseph F. Smith in 2012, and we do have two handwritten copies of this revelation. And these copies are 19th century documents, but we’re not sure who wrote them and we’re not sure what the dating is on these. And they are unidentified, so we don’t know what the provenance of these documents are either is either. So, um, these, Michelle brought out that this is an important, um, this is an important thing to know when you are relying on this for your um For your argument that uh Joseph Smith gave the wording of the revelation to Noel because um it’s, the document just isn’t real, real solid. So, I don’t, um, I don’t question the document very much though. I, I feel that it was something that Joseph Smith gave to Noel K. Whitney, and I’m gonna let Michelle talk a little bit about just real quickly why she doesn’t feel the revelation is um Um,
[11:43] Michelle: Is necessarily a a valid revelation. It has a different explanation. So yeah, so it’s been interesting going back and forth on this. And again, I would recommend watching the episode because they go into it more fully. But, um, it was a, it was a fun investigation to see the, um, what, uh, I guess, I guess the main thing that I was trying to bring out that I appreciate Cheryl for picking up on and and recognizing is that this is not. Solid enough to be relied on as it is, as a search and document. There are questions about it. Some of the, some of the things that I saw as questionable in addition to the provenance, are some of the wordings. I’m trying to go off the top of my head of what I talked about, but it’s very interesting that it says S A Whitney and some key points every time it doesn’t talk about Sarah or Sarah Anne, it has Newell pronounce on his daughter to it has Who will call his daughter SA Whitney, which is very strange. Also, the, um, the timing of it is really difficult, especially in comparison to Elizabeth Ann Whitney’s autobiography, where she tells us the sequence of events, and this just doesn’t fit in. It takes Orson Whitney, decades later, changing his grandmother’s autobiography and sort of reforming it without, you know, he wasn’t born. And I think he was born in 1855, if I recall. So he’s trying to make it make sense in light of this later document that he seems to have found the handwritten copies of. So there are many jump in right here, um, because I,
[13:13] Cheryl Bruno: I feel with my conversations with John Bradley on many subjects, he always tries to nail down the timeline of things and I think this is really valuable. And Michelle. Has brought up many um instances where the timeline is not working out with these Whitney documents and again if you go back to her um her podcast, you’ll see some of these things that she’s brought up, but I also went ahead and did my own timeline of each document, put them in time, and I didn’t put in like this one, tell me the date, date again of this one,
[13:47] Michelle: um, let’s see, it’s right there. July 27th, 1842, which is the date ascribed to the wedding as well. So
[13:55] Cheryl Bruno: quite early, but I couldn’t put it in my timeline in 1842. I had to put it much later. I could have put it probably somewhere in the 19th century because of those two handwritten documents, since they aren’t dated, I had to actually put this revelation in 1912, if I’m going to be honest about it. So I had to put that revelation all the way down. 1912 because that’s the earliest that we know um it came to pass. So um some of these and also some of the internal datings of these um revelations do not fit with um other affidavits and other um stories that were told um about the Sarah Anne Whitney marriage. So these, this is very important, this, this timing and you’ll see this as we go on. Um, right. Also, Michelle just made a great point also that um Sarah Anne was not referred to, well, people weren’t Joseph Smith did not refer to people by their initials generally he would call them, you know, my right, my daughter Emma or my, my servant Newe or something like that. And um so for him to use SA Whitney, um. NK NK Whitney, that kind of thing just um is a bit different than what we’re used to seeing in the other documents.
[15:14] Michelle: There are also some um idiosyncratic spellings that show up in other people’s work more than in Joseph Smith. For example, priesthood in this is spelled capital P R E A S T space H 00 D, so priesthood with priest with spelling. And that shows
[15:31] Cheryl Bruno: that one of the 19th century documents has that um spelling.
[15:36] Michelle: And that shows up from, um, Hebrewy Kimball, who interestingly became Sarah Anne Whitney’s husband, right? And so, so we have a lot of questions about this that give us some pause, as well as, I think, um, show, we were, we’ve also discussed quite a bit the affidavits, the 1869 affidavits, because that’s, that’s what backs up this document. But again, there are really, those are also really problematic. So it’s kind of the circular, you rely on one to validate the other, but neither of them is anchored in a way that that that makes them solid enough to support the narrative, in my opinion. We have more questions to ask.
[16:17] Cheryl Bruno: So let’s just jump real quick because we don’t want this to be like a 3 hour podcast, but
[16:22] Michelle: I, I did want to mention one other thing that we’ve been talking about because we also have looked at how other scholars have talked about this. For example, how Todd Compton presents it, how Brian Hailes presents it, how others, and, and they really do just kind of ignore these problems. Kind of, um, use ellipses or fudge them out. And we, we spoke about how they have worked to create a seamless narrative based on the documents, but the problem is you can’t do that. You can’t create a seamless narrative with these documents because they don’t support a seamless narrative. So things have been presented in a way that that really minimizes and hides the problems.
[17:01] Cheryl Bruno: And this isn’t probably as disturbing to me as it is to Michelle because as historians, we see this all the time in our documents we see many different, um, you know, somebody gets a date wrong or you know something doesn’t line up quite right and usually it’s more suspicious if every. Thing is just perfect, you know, that’s, that’s a little bit more suspicious, but when we have documents coming later, especially later in time, and they’re not, even when they are contemporary, we often see this, um, problems, um, and differences, so that doesn’t.
[17:38] Michelle: I pushed back on that a little bit in this case because, as I said to Cheryl before, we can see the sausage being made. We can see what document they’re relying on to create a new narrative and how it’s being like how Orson F. Whitney is trying to make these all work in, and which is why I argue, and I think Cheryl agrees that we should prioritize the contemporary sources, which in this case, interestingly enough, would be the 1842 affida. where in the times and seasons they reprinted the statement on marriage and both Newell and Elizabeth Whitney signed affidavits saying that was the only law of marriage that they knew of at all in the church. That would have happened just a few months after Sarah Ann’s supposed marriage and before 132 was was transcribed, was written down by William Clayton. So, so it really is endlessly fascinating. There’s a lot to discuss.
[18:30] Cheryl Bruno: I must say it it takes me back a little bit because I am counting on this document this uh as being a contemporary document and then to come to find out it really we don’t have the contemporary document for this. We do not. We have these two other copies that have been written later and so as much as we say this is an 1842, we cannot date this to 1842.
[18:57] Michelle: Thank you. And just really quickly, I know we’re moving on, but also that last paragraph that’s added on seamlessly, Orson F Whitney just stops the revelation for his typescript, but there’s in that last paragraph that seems to be a journal entry, so it’s very clearly been cobbled somehow been but you know, this isn’t an original revelation. Written. So anyway, so there are lots of
[19:19] Cheryl Bruno: stopping yourself and not saying fudged. I told Michelle she can’t use the word lie or fudge.
[19:28] Michelle: There seem to be some um irregularities with how this was transcribed by whoever didn’t. She’s training me. I’m, I’m learning. I’m very willing to learn. OK,
[19:39] Cheryl Bruno: yes, because we really don’t know, we don’t know that someone’s lying or we don’t know that someone’s fudging, but we, we do know that there’s some irregularities.
[19:47] Michelle: Excellent. OK, they could have been created in a different way than being fudged. OK, do you want to go on to the next,
[19:54] Cheryl Bruno: let’s go on to the second document, and this is a letter written by Joseph Smith, and this one, everyone loves this one because it’s one of the few documents that is written in Joseph Smith’s handwriting and it’s so lovely to see his actual words, um, written. In this document, and I think the handwriting has been um verified in this. And so I don’t think that anyone disagrees that this is Joseph Smith’s letter to um Noke Whitney and his wife Elizabeth. The problem comes in, it says to, um,
[20:31] Michelle: I’ll put this up instead and see if that makes a little. Little bit easier dear and beloved brother and sister Whitney and so and so and etc.
[20:39] Cheryl Bruno: etc. right. So, um, now, um this is written also in August of 1842, but it wasn’t until the affidavits, the polygamy affidavits were written in 1869 that we find out that the etc. I, um, their daughter, Sarah Anne, um, many people have just, um, assumed that this is Sarah Anne, the c is Sarah Anne, but we’re, um, we find out in 1969 when uh Sister Whitney and her daughter go to Joseph F. Smith and, and swear out an affidavit that this letter is the, um, their daughter. Um, right, to their daughter. So there are some possibilities that this can I,
[21:28] Michelle: can I very quickly share this because this, I, I point out in that affidavit, Sarah Anne and Elizabeth supposedly swear out an affidavit that this that be a third party with Sarah. But again, the problem with that affidavit is, you know, brings up some questions. I know Cheryl and I see this differently. I just wanted to point that out.
[21:46] Cheryl Bruno: OK, so this, to keep this up for just a second because we have gone back and forth on the affidavits and we would like to learn a little bit more about the affidavits. I feel that it’s, that’s pretty obvious to me, um, but not to Michelle, that this is a copy of documents because. It is written in Joseph F. Smith’s handwriting, and the signatures are done by Joseph F. Smith. He doesn’t, in most cases, he doesn’t even try to disguise, you know, the signature that he is just copying it. Also, the
[22:17] Michelle: cases,
[22:19] Cheryl Bruno: the notary is in the same handwriting. As the um signatures, etc. So, um, so anyway, I have not studied the affidavits. I would like to study the affidavits more and I would like to have more information on them and hopefully more information is forthcoming on these documents, but if you’d like to do a great project, analyze these documents because. They’re very interesting
[22:47] Michelle: and submit your paper to the Journal of Mormon Polygamy because that’s exactly what the goal is here. I will say to Cheryl that my sense is that when these were discovered, and I couldn’t remember who it was that was working on his, was it his master’s thesis and was it able to gain access to these in the church history library, I was just amazed that that he was getting to look at them. And, and so my feeling has been they were so excited to find them that they just accepted them uncritically and thought we now know all of these, you know, we know I now have all of these answers. And I don’t think that even from that any time since that point, they have been looked at critically enough, and I think that they need to be. So that’s why, that’s why this is such an important project.
[23:32] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, I would definitely agree that these affidavits need to be looked at and that they are later and they were created for a different purpose. So, um, so let’s go back to that, um, letter, and I think that Michelle makes an interesting to me, very interesting case for it not to be talking about polygamy. I have always read it with polygamy in mind and thinking that it fits well with the narrative. Of Joseph Smith wanting to um meet with Sarah and his new wife and have Noel and Elizabeth bring her to um his hiding place. However, Michelle has a little bit different um take on it and I thought it was very well thought out and um it’s, it’s take, I, you know, it was quite well, well made that um I had to think about as I um listened to our podcast on it.
[24:27] Michelle: So that’s excellent. So again, um, I don’t claim to know for sure, but I, but I so appreciate that what we’re saying is more work needs to be done on this, right?
[24:36] Cheryl Bruno: That’s one more point too is if you look up at the top and look at the date, um, there, which is August 18th, is that 1842. I can’t really see it, but, but, um, but that is written in different handwriting. The Joseph Smith papers say that this is um William Clayton’s handwriting.
[24:58] Michelle: Mhm. Let me see if I can get to that close up. It’s dated by William Clayton, and it’s written Navvo and the date. Yeah.
[25:05] Cheryl Bruno: Great. So we have Navu August 18, 1842, and Joseph Smith paper says that this is written in William Clayton’s handwriting and then the rest of the letter is Joseph Smith’s handwriting and his signature. So that um presents a question. When did William Clayton get a hold of this letter? When did he ever Have the letter. Was it delivered directly to um Noel K. Whitney and then later on, Clayton had the letter in his possession, or was the letter delivered to them by William Clayton? This is very interesting and I don’t think that people have really looked at that closely and tried to discover um what the meaning of that might be, how William Clayton was involved in this.
[25:53] Michelle: And I will say, we had a fun, um, like late night, almost all-nighter session discussing this at JWHA with several other historians, just discussing like my new hypothesis. I don’t, I, I don’t wanna overstate it, but my wondering about whether this letter was ever even Delivered because of all of the questions about why wasn’t it destroyed? Why was it dated and a location put why would that be necessary unless it was for filing purposes? How did it come across the plane several other questions that seem to be better answered by the case that William Clayton saw this as useful rather than that he um. He delivered it. Also, according to the Joseph Smith papers, according, William Clayton gives us different stories, but in his own story, he was not yet uh what um is what Brian Hailes likes to call a polygamy insider. He didn’t yet know about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, so he’s Saw this letter and wouldn’t have read like Joseph let him read it without being worried about it revealing polygamy apparently there are a lot of
[26:58] Cheryl Bruno: interesting we don’t know that we don’t know that he he saw that before he was an insider. We do not know this. We do not know when this state was added.
[27:07] Michelle: Right, the Joseph Smith papers do say in their historical introduction that the date was added before the letter was delivered, but I, but they don’t support that. I don’t know how they know that. Maybe it’s just trying to it. Yeah,
[27:18] Cheryl Bruno: um, I don’t see how it would have been added before the letter was delivered if the letter is indeed talking about polygamy because as you said, um, William Clayton was not a polygamy insider and Joseph Smith would not have wanted to reveal that to him. You know, at, at, at this point, so
[27:36] Michelle: right, so again, endless fascinating, a lot, like a lot more thought can be done on this that someone can write up in a journal article that we can engage with and that’s valuable.
[27:46] Cheryl Bruno: Yes, push back on it, push back on it. Um, also one other thing about this letter is, uh, Michelle has brought up whether or not, uh, Noel K. Whitney and Elizabeth ever received the letter. Perhaps they never received the letter. We don’t, um, we don’t have any indication that they did visit. Joseph Smith, um, at his, at Carlos Goves, is that where he was, um, that’s OK, um, so we don’t, we do have, I think William Clayton took meticulous notes of who was visiting, but he does not include them, so we do not know that they visited him or their daughters. So maybe they didn’t ever receive the letter. We don’t know.
[28:29] Michelle: Right, thank you. So, OK, this is really validating to hear you engaging with this and seeing, you know, and of course, uh, what I love about Cheryl is that she will, I, I feel like Cheryl has just so much integrity and scholastic integrity and in every way where she’s not defending a narrative, she’s just looking at the sources and what they say. So she Both will acknowledge when a good point is made and push back what she thinks something is weak. And that’s an example that I want all of us to, to follow, uh, everybody on the academic side and in the, um, in the skeptic movement because we all need to be able to do that. We should all want the truth, not just our bias, to win out.
[29:09] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, and let me just uh reiterate for those of you who don’t know, perhaps, um, you haven’t heard me talk about this before, but I do, um, I am of the opinion that Joseph Smith originated polygamy and, and practiced it as well. And I feel that these things can be explained, um, but perhaps such as the Whitney documents, we just haven’t looked. At them real real closely in the past and I know I haven’t, I’ve just accepted that they are um contemporary documents and that they refer to polygamy. So I think that I need to look at them a little closer and um kind of figure out what some of these, how some of these things can be explained and um understood.
[29:47] Michelle: Excellent. And can I say, can I tell them the topic that you’re working on for your journal article? Yes, so Cheryl is Cheryl is working in depth right now on the high council meeting that, um, I wanna say August 12, 18443 high council meeting where supposedly Hirum read what we now have as 132 according to the affidavits. And so that for. Cheryl is, is very strong evidence, and I would agree that that is, that is an important topic for us to get to. Cheryl and I have a few back and forth because she doesn’t want me to do my episode on it until she’s written an article. I feel like I, I feel like I need to do. We’ll see what happens. But, um, but anyway, I just wanted to say there are other reasons like Cheryl’s willing to look at these Whitney documents, honestly. Um, because she’s not, um, motivated to say they have to prove this, you know, and she has other reasons to have the conclusions that she has at this time.
[30:44] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, and I mean, I asked, I asked the same thing of everyone when I present my findings on the high council. I’d like for people to take that seriously and not just say, oh we can’t ever trust the expositor, we can’t trust this or we can’t trust that. And like, I mean, yes, it’s true that some things might be um might have discrepancies, but um don’t just throw everything out without looking at it closely like we’re doing tonight.
[31:11] Michelle: Right, right. And I do have my, I do have my information for that and my way of looking at it, but it’s really important to, I guess this is the goal. This has been my goal. It’s not necessarily to prove to everyone that my conclusion is correct. It’s just to say we need to have conversations. And if, and if we can move the dial enough. That people on both sides of the argument can agree that intelligent, um, informed, well-meaning, honest people can come to a different conclusion than they can then we’ve we’ve made progress, right? Because right now I feel like there’s a lot of bias against anyone that’s a polygamy denier that they’re just. You know, like, there’s no, there’s no, uh, um, there’s no, um, openness to believing that someone can see these documents and come to a different conclusion on that side. And I want those of us who are on the skeptical side to understand that people can also come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was a polygamist based on the documents, and we don’t need to judge or vilify one another. We just prioritize. Things differently and it’s
[32:16] Cheryl Bruno: right and I again, again, I feel a bit uncomfortable because I don’t have a lot of these documents I look at and I don’t have a conclusion yet. I cannot, you know, explain them or I, you know, and I don’t want people to then just say, oh, Michelle kicked your butt, you know, yeah, no, no. But I, but I do, right, so, but we would welcome all your comments if you see something in these documents that we haven’t seen yet or thought of a way to um look at them that we haven’t looked at them yet. We’d love to hear that. That would be really fabulous and that’s what we really encourage is this big conversation between and
[32:55] Michelle: that really is an invitation to the academics, right? Because my side has had a little bit more. More of a jumpstart because we have been looking at these all of these documents critically and um and the the standard narrative that I, I, I don’t know if that’s the right term, but the people who support the standard narrative haven’t necessarily looked at these critically yet, so they might not have like, like Cheryl doesn’t have her narrative supported yet, but I don’t.
[33:20] Cheryl Bruno: I don’t have a story about it and that’s often the case in my looking at historical documents is, um. I do like to analyze that’s part of a historian’s job is to analyze the documents, but um so far, I do not have a um an analysis of the Whitney documents. So right now I’m just at the stage where I’m looking and saying, oh this is interesting, look at this and look at these problems with it. And that kind of thing. And it’s fun. It’s really fun. And,
[33:47] Michelle: and I so appreciate that you have been willing to take the first really what’s proving to be the most difficult step for accredited historians is to acknowledge, oh, there are questions about these, right? That seems to be the important step that we’re asking other historians to be willing to take.
[34:04] Cheryl Bruno: OK, so let’s go on to the 3rd document, which is a cute little document here, uh, almost like a stationary. So this is a blessing to Sarah Anne Whitney by her um alleged husband Joseph Smith. And the Joseph Smith Papers has identified this handwriting once again as Jose. handwriting. However, Michelle in her podcast did a fascinating look at this um piece of paper and where it possibly came from, and she drew upon um the expertise of John Hayek who came and looked at another document that was on the same paper um in at BYU. And um talked about it perhaps not being um from the period of, of 1840, it’s dated 1843, is it? March 1840,
[35:01] Michelle: yes, I believe this would be 1843, just a month, March 23rd, 1843, I believe just a month before the supposed pretended marriage to Joseph C. Kingsbury.
[35:12] Cheryl Bruno: So I love this document and to me, it really, it does um tend to support polygamy because Joseph Smith was not known to give blessings like this um in the Navu period. And so this, it means that Sarah Anne was someone very special to him, um, that he would give her such a blessing. Um, but again, we have some difficulties with the dating of this and the paper and maybe Michelle just quickly, um, sum that up for us.
[35:44] Michelle: Oh, OK, um, so first of all, the, um, well, well should we talk about the wording and the challenge of, um, rejecting or accepting a document based on wording? Do you want to, yes, let’s start on that,
[35:56] Cheryl Bruno: and I really appreciated, um, Michelle in her, um. In her podcast, uh, talked about, well, first of all, she said that she didn’t think that this wording, oh Lord my God, um, was sounded to her like it came from Joseph Smith, um,
[36:12] Michelle: and not just that one phrase throughout, throughout,
[36:15] Cheryl Bruno: right? It doesn’t sound like the wording Joseph Smith would give, but she was careful to say that we do not have a lot of documents in Joseph Smith’s actual handwriting. We don’t know his voice. That’s the problem is we can’t just Say, oh, that doesn’t sound like Joseph Smith to me because we do not know his voice. We know the voice of scribes who wrote, um, you know, a synopsis of his, of his talks and things like that, um, but their, their voice will come in on this. And so,
[36:46] Michelle: um, and I will say part of my hesitant to say this absolutely answers that this is not Joseph Smith because of the wording is I have read some other documents that surprised me that make me think, oh, I didn’t know Joseph Smith would have said that. Right, so I, so it, it gives, gives me pause to say I can’t perfectly predict. Like you said, we don’t know his voice well enough
[37:07] Cheryl Bruno: to be so for me this did sound like Joseph Smith because I immediately thought of DNC 121 when he was in Liberty jail and he was, um, he kind of, um, was beseeching the Lord in in sort of a similar way. And so it did sound like the voice of Joe Smith to me, um. So also we, we had a fun little conversation. You should have been a fly on the wall when we were talking about the Masonic implications of this and the oh Lord my God, of course, is um what Joseph Smith um purportedly said as he jumped out the window to his death from
[37:43] Michelle: Carthage. And you said there were something like 6 witnesses outside that saw that.
[37:48] Cheryl Bruno: So that several documents that talk about um that being the, the final um. Words of Joseph Smith as he fell from the window, or when he was hanging from the window, or there’s, you know, there’s several different discrepancies, but um the interesting thing to me was, um, we don’t know that Joseph Smith was giving the Masonic call of distress by just the oh Lord my God. But the interesting thing to me was seeing that all of the Mormons who talk about that later, um are very sure that he was giving them. Masonic call of distress. Um, Brigham Young later talks about the Masonic call of distress. Uh, John D. Lee even says, um, that the last words of Joseph Smith were, oh Lord my God, is there no help for the widow’s son? He goes ahead and adds that, that in to make it clear in case nobody knew. Um, but, and then one of the wives of Joseph Smith also says that, um, that his last um words were a Masonic call of distress and Why didn’t any of those Masons answer that call of distress and how horrible that was. So, so all of the Mormons that talk about that were quite sure that that’s what he was doing. It’s just a little interesting tidbit.
[39:00] Michelle: And that is, and it’s also interesting as we’ve talked about to watch how um stories become cemented and how they blow up and how they expand and become certain when maybe it wasn’t before, which is one of the things I proposed that. If, if, if this were written later in Utah and you wanted to sound like Joseph Smith, you might say, Oh, Lord my God. You, you know, because that was well known as his last word. So, so it can go, it could be seen as evidence either way. But it is interesting. Like, for example, the angel with the drawn sword and the angel with the flaming sword and it, they just become these things that everybody knows where the original evidence for them is maybe not as solid as people assume it is because of the Utah period.
[39:43] Cheryl Bruno: So one of the little examples that I have is I always um talk about um the lamb lying down with the lion, you know, and we lion lying down with the lamb, and when we go back to the um scriptures, we realize that that’s not there isn’t in there. And so how do we have that, um, it’s because it’s a later kind of addition that we’ve, um, we’ve given it and we, and when we go back to the original documents and we look, we’re like, oh, you know, I didn’t realize that that wasn’t there. I thought it was there. Right,
[40:14] Michelle: right. And, um, so one of the other things we talked about back on the wording of this document, um, I think that while, um, the, the, the voice isn’t enough, saying that doesn’t sound like Joseph Smith isn’t enough to declare this document to be invalid. It is helpful because it was hearing the voice that inspired, it was Whitney Horning that said that. And I, I think, like, I give her credit for, for having read more of Joseph Smith than I have. So, so I, I trusted her analysis of that, but she didn’t stop there and I didn’t stop there. It was like, this doesn’t sound like Joseph Smith, so let’s go into the deeper exploration. And it was Because of the voice that we did the deeper explanation exploration to find out that Joseph was not in town the day that this blessing and the blessing to um to Joseph C. Kingsbury was supposedly given to find out the to question the paper because I think everyone this paper should strike everybody as strange, right? and and being able to look at the paper and. Oh, I say it again. She’s gonna, she’s gonna help me
[41:20] Cheryl Bruno: and Michelle’s often saying that something is strange or something is, um, she just can’t understand it or she’s, and I often say, you know, for me it’s not something’s not strange. I might not be familiar with it or it might be interesting or it might just be fascinating, but um I don’t necessarily think it we can say it’s strange because we don’t live in the 19th century. We don’t know what was strange or not then. Um, we don’t know what was in Joseph Smith’s mind, and it’s just, um, just because something is strange to us personally, it might not be strange to my neighbor next door, you know, it’s just,
[41:56] Michelle: yes, so let me correct because often these are semantic what I should have said is this seems to be unusual. I don’t see other papers like this that’s, that’s when I said strange I meant unusual. So often it’s just a matter of using a better.
[42:09] Cheryl Bruno: It is, it is, but also the other thing is, um, the ceiling, um, is a different usage than, um, it was earlier. So, um, as the historians know that ceiling, um, changed over the years, um, in Joseph’s usage, and this is one of the earlier um usages where he is sealing, you know, things, um, um, where we use sealing as um Pertaining to marriage, right? Well,
[42:40] Michelle: well, yeah,
[42:41] Cheryl Bruno: that’s everlasting covenant too, it’s the
[42:44] Michelle: everlasting covenant, and, and it actually isn’t explicit. It could be interpreted, I guess the, the, the thing that I was trying to pull out was that Everlasting Covenant takes on a different meaning later on than it appeared to have during Joseph’s life. So when we read this and read Everlasting Covenant as evidence of polygamy, that’s, that’s. Potentially, um, problematic. Am I OK to say that? That’s not necessarily a good interpretation if this document is genuine from Joseph Smith, but
[43:14] Cheryl Bruno: well, I mean you have to say that it’s not um the usage that Joseph Smith would have used or you would have to say that he changed his usage later in his life.
[43:25] Michelle: Right. And the only evidence we have of that is Section 132. And Section 131 and 132, which weren’t added to the Doctrine of Covenants until 1876. And, you know, so we have later, again, that kind of, it’s kind of that problem of, oh Lord, my God, is there no help for the widow’s son coming about later and then being backdated onto Joseph Smith. So we have That’s a challenge that we need to consider, I think. So
[43:47] Cheryl Bruno: right, so we would want to look for corroborating documents to see, he is actually changing this um understanding of the everlasting covenant, um. Into this one that’s that’s appearing in this letter. So just really keep going back to um John Hayek’s um look at this, at this um
[44:09] Michelle: um the paper can I fill that in really fast. So, so when I said that this paper was unusual, it’s just so unique from anything else on the Joseph Smith papers. And since um we started to ask the question of whether or not this was a legitimate Joseph Smith um document or a later someone writing a Joseph Smith’s hand possibly, um, so we started to question the paper. So I have this other document, but you go ahead, Cheryl, and, and tell your version of it, and then I can share that.
[44:37] Cheryl Bruno: Um, no, I just thought it was, it was interesting. Um, John said that this paper is usually dated, um, it started becoming into, um, popularity in England in the, the 1840s, but it wasn’t seen in the United States that early, probably not until the 1850s or 1860s, you would see this paper. So, um, we have a Couple of different ideas here whether um we have missionaries in England who could have brought this paper back, it could have been um part of the stock of the Whitney store or the red brick store. um Michelle talked a little bit about this. She did some fabulous research into it to look and see where they were getting their inventory and she’s just done a lot. If you listen to that podcast. That 3rd podcast, you will be amazed at how much research she has done on this little piece of paper. I was absolutely amazed at, I have not seen anyone else look at this piece of paper in such a great depth as she has and so it was fascinating to me and really I, if you’re gonna watch none other than that third um podcast, it’s amazing you’ve done great work on this.
[45:53] Michelle: Well, thank you, Cheryl. I really appreciate that. Yeah, I, I tried to think of everything I could. I will say it was, it was really fun to learn about this other document that is written on the same paper that was housed at BYU, and it was actually Cheryl that said, why don’t you go look at this at BYU? Go, go check it out. Cause I didn’t realize that. I could. And so I immediately called John and asked him to meet me. And this is interesting because it is the same. It’s the only document that we know of on that same stationery written by Helen Mart Helen Mar Kimball, Helen Mar Whitney, I guess. And it’s interesting because we can’t say for sure whether this was written in, um, In Navo or in Utah, but I will point out that I, I didn’t bring this out in my podcast and I wish I had. This is signed, you can see right here by Helen Mark Whitney. Which means that this would have been later. This would have been quite a while, like very possibly in Utah. I, I, you know, I can’t say for certain, but I, my hunch would be in Utah, but definitely after she was married, so it would have been later by quite a bit than when Joseph would have given that blessing to, um. To Sarah Anne, so that’s another clue that
[47:09] Cheryl Bruno: these are all clues, but I mean you can have your box of stationery for many years. I have a few boxes of stationery that have been around for 20 years, so right,
[47:18] Michelle: but what is most likely had to have crossed the plains, which is interesting.
[47:23] Cheryl Bruno: It might have been hard. So yeah, so there are just so many interesting things about this, these uh little documents. They’re very, very cool to look at. So, um, we want to just go on from these documents that Michelle has talked about into a few of the Kingsbury documents because, um, uh, Sarah, um. Whitney was married to um Joseph Smith, and then she had a pretend marriage to Joseph C. King Kingsbury, who tells about it later. And um this comes in because he, he gives some reminiscences. Do you have that one too?
[48:03] Michelle: I don’t. I’m wondering what page you want to share, and you know I’m gonna have to push back on you now, Sheryl, because you did the thing where you said Joseph was married to Sarah. We have to acknowledge that that is um. Possibly, or you know,
[48:17] Cheryl Bruno: yes. So, um, so Joseph Kingsbury says that in his reminiscences, he talks about um him, um, and this one was written in 1848. So
[48:31] Michelle: I’ll show, I can show them how we, how we date that. So you can see all of these first pages that I’m clicking through, and it looks like it was probably paginated later that looks to be different, the 21. 22. And here we have, you can see all the way from the beginning, it’s the same pen until here on page 26. So it’s easy to assume that was all written at, at a, at a similar time. And then we have this entry right here. I mean, where it ends is, we were, I, I should go back a little bit and read from the last page, but we are now in, uh, Cheryl is much better at reading things than I am. We are now in the, um, both comfortable with something comfortable and are doing all we can to raise our living in and tilling the earth June 25th, 1848 is when it’s dated, when that 1st 26 page entry is dated. So, OK,
[49:25] Cheryl Bruno: so he starts from his birth and he goes all the way through and he tells this little story of how, uh, Joseph married Sarah Anne and that he was to Um, have a pretend marriage so that Joseph wouldn’t get in trouble, so it wouldn’t be suspicious. Um, so he, so he did marry her, um, is that on this page?
[49:46] Michelle: Let me share this page right here. According to President Joseph Smith’s counsel and others, I agreed to stand by, oops, I turned the page by accident, stand by Sarah and Whitney as supposed to be her husband and had a pretended marriage for the purpose of.
[50:02] Cheryl Bruno: Bringing about the purposes of God in these last days, so spoken by the mouth of the prophets, Isaiah, etc. OK, so, um, this is actually in 1848, which I think is quite early. I think it’s pretty early, but he is in Utah at the time, so it is a Utah period document.
[50:22] Michelle: It’s before 1:32 is revealed, right? It’s before the revelation is revealed. So it is quite early.
[50:28] Cheryl Bruno: So one of the earliest documents talking about polygamy that we Have and talking about how Joseph, how Joseph was married to a woman and so I take this one quite seriously. I love this document and um it was also this was really this um Michelle and I were discussing this today and had such fun with it. There are throughout the document, there are some little writings if she can find them.
[50:53] Michelle: Yep, I’ll, I’ll go back and share this one again and find some of the pages. Where we can find the
[51:00] Cheryl Bruno: document and made some corrections on these. So we have this date right here. So kind of look in the middle of the right hand page, the 22nd day of November 1845 and someone has taken a pen and overwritten that 1844 because later on in the page it talks about January 1845 and so they’ve corrected those dates because they don’t make sense, right? They’re not chronological, but what we.
[51:27] Michelle: Oh yeah, go ahead. When we looked back at it, we realized that Kingsbury’s dates were actually better than the corrected dates.
[51:33] Cheryl Bruno: Yes, but we did need to correct because it should have been November of 1845 and then January of 1846. So he didn’t get the dates right and neither did the corrector, but we know because we know when the temple was open and when they were doing endowments in the temple was late 1845 and early 1846. So we figured that’s what he, he meant. And so this is a sample of, you know, they can get their dates wrong and they can still be fine. It’s just because when you’re looking back or when you’re writing the document, often the dates kind of get messed up and so we don’t have to have a big fit about it, right?
[52:12] Michelle: I sometimes put the wrong year on a slide just out of just out of a typo or, you know, I just wasn’t being quite careful enough. So yes, you can see more of this purple correction and more of these um editing marks. Was there something else you wanted to point out or did you want to talk about that? Because that was
[52:28] Cheryl Bruno: so right there on page 29, it’s just below what she’s looking at here. And so we talked about my gospel father. OK, there it is. So um we’re talking about with Bishop NK Whitney, my father, and someone has um inserted that word gospel right above my gospel father and to make it plain that this was an adoption that it wasn’t he wasn’t his actual father. He was his adoptive father. Um, so they just clarified that. And so by that, we were able to tell who it was that was making these corrections. we were,
[53:07] Michelle: we were curious, wondering who was who was it that was making these corrections, right? We had that question. And so, yeah, so go ahead, Cheryl. I didn’t mean to interrupt you.
[53:16] Cheryl Bruno: So I don’t know if you have the typescript. You probably have the I do was written by the type script was written by, um.
[53:24] Michelle: A granddaughter, I believe. So let me go back to it.
[53:29] Cheryl Bruno: But it was one of um Joseph Kingsbury’s granddaughters who had his, um his, they call it the autobio autobiography and journal but we call it his reminiscences, um, that’s a little bit more accurate, um, but she made this type script and then gave it to Joseph F. Smith and Um, when we look back, it has those, those changes the 1844 and the Gospel Father, and they’re just put right into the text as if they were um written by him.
[53:58] Michelle: And yes, and my computer is going very slow, so it’s taking me a minute. Um, let me add this back to the stage. And I’ll show you right here who it was that we could call her Miss Purple Pen, right? Who it was that was making the corrections. Um, History of Joseph C. Kingsbury, copied from his own handwriting in his little books where he kept his diary by his granddaughter, Rosalia Maserve Watson.
[54:24] Cheryl Bruno: Right, so, and,
[54:26] Michelle: and I want to pay attention here people date this from 1846, but it’s important to point out that that’s just her assumption. I think that we’ve done a little bit better analysis to date it from 1848, what we just showed.
[54:40] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, so we’re pretty sure about the date of 1848 when we go back to the original um diary slash reminiscences. So
[54:48] Michelle: unless there’s something we’ve missed, as always.
[54:51] Cheryl Bruno: So also that’s another thing is when you look at these documents, often it’s really easy to read the type script and so people don’t go back to the handwriting. I love the handwriting. I am very good at reading. 19th century handwriting and so um I always go to the handwriting but um when you go to the type script, you really need to check it with the handwriting because often there are small changes that are made later um they in problems in. Um, making the type scripts, they didn’t read a word right or whatever, and it, it can make a big difference, um, if not like
[55:24] Michelle: the dating that we just pointed out that dating would be a really big problem and I want to point out, so I’ll show right here that for some reason, um, this, this, um, the typescript is available on the church history library, but interestingly, the, um, let’s see if I can get there, the Original is only I can only find it on archive.org and so it’s interesting that it’s not in the Church History library, but you do have to sometimes be creative and search different um sources to try to find, you know, because if you can only find the typescript on the church library, you might think that’s all that we have but this I would say is far more
[56:03] Cheryl Bruno: if it is all that we have, if the typescript is all that we have, we can’t date it back to that earlier date. We have to date it to when the typescript was created. Created because that’s the earliest document we have and so on the timeline it’s important to um look at these different things and don’t just jump to the conclusion, oh this is 1848. No, if we only have it back to 1912, then
[56:26] Michelle: that’s
[56:26] Cheryl Bruno: date.
[56:28] Michelle: And like we said, if we only had this type script right here, we would date it to 46 because that’s what the typescript says where when we go to the original, we can see that it’s most likely 48.
[56:41] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, so that’s kind of some of the fun things that we’ve been doing together lately. Is there any other documents we’ve looked at that we want to talk about?
[56:50] Michelle: Well, we could talk quite a bit more about the affidavits because, um, I don’t, I don’t know if we want to right now, but I think both Cheryl and I are committed to doing. A much more thorough investigation of the affidavits. Um, one of the questions we’ve had is whether the affidavits are, um, copies or meant to be originals. And I think that we see that quite differently. And, um, but I, but I just, I will show this one example. I explained, and I, was it part two that I explained the, um, sort of Joseph F. Smith’s 4 books of affidavits. It was part two or part 3, but I think maybe part 2. And um and so I’ll just show this I find really interesting. So this is the affidavit of um I believe it’s David Fulmer, and it’s one of the affidavits about the high council meeting, and it’s really interesting because you can see that it um is a signed affidavit, right? And it and it looks like it’s signed. Uh, or supposed to be signed by David Fulmer, not just by Joseph F. Smith. That’s a different hand. And right here we can go up and you can see, if you look close, maybe I’ll zoom in a little bit, you can see that names have been scratched out right here and right here on both sides of Samuel Bent. And that’s really interesting on an affidavit. Those are supposed to be legal documents. So I’ll show, and that was from series 10 no, that’s from series 2, and this is from series 1. I showed them in the wrong order. So, uh, I should have showed this one first, but they’re the same thing. This is series one, where it has the same thing where the names are pressed out, but this one happens to have a cutler penciled in after. And then another name scratched out here, so you could see that these don’t appear to me to be copies because they are being changed and altered after the fact, rather than just copied as they were. So these are the kinds of things that I think It’s useful to, you know, one of the things we
[58:50] Cheryl Bruno: need, let me jump in. this is where we need lots of brains because um sometimes names were, um, in documents, in church documents we see this a few times like when William Law and William Marks were kind of marked out because then they apostattized and they didn’t want to, to include them in with the, the faithful. So I mean there were several times when this hap when we see this happen, um, and so there could be different, uh. Reasons why we have this is very fascinating. It’s definitely needs investigation. Um, we, we need to think of why or what those names might have been why they must, might have been crossed out and when are erased and when they were erased, were they erased before the signature was placed on the document? Were they erased after, um, you know, what was the motivation of doing this? Like, why do you see this as being um Um, fitting into a different narrative, um, cause I don’t necessarily see it as being suspicious. Um, but
[59:55] Michelle: right. One of the things though that I think that I proposed that I think Cheryl, you agreed to and maybe you’ll think differently about it now, but It appears to me that Joseph F. Smith wanted these documents to have sort of the, um, the legal status, the, um, viability of being affidavits. So he tried to create them as legal affidavits. But I think it’s important for us to recognize that they don’t necessarily deserve. That level of viability because of how, because of the questions we have about them and some of the, um, issues with them so he was trying to create these very official reliable documents but they don’t necessarily rise to that level in actuality.
[1:00:38] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, so let me just talk about the affidavits in my um perspective because I started out with uh before I had looked at the affidavits closely, I just thought, and I think many people do think that the affidavits kind of nailed down Joseph Smith’s polygamy, that here we have these affidavits of the women who are married to Joseph Smith. What can you say about that? Um You know, um, and when I started looking at them and seeing the problems with signatures that they don’t always have signatures, to me they seem to be copies and that’s not suspicious because when I went through the um Masonic lodge minutes I saw often they would uh put in a letter from somebody and then they just copy it into the book and they. wouldn’t have the signature of the person, they just have a copy of the letter with, you know, writing that signature. And so that was sort of normal for the time. Um, it’s also seen in the Relief Society minutes and so it didn’t bother me quite so much, but I did see um certain things about the affidavits that I thought were unusual and didn’t make them quite as um um. Uh,
[1:01:45] Michelle: just reliable, maybe. Yeah,
[1:01:47] Cheryl Bruno: maybe reliable. Um, it’s not that I felt they were unreliable, it’s just that they weren’t like firsthand documents of the person with their actual signature there and that, you know, so, um, and there’s several problems in, um, some of The affidavits and it looks like um many of them were written in formed style where they just uh have the same thing repeated. So it almost looks like he wrote um these affidavits and then later had the women come in and, and um I don’t know exactly how they were created. So that’s what I realized, I guess I realized I don’t know exactly how they were created. I don’t know how, um, for what purpose or what involvement the women had. Were they tell their own stories or were the affidavits created and then they were later asked to sign them? We just don’t know those things or
[1:02:41] Michelle: did or were they sometimes created and signed on their behalf without any. Involvement from them,
[1:02:46] Cheryl Bruno: and then some of them were not signed at all. They were just created, but not, but the signature was left blank, which actually to me it makes it more likely when he just writes the signature that that woman had agreed to it because, you know, otherwise he would have just signed them all, right? Why were some of them, there are two of them, right, that that are left blank where they don’t have their name. Do you know what would be it.
[1:03:13] Michelle: It would be interesting to compare the affidavits to, say, Andrew Jensen’s list of first wives and to see where Joseph F. Smith might have been getting his information of who to include for an affidavit. I haven’t, I haven’t done an in-depth search, but I did look briefly to try to see if he had advertised in the Deseret News, any wives of Joseph Smith come and sign an affidavit or, you know, how he was, like, it would be interesting to see.
[1:03:38] Cheryl Bruno: And you know, I had, I hesitate to say much about this, but I know there is um some information which I’m not really sure, so that’s why I can’t say it because I haven’t seen it and but I know there is some information about how the first few were created and so um this is something that we need more work on. We need more work on the affidavits and it would be really helpful to this conversation if we had more um close work on the affidavits.
[1:04:05] Michelle: Yes, so, so I guess I’m summing this up by saying, Cheryl and I are doing this work, and I know other people in, in especially my community are doing this work, you know, more of the skeptical side, but we are asking more people from the historical side to also join in. It is really, it really is astounding that more work hasn’t been done on these affidavits. And that’s a huge part of what both Cheryl and I are talking about. There is. The field is white and ready to harvest, right? That’s what we’re trying to say in the, in the study of polygamy. There is so much opportunity here and so much need
[1:04:42] Cheryl Bruno: for just one more thing before we close, because I don’t want to, I don’t want this to be a very long one because I do want you to go back and look at the, the other three, but um I do just want to say here that um I feel like that um our community, the Scholarly community has for so long felt like these should be interpreted one way or that they were very um easy to um look at and just see like why aren’t we believing the women who are writing these affidavits. Um and um me as I’ve gone in and I’ve looked at these documents, I’ve realized that there’s a lot of, still a lot of work to be done. And so I, you know, I really implore you. to not just, um, not just stand on what you’ve thought in the past, um, and start looking at these new, um, these new close looks that Michelle and others have been taking and don’t feel threatened by it because like I um haven’t found anything threatening about this work at all as I’ve been um talking with Michelle. Sometimes we get quite um Heated about our conversations, but yet, um, you know, it’s not threatening and it’s um Um, I, I kind of hate when people connect this investigation with other things that are extraneous to it. OK? So don’t worry about if you’ve seen, you know, Cheryl Bruno doing something, um, you know, I
[1:06:13] Michelle: don’t know Cheryl Bruno made some tarot cards. Therefore
[1:06:16] Cheryl Bruno: I made some cards right, so, um, you’re not gonna listen to anything I now say about the Jesse Smith affidavits. So that’s not fair.
[1:06:24] Michelle: um, and on my side
[1:06:26] Cheryl Bruno: exactly. So, um, I implore you to, um, jump into the conversation with us and have a great time.
[1:06:34] Michelle: Excellent. This is how history is done. This is how it’s supposed to be done, right? And that’s what, that’s what we were hoping or will continue. So again, a huge thank you to Cheryl for engaging the way that she has. You guys, she really has put herself out to work hand in hand with me to try to bring these conversations to the table, to try to improve the dialogue. And the scholarship on these topics. And so I, I hope that everyone will, will continue to engage in these topics, make room in their space for alternative perspectives, alternative voices, the way that Cheryl and I have stuck in there and sometimes fought it out, right? But we both continued and, um, and a lot of good has come from it already. And then again, I want to recommend the Journal of Mormon Polygamy. So I want to ask everyone to please, uh, Support us even with your prayers at this point, or in any way that you feel that you feel that you can with the success of the Journal of Mormon Polygamy. We already do have some people fighting against us, and, and so it’s, it’s, it’s going to take all that we can do. Cheryl and I are extremely committed to making this a success. As we said, we have a fantastic board of directors. I think everybody is going to be properly surprised by the people that are involved and, um, sitting around the table. With with this endeavor. So our website will be up in the not too distant future, and we will start accepting submissions, be looking forward to it, and, um, start working on your papers. Everybody from both perspectives, this really is going to be the cutting edge of where this topic is discussed. And so wherever you stand on this topic, you really don’t want to be left behind. That’s why we are encouraging people to engage. So thank you again, Cheryl. I really appreciate you. I really appreciate your work. I hope everybody in both communities does, cause I think I’m just gonna say, like, both of us are courageous in what we are doing. We are working hard, stepping out of our comfort zones, and we hope more people will follow suit.
[1:08:44] Cheryl Bruno: Yes, I think you saw me stepping out of my comfort zone just now, but read my books. Yes, yes, but, um, really, I think that this is valuable and this is important and I hope more people will join in.
[1:08:58] Michelle: Thank you so much and we will see you next time. Thank you again to Cheryl for coming on and engaging today, and for her willingness to engage in all of this. I hope that everybody recognizes how courageous Cheryl is, how much integrity she has, and how much she is willing to step into this challenging space. Just because she thinks it’s the right thing to do and she thinks these are important topics. And again, please watch for our website. It should be launching in the not too distant future. Be thinking about how you want to engage. And as always, I welcome your thoughts and discussion on the Whitney documents that we discussed today and any other topics. I’ll see you next time.
