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[00:00] Michelle: Welcome to 132 Problems revisiting Mormon polygamy. I am very excited to bring you this first response to John Delin’s recent episodes on Joseph Smith’s polygamy. There will be more to come. We just covered a portion of it today. But I have to let you know that the next morning after recording this conversation, Jonah actually reached out to me and we ended up talking on the phone for 2 hours, had a great conversation. And I actually will be going on his show next week, I think, I believe on Tuesday. So look forward to that. And so some of what we talked about is not quite as relevant, but I still thought this was a fantastic conversation and I’m excited to share it. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to 132 Problems. I am very excited to be here with my good friend, Cheryl Bruno, for this first part of our response to John Dehlin’s recent episode on polygamy responding to Well, monogamy affirmers. We call ourselves monogamy affirmers because I think we saw in this episode why the term polygamy denier is so inaccurate. They seem to completely not understand anything that we’re about. So I want to set that out from the beginning. Refer to us as monogamy affirmers because we affirm that Joseph Smith was a monogamist. And anyway, that’s, that’s a little sidetrack. I want to thank Cheryl for being here because we want to explain why we think this is a conversation worth having. It seems that John, and this happens with many others, think what in the world is wrong with people to not believe that polygamy originated with Joseph Smith. And, and Cheryl. And I want to help people understand why we think this is an important conversation to have. So, Cheryl, thank you for being here. Go ahead and, and tell people what you want them to know at the very beginning.
[01:55] Cheryl Bruno: Oh, it’s so good to be here, Michelle. Thank you for having me on. I am a polygamy affirmer. Michelle is a monogamy affirmer. I’m a polygamy firmer because I believe that Joseph Smith did initiate and practice. Polygamy in Au. So we’re a little bit, um, we, we don’t have exactly the same ideas, but uh we did want to uh both respond to what John Dehlin has to say because um he, he really, as Michelle said, I think there is a misunderstanding of why monogamy a firmers believe the way they do. Let me just start with kind of my little story. Um, I originally thought, probably very much like John Dehlin, that um monogamy of firmers didn’t, um, Didn’t understand how much, just how much evidence we have that Joseph practiced polygamy and so about 2 years ago I came across Michelle’s podcast and I wondered about that and so I started listening to see what, you know, what they could possibly be thinking that. They might, they just didn’t have any reason to believe that Joseph didn’t practice polygamy, but what I found was really shocking to me. We don’t have the evidence that we think we do. We think we have tons of contemporary evidence. There’s actually very little contemporary evidence and the later evidence, um. That has come out is, is um very outdated. Uh, we have Todd Compton’s book, which is almost 30 years old now. We have Brian Hill’s book that is 10 years at least 10 years old,
[03:35] Michelle: 2014, I want to say 2013 or something like that. Yeah, it’s almost 20 years old.
[03:40] Cheryl Bruno: Right, there’s been very little done since then on polygamy that doesn’t have. To do with the monogamy of firmers. They’ve done most of the research that’s been done recently and their research is very good. People didn’t, don’t realize that. And I thought that this podcast, this episode will show you the kinds of things that are coming out right now from the monogamy of firmers and exactly why they take the position they do and why I think we should listen to them. John’s podcast that we’re going to respond to has taken evidence for that is very, um very sketchy, uh, that looks like it, they’ve gotten it, collected it by doing a quick internet search and they haven’t gone into the uh actual documents as Michelle really is very um Careful to do. And so we want to just show the difference between what they’re doing and why they believe the way they do and why they can’t understand what’s happening currently and um why it’s so important for us to collaborate, for us to get together those of all different um ideologies to get together and study these things together.
[04:57] Michelle: Yes, worked together on it. I should have, at the beginning, introduced who Cheryl is. So for anyone who doesn’t know, Cheryl is a highly respected historian. She is the author of three books that have come out recently, Method Infinite. Cheryl, maybe I should let you introduce your book.
[05:14] Cheryl Bruno: Method Infinite was co-authored by, um, Joe Swick, Steve Swick III. and Nick Laursky and myself. It’s about Freemasonry in the Mormon restoration, and then I have a biography
[05:26] Michelle: people should be interested in because because anyone who’s involved with Mormonism knows the connections between the Mormon temple and Freemasonry. So Freemasonry, Cheryl worked well, that book was 2 years um in the works of research coming out in that amazing book. Continue.
[05:42] Cheryl Bruno: And I uh also co-authored um a biography on William Marks with John Dinger. Um, and then I did a book called Secret Covenants on Polygamy, which is a collection of essays on Mormon polygamy. Um, also, we started that about 2 years ago, right before I found out about monogamy of farmers, and, uh, the book took almost 2 years to come out. By the time it did, I feel like we were almost, um, We needed to start over again in our research because the field just uh keeps rolling and we need to always keep up to date on what is happening and, and um so I think that while that book contributes, uh there are a lot of things that now are obsolete in that book that we need to now consider again.
[06:32] Michelle: OK. And then, and then, um, her compilation, Secret Covenants really is, as far as I’m aware, the most recent scholarship that’s been done on Mormon polygamy. And Cheryl was the editor of that book and gathered all of the essays for it. And I don’t know that of another book that’s come out more recently than that. And so Cheryl really is at the forefront and Someone that everybody should listen to as a respected historian on this topic. And Cheryl, is it OK if I tell a little bit of my side of it? Because this is, this is the experience that I want. We’re going to get into the evidence. I just want to lay out a little bit of the groundwork, and there will actually be a couple of different responses. So Cheryl and I have just gone through and chosen a couple of things to respond to because there’s so much. So, um, so, but for this episode, what I want to explain to people is this pattern that happens all the time. And I think this is the thing that finally got Cheryl to realize she, like, that she was gonna dive into this, because I have, I’ve shared this experience. I am doing my research, and I’m relatively new to this. It was a year into my podcast before I was willing to consider that, that polygamy didn’t start with Joseph Smith. Or that I was willing to say, I think the evidence points this way, and for me it was absolutely the evidence that that convinced me. I was, I was not believing that initially, even with my research on polygamy, I started out talking about polygamy theologically and scripturally to help my people, the people of the LDS Church, understand that polygamy never was of God and that it always causes damage. That’s another thing that Cheryl and I disagree on because, you know, you know, we have, we To this from very different perspectives, but that was my perspective. Then by necessity, I started diving into the history, and I was amazed by what I didn’t find and by what I did find, and it changed my mind. And so I have had so many conversations with different people, but I’m going to speak mostly about the historians because I have engaged with many different histo historians on this topic. And what almost always happens is they start out kind of Being nice to the little monogamy a firmer, you know what I mean? They’ll they’ll kind of be like, OK, tell me your ideas. And within about 10 or 15 minutes into the conversation. They’re saying something along the lines of, well, actually, this isn’t my field, and I’m not a frontline researcher on this topic. And like, they realize that they don’t have answers to the, to the things I’m saying and the sources I’m bringing up, right? And then, and then I always say, Well, who is? Who should I talk to? And nobody knows. Nobody knows who it is that, that can defend this narrative, this, this model. Of Joseph Smith originating polygamy. And so I, in frustration, posted about that one day, and Cheryl, who had been trying to get people to pay attention, realized, I’m speaking for you so you can jump in. But kind of the message that I got from Cheryl, Cheryl, is she’s like, OK, I guess nobody has has dived in to do this research, so I guess I have to, even though Cheryl said the one topic she never wanted to get. Involved in this polygamy,
[09:28] Cheryl Bruno: right? Right. I never wanted to be a polygamy researcher, but really there is a dearth on my side of things. There’s a dearth of people that are studying and researching it deeply. So I felt like, you know, and I, I would like to encourage anyone that has an interest to please join me in in. Studying Mormon polygamy because the people are saying that the work has been done, the work has not been done. There’s tons of work still to do on this, and I think that Todd and Brian Hills have laid a good foundation for what we have. Um, Brian has made available many things that we have never seen before, so we have. It out online now that we can easily go to Brian’s site and and find those things um the church history library has become more open, the Joseph Smith papers we have so many um things that we can draw from, but these are relatively recent and they haven’t been uh analyzed deeply. So we really need people who can do that.
[10:31] Michelle: And it’s important to state also that Brian Hill’s site wallet so great, does not include everything. There are, there are more documents that have not been brought to the topic because that’s what, that’s what we have, I, I’ve been trying to beat this drum of like, we need people with different perspectives to come to. This to bring up other documents that have always been ignored that people didn’t realize were important. And so, so in, in, um, because both Cheryl and I feel that this conversation is so important, not this conversation, this research, this topic. Like, polygamy is the most Fascinating part of Mormonism, the biggest, like with the most documents and the most contested for the for the longest time, it is an amazing topic, and yet very little work has been done on it. And so, we’ll introduce, I’ll let you introduce Cheryl.
[11:17] Cheryl Bruno: So we have started a Journal of Mormon polygamy where we want people to come together from all aspects in a scholarly manner in an academic way. Um, so anyone who wants to write academically on Mormon polygamy, whether they have a PhD or whether they don’t, whether they’re an independent researcher as I am, wherever they come from, they can publish in the Journal of Mormon Polygamy, they can submit. The papers. This will be these papers will be peer reviewed very rigorously and put on our new Journal of Mormon polygamy. Along with our journal, we have a conference that’s going to be happening in March, March 21st and 22nd at the University of Utah. You can sign up for that right now. Um, we have tickets for sale right now for our conference. It’s going to be. Amazing conference with many, many polygamy related researchers. We have, um, our, yeah
[12:16] Michelle: Todd Compton is presenting. He’ll be there. um, Dodd Bradley will be there. Um, um, Maxine Hanks will be there. Margaret Tescano will be there. Our keynote speakers are Barbara Jones Brown and Taylor Petrie. People in the historical communities know these names. And then we also have Claire Barris, and, um, I, I know there are others. And then we also have people from my perspective who are doing the research on this side, I’m Gwendolyn Wine, Whitney Horning, Jeremy Hoop, and several others that will be there that people can meet and engage with, ask questions, and hear, cutting edge presentations that have not been part of the, the conversation yet that really need to be. If people aren’t Um, recognizing that’s what we’re realizing if people don’t recognize that this, um, research is moving forward, they’re just going to be left behind, which is what I think we saw in this podcast.
[13:12] Cheryl Bruno: Right, so let’s get right to that because this podcast is going to show you we’re gonna kind of demonstrate because John Dehlin asks over and over the question, how can they believe this? And we want to show you what is happening and why and he did not invite um. Mia Firmer on his show to explain why they believe the way they believe. And so, we’re having to do this, um, outside of his, outside of his podcast.
[13:39] Michelle: Yeah. I have to say something about that. It was funny because he did have Nemo there to sort of be the devil’s advocate, but like, he can’t represent my perspective at all. He doesn’t know it. It was so apparent that none of them have done even the tiniest little bit of research into what we believe.
[13:55] Cheryl Bruno: It just one more thing, I just I want to say quickly, um, that goes along with that is that, um, John, I admire John very greatly and the things that he does and so does Michelle, but they often will say, you know, the church, um, church people say, oh, we just left the church because we were, you know, we wanted to sin or we were, you know, um, and
[14:16] Michelle: I messaged John about this very thing. Can I, can I tell if that’s OK because John did fantastic. Church on why people leave the church and how the reality stands up to the to the assumption, right, that people in the church love to say they just never had a testimony to begin with or they just wanted to say or they got offended or whatever it was. And people who leave the church are saying, hey, we have done research that you haven’t done. We’ve seen things that you haven’t looked at and we are logical people who have sound minds and reasons for doing what we’re doing, right? And John’s research was important in that. And that was the message that I sent John, oh gosh, it’s been well over a year ago, where I just said, hey, I’d like to just let you know that just, this is how it hits me. When you say polygamy deniers, and that’s, and it’s so dumb because it’s just not accurate. We do not deny that polygamy happened, right? But when you call us that, and when you say that we just can’t handle our cognitive dissonance, and we are just so biased, and we just have to have Joseph Smith on a pedestal, doing the same thing. It’s exactly the same thing. It is dismissive. It is dehumanizing, and it’s, it’s making up a story about me and those in my community to make to fit your worldview, just like people in the church do about people who leave the church. And it is exactly the same. And I am asking people to please do. Just let’s, let’s have that mutual respect. I promise that there are people in, in this community who are extremely intelligent and extremely well informed. I would say on average people in my community know the documents way better than than people who haven’t delved in like
[15:53] Cheryl Bruno: let’s just go ahead and give a little demonstration of what we’re having difficulty with in this um certain genderlin podcast that has recently come out.
[16:03] Michelle: OK, so we’re going to just do a little bit of back and forth. We, we wanted to kind of show some clips. We’re going to just talk about a few wives, but we also wanted to show some clips to just kind of show the quality of scholarship that seems to be lacking in this podcast. So here’s the first example.
[16:16] Julia: So I just like try to break down the churches, like in a historical way, like I know I’m opinionated and I have my thoughts, but I try to present things in a, in a non. I don’t know, just a very neutral kind of way, but we do, I, sometimes I say that we try to be as objective or as neutral as possible. Of course, we all have biases, and in these LDS discussions episodes, they come out, but we try to be factual. I think it’s fair to say this whole series is evidence and fact-based.
[16:45] Cheryl Bruno: Yes, so first of all, just for our audience, we have um We have John Dehlin, we have Julia, and we have Nemo, um, there, uh, and they’re going to tell us about the evidence that Joseph Smith had sexual relations with 35 wives.
[17:04] Michelle: OK. Well, I think with most of those 35 wives,
[17:07] Cheryl Bruno: yeah. Oh, well, yes, they’re gonna tell us about Joseph Smith had 35s. And then, um, who, which of those 35 wives he had sexual relationships with. Yeah, these three people are saying that they are going to be fact-based, that they are going to be um
[17:25] Michelle: what fact and evidence-based and non-biased, right? Very, very, um, yes, very neutral. And what I, I appreciate that that’s the goal that they have for themselves and that’s what they are wanting to. accomplish. So I think that as we go through, we’ll see, I, well, we won’t be able to show as many clips as we would have liked to, to show how well they accomplished that, because that’s a challenge for everyone. And Cheryl and I have talked about this. The only way you can actually accomplish that is to engage with someone who disagrees with you and have them poke holes in your, uh, in your arguments. So when you’re in an echo chamber, you cannot be unbiased. You Can be neutral and you cannot be fact and evidence-based because of, uh, you, you aren’t even questioning your sources. So that’s one thing we wanted to point out. I also wanted to respond quickly how funny I think it is that the way he wants to respond to the monogamy of firmers is by showing evidence that Joseph Smith had sex with his wives. Like, he doesn’t even know who he’s arguing with. It’s so funny because on the one hand, I hear. Um, Lindsay Hudson Park or others go on his show to refute us, and they say, like, Mormons are just so sex obsessed. And then I see this episode and all they are focused on is the sex, right? And that’s very, I don’t know, interesting and to me, because they are missing all of our arguments. That’s not, that’s not the ground that we argue on. We, we question the sources way before we get to that point, as you’ll see. So, um, so yeah, we wanted to show that. And now, I think that this is an example. Of kind of what we’re talking about with regard to how, um, when Sheryl and I do research, we dive in and spend hours poring over original documents, right? Trying to understand them and then looking at all of the related documents. And this did appear to be like a Google search or a search of ex-Mormon Reddit or whatever sites to say, what quotes do you have? And, and that, that comes across in several of these clips.
[19:15] Julia: So Miranda and Nancy Johnson married Orson Hyde, and he’s one of the apostles on September 4th of 1834. She married Joseph Smith on April of 1842. And then in from a statement from William Arrowsmith, he slept, he’s saying he slept, Joseph Smith slept at his mother-in-law’s house, who was a Mormon when Joseph Smith slept with, oh sorry, hang on, I’m getting my people wrong. He, Orson Hyde, slept at his mother-in-law’s house. Oh my gosh, maybe he is William. um Joseph, Joseph has slept with the Orson Hyde’s wife under the same roof. Sorry, that was a really complicated way. Can you just summarize again. Uh, will you take that? I will say that this is when we talked off and it was confusing. So some man. We’re not sure who, I think it means Orson would sleep at his mother-in-law’s, who is a Mormon, when Joseph slept with Orson’s wife under the same roof. Yeah, sorry about that. So many pronouns. I know. OK, so we have a man claiming that he slept under the same roof of Joseph and sleeping with Mirinda Hyde. Yeah, I mean, that’s, that’s pretty solid. OK,
[20:26] Cheryl Bruno: so many pronouns. There’s one pronoun in there, he. So, um, but the thing is what was interesting was obviously they have not gone to the source to see anything about the source. They know very little about the source. They just have a sentence that they’re reading and that they are analyzing without having gone to the source. If you go to the Source. It’s not Joseph Smith who is sleeping under the same roof with his mother-in-law. It is not Orson Hyde. It is William Arrowsmith. They didn’t get that one, who is sleeping with his mother-in-law who’s John Taylor’s mother. Um, and if you go to the source, you can see that this is not a, this is not a primary source. This is not a secondary source. This is a thirdhand account. It is not, um, it is not Orson Hyde who’s speaking, and it’s not William Smith who’s speaking, it’s John Bos who wrote the book telling about William Aerosmith, telling about Orson Hay and so it’s a, it’s a very we historians don’t like to use these sort sorts of sources, especially if they’re the only source we have of something. Then it’s very difficult to think that this is, um, that this is a good source, but not only do they not recognize this isn’t a good source, they don’t go and look at the source at all. And this is a big, big problem, and especially when people want to make claims about Joseph Smith’s polygamy, you really need to go to the source and see what the pros and cons are of the source that you’re using.
[21:59] Michelle: Yes, it was so interesting to me that they even had an ellipses, right? And they, and they, they had a he and then an ellipses, and then the rest of it, and they couldn’t figure out who the he was. They said they had discussed it, and the thought didn’t even occur to them to look up what the actual source is and what it says. I think that It’s so easy to just get in the habit of finding something online. And one thing I had mentioned to Cheryl that we see coming through in this is like, cherry picking is something that everyone should know, right? It means you only pick the sources that you want that prove your point and you leave everything else on the tree and ignore it. And that is something that historians need to not do. But, but what’s interesting here is that when you research this way and only go to like these searches and find things that people are posting, you don’t even realize that you’re cherry-picking because you don’t even know what the sources are. Like, like, they don’t even know their own sources, let alone what other sources there may be. I don’t want to pick on, you know, I appreciate people doing the research, and I think Julia is very sweet. And, you know, I feel that I don’t want it to be picking on anyone, although they are plenty happy to pick on me. But I, I, we do want to draw attention to why this just is not good research. And when, when you’re setting yourself up to like, show why people are so You know, unbelievable or so, so wrong, you need to do better than this. This is also what I want to tell people, because Sheryl and I have talked about this. When, like, really, they just, one of the reasons I think that they’re responding to the monogamy of firms is because they use the content from my channel, the Keith Erickson fireside. And that was so, um, frustrating to listen to the Keith Erickson fireside because he didn’t share a single source and he just like said things, you know, this feels. exactly the same on the other side. It feels like the same quality of research and presentation. And when people who are questioning, watch the Keith Erickson fireside, they tend to start going, I need to pay more attention to the monogamy of firmers because this is not good evidence. And I want to express that when, when John Dehlin presents information like this, it tends to do the same thing. It will bring people to see, oh my gosh, is that the best that we’ve got.
[24:03] Cheryl Bruno: So yeah, let me just jump right in here and so John and um Julia and Nemo. I’m on the same side as them. I believe that you practice polygamy and so I don’t embarrass me by um you know, picking out these sources that aren’t good sources because we need to find the good sources. We need to show our side of things, um, well, you know, and, and this as we go on, you’ll see um what. The problems are with this presentation and then at the end of the presentation everyone’s gonna have watched it and think oh this is the, you know, this is the scholarly view of it or this is this is how we believe about polygamy but no we can’t depend on I’d say the majority of the sources they use, they do the same thing as here is where they do not look at the go to the actual journal, go to the actual book, go to the actual source and see who is it that’s writing. Um, how credible do they actually say? Yes, right. What did they actually say?
[25:02] Michelle: Yeah, the whole, the whole bit. And so this next little section, so Cheryl and I, we’ve had, we, we actually really debate this topic, sometimes very intensely because we have different perspectives. So I, anyway, we’ll get to some of the points where we do debate. The problem is this This isn’t even in the debate, right? This isn’t even approaching the things that should be debated if we want to get to the bottom of whether Joseph originated polygamy. And so Cheryl that I did have, um, some animated discussions, but it was mostly like, I cannot believe this, right? That those were the phone calls I was getting. So several of the clips that we thought we would include actually come in this next section. It’s about a 7 minute segment. So we’ll just play through it and pause as we go. So we can kind of break down, this is the last part that we’ll do that will be sort of critical of their sources and methodology. And then after that, we’re going to go through, I think, 3 of the wives is what we’ve chosen that we thought we could handle in this episode, and play their evidence and then show the actual evidence and the sources that people need to be aware of. So here comes, here comes this long clip.
[26:06] Cheryl Bruno: Wait,
[26:07] Julia: explain, give a tiny bit of background on the Temple Juliet the Temple lot. Oh, so I’m pretty sure it’s the, the, um, Joseph Smith the Third, what, what do I call that the RLES Church. They were trying to prove that Joseph Smith did not have polygamy, did not have polygamist wives, um, and so they were, these women were brought in to testify. Julie, if I get back up just because never Mormons are, are newly questioning Mormons, I have no idea. So when, when Joseph Smith died. Um, Emma didn’t, Emma hated Brigham Young and didn’t want to go to Utah. So, so Emma stays behind in Navo. Brigham goes to Utah, eventually admits polygamy, but Emma stays behind and denies that polygamy ever happened, which is mind blowing. Um, because now she’s lying, and we don’t know fully why other than maybe she was just embarrassed and hated it, and it’s the reason why her husband was ultimately killed. But regardless, when she starts the church, the reorganized church Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints with her son, Joseph Smith the 3rd as the blood successor to Joseph Smith Junior, they start with the doctrine that the polygamy was Brigham’s thing and that the polygamy never happened.
[27:20] Michelle: Should I pause there
[27:25] Cheryl Bruno: for just a second we will see in this um episode a lot of wild speculation, so that’s what he does wild speculation, but then he goes ahead and gives some pretty bad misinformation.
[27:38] Michelle: Yes.
[27:41] Cheryl Bruno: Do you want to? Yeah,
[27:41] Michelle: we can talk about so much of this. Like, in the beginning, Julia actually did a reasonably OK job just giving the basics of the Temple Lot case until John jumped in to help. And so really quickly on the RLDS church, and I actually have studied the RLDS Church quite a bit because they play into this conversation. But it was not started by Emma Smith. It was not started, that is such, I’m so tired of hearing people say that. Jason Briggs was a member of the church who did not believe in polygamy and did not follow Brigham Young. He had a revelation, I want to say it was in 1851, telling him the church needed to be reorganized. He and Zenus Gurley got together and started the church, and they went to Joseph Smith III because part of the revelation was that it needed to be a descendant of Joseph Smith that would lead the church. And they asked, Joseph Smith
[28:29] Cheryl Bruno: the
[28:30] Michelle: 3rd was only 11 when his father was killed, almost 12, right? And this was a couple of years later, he was still in his teens, I want to say. They went to him several times to ask him, and he wanted to have nothing. No,
[28:41] Cheryl Bruno: he was a young, a young man, um, I’d say in his 20s. Um, I, I’m not sure on that one either, but, um, but it was not, yeah, it was,
[28:50] Michelle: but I know they came from a couple of different. and ask, and he said
[28:53] Cheryl Bruno: no. And William Marks, my guy, um, was finally the one who he when he when Joseph Smith the 3rd finally decided he would take over the reins of the reorganized church, um, he called William Marks and told him, I’m ready to do this. But see, the church was already reorganized when Emma Smith and Joseph Smith the 3rd decided to become involved. And that’s a pretty important point.
[29:16] Michelle: It is very important. And I also want to see, that’s the other thing. Like he talks about Emma denied it. I can’t understand. They have never, like, that’s one thing that has not been brought into this conversation are the RLDS sources. People have no idea of how much Emma Smith said on these different topics. But one thing that she said is that she never encouraged Joseph Smith III one way or the other. She said, That she could not give him any advice. They didn’t want anything to do with organized religion after what had happened. And she said the reason she couldn’t advise him was that she had suffered too much. She said she suffered too much. Emma wasn’t eager to have Joseph Smith III step into the role that his father had, um, had suffered so much, trying to fulfill. And so that’s a really important thing, and you do a real disservice to Emma and Joseph III and the RLDS Church by spreading that false history of it.
[30:09] Julia: And so that’s why the reorganized church is always trying to disprove polygamy, whereas the Mormon Church is forced to always try and uphold polygamy even after it ceased practicing it. Now, where does the Temple Lot thing come in? Now you might know more about the history than I do. I think, I think there’s some contention over some land in Missouri, and I don’t even think it’s a reorganized church that owns that land today. But regardless, subpoenas were being, you know, sort of, uh, affidavits were being collected. is it, can we just say for a legal matter involving real estate, uh, affidavits are being collected about whether or not Joseph indeed had sex with his plural wives, right? OK,
[30:51] Cheryl Bruno: go ahead.
[30:54] Michelle: OK, should we pause there again? Yes, let’s
[30:56] Cheryl Bruno: pause there. I, if you don’t mind, Michelle, I’m gonna put you on the spot for one minute here. Um, I wanna show the audience something, and Michelle doesn’t know I’m gonna do this, but, um, Michelle, can you explain in like I don’t know, 3 or 4 sentences, 4 or 5 sentences. What’s the Temple Lot case was all about?
[31:17] Michelle: Yes. Yeah, you made me nervous. Yes, I could do that. So, well, first of all, can I just say, he, he mentioned affidavits were gathered. So I think he thinks the affidavits that we will talk about as well are related to the Temple Lot case, which they are not at all. So the, the affidavits were gathered, started by Joseph F. Smith, starting in 1869. The Temple Lot case happened in the 1890s, 1892 and 1893, I think the first, um, charge was brought in 1891. So I believe it’s the, um, I get mixed up between the Bickertonites and the hedgeites. I, I’m sorry to say that. I, I believe it’s the hedraites. I think it was the hedgeites cause it was Granville Hedrick, that was the Temple loth. So they, after the dispersion from Missouri, some people stayed there and just owned the temple lot that, that was prophesized to be where the temple would be built for Zion, right? And so they had the temple, and they started, and, and when Joseph Smith III did step into authority in the RLDS Church, he started sending missionaries out to all the dispersed branches and saying, we have the reorganization, the churches that, come and join us. So they went to join to, um, bring the heterites in, and, um, they had started building some pro some a building on that land. So Joseph Joseph Smith III said, We are the true church. That is our land because the church had purchased it and they had just stayed there and kind of squatted on it, I guess. So he brought a lawsuit between the, the hedgeites and the RLDS Church. The Joseph Smith III was saying, we are the, um, the legitimate descendant of the of the LDS Church, and therefore the LDS Church property belongs to our church. That’s what the lawsuit was. And then, since there was this real, um, debate between the LDS Church and the RLDS Church vying for who was actually the, the Successor of Joseph Smith, the LDS Church joined in that, I think they entered an amicus brief, and then they, and they ended up sending a lot of testimony on the side of the Hedrickites. The LDS Church of the Hedrickites had nothing to do with each other. In fact, Granville Hedrick wrote much against Brigham Young and polygamy, but the LDS Church was basically the enemy of my enemy as my friend, and wanted to fight the RLDS Church. And so that that’s why we start getting, that’s why the, the, um, The case kind of became about whether or not Joseph Smith practiced polygamy, right? That’s, that’s what they were, that’s what they kind of started to try. And what people don’t realize is that, so, yes, as a fact, Joseph Smith’s polygamy has been tried in a court of Law in America while several of the supposed wives were still alive to testify and the judge, Judge Phillips, found very solidly in favor of the RLDS Church and did not find the LDS witnesses credible. So if there’s more to this story, but that’s important to know.
[34:06] Cheryl Bruno: So, OK, that was more than 4 or 5 sentences. I think the point I wanted to show here was, I mean, it’s not that easy for um just your average member to tell what the Temple Lot case is all about, right? Um, some people might have a cloudy picture in their mind of what it was, but um, I doubt that very many people know that it was Judge Phillips that, you know, who was. Involved and exactly how it worked and I, I think I just wanted to show that um Michelle is just not someone who is um she is someone who has deeply studied these issues and so even when I kind of spring things on her, she can, she can um tell you pretty much what is happening. Here and and to give you a good overview of what’s happening whereas the three people here that are giving the who should be prepared because they are the ones that are presenting this, you know, have not, have not done their preparation. They do not know what the Temple Lo case is they have a very, very cloudy, um, view of it in their minds so um. I just, I, I did want to make that point because people are often saying that the monogamy of firmers really don’t have um a real good grasp of what the situation is and um actually that’s not the case. Um, they do, they Have a better, at least Michelle, who I’m very familiar with Michelle’s grasp of the situation, and it is very strong. I could ask her a number of different questions, um, that most people would not be able to expand on, and she has that at the tip of her fingers.
[35:47] Michelle: My challenge is not saying too much. I’m sorry that I went on
[35:49] Julia: a little too much, but
[35:51] Michelle: it’s fascinating information.
[35:52] Julia: So we’ll continue,
[35:54] Michelle: we’ll continue on with this clip.
[35:56] Julia: Yeah, so, OK, right, I’ll do my best, uh, interrogatory voice. So this is, this is, is this an affidavit? This Q&A comes from. Yeah, so Eliza is giving her testimony and she’s being quite, or excuse me, Emily is Joseph’s 19 wife being questioned in a Q&A as a part of a legal matter.
[36:17] Michelle: OK, so there they start reading through, um, Emily’s Temple Lot affidavit, and I actually I’m going to, we’re going to cover that in a different episode, so we won’t go into it. I just wanted to see that it’s a legal matter, it’s a, you know, just the, the, um, limited understanding of what it. they were actually reading and I,
[36:36] Cheryl Bruno: I will confusion with affidavits. He keeps saying affidavits. He’s not sure whether affidavits were used here or not, what exactly this questioning is, you know, how the Temple at case was conducted.
[36:49] Michelle: Right, right. It’s, it’s really, it’s really important because the section of the Temple Lot of, of Emily’s testimony they choose, I, it’s also so apparent to me that I have not read through all of Emily’s Temple Lot testimony, which you absolutely need to do to be able to understand it and speak, um, It’s convincingly or intelligently about it, and, and that became pretty obvious. So I think there’s more to this clip so we’ll continue on
[37:13] Julia: the 6 are all ones just so people have it in their mind. The next 6 are all ones the Mormon Church agrees upon because how could they not?
[37:23] Michelle: So just to fill you in, the green highlighted ones are ones that they say that that the LDS Church, well, they’re having Brian Hailes be a stand-in for the LDS Church, but they’re saying that Brian Hays agrees that there is evidence of sexuality with these women.
[37:38] Julia: Right? How could they, how could they argue? Um, OK, so let’s do Eliza Partridge. So this is Eliza now. So Benjamin F. Johnson wrote in 1903 that the first plural wife brought to my house, with whom the prophet stayed was Eliza Partridge, after which he was there with my sister, Elmira as his wife. So yeah, just another, she’s staying, they’re at a different person’s house and he’s staying with Eliza. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. Even Nemo was willing to concede that one.
[38:10] Michelle: I just want to pause for a second here and notice the source, Benjamin F. Johnson. I want to take just a minute and go into this because this is the number one thing I tell most people who jump on to try to refute is, please pay attention to your sources. You have to know who it is that is saying what, what you are quoting to know how valuable it is.
[38:30] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, so I mean, pretty straightforward, uh, pretty straightforward, um. It’s, it’s too glib because we have to look at that this was written in 1903, um, you know, and, and the motivations that Benjamin F. Johnson may have had, um, all these kinds of things come into play and so pretty straightforward. I wouldn’t say that Benjamin F. Johnson is pretty straightforward of
[38:59] Michelle: a source, right.
[39:01] Julia: You know, I, I’m thinking maybe we, maybe we should have one of these polygamy deniers on and just literally go through this PowerPoint with them and have them explain away each, each one of these slides. Sure, if you can just share the whole thing with them. All right, let’s go ahead and
[39:20] Michelle: OK, so that was hilarious for a number of reasons. As I said, he’s already engaged with me. I’ve engaged with John many times over the years. And, um, and I wanted to play this little clip, Cheryl, because this made me laugh watching. These are the last two weeks of lives that John did and how he is trying to navigate this. I know that when he had Lindsey Hanson Park on, um, a while ago, and I did a response to that, to that episode, a couple of Responses because it was so troubling to me, the way that, um, they talked about several things. But, um, in that one, she, they also did not say my name, and they said, We can’t give this any oxygen. So that seems to be the same, um, strategy they’re following. So this is my response to this, because John, the week before he did that last one, he was engaging with Cheryl, and they were coming up with the things we could debate, right? He knows exactly who I am. So this, this is my fun little clip.
[40:19] Julia: I want to just have Gerardo explain to us why he had the idea for today’s episode and what we’re gonna be doing today. So, Gerardo. Yeah, so, um, I came up on, on these, on the video or the recording of this fireside, uh, on the YouTube channel 132 Problems, and they did a response, you know, based on their understanding or their belief that Joseph Smith did not practice polygamy. Um, so on the polygamy part and she posted the entire video, so that’s kind of where I watched it. And I thought what was interesting about it, it, well, first of all, it’s kind of um not very uh so it’s a YouTube channel from um my goodness, what’s what’s her name? uh Michelle is the polygamy denier Michelle Stone? Yes, OK.
[41:13] Michelle: I am loving watching them try to pretend they don’t know my name, right? And trying to all uncomfortably, I, I, I’m glad they at least acknowledged where they got the source, but that was funny. And it goes on from there. This that was from, um, to the, the first one, and here’s from next week, the the next weeks.
[41:31] Julia: And I’ll just mention, I was watching a YouTube channel the other day of these polygamy deniers. Apparently, according to this YouTube channel, people are starting to get excommunicated for denying Joseph Smith’s polygamy. And, and again, that’s if the YouTube show I saw is accurate, but I did it, it’s on a, it’s on a channel who we all know who the, the person is. I don’t like to say the name because I don’t like to spread conspiracy theories. All right. Really quickly going back to uh Josephine and Sylvia, Dan Vogel tells us just the explanations that um 11 sex denier um basically says that um it would have been pres prestigious.
[42:17] Cheryl Bruno: And so now, now, Michelle, now you’re a sex denier.
[42:21] Michelle: Now I’m a sex denier, and this was so funny when that happened. This was the comment, one of the comments, Stone, the year stone told us. It’s so funny how he tried to do that. So my husband told me I had to include this clip. Brian Hailes used to do this to me too. He, he would always say, I won’t say their name. I won’t say their names. So my husband told me about this then, so I’m gonna use it for John cause it’s so funny. You all know exactly who I am. Say my name. Do what? Uh,
[42:52] Cheryl Bruno: I don’t have a damn clue what the hell you are. Yeah, you do now. Say my name. Say my name. OK. So I, I really, this is one reason why I am here today because people are so scared um of having monogamy affirmers speak their piece or to even mention, I don’t even want to mention her name. What is the scary thing about mentioning her name, um, and why are you so Why, why is it so scary to just ask because over and over again in this episode, he says, I don’t understand why they don’t, I don’t understand what they’re all about. Why don’t you have them on and tell you, why don’t you ask your questions to the actual person? And so when, when Michelle and I had um asked John if we could come on his channel and he actually did tell me yes we could. And um and then instead of having a son, he um instead did this little thing and pretended like he didn’t know um who Michelle was. And then, of course, my name is not in there at all either, so he doesn’t even bring me into the thing at all when he, when I was the one who he said, yes, we’ll have you on, but then did not and instead came up with Julia. Um, who I’d like to know her last name as well because, um, you know, I mean this is a person who I’m not gonna put Julia down. She has a YouTube channel. She’s very successful. She’s, uh, she’s very well spoken, but she is not a historian and she does not know the historical method. She’s not, um, she’s not showing. Good research here and Michelle, if he had had Michelle on, she could have shown much better research and the reasons actually she could tell you the reasons why monogamy affirmers believe the way they do. So if you want to know why monogamy affirmers believe the way they do, please say their name and have them on and ask them. I mean you don’t have any problem with having someone on there who you don’t, other people that you don’t agree with on there. He’s got all kinds of people who he doesn’t agree with on there. But why are polygamy, why are monogamy affirmers so different that we can’t let them speak for themselves.
[45:21] Michelle: That, thank you. That is such an excellent point. It is so strange because it does feel like people are scared of this topic. If I’m as ridiculous as you claim, then have me on and embarrass me, right? Show, show how ridiculous I am. Otherwise, it becomes very apparent that you are protecting a narrative at the expense of good documentation, good argumentation, good sources, and truth. And that is Exactly, again, what people decry when the church does it. And so to see these other groups doing it is very interesting. If, no matter what you believe, we should want to have good sources and, and to know that we are making good arguments and not embarrassing ourselves. And then let the, you know, what does it do, what is right, let the consequence follow us now what John always quotes, right? Like, like, let’s get the truth, and, and no one has to. Change their views on much of anything. Let’s just figure out what the documentation shows and then go from there. So, OK, I’ll continue with. So
[46:21] Cheryl Bruno: it’s gonna be really hard for us here because as he said, oh we should get somebody on there who can, you know, tell us about all these wives. Well, um, we could actually go through each one of the wives and we, we’ll probably do other episodes where Michelle will do some episodes on other wives and I’ll join her in um talking about. Otherwise it’s very difficult because we can respond to each one of these wives. We can talk about why their little cherry-picked quote that they have up there um is problematic. And so um once they see this, I hope, I hope that they’ll realize that this is a this is a topic that needs to be addressed rather than just pushed under the rug.
[47:05] Michelle: That’s so and, and I need to remind everyone. That Cheryl is a polygamy affirmer. What would have been so much more interesting is what John’s initial idea was when Cheryl reached out. The third time that John said he would have me on, when, um, he said, could you and Michelle have a debate? And so Cheryl and I could have come on and debated relevant topics because
[47:26] Cheryl Bruno: I actually came up with a proposal for him talking about the three things that we would debate that we talked that we would talk about, and we would show, you know, what this movement is all about.
[47:36] Michelle: Right. And, and that’s what’s so unfortunate is that Cheryl is on your side, and yet she is now sitting with me refuting everything you showed because it was not good. So, OK, we’ll continue.
[47:47] Julia: Go on to the second slide with Eliza Partridge. So this is Benjamin F. Johnson again. I’m pretty sure this is a year later. In 1904, he says, I saw one of my sisters married to him and know that with her, he occupied my house on May 16th and 17th of 1843. Which he had occupied with Eliza Partridge, another plural wife, on the 2nd of the previous month. So he’s acknowledging here two different women, um, his sister, um, and then Eliza. Was that Marinda? Yeah, I think so.
[48:15] Cheryl Bruno: It was Elmira,
[48:16] Michelle: OK, yeah it was Elmira. Mirinda is not the the sister of Benjamin Johnson.
[48:22] Julia: And the Mormon Church, uh, acknowledges this one. So this is an obvious yes.
[48:29] Michelle: So I was going to pause here to go to Benjamin F. Johnson, but we’ll, we’ll go through a mirror first, and then I’ll do, we can do both.
[48:35] Julia: That’s now 21 Elmira Johnson. Um, do you want to read this one, In Elmira W. Johnson’s affidavit, this is a legal proceeding, uh, dated August 1st, 188. Cheryl,
[48:50] Michelle: should we pause on that, the legal proceeding quickly? Do you want to, want to talk about an affidavit? Because that is relevant to what we are talking about.
[48:58] Cheryl Bruno: OK, so do we want to talk about the 1869 and 1970 affidavits?
[49:04] Michelle: Yes, because I think that people need to understand John is is mixing up the affidavits and the Temple Lot case, which is a huge, huge misunderstanding that really matters. And, um, so you go ahead and talk about this.
[49:18] Cheryl Bruno: I just say that this is one of the things that I had an understanding of that I’ve changed my mind in the last um year or so. My understanding was that we had a group of affidavits that Joseph F. Smith collected that were like knocked down, you know, let’s listen to the women because the women have all um put together affidavits saying that they lived polygamy. So what it is is it is a series of books that Joseph F. Smith kept in 1869 and 1870. Um, but we, but when I looked into them and Michelle points. Out that no one really has done research on or no one has given us a great understanding of exactly what these affidavit books are, how they were kept, etc. and um what we’ve realized is that uh and and we are going to write a book on this because we feel that there is a dearth of explanation about these affidavit books and people need to understand what they are. But just real quickly, in 1869 and 1870. What Joseph F. Smith did was he wrote a boilerplate, uh, like a template for the women saying, I, and then he’d put a blank met before this, um, notary public on, you know, such and such a day, and I was married and sealed to Joseph Smith
[50:39] Michelle: or sealed. They all say married or sealed, which is ridiculous language.
[50:43] Cheryl Bruno: Smith on such and such a date in the city of Navvo signed, you know. And then he’d leave another blank and so apparently what he was doing was he was um filling these in either having the women come and fill them in and then sign them. Um it looks like he was um he was putting the appeared before me, James Jack Justice of the peace. He was putting that all in without having an actual justice of the peace there until later to sign those. And so um he was, he was um he was making these. And some of them ended up getting signed by the women, some did not. They don’t tell the women’s stories, they just say, I was married or sealed to Joseph Smith on such and such a date. Some have a date, some don’t have some have a year, you know, so they weren’t all filled in and so it’s very interesting to look at them and we are going over each one in our book to talk about is this um is this actually the signature of the woman, um, and how this was collected and when. And then there are a series of affidavits that are also included in a folder with these books, which were not collected by Joseph F. Smith, but people want to lump in to the Joseph F. Smith affidavits. Joseph F. Smith finished taking his affidavits in 1870, and then there’s others that come in from the 1880s and from even like the early 19. 15 right done by other people and they’re just putting them all into this folder and then we can kind of lump them together into the Joseph F. Smith affidavits. So there’s not a good understanding of what the affidavits are, who they were given by, who they were taken by. That’s there’s not a good understanding there.
[52:30] Michelle: And, and my guess is that this the the the. Presenters in this episode we’re responding to wouldn’t have even known that Joseph F. Smith collected the affidavits, right, because they just think that they’re with the Temple lot. So there’s a lot to understand. When, whenever we are told, believe the women, this is what they’re talking about are these affidavits which are so essential to understand. So I do want to say, Cheryl and I have already written an academic paper that has been through peer review and will be released on the Journal of Mormon Polygamy. Any time now, as soon as as soon as it’s released where we are, so I disagree with you a little bit, Cheryl, that that Joseph F stopped after 1870 because we do have some affidavits that he was working on coming out after that, and that’s one of the affidavits that we’re responding to in our journal article that’s actually the affidavit of William Clayton, and I think people are really amazed, amazed by what we are talking about in that journal article. So we’ll put the link to it below, and I think people should pay attention. And also look forward to that book coming out, because people do not understand. So, I’ll go ahead with a little more of this clip, and then I actually have an affidavit to show just as one of many examples.
[53:36] Julia: She said, quote, I had been fearing and doubting about the principle. This is how Mormons and fundamentalist Mormons refer to polygamy, about the principle, and so had he, but he now knew it was true. After this, and I wonder who, who she’s talking about when she said I think she’s talking to Joseph that Joseph had doubts too. Uh-huh, I’m sure he was just Joseph was torn up about this principle, just totally conflicted. I just can’t. I just, please, angel, please don’t make me. I can’t do it. I don’t wanna do it. Don’t make me do it. Sorry, um, after this, sorry, OK.
[54:17] Cheryl Bruno: No, first
[54:18] Julia: of all, I
[54:18] Cheryl Bruno: have to just say that he is taking, well, go back to that slide. He first of all, they don’t even know who
[54:25] Julia: he again
[54:27] Cheryl Bruno: pronoun he, he doesn’t even know who he was. He doesn’t know that this is Joseph Smith, and then he continues now he’s gonna speculate and tell us and put some words in Joseph Smith’s mouth when he. He doesn’t, he has not been to that affidavit, which now this affidavit is taken by Joseph F. Smith’s son, Joseph Fielding Smith and published in Blood Atonement, right? And so this is this
[54:50] Michelle: was one of, no, this was Joseph F. Smith’s affidavit. They don’t even know to go to the original affidavit. They only go to Blood Atonement. So it was published in Blood Atonement by Joseph Fielding Smith, but it is one of Joseph F. Smith’s affidavits.
[55:01] Cheryl Bruno: OK, we’ll have to, um, we’ll have to argue that later. OK. But this is one of the affidavits that is, I think, coming from the women’s voice. Now here we hear the woman’s voice, right? This is not one of the affidavits Joseph S. Smith took with the boilerplate, right?
[55:18] Michelle: No, it wasn’t a boilerplate.
[55:19] Cheryl Bruno: We do, so we do hear Elmira’s voice here, um, so. That’s good, but when he’s when he says that he and he doesn’t know who it is, he’s not, and then, and then he just speculates wildly. I have a real problem with that. I have a big huge problem with that. So don’t speculate about when you don’t even know who that is.
[55:41] Michelle: Yeah, taking that opportunity to be so offensive when he’s not correct. It’s not Joseph Smith, as we’ll show in just a second. And so it, it is, it’s like, this, this shows the bias there. If there’s any chance to really push this narrative in this way, they will take it. So, OK, I’ll continue on.
[56:01] Julia: I lived with the prophet Joseph Smith and his wife and his wife, and he visited me at my home. Hm. Um, of my brother Benjamin F at Macedonia. What does it mean that Elmira says she was living with Joseph and Emma? Does that mean Emma was OK with this sometimes? Uh, or that because Joseph has the pattern of he lives with these women, whether that’s at his house or he’s at their house, and then he’s like, oh, in my view, I want to marry this woman, and then he eventually does. And so that that could have been what she meant there. Um, I, I don’t know. OK,
[56:38] Cheryl Bruno: so did you catch that? the wording says after this time I lived with the prophet Joseph Smith as his wife, and John has misread this to say I lived with the prophet Joseph Smith and his wife. And then they’re gonna go off on another round of speculation talking about um whether they’re living with Joseph Smith and his wife and all the women that lived with Joseph Smith and his wife, and it’s, it’s a very poor misreading of the affidavit when they just and, and that’s the problem is these affidavits are often done in handwriting. You have to go back to the handwriting. First of all, you have to see is the person who did the transcription. Writing the correct thing, and then am I reading it the correct way? And I mean, it’s very, it’s a very, um, a very involved process that we have to go in before we can just make wild speculations.
[57:32] Michelle: Right? And this was amazing to see them misread it. Well, first of all, not know who he is, who it’s talking about, and go off on that. And then, based on a misreading, go on to all of the explanation of what, of how that makes sense. OK, so why don’t we go ahead and look at the actual affidavit that they are talking about, which these are available online in multiple places. They’re not that hard to find. This is just one example we’ll show of Elmira Johnson’s affidavit, and you can see a bit of what we’re talking about. Be it remembered on this blank. Space left and they write in first. It’s in a blue ink when the original affidavit is written in black. Um, day of August 1880, 1883 personally appeared before me. John W. Brown, a notary public in in Forset County, Elmira W. Johnson, they have to add her initial in. And then I’m just going to go ahead and go to the second. Page right here so we can read what they were talking about on a certain occasion in the spring of the year 1843, the exact date which I do not now recollect, I went from Macedonia to Navu to visit another of my of my sisters, the one who was the widow of, is that Lyman R. Sherman, I believe. Um, deceased, at which time I was sealed to the Prophet Joseph Smith. At the time this took place, Hiram Smith, Joseph’s brother, came to me and said, I need not be afraid. I had been fearing and doubting about the principle, and so had he, but he now knew it was true. So
[59:08] Cheryl Bruno: we have Hiram, and they have no clue that Hiram is even a part of this affidavit, because they haven’t gone to the affidavit.
[59:16] Michelle: Right. And you can see the, the different pen and that, right, it is Hirum, that is the heat. And can I just take a minute to show why that’s relevant? Because that’s actually a really important fact, because this is the spring of 1843. So I think that we just dated April or May is how is what wedding dates she’s usually given for Joseph Smith. And I just want to show these two sources. This is Levi Richard. Levi Richard’s diary, and it has a sermon that Hiram Smith gave on May 14, 1843. So near the end of that window. And is it OK if I go ahead and read part of this? Because I think it’s so important. So May 14th, this is Levi Richard’s journal, which apparently the church historians either didn’t have, didn’t know about, or just chose not to use. It says May 14th, attended meeting at the temple a.m. in the morning. Hiram Smith addressed the people. The subject was the Book of Mormon, 2nd chapter of Jacob, remarked that the Book of Mormon was a mirror, a key to the Bible, said that there were many that had a great deal to say about the ancient order of things, as Solomon and David having many wives and concubines, but it’s an abomination in the sight of God. If an angel From heaven should come and preach such doctrine, you would be sure to see his cloven foot and cloud of blackness around his head, though his garments might shine as white as snow. A man might have one wife, concubines he should have none. And then Hyrum went on to observe that the idea was that this was given to Jacob for a perpetual principle. And so that’s interesting right there that Hiram is using the Book of Mormon to preach against polygamy. That source I haven’t seen used by, um, I at least I haven’t seen used in the conversations, except by The monogamy affirmers, and then I’ll just share one more source that I want to show that I’ve gone into depth on my podcast, uh, uh, often, that, um, every monogamy affirmer knows this source. And this is so interesting. This Hirum gave a sermon at a special elders conference that he called for this purpose on April 8, 1844. And what is fascinating is that we have, now that the Joseph Smith papers are here, we have the original. Notes of the sermon taken by Thomas Bullock. I’m sure he took it in shorthand and then transcribed it into these notes that we have. And I can show you just a little bit what the notes look like. I probably need to blow it up for you to be able to see it. It’s, it’s a little bit hard to read, but Hiram gave a sermon. So April 8th, 1844 is just what is that? Two months before he died, he was killed, right? April, May, June? Yeah, just two months before he was killed. And, um, and I’ll read to you part of what he said. And why this is so interesting is because, well, I’ll, I’ll come back to the screen in just a minute. I’ll go ahead and read it first. This, um, sermon was included in the draft history. So when the historians created the history for the church, they first made a draft, and then they came up with a finalized history. And we haven’t been able to see the original notes or the draft until we had the Joseph Smith papers. And you can see the original notes of the sermon, the draft history where the sermon was included, but changed. They all, that’s something that we see happening all the time. We have the original notes and then we have changes made to make it pro polygamy when it wasn’t pro polygamy before, but even then it was still cut out of the final history. So this was erased from history by the polygamist church historians. So let me go ahead and read this, um, just a portion of the sermon that Hiram Smith gave to this special conference of elders. He said, one reason I speak to the elders is in consequence of the 10,000 reports from abroad. Almost every man runs to me, to, to him, but to me, to Hiram, to inquire if things are true, how many spiritual wives a man may have. I know nothing about it. What he might call spiritual spiritual wife, I should, I know nothing about. In about a half an hour after that man was gone, another would begin. The elders tell such things all over the country. I am authorized to tell you from henceforth that any man who comes in and tells any such damn fool doctrine. To take away his license, none but a fool teaches such stuff. The devil himself is not such a fool. Every elder who teaches such stuff ought to have his nose rung. His name will be published, and if found guilty, his license shall be taken. I wish the elders of Israel to understand it is lawful for a man to marry a wife, but it is unlawful to have more, and God has not commanded anyone to have more. And I want to remind everyone he. was speaking this to the elders. This wasn’t going out abroad to other people. He had called all of the 12 and all of the elders in to hear this sermon just a few months before he killed. He was killed. He said, And if any of you dare to presume to do any such thing, it will spoil your fun for you, for you will never preach the gospel. I despise a man who teaches a pack of stuff that will disgrace himself so. For a man to go into the world and talk of the spiritual wife system, a man An empty as empty as an open sepulcher. If the coat suits anyone, let him put it on. I would call the devil my brother before such a man. He goes on to say, Get the wife that God and your country let you have. And if any brother hears any person preach such stuff, wring his nose. I give the sisters leave to wring his nose, who teaches such stuff. I’ll bear you out in it. Give him justice. If I can’t get you clear, WW Phelps. The Constitutional Congress can. Every man that knows me knows that I have taught these same principles from the beginning. And he goes on to explain that in order to gather the good people, that the, um, it requires the elders to have purity and be virtuous. We are in a different dispensation. It is the honest and pure that will hearken to the everlasting covenant. They are those that are the noble and good. We want the honest in heart, the virtue. the noble. We want the good seed gathered here. Let all men repent, and the elders gather out the good seed and bring it to Navu. We want you to understand that if you preach anything wrong, you will be published. We don’t want bogus makers, counterfeitfeiters, or preachers of the spiritual life system preach principles that will stand the test of time, teach them good principles, and save souls. And now, why that is so, that that is important for a number of reasons. And I’m sure Many of us can debate it, but these are the sources that have never been included. But we have Hiram Smith saying this to the elders of the church, and no one’s certain terms, and what’s fascinating is that the RLDS Church had records of this sermon, but the LDS Church always told them that they were wrong, that they were lying about it. In the RLDS records, some of them said that Hiram told the women to stab a man if he does this, right? There are different versions of it. So it’s really important that we bring all of this out onto the table that people have just never seen and never heard.
[1:06:17] Cheryl Bruno: OK, so now you’ve talked a long time and I’m, now I’m gonna talk a long time. So, um, so I guess for the audience, um, what, what, um, Michelle’s point is that if Elmira, Elmira is saying in her affidavit that the ceiling was done by Hiram Smith, then he would have had to by the spring of 1844 to have accepted 43 have accepted, sorry, um, have accepted polygamy by the spring of 1843. is right before the Revelation 132 came out and he would have had accepted that and then um then because she has um many instances of Hiram preaching against polygamy, she says that we need to on our side, we need to um somehow make that um like explain that. Why would Hiram be um preaching against polygamy? And I agree, I think that um some of these things that the monogamy. Farmers are bringing out our questions that are honest questions that we have to answer as historians. Um, that one I feel like is a pretty easy one to answer because Hiru is preaching to a group of elders and telling them that they can’t go out and preach this, right? And so this is something he’s telling them not to if you see any elder preaching this, then wring his nose, you know, if your sisters see any any anyone preaching this, and this is one of the things that Shell and I kind of get into because she reads some of these um documents a certain way and I’ll say, no, polygamy was something that they were keeping back. They didn’t want to preach it publicly to the world yet. So this makes sense with, you know, kind of the narrative of, um, of Hiram Smith telling elders, a group of elders, not to preach this publicly. And I have no problem with that.
[1:08:10] Michelle: That’s great. And I would push back, but we’re not gonna have this. Debate right now, we’ll save that for our late night phone calls where we yell at each other because it’s really fun to get it and debate these things. But these are the kinds of debates that should be being had, right? Not what they were referencing. And then I did want to go into just one more thing that they went over with the, um, Eliza Snow and also the Elmira, and that’s Benjamin F. Johnson. But actually, before I go to Benjamin F. Johnson, I have to bring this affidavit up again because I spoke too soon and just assumed this was a Joseph F. Smith affidavit. And looking at the,
[1:08:43] Cheryl Bruno: this is not the handwriting of Joseph F. Smith, so it, it seems to have been the boilerplate was done by another hand. I’m not sure quite um. Yeah,
[1:08:55] Michelle: right, I assumed it was because it had the same problems with the boilerplate wording and the blanks. But then as we look at the, the, so, so I just, I, I’m willing to say I spoke, um, out of an assumption that I hadn’t studied enough. So I’m glad that Cheryl pushed back on me. And we are
[1:09:09] Cheryl Bruno: affidavits really do need to be looked at and, um, and really analyzed because they are, um, it makes a difference. Whether Joseph Smith did them, um, the ones that he did were not the voices of the women. This seems to have taken a little bit more of the voice of the women into account, um, but it’s much, much later. It’s much, it’s much later. 1880, what did you say? 1883.
[1:09:34] Michelle: And it does still follow the troubling patterns that we see in the Joseph F. Smith affidavit. So that’s why the somewhere in between what we were saying, and that’s why we are writing this book so that we Will really, with our different perspectives, dive in and make sure that we are giving a truly fair and balanced handling of these affidavits. But I did want to show some things because they relied so much on Benjamin F. Johnson. And that is, and again, interesting. You have to research the sources that you were looking at. So I’ll really quickly just introduce Benjamin F. Johnson. He was a great big huge polygamy. He had, I believe, 7. He married 7 women and many of them were teenage brides, and he had 49 children. The youngest girl he married, his second to last wife was Susan Holman, and she was 15, not yet 15.5, and he was approaching 40, and he had 8 children with her. The first one was born less than a year after marriage. And so, and then 2 months after marrying her, he married another 17-year-old Sarah Jane Spooner. So Um, so that is something to consider, is that the polygamists were very invested in defending polygamy. And when I heard John at one point and some of the others say, Why would they lie? And I, I am baffled by that because we have so many accounts where, um, John and I think others in his perspective would think that early members of the church were lying, right? Like, for example, I can just think of the example of the transfiguration of Brigham Young, and we have so many accounts of that, right? And faith promoting stories that get told decades later. It’s interesting to me that this, that John and and and his listeners tend to disregard all of those and just think they’re lying except when it comes to polygamy, and then they are absolutely only telling the truth. That’s an interesting thing. So I just want to show a couple of, um, a couple of things. So this is the source that they are quoting for this. It’s an, it’s a, um, 1904 letter, and this, we, all we have is the copy, a letter that Benjamin F. Johnson wrote. And, um, I’m, I, I need to do a deep dive into Benjamin F. Johnson to feel, um, more. qualified to speak about him more completely, but these are some things to know. He was very, very motivated to have, sorry, I’m trying to get it to the right size, to have Joseph Smith be a polygamist. But this is interesting to read. So his first testimonies start coming out at this point, and he says in reading reports from Senate committee on the Reed Smoot case, so again, the Reed Smoot hearing is another thing people need to know about. I see that witnesses are subpoenaed to prove that the Prophet Joseph Smith did not authorize or practice polygamy. And as I do know that he did teach plural marriage and that he did give me a plural wife who was still living with me and that I saw one of my sisters married to him and know that with her, he occupied the same bed at my house on May 16th and 17th, 1843. The bed he had occupied with Eliza Partridge, another plural wife, on the 2nd of the previous month. So I won’t go into this a bunch more right now, but there are some things, oops, I did something wrong. There, um, there are some things that I want to show that I think are important, so we can look at the claims he made. He said that Joseph Smith gave him his first wife and that he was still, um, living with her. And this was, um, he wrote. This letter in 1904. So already looking into those initial claims, we see some big problems. Joseph Smith could not have given, Benjamin F. Johnson a plural wife because he did not marry his second wife, his first plural wife, until 4.5 months after Joseph was killed. He married Mary Ann Hale, who was his first polygamist wife. No. November 14, 1844. And in addition, according to the census records, she was not living with him in 1904. We can see the 1880 census records, and he’s still living with five of his wives. One had passed away, his first wife had died, and then one of his wives had left him, but he was still living with 5 of his wives. But in the 1900 census records, I’ll go ahead and show this. You can see right here. Um, let me see if I can blow it up just a little bit. Oh it’ll come into focus. You can see right here we have Don C. Babbitt, and he’s the head of household. We have his wife, Melissa, and then three daughters, and then we have Benjamin F. Johnson, his father-in-law. So in the 1900 in the 1900, Benjamin F. Johnson is not living with any of his wives, and I wasn’t able to find, um, other, um, census records of his wives. I looked. So I’m not saying that this is absolutely definitive, more work could be done and there’s more to study out on Benjamin F. Johnson. I’m just saying this is why you need to be careful with the 1904 source. It’s very, um, very problematic to use that with like, well, that does it, no questions asked. Right.
[1:14:27] Cheryl Bruno: So the problem is the problem with John and his friends, um, using that, um, just that little clip from the, from that letter. Is that Benjamin F. Johnson is saying, you know, my sister slept with Joseph Smith, but then he’s also saying, oh, Joseph Smith, give me my second wife, and then we find out Joseph Smith had already passed away when he took his second wife. And so there’s a little bit of, uh, you know, a misremembering there from old Benjamin F. Johnson. So, um, what is he misremembering? Is he only misremembering Date of his marriage to his wife, or could he also be misremembering things that he’s saying about his sisters. So when we have that problem within a single source, then we do have to be very careful about we can’t say, oh, that’s straightforward, isn’t it? That’s pretty, that’s pretty obvious. We do have to say this is a late source. Here are the problems with it. It’s very irresponsible not to show the problems with it. And to just take it because people that are listening to this podcast now are gonna say, oh well, Benjamin Jeff Johnson said, you know, um, and they don’t even realize there’s any kind of difficulty with that source.
[1:15:39] Michelle: That’s excellent. And I will say Benjamin F. Johnson is another one like Joseph Bates Noble, who, he’s a huge source. He he said quite a few things, and Benjamin F. Johnson is the only source for many of the claims. He’s the only source for, um, Delcina being married to Joseph Smith. He’s also the only Source for Eliza Snow having sex with Joseph Smith. So there are a lot of questions that rely only on these sources that um they need to be, I agree with you, um,
[1:16:06] Cheryl Bruno: so I hate to say this because I love Benjamin F. Johnson as a source and I use Benjamin F. Johnson as a source and um so it’s hard for me to not want to use him as a source, but if we use him as a source, it’s very irresponsible not to make it clear that this is, you know, this, this is a light source and here are the problems with it, but. Um, but these are the things that we have to, historians, we have to now grapple with, you know, Brian has come out with the foundation telling us about the source, but now we have um others who now are pushing back on this and so now. We have to respond to this. We have to say, well, it’s, um, you know, we have another source that corroborates it or something we have to respond and give our response of why we still use this as a valid source and um it’s very um. It’s, I think it’s something that we need to be doing and working on continually, and we can’t just say, we can’t just rest on the laurels of Brian Hailes anymore.
[1:17:08] Michelle: I agree. And I think that it will make everybody’s work better. I like, like those on my side, we have to do such hard work because we are fighting against the standard narrative, right? The dominant. Narrative. And so making the historians work a little harder will be good as well. And at the very least, if people want to keep using Benjamin F. Johnson, there at least shouldn’t be this idea of, oh my gosh, those stupid monogamy affirmers, they just don’t know the sources and they just can’t handle it. That is not, that is not an accurate response. So
[1:17:38] Cheryl Bruno: I would say that. You know we’ve shown that the monogamy farmers know the sources better than the others who are using the standard narrative and so that’s the problem we need to know the sources just as well so that we can be um at the at the level that everyone else is at. We can’t fall behind. We need to keep up with the research.
[1:17:59] Michelle: Yes, this is why we’re starting the journal. And it is, and it’s true because Benjamin F. Johnson is one of so many examples of sources that we are digging into. So I’ll go ahead with the next clip, if that’s all right. And this is an interesting one, because, uh, I think this is where we get into Eliza Snow, and this is a fun one to dig into as well.
[1:18:17] Julia: 14, uh, is someone whose name I would have heard growing up, Eliza R. Snow, not as Joseph’s plural wife, but as a poet and, you know, a leader in In the church is where it gets interesting. Yeah, so there’s a story here. I will, I’ll have one of you guys read it because it’s, it’s a, this is probably one of the most interesting stories. There’s a lot of people that say this story never happened. I disagree from a historical perspective and I’ll explain why, but um N Nemo, do you want to read this story? Yeah, sure. Perhaps the best known account that would indicate sexual relations between Joseph Smith and Eliza R. Snow comes from Charles C. Rich. Chelsea and Rich called at the mansion house, Navvo to go with the prophet on some appointment they had together. As he waited in the main lobby or parlor, he saw the prophet and Emma come out of a room upstairs and walk together toward the stairway, which apparently came down center. Almost at the same time, a door opposite opened, and dainty little dark-haired Eliza R. Sno, brackets she was heavy with child, came out and walked towards the center stairway. When Joseph saw her, he turned and kissed Emma goodbye, and she remained standing at the banister. Joseph then walked onto the stairway, where he tenderly kissed Eliza, and then came down on stairs towards Brother Rich. Just as he reached the bottom step, there was a commotion on the stairway. And both Joseph and Brother Rich turned quickly to see Eliza come tumbling down the stairs. Emma had pushed her in a fit of rage and jealousy. She stood at the top of the stairs, glowering, her countenance a picture of hell. Joseph quickly picked up the little lady, and with her in his arms, he turned and looked up at Emma, who then burst into tears and ran to her room. Joseph carried the hurt and bruised Eliza up the stairs and to her room. Her hip was injured, and that is why she always afterward favored that leg, said Charles C. Rich. She lost the unborn babe. So the allegation by a totally credible pioneer founding Mormon, who is known all over, you know, let’s just say Cash Valley or I don’t know if it’s Southern Utah, Cash Valley, but I’m always hearing his name is like a really important founding Mormon pioneer, Charles C. Rich. He’s saying that Joseph knocked up Eliza Snow, Emma found out, got mad, knocked her down the stairs, and she lost the baby. And I Go, go ahead, Julie. I was gonna say maybe not found out because if she’s living in the mansion house, Emma, there’s no way she wouldn’t have known unless her pregnancy was um not as far along. But yeah, I guess I, yeah, she’s at least seeing heavy. I, I, yeah, that, that, that added word makes me feel like Emma would have already known, um, and just couldn’t handle it anymore. Maybe it was seeing it in front of her face with the kiss was the thing that sent her over the edge. Right. Got it. Yeah, OK. And you’ve got a video about this. Yeah, so this is a video I made, um, exploring the Novo Relief Society Min book, um, I’ll explain in the video, but, um, it just makes me, because a lot of people discredit the story of, uh, Emma pushing Eliza down the stairs. I’ve been to the Navvo Mansion House. Um, it, I don’t know why people would say that that’s not the case. I know Brian Hills in his book, he puts up the stairs from Joseph Smith’s house in the Navvau Mansion House and he’s like, there’s no way that that this could work out, her being pushed, him seeing um Charles seeing this happen, but I’ve been to the home like it’s, it, I mean, it looks perfectly fine to me to have witnessed this scene, um, and then I, and then this video I explore a little bit more of what’s happening historically, um, so yeah.
[1:21:48] Michelle: OK, wow. So much here. Do you wanna start or should I start?
[1:21:53] Cheryl Bruno: Um, so, uh, let me just start with where she says, I’ll explain later historically, um, why I don’t believe Brian Hailes and then basically her historical reason for not believing um Brian Hailes. is that she’s been to the Navu House or the mansion house, she’s seen the steps and then in her little video, she talks about in the relief Society minutes that she’s gone through, Emma um quits attending relief Society for a long period of time until her final, you know, um, her final. Hurrah. OK, Corral, you know, those last four meetings the voice of innocence meetings, but anyway, I have actually written an article on that as well, and I’ve given reasons why I feel like she wasn’t attending relief society, um, and also Emma’s biographers have also. spoken to that and none of us have come to the same conclusions. She doesn’t seem to have a historical reasoning why she thinks it’s just, you know, kind of a speculation and then if you want to get into the um mansion house, um, let’s find out how much more of a speculation that is.
[1:23:05] Michelle: OK. Yes, I have, I have a lot to say about this. So actually, I want to go here first and talk about the source, and then we’ll dig into the story a little bit more. But I think John Dehlin did talk about Charles C. Rich and how he is like an important figure, right? I don’t, I don’t know if he mentioned Rich Fields or, you know, what he said, but he’s correct. Charles Rich was, uh, in Navvo. Um, he would have known Joseph Smith for sure. Brigham Young made him an apostle after Joseph’s death, so he became an apostle later on. But John is exactly right about this. So Charles C. Rich may very well be a reliable source if he were the source for this claim, which, unfortunately, he isn’t. So we’ll get into it. I first want to show this other, um, paper, because this is an important paper if you are going to talk about Emma. And Eliza and the stairs. Look at that. The name of the paper. This was actually written in 1982, so this is not new scholarship. And the three authors, um, Maureen Beecher is the one who compiled the complete writings of Eliza Snow. This has all of her journals and all of her other writings. And then it also is Linda King Newell and Vale Tippitz Avery, who are the biographers of Emma Smith. They wrote Mormon Enigma. So, If you want to talk about this source at all, you really should at least read the existing scholarship that isn’t even new, right? That’s not a hard one to do. So I just want to share a couple of things from this that I think need to be paid attention to. So if you had done that research, you would know that this story does not come from Charles C. Rich. It comes from Leroy Snow. He was the youngest son of Lorenzo Snow. He was Eliza’s nephew. He was born when his father was 62, and his mother Sarah Jensen, Lorenzo’s ninth wife, was 20. I just, we have to understand the polygamy dynamics. And so Leroy Snow, born in ’76, he was barely 7 years old when Charles C. Rich died. So he could not possibly have gotten this story from Charles C. Rich, but fortunately, again, work has been done on this account, so I’ll just quote a couple of things from this paper um that I just showed.
[1:25:29] Cheryl Bruno: And I think that um it’s important to, to say that even before, I think Michelle, even before you found that article, um Michelle and I were talking about it not coming from Chelsea Rich because you can see that Leroy Snow is quoting Chelsea Rich, so I asked Michelle, well, how old was he? You know, so. That was, I mean, even without reading the article, it’s something that you just when you’re doing historical work like this, you ask these questions about the sources, you have to ask these questions about the sources before you put them up on your, on your episode and just, you know, trust them so much.
[1:26:09] Michelle: Yeah, and absolutely all of us can make mistakes, right? We all make mistakes. I understand that. But it’s just an overall procedural, knowing how to do good, credible work. Yeah. So, OK, so this paper, it says that, um, among any uh, many other things, it explains that Leroy worked in the church historian’s office from 1926 to 1950, during which time he wrote this account, which he wrote because he planned to include it in a Biography. Well, he, he intended to write biographies of both Eliza and Lorenzo, his father, his aunt and his father, and he never wrote this. He never wrote that. But this account was found among his papers. So that’s when it first emerged, was after 1950, likely after LeRoy Snow had died. And so I’ll quote something from this article. In his notes, Leroy Snow attributes this account to Charles C. Rich, giving as a, um, giving as source a letter from W. Aird McDonald. dated 11th of August 1944. That letter has not been found, but from MacDonald’s son, we learned that his father, who would have known Apostle Rich, did serve a mission in 1906 to 1908 under the presidency of Ben E. Rich, Charles Rich’s son. If that is the that is the connection, the account is at best forthhand, and in any case, the event is separated from the writing by a century. So I would, so
[1:27:41] Cheryl Bruno: you would have Chelsea Rich telling. Ben E. Rich, the story who told his father, who told Leroy
[1:27:51] Michelle: Aird McDonald, who then who told W Aird McDonald, who then maybe wrote it in a letter, but we don’t have the letter, even though Leroy Smith kept all of his papers. So there might be a letter written by W. Aird McDonald that, um, Leroy Snow at some point saw. That’s the best case scenario.
[1:28:14] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah.
[1:28:14] Michelle: Yeah. So this is not a good source. And again, it wasn’t discovered until after the 1950s, and it wasn’t written until a century after this happened. This is like a bad game of telephone, right? And you know how specific and detailed it is. It, it’s told in this narrative emotive style that it does not ring, um, historically. Accurate, I guess I can say. And so then, um, in the late 1960s, Eliza Snow’s journal was discovered and first became available for research in the 1970s. So this is Eliza Snow’s Navvoo Journal, a huge find. Um, transcripts were compiled again by Maureen Beecher, and who was one of the authors of this paper. And I just want to read how she introduces the journal really quickly. I’ll just read one little snippet. She says the Nauvoo Journal at last available did not directly answer the anxious speculations of historians. There is no overt men. of um, of a ceiling between Eliza Snow and Joseph Smith, and there is no description of a scene with Emma on the stairs. So that’s a good piece to know. I’m not going to argue from absence of evidence and, you know, and, and I’m not going to make an argument from silence. At the same time, though, that is something to pay attention to. I don’t know why I still have this on the screen. I could have taken that down. But it’s the, um, it’s the same writer.
[1:29:42] Cheryl Bruno: There’s more.
[1:29:44] Michelle: There is more. There is more. So I want to go ahead and look at a few things that are important. So it was so interesting that Julia had her picture of the mansion house stairs and was like, I don’t know why people say this isn’t a good source. I, I’ve been there, I’ve seen the stairs, but she didn’t stop to do even the basic amount of research to understand why that matters, why the question matters, to understand that she’s at the wrong house. So I’m going to read, um, Eliza, and I did watch her video, that little video that she includes, I believe in that video or another one, she includes this source, so she could have known it. But just it’s,
[1:30:21] Cheryl Bruno: it’s interesting that she didn’t pick this up already from the source because a close reading of the source would automatically tell you,
[1:30:29] Michelle: right. Right. So Eliza Snow moved in with the Smiths after her, according to her, um, journal, after her family moved out of Navo and moved to, I want to say it was Walnut Creek. Yes, or Walnut Grove. It was one or the other. It’s the, um, same as the Little House on the Prairie town. And so, um, so then she just records February 11, 1843. So pay attention to that date. February 11th. In 1843, took board and had my lodging removed to the residence of brother Jay Holmes. So she moved in with her friends, the Holmes, who she lived with a couple of times, and she never lived with Joseph Smith again. She records the other places she lives. So this account for her to be living with Joseph Smith would have had to happen before February 13, 1843, because that’s when she was living with them. So then if we go ahead and go to, um, Joseph Smith’s journal, oh, see, I didn’t, I didn’t, I should have put this on the screen. This is LeRoy C Snow. Did I put him up so everyone could see him? That’s who it is that wrote this account. And then if we go to, um, Joseph Smith’s journal, I just want to show a couple of things, because this is, um, his, well, it’s not Joseph Smith’s journal. This is a complicated. thing to pay attention to. It’s Willard Richards, um, journal for Joseph Smith. It’s Willard Richards that recorded this. But Thursday, um August 31st, it says, um, about these days was moving into the new house on the diagonal corner to commence keeping Tavern. So this is about the time that Joseph Smith moved in to the Navo Mansion. And then we can go, we can corroborate that, end of August. Yes, but it might not have even been that soon because it’s his September 15th journal that we read that they hung the sign. It says, Joseph raised a sign Navu Mansion. So they, they put a sign up on this date, the middle of September, and then we have one more to show. October 3rd, we can see that this is, it says, um, the brethren assembled with their wives to the amount of about 100 couples and dined at the Navvo mansion as an opening to the house, a very pleasant day and all things passed off well. So this is when they moved into the Navu mansion. It was not before September of 1843, right? Now, Are you catching Cheryl, do you want to like spell out for people the problem if they’re not catching it?
[1:33:02] Cheryl Bruno: Eliza never lived in the Nava mansion. She lived in the Joseph Smith and Emma Smith home, which is a very, very different place. There are not, um, there are not a stairs with a balcony and a place, you know, a foyer where you can look up the stairs, um, and That’s why Brian Hailes has said that this wouldn’t be possible to see in the way that’s described a person coming tumbling down the stairs.
[1:33:31] Michelle: Exactly. Yes. This is the homestead, and this is where they lived when Eliza lived with them. They actually only have that small
[1:33:38] Cheryl Bruno: little log part. It’s not the addition. Yeah.
[1:33:42] Michelle: Joseph Smith the 3rd built on the edition. Later. So that little log part is what Emma and Joseph lived in. It actually started out just as a log cabin that they kept adding to.
[1:33:51] Cheryl Bruno: And correct me if I’m wrong, Michelle, is there’s only one room upstairs. Is that right?
[1:33:56] Michelle: I think that there was one, and then they added one more later on, and I’m not, I, I’m not sure when they added each one. But I did, it’s really hard to find pictures of the interior of this little homestead. But I was able to find this video, um, where Lachlan McKay, who is, he’s, he’s just this excellent guy. I love him, who’s kind of the, he, he kept took care of the properties for the community of Christ. And he gives us a little virtual tour of the inside of the, um, homestead. So I just want to show this little part so you can see why this is a problem. Let’s go in. Again, this is the oldest part of the house. Stairs behind this door would get you up initially to one room above. Yes, so you
[1:34:46] Cheryl Bruno: can so there’s there you cannot see the stairs from if you’re if you’re child rich and you’re standing in the doorway in the in the front part, you know,
[1:34:56] Michelle: it’s a tiny little stairwell behind that door. You cannot see up to the top and you cannot see. Down to the bottom, right? It’s not like, like Leroy was imagining this story based on the Navu Mansion and didn’t understand when he was making up, creating this story, that they lived in the homestead and that it wouldn’t possibly work. So, again, This is an important thing to pay attention to, but there’s even more that we can show. So first of all, when Julia shows the picture of the Navo of the Navo mansion stairs, she’s completely wrong cause she hasn’t done this basic work that has been known for a very long time. Brian Hailes didn’t do new work to say this couldn’t happen because it was already done in that paper in 82. But there are a few additional things that we can show. Um, First of all, another huge problem with this comes right here. This is The affidavit of Charles C. Rich, right? And you can see it’s the same form letter that we’re talking about. This is Joseph F. Smith’s handwriting. Smith’s handwriting. Mhm. And you can see the, um, appeared before me, Charles Rich, who was sworn in, and on his oaths sayeth that on the blank day of May 1844, as he was about starting on a Mission to the state of Michigan, Hiram Smith, patriarch, taught him the principle of polygamy or celestial marriage, and told him that when he should return from the said mission, it would be his privilege to take other wives. So according to this affidavit, which, in my perspective, I question these affidavits. I, I think that they are motivated to create something Cheryl might have a different perspective on them. But, um, this affidavit makes it clear that according, even, even if Charles C. Bridge’s affidavit is true, he wouldn’t have known about polygamy until May of 1844. So he could not have witnessed Joseph Smith kissing pregnant Eliza and having two wives. Right? That’s another huge problem with this account. But there are more problems. Do you have anything to respond to with that, or? I just continue, please go on. OK. So I’ll just show, um, one more thing, and I know that Cheryl and I also have a different perspective on this source. So, um, so I’m showing you these things so that you guys can all be aware of what the conversations actually should be. But this is the affidavit in the that was published in The Times of Seasons, October 1st, 1842. And this is another one that the LDS. Church leaders forgot about or weren’t aware of until the RLDS missionaries brought it out and challenged them with it, and then they had to come up with reasons to explain it away. But you’ll see that it says we the undersigned members of the Ladies’ Relief Society and married females do certify and declare that we know of no system of marriage being practiced in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints save the one contained contained in the Book of the Doctrine and Covenants. I have to stop and clarify. You need to know what the original doctrine and Covenant statement on marriage says. It was Section 101 in the 1835 doctrine and Covenants, and then Section 109 and the 1844 doctrine and Covenants, and it said that inasmuch as this church has been reproved with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that one man, but we believe that one man should have one wife and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death when either is at liberty to marry again. So that was published in their canonized scripture that had the scriptures that had been accepted by universal common consent, and that’s what they are testifying to. There’s no other system of marriage other than that one. And then it goes on and it goes on and says, and we give this certificate to the public to show that John C. Bennett’s secret wife system is a disclosure, disclosure of his own mate, because John C. Bennett was putting out stories accusing the Mormons of practicing spiritual wifery. and it signed Emma Smith. Elizabeth Ann Whitney, counselor, according to the later stories, by this point her daughter Sarah Anne would already have been married to Joseph Smith, and then Sarah M. Cleveland and Eliza R. Snow, secretary, and she would have already been married if I, I happen to believe that the women were telling the truth in this affidavit and the stories developed later. But this is another piece of evidence that needs to be very carefully dealt with, and you can see all of the other signatures. There’s more to this one. But I’ll move on.
[1:39:27] Cheryl Bruno: So right before, um, yeah, before she goes on with that, we do this is something that Michelle and I go back and forth on and so these are the kinds of things that are, um, these are the kinds of things that are important in the polygamy dialogue right now is where these carefully worded denial. Um, were they saying we know of no other system practiced in the church, um, polygamy wasn’t being practiced in the church as a whole. Um, can we bring out Eliza R Sna’s later statement that when we were talking about this, we were making a distinguished, we were trying to distinguish between John C. Bennett’s polygamy and just polygamy. So these are the kinds of conversations that we do have and that we need to be having, um, that we need to go back and forth on to decide whether um Eliza Arsenault is a um is a true source here about polygamy or um and those kind of things, but we, the, the falling down the stairs thing, that’s just not a part of the conversation talking about that conversation we are years behind, you know, we’re back in 1982. We need to get to 2025 and talk about the things that are now being not that that are now being contested.
[1:40:48] Michelle: Yes, and these are rigorous, important conversations to be having with a with a lot of strong opinions on them that that are going forward. So I just want to share one more source, and then I’ll share a couple of other things. But this was Lorenzo Snow in a speech in May 1899. speaking in St. George, he said, My sister Eliza Arsenault, I believe just as good as any woman just as good a woman as any Latter-day Saint woman that ever lived, and she lived in an unmarried state until she was beyond the condition of raising a family. So Lorenzo Snow is speaking, saying that Eliza never had the opportunity to to have a family, even if she was sealed to Joseph Smith, with which Lorenzo Snow claimed that she was. So that’s another death nail in this, um, in this story that that came out after 1950, you know, more than 50 years later after even Snow.
[1:41:46] Cheryl Bruno: The thing that we can talk about, um, does this mean that ceiling was different than being in a married state? Um, what was, was Joseph Smith ceiling two wives different? I know, um, Michelle doesn’t believe that that there were ceilings either, but
[1:42:03] Michelle: I don’t,
[1:42:04] Cheryl Bruno: but there are, you know, there are some, uh. Reasons to believe that Lorenzo Snow thought that.
[1:42:10] Michelle: So I believe there were posthumous ceilings and there could have been different, yes, but nothing that would have equated to a marriage.
[1:42:15] Cheryl Bruno: You need to bring out we need to be arguing these things and get up to speed here. Yeah,
[1:42:22] Michelle: and a couple of things that are just telltale signs that this is a later story. It talks about dainty little Eliza. Eliza was not little. She was 5’6, which was well above the average. The day, right? She was, she was a, a large woman. Um, I, I mean, I mean, she was tall and she was, uh, you know, she, you wouldn’t describe her as little or tiny. And also, the idea of Eliza being heavy with child in Navu is very surprising that people wouldn’t take, like, stop at that. Because, um, Julia even went through the records of the relief society showing That Eliza was there. So here we have this really hush hush secret, but Eliza walking around fully pregnant with no husband or as a spiritual wife of Joseph Smith, the Trump spirit wife didn’t come about until decades later. So anyway, there are, there are several problems with this account. We can cut it, slice it open a million different ways, and it, it, it is, it shouldn’t be used. It just makes you lose credibility. Any last words on it,
[1:43:21] Cheryl Bruno: Cheryl? Um, yeah, just, um, the, using, using these, um, these sources, we just have to really be careful on, on using the sources that, you know, I mean, just how many, I have to laugh at how many people that one little story goes through and then to find out that she didn’t even live in the same house, it’s just, you know, it’s not something we need to be. Um, continuing to talk about. So then if this is the only source we have of um Eliza R Sno um living with Joseph Smith, like um having consensual relationships with, with Joseph Smith, and that’s a big problem. And this is what I always thought that, oh we have these, we have so many accounts and as you look at them one by One, you see that each one of them has problems, then you wonder how many accounts do we have that we can rely upon. And so that’s where we need to get as historians, we need to now be starting to dig into these and saying this one’s reliable, we do have some reliable ones because otherwise the monogamy firmers are running, you know, they’re just running away with. The with the narrative because they now can say can point to this story and this story and this story and show how they’re not believable and so we need to make sure that we um if we want to keep our narrative which I think I’m thinking that we may want to revise our narrative in some ways, in many ways um so we need to start doing some work on that.
[1:45:00] Michelle: That’s excellent. This is why Cheryl said, stop embarrassing me, you know, like, like you guys are arguing her side, and when you’re doing it this poorly, it, it, it’s not helpful, so. Cheryl and I had planned, let’s see, um, should we, we have two more wives we want to talk about. We wanted to go into Eliza Snow quickly, and then also, um, Agnes Smith. This is kind of a big hairy one, and then we had one more. Maybe, maybe we can take Agnes Smith and then save our last one for um for a part two. Does that sound good? Yeah,
[1:45:30] Cheryl Bruno: let’s do that quickly because we don’t want it too long. Um, I hope that it doesn’t get um. I hope this just doesn’t get too like strung out for a lot of listeners, but I think it’s really important to show details on this so that we realize that, um, you know, we can’t just take what John Dehlin has come out with his little, you know, his little review of all the wives and just say, yeah. Yeah, he’s, he’s shown, you know, evidence. He hasn’t shown evidence that what he, those little, you know, sentences that he pulled out of here and there that Julia pulled out of here and there um are not evidence.
[1:46:10] Michelle: And please pay attention. This is being said by a respected historian who shares your perspective. So, OK, we’ll go over to the next clip about Agnes Smith.
[1:46:21] Julia: So I’ll, I’ll kind of summarize this one because this is a lot of information. So Agnes Smith, Agnes Smith was Joseph Smith, that’s his Agnes is Joseph’s brother, sister-in-law, excuse me. Agnes married Don Carlos on July 30th of 1835, and they had three kids together. And then Don Carlos got sick and he passed away unexpectedly on August 7th of 1841. And Todd Compton says that in their journal, on January 6th, Brigham Young wrote that they, he wrote a Masonic code, he wrote, I was, I was taken into the lodge. JS J Smith was was Agnes’s, and he says that the was is code meaning wedded and sealed to, and then from other sources, um, he probably married her on March 24th of 1842. Um, and then, then you go down in the same in his, in his journal, and Joseph Smith’s diary, um, for January 6th, it says, truly this is a day long to be remembered by the saints of the last days, a day in which the God of heaven has begun to restore the ancient order of his kingdom unto his servants and his people. A day in which all things are concurring together to bring about the completion of the fullness of the gospel. And it is reasonable to read in Joseph Smith’s diary that what he’s referring to, to restore the ancient order, is he’s talking about the leveret marriage.
[1:47:36] Cheryl Bruno: So she’s right. There’s so much in here. There’s so much in here. Um, so Michelle has done an episode on this, and if you want to, um, read about a lot of detail on this, then I suggest you go to her episode,
[1:47:49] Michelle: which is very good. I’m gonna, I’m gonna put it up here. I, I not to be embarrassing, but you can see it. It’ll be linked below. So if anyone wants to actually dig into this, I recommend this episode. I recommend this as well. OK. You have to
[1:48:03] Cheryl Bruno: adjust the Brigham Man journal.
[1:48:06] Michelle: Yes, I do. I’ll go ahead and show up. Yes, so here’s the.
[1:48:12] Cheryl Bruno: Yes, this is Brigham Young’s journal, and it’s um interesting. He writes twice, January 6, 1842 and um this is written in Masonic cipher, and it was um deciphered by Arturo de Hoyos. He wrote this, he deciphered this on May 21st, 1991. And this was the first time that we really get any sense of what this means before this historians didn’t know what the cipher meant. They had no idea. That’s the whole page,
[1:48:41] Michelle: entry, uh-huh,
[1:48:43] Cheryl Bruno: right. So before this time, um, most of the people. Who are writing lists of Joseph Smith’s wives were not including Agnes Krith Smith on their list because they did not know of this um Masonic code. So if you bring that up again. So what it actually says is the first line there says um. I was taken into the lodge. OK, what he’s referring to?
[1:49:08] Michelle: Let me, let me just show this really quickly, because this is something that we worked on. This is Brigham Young’s Masonic cipher, and this is kind of like cutting edge information. This is quite new. This has gone over in that episode, that, that this is some of the new information that is coming out. Work that’s being done. So now I’ll go ahead to um
[1:49:26] Cheryl Bruno: they’re
[1:49:26] Michelle: good
[1:49:26] Cheryl Bruno: they’re good. OK, so, um, I was taken into the way the way I read this and other his Masonic historians are beginning to look at this and say, um, I was taken into the lodge. Jay Smith was. And then there’s kind of a little space there and it looks like then he’s going, Agnes, I don’t, I’ll talk about the W’s in a minute. It looks like he might be saying Agnes, and then he puts ellipses. Maybe he’s gonna say something later about Agnes, OK? So I was taking the lodge. Jay Smith was Agnes, and I’ll let you talk about Agnew later, um, Michelle. OK, but if you just look at this, I just,
[1:50:08] Michelle: I could do it super quick and we can move on because you can see. That he makes a mistake with the H based on the, the deciphering, right? Which is an easy mistake to make because you can see how similar the H is to the G. Yeah. So, so that makes sense. But, um, the, the W’s at the end are actually W’s, not S’s. And the reason I have a harder time accepting that as a mistake is because he uses 5 S’s or Ws correctly before making those, um, mistake. And so, so the first hurdle to get over. it says, I was taken into the lodge. Jay Smith was Agnew is what it actually says. So we already have to interpret it as a mistake to get to Agnes. And then I guess we’ll go ahead with, with you go ahead and then I’ll add another part.
[1:50:51] Cheryl Bruno: OK, so right, so what this is is this is a Masonic document. He was taken into the lodge on January, what was it? 6? Um, and, um, and then perhaps Joseph Smith was. In the lodge. So, um, people, what the reason why they’re saying this is a polygamy document is why was it um kind of secret? Why was it put in code? And we have discovered that um Joseph Smith and Brigham Young were not supposed to be um raised as Masons yet because the lodge did not have authority to work yet. It wasn’t given authority to work until March. And so if he, if Brigham. was taken into the lodge this early, which um Dawn Bradley is working on this and is coming out with an article on this talking about how possibly Brigham Young and Joseph Smith were taken into the lodge earlier, but they’re keeping it a secret. OK, so that’s what the secrecy is all about. It doesn’t really have anything to do with polygamy, um, just looking at the document, even if it’s as Agnes, we don’t know that that’s. The only reason we might think it was polygamy is because it’s secret. And if we know that it could be secret for another reason, then we have no, no way of thinking that this is a polygamy document. Perhaps Agnes was going to be made a Mason as a woman or something. We just don’t know what’s happening or it could be Agnew. There was a Joseph Agnew in Navvo at one period of time.
[1:52:27] Michelle: So another challenge is that this is just thrown into Brigham’s almost blank journal, right? So if we’ll get, you’ll get more details in the episode. But this, and then there is one more reason that this is thought to be about polygamy, and it makes me laugh because to me, as I’ve dug into it, it turns out to be so silly. And that it really just says I was taken into the lodge, Jay Smith was Agnes, right? And this is the day that they were both taken into the lodge, possibly. But, um, we’ve done this other thing to claim that WAS isn’t was, that it’s wetted and sealed. And this, if, if, I mean, if people want to talk about motivated reasoning, there There is nothing to support this interpretation. In fact, um, um, Arturo de Hoyas by saying it right, art is on record saying that they were just spitballing. They were just spitballing coming up with what WAS might mean.
[1:53:30] Cheryl Bruno: Could it possibly mean wetted and sealed? Or could it be anointed sealed, or could it be, you know, what kinds of things could that mean? So that Um, so some historians now have taken off with this and said this is a polygamy document where Joseph and Joseph Smith wedded and sealed Agnes,
[1:53:49] Michelle: and that’s why it’s interpreted as a polygamy document. And then if you look at the other examples that they use to claim it says wetted and sealed, it’s quite tortured. It really, again, this is something that monogamy affirmers see and just go. Are you kidding me? And so I, I do recommend watching that episode, um, to, to get the, the rest of the story. Can I go on? Was there anything else you wanted to share, or should we go on to the journal entry that they?
[1:54:16] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, I mean, I can, I, I could say that, you know, I, I wouldn’t say that you can throw it out as a polygamy document, but it would have to have some corroboration.
[1:54:26] Michelle: And so it’s really grasping at straws. And then they go to more places with this that I want to, um, Talk about quickly. So, one is they call this lever at marriage, right? And that, um, has also just been adopted and taken on, and I don’t want to spend too much time on it, but at the same time, I also kind of do because it’s really, it really matters. And, um, Julia, at least attached. Well, should I go to the journal entry first? I guess I’ll talk tolle,
[1:54:54] Cheryl Bruno: I think I’m gonna stop you right here and just say, today, I found some new information on. Leverett marriage and Hiram Smith. So I think that you and I should do an episode about Leverett marriage because I know what you’re going to say because I know your views on Leverett marriage, and I feel that I’ve found some um some information that would be really interesting. We could go do a whole episode on it. So I don’t want you to, I don’t want you to give your, you know, your whole marriage spiel because I have some more information on it. Approximately 10 hours later.
[1:55:32] Michelle: So Cheryl and I just had to go off the air and debate a source. You could see the lighting is a little different now, but we will save that for a future episode, and we will continue on with our presentation. So the last thing I want to talk about. The last thing Cheryl wants me to talk about. OK, sorry. So, um, OK, so, um, after, um, Juliet talks about the WAS, she goes into love at marriage. I’m not gonna take time to go into that right now. I’ve done an episode on it that will be linked below. There’s more to be said on all of these topics, of course, but you can go into why I don’t see that as a, um, Relevant point here. But then she refers to this journal entry, that is Joseph Smith’s January 6, 1842 journal. Again, this is kept by Willard Richards, and I believe this may be the first entry that Willard Richards does in this journal. I could be wrong. But, um, but it may be, but this is what’s so interesting. She just reads a little tiny part of it about the ancient order being restored and leaves the rest out. I do want to show one other thing before I read this, just to point out why that’s a problem. This is Alexandra Campbell. We know that Sydney Rigdon was a Campbellite preacher before he joined the, um, LDS Church. And actually, if you look up Restoration Movement online, if you do a Google search, it will bring up Alexander Campbell, not Joseph Smith. That was considered the Restoration Movement. And the compilation of Alexander’s teaching is called A Restoration of the Ancient Order of Things. So you absolutely cannot use that term and attach it to polygamy.
[1:57:12] Cheryl Bruno: But you know you can use that term. attach it to Freemasonry because Freemasonry often talked about the ancient order of things and that was considered to be Freemasonry and so we have some Masonic historians looking at that journal entry that you just referenced or the, the, um, the, what is Jeremy called it the Willard Richards history note, Joseph Smith history or something. Anyway. Um, so I, I would like to change it to that too because it’s really not Joseph Smith’s journal. I agree with that. So, so, but, um, but what we have in this entry is the ancient order of things. Masonic historians are looking at that and then wondering was he talking Masonically, especially since we have the Brigham Young Journal talking Masonically and then could ancient order of things refer to something Masonic, but that’s not the. Important thing about this century.
[1:58:07] Michelle: But that is an additional confirmation that it’s, if it’s anything, it’s about Freemasonry, not about polygamy, right? And I just wanted to point out that the, um, that Alexander Campbell was certainly not teaching polygamy. He was not in favor of anything along those lines. And he also was not teaching anything along the lines of love at marriage. So I just wanted to point out that it’s not, you cannot just make that jump and say, because it says ancient order, it must be about polygamy. And then also, they only read a small portion of this. So I just want to read a little bit more of it because it’s important, again, to not just cherry pick the part you think and then twist it to make it say what you want. Because as I read this, it is so abundantly clear that this is about a new year in this movement that we’re building a temple. There’s so much to be excited about. And to try to, to try to twist polygamy into this is some serious motivated reasoning, in my opinion. So it says the new year has been ushered in and continued thus far under the most favorable auspices, and the saints seem to be influenced by a kind of indulgent providence in their disposition and means to rear the temple of the Most High God, anxiously looking forward to the completion thereof as an event of the greatest importance to the church and the world. So here it’s telling us what events are important, right? It’s the building of the temple, making the saints in Zion to rejoice and the hypocrite and sinner to tremble. Truly, this is a day long to be remembered. This is where they start reading. By the saints of the last days, a day in which the God of heaven has begun, has begun to restore the ancient order of His kingdom. So
[1:59:41] Cheryl Bruno: you, if you stop right there, he’s, he’s talking about the New year. And then he refers to that by saying, truly, this is a day long to be remembered. So he means a day, like the great day of my power. He means a day of, you know, not a specific day Monday. He means, you know, a period of time.
[2:00:04] Michelle: Right? This is, these are the days to be remembered would be just as accurate. And he is talking about the events. That are important are the temple. So if you read it in context, it’s very, very difficult to claim. But again, I’m not certain that they went and read the full journal. I won’t take more time, but it goes on to make that more clear that that it’s very, very, and again, this is why the arguments fall apart when we see them and, and you’re trying to claim. That this, um, WAS means wetted and sealed with nothing to support that. And then you’re attaching it to this journal that you’re only taking a small snippet of and saying, see, they support each other. When I, I, I don’t think there’s strong evidence for that. I think much better work would need to be done to make those claims. And I love what Cheryl has pointed out, that these are Masonic things that need to be studied as well.
[2:00:58] Cheryl Bruno: Right, because we know that the, the cipher is a Masonic cipher, and now, you know, we know that this is perhaps the day that he was taken into the lodge Masonically, you know, and perhaps Joe Smith was taken to lodge Masonically. We also have a reason to hide it, which is Masonic, you know, we, all these things are Masonic and so we, we can’t see polygamy in there unless we have some other kind of corroborating evidence, um, which we don’t. Or which they haven’t, they haven’t shown us.
[2:01:31] Michelle: And I hope that people listening can at least recognize how much motivated reasoning plays into this. How, if you choose to read polygamy into that, you are looking, you are, you know, a polygamy hammer and everything you see is a, is a polygamy nail. Like you, like you are looking through such thick polygamy lenses that you’re turning everything into that without justification for it.
[2:01:53] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, and Michelle thinks that’s what I do. But in this case, I don’t do that. So no,
[2:01:59] Michelle: I actually think Cheryl does a great job. And I hope we, we did just pause the, pause the, um, recording for a little while and have a pretty good kno knock down drag out, right? Cause we really do push against each other. But I think that we both try very hard to be honest with the sources. And then I think that engaging together makes us each try even harder and be even more careful than we would otherwise be. So that’s why we’re doing this, is to recommend that to everyone. But, um, Cheryl, there’s just one more, one more wife we were going to bring up. Can we take a few more minutes and go over this last wife? OK, real quick, let’s do it real fast. OK, so here is the last clip that we are going to play.
[2:02:37] Julia: Joseph took Sarah Anne as a plural wife on July 27th of 1842, and nine months later, she married Joseph C. Kingsbury, with Joseph Smith performing the marriage in April of 1843. Kingsbury was a pretend or front husband in this poly polygamous union, so, so it’s becoming polyandry. The marriage ceremony between Joseph Smith and Sarah Anne implied that mortal offspring um could occur. And so this is the blessing um between Joseph and Sarah, or the not blessing, the marriage ceremony. I give you SA Whitney, my daughter, so this is her dad.
[2:03:12] Michelle: OK. She, she struggles to read that and stumbles over it quite a bit, so I’ll just skip and, and I’ll come back to it. But we’ll just go over the Whitney documents and we’ll explain them much better than I think that they did in that episode and talk about them because these for many people are seen as the strongest evidence of Joseph’s polygamy, right? And so, again, forgive me for putting myself back up on the screen. I just want to show, again, we won’t be able to touch on these here, but I’ve done an episode on the Whitney revelation. And on, oh, I guess we’ll go through each one. So the first one is the Whitney Revelation, and that’s what she’s talking about and reading from. The, um, blessing that that, um, Noel K. Whitney is supposed to say when he is marrying Joseph to Sarah. And I’ll just quickly point out this is the earliest version we have of it. And for anyone who wants to know, they did not have typewriters in Navu. This,
[2:04:10] Cheryl Bruno: this is a big problem.
[2:04:12] Michelle: This is a big problem. So this was actually typed up by Orson F. Whitney, and he gave it to Joseph F. Smith. It was typed up in, um, on April 1st, 1912 is when we get this, and he gave it to Joseph F. Smith, along with some other documents that we’ll go, go through. So this is the earliest version we have, and it’s all we have, really. A little later, 2 in the 1920s at some point, there were two, as I have written that it’s the revelation that’s dated. It’s, I mean, it’s supposed to be July 1842, but, but we cannot date it to that date.
[2:04:50] Cheryl Bruno: The thing is, from my perspective, I would like to say that this is a document, an original polygamy document. I would very much like to say that. However, I do, we’d always have to note if we ever reference this document that it is very much la that we do not have the handwritten revelation.
[2:05:09] Michelle: Um, and there is no provenance for this. It’s, it just comes from Orson F. Whitney in 1912. And so later on two handwritten versions of it showed up. And these are in the church history library, but they just showed up in 19 it says, apparently they were donated in 19 in the 1920s. So nobody knows anything about them. The Joseph Smith papers dates them and says circa 1870s, but it’s a complete guess. They admit that they have no idea what these are, and there are problems with them. Neither one is an. Exact match with the revelation, and they have other things included that come from journals. And so it’s, it’s very problematic and troubling to know what this revelation might be. And
[2:05:55] Cheryl Bruno: so because we don’t have that handwriting because we don’t know who’s handwriting it is, we don’t know, you know, what they were copying it from, um, who it is that’s copying it.
[2:06:06] Michelle: Yep. And I won’t take time to go into it now, but there are also really big problems with the wording, just the internal document, what it, how it refers to the names of the people, and a lot of the things that it says pose additional problems that need to be dealt with. So if anyone wants more evidence and wants to understand that more, I recommend the episode I did on it that will be linked below. And, um, I just will say that those of us on our I have very good reason to believe that this is not an authentic document from Joseph Smith, and people can disagree, but we need to bring good arguments to the table. Those are the arguments that need to be had. You can’t just use it and think you will refute us because you don’t even know what the document is or the provenance of it and why it’s a problem.
[2:06:52] Cheryl Bruno: And I keep saying, let’s do some, let’s do some research on it. Let’s, you know, get some people digging in on this. I think. It would be really fun to have some really good Mormon history work being done on these stuff.
[2:07:05] Michelle: Yeah, but Cheryl, even you agreed that things like Noel K. Whitney, supposedly supposed to call his daughter SA Whitney, is a problem. Like there are lots of problems like that that are just very strange and very goofy. So, um, there’s, there’s more to be said on it. So then we can go to the next document and forgive me, I have to show my next, um, Thumbnail, this is the Whitney letter that I’ve also done an an episode on that they go on to talk about. This is the Whitney letter and this is so important because again this is seen as sort of the smoking gun of Joseph Smith. Not only practicing polygamy, but practicing sexual polygamy and hiding it from Emma. Um, Sheryl and I had, we, we will at the polygamy, um, conference, the Journal of Mormon polygamy conference, be discussing, we’re doing a panel on Emma because we have such different Perspectives on Emma and it’s something we, we can test quite like we we go at it about Emma and this is one of the documents that comes up in that argument that we have just because of what it might mean, but I want to play what um they say about this, about the letter.
[2:08:16] Julia: OK, so that last paragraph, so the first paragraph about the, the way the marriage ceremony speaks of posterity. Again, it’s not a direct thing saying like they did have sex, and then this that thing about the um I have a room by myself, burn this letter, make sure Emma doesn’t see you. That to me implies that they, that’s one of the reasons that they’re bringing her is for this conjugal yeah, why would Joseph Smith say don’t tell Emma and burn the letter if it was just Emma’s pushing people downstairs. That’s why. That’s for her
[2:08:46] Cheryl Bruno: safety like that’s sounding sexual to me.
[2:08:52] Michelle: So again, pushing back to the, because Emma’s pushing people down the stairs, which is not true, right? And then using that to verify Emma was so dangerous, we have to keep this a secret from her. And so, oh, I don’t want to take time to go into all of the evidence. I will just
[2:09:08] Cheryl Bruno: I can just say please watch Michelle’s episode because even though I can see, personally, I can see that the letter can be read two different ways, but Michelle makes a very, very good case. Why he would want it kept from Emma, why there would be secrecy around this letter. All the questions that John Dehlin is asking, those have been answered very well in this episode of Michelle’s, and so I, I heartily recommend it, even though I do feel that it can be read two different ways. Um, sometimes it can be read different ways, but the fact is that we have another way of looking at it, so we can’t just say this is the only way to look at it.
[2:09:48] Michelle: Right. And I’ll just say really quickly, again, those are the arguments that need to be had. We, people need to know the sources and then have an intelligent conversation about it. But let me just throw in really quickly. Joseph Smith in hiding kept we have extensive journal entries from him every single day during this period that he’s in hiding, and we have additional sources as well. And if you are looking at this letter without reading the journal entries to under the context, then you are not equipped to discuss this letter. So a couple of, right. And then also if you are reading only a portion of the letter that you are cherry picking and don’t even know what the rest of it says, you are not making a strong argument. So let me just really quickly throw in, oh, you go ahead, Cheryl, then I’ll
[2:10:32] Cheryl Bruno: just say the problem with John is having no idea what the source is all about. Just can’t see any other possibility, right? And so then he thinks that monogamy affirmers are stupid or that, you know, that, that they’re, you know, but it’s only because he cannot see the possibility because he doesn’t have the background he needs to see the possibilities,
[2:10:55] Michelle: right? So let me throw in really quickly a couple of things I cannot go into nearly as much as I would like to because this is something I actually care passionately about. This is an argument. That I had that that that I think needs to be made and heard and addressed. So the Daily Record of the Journal and Emma’s sources show the situation in Navu. It was crawling with bounty hunters and mobbers. There was a big price on Joseph’s head because of the murder of Governor Boggs, or the shooting, he wasn’t killed of Governor Boggs, and they already had another suspect until John Bennett published that it was Joseph Smith, which I think there’s very strong evidence. To, to not believe based, I, I go over that in that. But in any case, there, we get kind of a day by day record of the, um, evasive maneuvers that Emma has to go through to be able to visit Joseph because she is being closely followed. She several times like risks her life crossing the river in bad weather in the middle of the night, so she can look like she’s coming back across the river so that she can confuse people about where Joseph is hiding. It’s, it’s, it’s really important. To see. We also have Emma, and we not only do we have the journals, we have the letters going back between Joseph and Emma. And we have Emma saying, I would love to come and see you, but I don’t dare to because because other people are coming to see you. We know that Emma was being followed. Everyone was looking. So if other people were going, Emma couldn’t go. We have that verifiable in the documents, in the letters between them. So when, when he says, if Emma’s not here, you should be safe. What was the danger? The danger was that Joseph’s life was literally in danger from these bounty hunters trying to extradite him back to Missouri for the shooting of Governor Boggs. To ignore that and claim that Emma is the danger is, I think, very irresponsible.
[2:12:45] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, the interesting part to me was when it said, um, burn the letter, and everyone says, why would he have to burn the letter? Well, because he says in the letter where he’s hiding, whose house he’s at, so they have to bring the letter so that he can be found.
[2:12:59] Michelle: That’s exactly right. The day before, so Emma was, Emma was writing letters to the governor. She was doing everything she could to keep him safe and protect him and to get the, um, to get this worked out. She had the, the night before, Joseph wrote this letter, his hiding place had been discovered. He went for a walk in the woods and they were seen. And so Emma had to wait till after dark, do her evasive actions to go visit him, to warn him, and then to move him to a hiding place, which means Emma was very likely there when he wrote this letter, and since we know Emma was currying letters, she could have even been been the one carrying the letter. So he had barely gone to a new hiding place, which was a dismal hiding place, it sounds like compared. He’s now at the, at Granger’s and it was a really, he really struggled and, um, it was dismal for him, so he was desperate for company. And he, um, yeah, yeah. Yes, he says in the letter where his brand new hiding place is. So to ignore that that’s the reason that he wanted the letter to be burned again is, and, and there’s so much more to be said about this that I hope people will watch that episode because this is one that you can claim that oh my gosh, how can they possibly argue against this? Well, if you say that you reveal your ignorance because you have not engaged with the very strong arguments that need to be considered. And so, Was there anything else, Cheryl, I kind of went off on that because, yeah, that’s all. Yeah. OK. And then the last one, we’ll just show that it’s a trilogy, the Whitney documents. There are 3 important documents. And the last one is the blessing to Sarah Anne, and that’s this one that I don’t even know if they refer to that in this episode, but it’s an important one to talk about as well. And I did an episode on it. I again, I guess just the cliff’s notes to, um, You know, like the spoiler alert, this paper is a very unique paper that very likely would not have been even manufactured until closer to the 1860s and certainly would not be available in Navvo. Almost certainly. I can’t, I can’t speak above what I know. And then we have the same exact paper that, um, Eliza drew that painted that flower on it, but this is the exact same paper being used by Eliza Snow much later in Utah. And there’s Helen Helen Whitney. Oh, Helen Mar Kimball. I’m so sorry. Thank you for correcting me. It is Helen. Yes. And so, um, that’s another big problem. And then I’ll just point out a couple of other little things. The day this, this across the top, I don’t know if you can see, but it says Navvoo City, March 23, 18, right? It has the date across it. And then I’ll just highlight these couple of things. Joseph wasn’t in town when he was supposed to have both received and written this letter, this, this blessing. So this is a really big problem. He was in Chicoin, Illinois, and, oh, I, and I guess that’s all that I’m going to go into in this one. So we have, again, Just problem after problem with the documents that people just need to be aware of. We can have the conversation. Maybe you’re right. Maybe polygamy originated with Joseph Smith, but maybe I’m right. And at this point, I would say we, like, like, it, it is not a done, done deal. We cannot say case closed. This needs to all be addressed.
[2:16:16] Cheryl Bruno: Yeah, um, I don’t know if you have the clips of John saying this, but, um, he says at one point at the end there, he says, we’ve shown really good evidence. And I mean to him, um, and to his listeners, I’m sure the ones that went through this whole um this whole episode, I’m sure they thought. I thought it was really good evidence because they don’t know what they don’t know, right? Um, they only, I mean, I hope that this, we’ve gotten into a lot of kind of murky details, um, but I hope that it shows you that the evidence that they’re showing is very, um, surface level, um. It, it’s just not good evidence. I can’t agree with the statement we’ve shown you really good evidence. And I hope that you’ll agree with us after, after you’ve heard, because it’s not only the 3 or 4 wives that we’ve talked about, it’s every single one has problems that we could talk about. Maybe some of them are picky, but they all do have things that we need to discuss. And then at the end, um John also says that um he puts Down monogamy of firmers as preferring other evidence to the evidence staring them right in the face. And I would just have to say to that, preferring what evidence you have not shown us evidence that would be up to the standard of where we are now in the polygamy debate. So this is not a question of them preferring other evidence. It’s, it’s about, you know, So they, they have the evidence you don’t. So, um, I really, really hope that people will take this seriously and, um, I, I have to say that I sort of put myself on the line here because I know that people are now um questioning my um historical chops because I’m being associated with the polygamy denial movement, um. So they’re questioning me, but I feel like this is where we’re going in the future. And if you don’t keep up with this information that’s coming out, you are the one that’s going to be left behind. And so, I mean, really, I, I urge you to keep up with um what’s happening in this movement and what evidence is being brought out.
[2:18:39] Michelle: I appreciate that. And I want to clarify because I know I don’t want anyone to misunderstand what you said when you said this is where we’re going in the future. I think what you mean is these are the conversations that need to be engaged in. These are the sources that need to be dealt with, right? This is, these are the debates that need to be had, and we are, we are, that’s why we’re doing this is. To try to bring everyone, like, up everyone’s game, so we can actually get in and have the conversations that need to be had based on all of the evidence. And, and it was really hard to choose which parts to respond to because we could have responded to so much of this. But I do want to say this at this point. Um, I, I hope that after watching this, John Dehlin or anyone else will not continue to say, I don’t want to have a conspiracy theorist on my program. And will stop like trying to use that as an excuse. I hope that people will reach out to John and anybody else and tell him to talk to me because here’s the thing. If with what you’ve just watched, if you think I just am ignorant and, and have confirmation bias and don’t have anything to say, then I guess I can’t, I can’t help, and you can just tell John that, yeah, I don’t have anything to do with her. But I hope that people who have engaged have seen that that is not the case, and that there are strong conversations to be had. And if people refuse to have me on, it’s not. Because I’m, I’m, I’m just nonsensical. It’s because they’re afraid of dealing with the honest evidence. And I think that’s a shame. I think it’s a shame to say, we’re not going to give this oxygen because we don’t like what it says, rather than saying, OK, let’s dig in and either argue against it or deal with the implications because we should all just want truths.
[2:20:23] Cheryl Bruno: So I’ll say too before we end, um, I know it’s going on a long time, but um I know it’s hard to engage with Michelle because you have to um get yourself to the point where you can even engage. You have to know a lot of things, you know, you have to know what the temple uh cases. You have to know what the evidence is, why certain, why we can’t talk about Emma falling down the stairs, why, you know, certain evidence is good or bad already. You have to Really know these things already and so it’s really hard to engage with Michelle because you find yourself very quickly being in over your head but that’s OK. She’s, she’s really good about that and if you need to step back and say, you know, I need a week to go look at this document, that’s fine. That’s what the historical, you know, um, method is all about. So let’s do this. Let’s continue and let’s not be scared to talk about it. Let’s get into.
[2:21:20] Michelle: And I will say, I try never to be, um, I try not to like vomit polygamy all over people, or, you know, the, the sources. Like, I try to be very reasonable and calm and just talk about what people want to talk about. And I’m happy to have conversations that aren’t about polygamy. The thing that I object to is, here’s the, here’s the thing. In any other domain or field, if there’s someone who knows a lot more than you do, then you generally consider them an expert. And you invite them on to share their expertise. And so that’s the problem that we have here is that people are wanting to prove I’m wrong, but they have no idea how to talk about the sources. And so maybe something to consider is maybe it’s worthwhile to just let me share my, the expertise I have. I, I have a very narrow field of focus, but I have gone very deep into it, and I continue to. And so I guess that’s what I’m saying is like, I’m not trying to win anything. I’m not trying to come. And bludgeon or sledgehammer. I just think it’s important for us all to be humble and honest with with where things are and and have the conversations that need to be had. That’s all I’m asking. But
[2:22:30] Cheryl Bruno: one last point too is that this is, um, an ongoing conversation and so a lot of the things that happened early on in Michelle’s podcast, she’s also grown from those and either there are many places where she’s either changed her. Her mind on it or she’s developed a better argument than she had at the beginning. So um I mean it’s, it’s hard to look back at her things and criticize her for early um early episodes that she did without realizing that it’s a continuing conversation and I have to say I really admire that because for me it’s really hard to put something out that I’m not sure of that I haven’t studied for two years first before, and she is willing to kind of put something out. And then, you know, change things if it, if it comes out that you know such and such a stationery was found in Navvo she’ll come on our podcast and say, oh yeah, you know, we found this and so it’s an, it’s an ongoing conversation which you can participate in. If you see something you don’t believe that she’s right on, participate in it show where, you know, where she’s wrong or where she needs to do more research and um that’s really important.
[2:23:43] Michelle: That’s great. Yeah. I started out my podcast for the, like, knowing Joseph Smith originated polygamy. And, and, in my view, it was bad that he did, and that’s why he was allowed to be killed. From my believing perspective, I thought that he did something that he shouldn’t have done. So I changed my mind on that, on live in real time in front of everybody. So yes, that is true. So yeah, just ask. Let let’s let’s keep the conversations going. Cheryl, thank you for coming on and doing this. I know this was a lot of work for both of us. And I, I want to thank everyone for tuning in. And I hope you listen to this conversation and take it seriously. And I hope that, that everyone is encouraged to continue these conversations. Thank you again for joining us. A huge thank you to Cheryl. I’m excited to go talk to John Deyn and I will see you next time.
